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Strategies & Market Trends : IPPs and Merchant Energy Co.s -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KyrosL who wrote (3025)	1/2/2004 10:41:51 AM
From: NDBFREE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3358

People interested in RRI and/or TGN may find of interest The Bay City Tribune baycitytribune.com STP faces challenges in 2003 By William T. Wood Bay City Tribune Published December 31, 2003 WADSWORTH — The South Texas Project (STP) nuclear power plant endured one of its more challenging years in 2003. First, on April 12, a routine inspection of the Unit 1 reactor during a refueling outage revealed the presence of a small amount of boric acid where two instrument-monitoring tubes emerged from the bottom of the reactor. That warned inspectors of a leak of the reactor’s coolant fluid, since boric acid is added to the fluid as part of the reactor’s operation. The discovery led STP and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) officials to shut the reactor down pending an investigation of the leak’s cause and to draft a repair plan. Repairs were completed in July, but the unit remained down until mid-August, while engineers from several federal and industry agencies worked to ensure the two affected tubes were an isolated incident. Tests of the remaining 56 instrument tubes in Unit 1 and of all of those in Unit 2 showed no similar faults. Using high-tech equipment and a full-scale mockup of the reactor’s bottom, the repair team rehearsed several times the method they would use to fix the cracks. STP officials said later the practice sessions helped cut by more than 50 percent the time repair personnel were exposed to potential radiation. “This was one of the greatest technical challenges STP has ever faced,” plant manager Ed Halpin said at a post-repair press briefing. “At every step, we had to overcome major obstacles and find solutions to new and complex new problems,“ he added. Unit 1 was back on line later in August. In December, a routine test revealed that back-up diesel generator failed. The generator is one of three such generators designed to power each of the two reactors should the plant lose it off-site power source. While the failure did not threaten the plant’s operation, STP officials sought an extension from NRC to inspect the generator and to make repairs. NRC granted that extension request in late December and the generator — one of six, or three for each unit — is expected to be fixed in early 2004, plant spokesmen said.