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Alabama's Brown's Ferry Nuclear Plant - whistleblower on safety problems
Browns Ferry: Shrinking the safety margin at Alabama's largest nuclear plant
By Challen Stephens and Brian Lawson
ATHENS, Alabama – For more than two years, the largest nuclear plant in Alabama operated without a fully functioning failsafe system.
A massive cooling pump didn't work. Bearings were installed backwards. Emergency cooling lines sat blocked and unnoticed for years. The last was a safety lapse so dire Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Athens received the federal notice of a "red finding" – the final warning before being forced to shut down.
Now a TVA engineer tells The Huntsville Times/AL.com that both the mechanical and managerial shortcomings were worse than what has been reported by federal regulators. Joni Johnson, a 52-year-old who's been a TVA engineer for half her life, contends that a worst-case scenario – overlapping failures of a broken line and a rapid loss of coolant in Unit 1 – could have led to a meltdown.
<snip>
Johnson points to managerial bonuses for rapid installation of equipment. She also blames an emphasis on continuous running of three boiling water reactors, which need to be shut down to allow for major repairs. But Browns Ferry generates about $1 billion a year, or about 10 percent of TVA's annual revenue, and maintenance shutdowns cost money.
For the past two months, a 23-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspection team has been poring over records at Browns Ferry...
By Challen Stephens and Brian Lawson
ATHENS, Alabama – For more than two years, the largest nuclear plant in Alabama operated without a fully functioning failsafe system.
A massive cooling pump didn't work. Bearings were installed backwards. Emergency cooling lines sat blocked and unnoticed for years. The last was a safety lapse so dire Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Athens received the federal notice of a "red finding" – the final warning before being forced to shut down.
Now a TVA engineer tells The Huntsville Times/AL.com that both the mechanical and managerial shortcomings were worse than what has been reported by federal regulators. Joni Johnson, a 52-year-old who's been a TVA engineer for half her life, contends that a worst-case scenario – overlapping failures of a broken line and a rapid loss of coolant in Unit 1 – could have led to a meltdown.
<snip>
Johnson points to managerial bonuses for rapid installation of equipment. She also blames an emphasis on continuous running of three boiling water reactors, which need to be shut down to allow for major repairs. But Browns Ferry generates about $1 billion a year, or about 10 percent of TVA's annual revenue, and maintenance shutdowns cost money.
For the past two months, a 23-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspection team has been poring over records at Browns Ferry...
Much much more at: http://blog.al.com/wire/2013/07/browns_ferry.html#incart_maj-story-1