Nuclear Plants Withstand Hurricane Sandy

With the worst of Hurricane Sandy now passing the eastern seaboard, Entergy's Indian Point Energy Center and James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in New York, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts and Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Vermont have all safely endured the storm.  Did the grid hold? Are there lessons for facility managers and building owners here as well?

Indian Point 2, FitzPatrick and Pilgrim remained at full power while Vermont Yankee reduced power to 88% at the request of ISO New England to help maintain grid stability. Indian Point 3 automatically shut down at 10:41 p.m. Monday as a result of an electrical grid disturbance. 

"Nuclear plants are built to exceed the most severe natural forces historically reported for their geographic area," says John Herron, president and CEO of Entergy Nuclear. "And we saw evidence of that again with Hurricane Sandy."

Entergy Nuclear plants began preparations for the storm last week, coordinating activities with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, independent system operators and various state and local government officials.

Critical staff remained dedicated at each site, ready to respond to potential weather impacts.

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FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant Achieves Record Performance

LYCOMING, N.Y. – Early this morning (Sept. 16), control room operators removed Entergy’s James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant from service to begin its 20th refueling and maintenance outage after generating electricity safely for 700 consecutive days.

This marks the second consecutive time FitzPatrick has operated “breaker-to-breaker” (operating from one refueling outage to the next without needing to take the plant offline in between).

That means the plant has been on line every day for the past four years with the exception of two required outages to refuel and perform maintenance.

Since completing its last refueling and maintenance outage in October 2010, the plant produced more than 14 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity over its 700-day run. During the previous operating cycle, FitzPatrick achieved a site record by operating continuously for 702 days.

“Breaker-to-breaker operation is a significant accomplishment for any plant, but achieving it back-to-back over two consecutive operating cycles is truly a noteworthy accomplishment,” said Mike Colomb, Entergy’s site vice president at FitzPatrick.

“This achievement is the direct result of our workforce being committed to the safe and reliable operation of FitzPatrick through a focus on standards of excellence, equipment reliability, maintenance and continuous improvement and training.”

The upcoming work during the refueling and maintenance outage will be performed by FitzPatrick’s staff supplemented by Entergy employees from its other nuclear plants and contract workers, including pipefitters, boilermakers, electricians, laborers, valve technicians, engineers and radiation protection technicians.

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UPDATE 1-Entergy NY FitzPatrick reactor at 14 pct power for repair

April 2 (Reuters) - Entergy Corp's 855-megawatt FitzPatrick nuclear
power plant in the U.S. state of New York was operating at reduced
power on Monday to perform maintenance on one of the reactor's
water recirculation pump motors, a company spokeswoman said.

The unit began powering down on Sunday morning and was currently
operating at about 14 percent power, Entergy spokeswoman Tammy
Holden said.

Holden did not specify when the unit would return to full power.