One of the tensioned cables used to support a reactor containment wall at the unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Plant unexpectedly snapped last summer, and federal regulators want TVA to explain why before resuming any construction at the idled facility.
Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Tuesday that the NRC wants the Tennessee Valley Authority to assess whether the broken vertical tendon at Bellefonte reflects any equipment or maintanance failures that could create more problems. NRC inspectors in December gave a favorable review of TVA’s maintenance of the idled plant, where construction has been halted since 1988.
“If multiple containment tendons are found to be losing the capability to carry design force and this condition was left uncorrected, this could jeopardize the ability of the containment structure to perform its design function,” the NRC said in its incident report last month.
TVA spokesman Terry Johnson said the agency plans to complete a review of the support cables, or tendons, by the end of March. The TVA board is scheduled to decide in April whether to resume construction of the twin-reactor plant at Bellefonte for possible completion and power generation by 2018.
Garry Morgan, a Scottsboro resident active in the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, said Tuesday the failure of the cable raises questions about the integrity of what was built at Bellefonte.
“What other problems lurk at Bellefonte as a result of the NRC and TVA failing to uphold their commitment to public safety?” he asked.
Comment on Chattanooga Times Free Press article.
A long time ago, the word apparently was out that the Bellefonte reactors would not be completed after spending billions on them. The word turned into scrapping, cannibalizing and otherwise letting the plants “go to pot”.
TVA indecisiveness eventually dictates ultimate decisions on these kinds of structures; apparently the so-called maintenance on one of the containment buildings failed to uncover an inherent fault in one of the cables that suddenly and loudly snapped.
But this points more to either faulty engineering of the structure or purposely substituting inferior or cost shaving construction, or both.
TVA has a kind of lackadaisical attitude about their whole operations in producing electricity. I have a firsthand report from a former nuclear reactor operator that a cleanup person was allowed to shut down a TVA reactor.
Of all the things TVA is supposed to do, the most important it seems to me is to be over-cautious in dealing with anything nuclear. TVA does not measure up to the zero error tolerance required in this regard.
Where’s the Congressional investigation of TVA’s long-running coverups of gross management mistakes?
My recommendation would be to place a “freeze” on TVA’s plans to spend billions of dollars more it does not have unless there is a feasible way to finance them. Today, it means inevitable skyrocketing rates for TVA’s ratepayers.
TVA is a parallel of the present administration’s spendthrift ways and bad decision making; both need changing.
For more comments on the TVA, see my latest http://norsworthyopinion.com/TVAtimelinePart1.aspx
Ernest Norsworthy emnorsworthy@earthlink.net
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