The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has no immediate safety concerns at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, following yet another operational malfunction, but the regulator is assessing the situation with continued heightened scrutiny at the troubled plant, an agency official said Wednesday.
The latest event at the 45-year-old Massachusetts facility occurred on March 31, when operators failed to follow proper procedure and allowed water to inadvertently flow into Pilgrim’s torus. The torus is an enormous doughnut-shaped water reservoir located at the base of the reactor building; it holds more than 1 million gallons of water and is used to condense steam and filter out radioactivity from water in the event of an accident.
The NRC said the event occurred after workers with plant owner Entergy finished flushing the core spray line, using water from the condensate storage tank, which holds hundreds of thousands of gallons of water. When they were done flushing, the operators failed to properly line up the storage tank valves, according to NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan. A control room alarm alerted personnel to the situation, Sheehan said, and Entergy corrected the problem.
NRC resident inspectors were quickly deployed to the site to verify that water was no longer flowing into the torus, Sheehan said, adding that the regulator is still assessing how the flooding could have impacted the torus’ depressurization and cool-down functions. Excess water levels could disrupt those functions, Sheehan said, noting that water levels in the Pilgrim torus have since returned to appropriate levels.
“There’s no immediate safety concern, but there is the question about adherence to procedures, particularly against the backdrop of – the plant is under heightened oversight, and they’ve had a number of these performance issues, procedural compliance issues in recent months,” Sheehan said.
Entergy did not respond to a request for comment.
The Plymouth plant has experienced a number of operational failures, procedural failures, and unplanned shutdowns dating to 2013, and environmentalists and residents have repeatedly called on the NRC to close the facility ahead of its scheduled shutdown on May 31, 2019. Pilgrim is rated as one of the worst-performing nuclear plants in the country, after being downgraded in 2015 to Column 4 of the NRC’s Action Matrix, which is the lowest rating for an operating nuclear reactor.
The NRC is preparing results from a three-phase special inspection at the plant, which placed Pilgrim’s safety culture under the microscope. Public backlash erupted in December when an NRC employee inadvertently forwarded an internal email to a local activist group, disclosing candid inspection details from the NRC, most notably concerns about Entergy’s safety culture.
The activist group, Cape Downwinders – which consists of residents from Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket – has scheduled a rally from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday outside Pilgrim to protest the plant’s refueling.
Sheehan said inspection results are expected in late April or early May. The NRC has 45 days after its special inspection exit meeting, which took place March 21, to release those details. NRC staff identified 13 deficiencies during Pilgrim’s special inspection, which the agency said were “consistent with a plant in Column 4.”
