Nuclear Safety: Unusual Event at Grand Gulf & What It Means
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By The Fairewinds Crew
We recently received an excellent question from a Fairewinds reader who asked about an “unusual event” at Mississippi's Grand Gulf nuclear power plant. Thanks to the member of the Fairewinds community whose question prompted us to write this Blog Post.
First, what is an unusual event?
When employees at a nuclear power plant discover that a piece of safety equipment is degraded as required in its technical specifications, it triggers an emergency notification to its federal regulator, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The NRC defines an unusual event as an Emergency Classification that indicates:
“A situation is in progress … which could potentially degrade the plant's level of safety … No releases of radioactive material requiring offsite actions are expected unless safety systems degrade further.”
Second, what about Grand Gulf?
This particular “unusual event” occurred at one of the largest Boiling Water Reactors (BWR) in the world: Grand Gulf nuclear power plant located on 2,100 acres near Port Gibson, Mississippi. Owned by Entergy Corporation (90%) and Cooperative Energy (10%), Grand Gulf is the largest single nuclear reactor in the US. If this Fairewinds reference to a BWR made you think of Fukushima Dai-ichi, you are correct; Japan’s Fukushima reactors had three meltdowns in 2011 and were BWR reactors of a much smaller and older design. Four of the six reactors at Japan’s Fukushima site had Mark 1 containments, while Grand Gulf is the newer Mark 3 design.
Grand Gulf, which received a power up-rate in 2012, has a truly abysmal reliability record, a long history of significant operating problems, as well as management fiascos. During 2020 and the pandemic, this atomic power reactor was either not running at all or was operating at reduced power for three-quarters of the entire year! Several years ago, Grand Gulf’s executives closed the plant for more than six months due to its own inadequate nuclear plant employee safety culture!
The NRC has known about numerous significant safety issues at Grand Gulf for decades. Back in 1997, the NRC said:
Grand Gulf tritium effluent amounts, currently among the highest in the country, are expected to begin to decrease… The station's liquid tritium release is an industry outlier. We have identified a direct correlation between reactor coolant boron and tritium levels and the effluent tritium increase… Grand Gulf liquid discharge volume has been identified as an outlier. This has led (sic) to a site commitment to reducing leakage.
Fifteen years later, in 2011, at the same time that Fukushima had its meltdowns, Grand Gulf Unit 1 had another significant tritium leak into the basement of the unfinished [never completed] Grand Gulf Unit 2 reactor. It then dumped that tritium directly into the Mississippi River. There is an international controversy currently underway because the Japanese government and TEPCO are trying to release tritium into the Pacific from Fukushima. In contrast, Grand Gulf released it directly into the Mississippi River. For a discussion about the dangers of tritium, here is a link to a Fairewinds podcast with Dr. Ian Fairlie.
It’s no wonder that within the nuclear industry, Grand Gulf has earned the moniker Grand Goof!
Now, in early 2021, Grand Gulf has reported an “unusual event” to the federal NRC due to “unidentified” water leakage in the drywell that exceeded nationwide regulatory allowable leak values. Yet again, there are no reports about what caused the unidentified leakage at Grand Gulf. At Fukushima Dai-ichi, the drywell keeps radiation trapped inside and is safety-related. While the Mark 3 containment design does not use the drywell as a radiation barrier, it still directs the flow of radioactive steam in the event of a radioactive steam line break.
The truth behind the leak
The truth about this leakage story is the impact of the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic on nuclear safety. In April 2020, Grand Gulf was required to perform leak tests of the drywell and claimed its concerns for COVID-19 transmission to its employees made that test difficult and time-consuming and asked for an 18-month extension.
The licensee provided the following information to support its need for this exigent license amendment request. The licensee is requesting this extension due to unforeseen circumstances because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in a need to delay the Type A ILRT and DWBT from the current spring 2020 refueling outage to the next spring 2022 refueling outage.
Readers may remember that in May of 2020, Fairewinds was a co-author petitioning the NRC to slow down nuclear reactor refueling outages because of the COVID-19 Pandemic. While we recognized that COVID-19 is dangerous, we also noted that atomic reactor outages indeed could be lengthened so that all scheduled safety tests might be appropriately implemented at a slower pace to accommodate for pandemic social distancing and masking protocols. But the NRC would have none of this and handed out test exemptions like Halloween candy to expedite safety outages that allowed the owners to earn additional profits!.
Proof of regulatory capture
As we said before, this unusual event is more proof of regulatory capture at the NRC! In the nuclear power industry, the NRC allows safety to have a secondary role to corporate profits. As a direct result of the NRC’s abysmal oversight, at least one reactor has had to declare an “unusual event” because it had an exemption to delay a required safety test and could therefore increase its owner’s profits. What would have happened at Grand Gulf if a radioactive steam line had ruptured? If there were a significant radiation release, it would jeopardize public health and safety in Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana.
Fairewinds wonders how many more of these hidden COVID-19 land mines might be waiting to fail because of deferred testing. The next grand goof by the atomic power industry might be much worse!
Fairewinds will keep you informed.
