Hemp4Fuel.com

Auditors: Nuclear plants not following fire rules

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080701/ap_on_go_co/reactors_fire_2

Auditors: Nuclear plants not following fire rules
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer Mon Jun 30

WASHINGTON - Operators of nuclear power plants have yet to comply with some
of the government's fire safety rules three decades after they were issued,
a congressional report said Monday.
The Government Accountability Office said there were 125 fires reported at
54 power plants since 1995, an average of nearly 10 a year, although none
threatened safe emergency reactor shutdown or posed any significant safety
threats. The fires were mostly electrical or maintenance related.
But the GAO study said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been unable to
resolve "several long-standing issues" with the industry over fire safety
including full compliance with NRC fire rules put in place in 1976 and 1980
as a result of the fire at the Browns Ferry plant in Alabama in 1975.
The blaze, which raged for seven hours at the Browns Ferry Unit 1 reactor,
was the worst fire ever at an American nuclear plant. It exposed for the
first time that nuclear reactors needed special fire protection to assure a
fire did not prevent a reactor from safely shutting down.
The report said some nuclear reactor operators are:
_Using unapproved fire safety manuals.
_Relying on interim, temporary fixes in response to fire damage instead of
making permanent repairs. In one case a plant used "fire watches" - designed
as temporary safety procedures - for five years instead of replacing damaged
parts.
_Continuing to rely on manual responses, such as a person having to close or
open a valve, instead of passive fire protective measures.
_Using fire protective wraps around electrical wires without having
conducted needed fire endurance tests on the material.
The nuclear industry had no immediate comment on the report. "We haven't had
time to examine it," said John Keeley, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy
Institute, the industry's trade group.
Eliot Brenner, a spokesman for the NRC, said the agency considered the GAO
report to be accurate and complete. "We will be giving the GAO's findings
and conclusions serious consideration," he said.
As industry showed problems with meeting the NRC's "prescriptive" fire
safety rules, the NRC in 2004 encouraged reactor operators to adopt a "risk
based" approach in which plant operators focused fire safety efforts in
areas of the plant where a fire would pose the greatest threat to plant
operation and emergency shutdown.
As of April, the new approach had been adopted at only 46 of the 105
reactors, the GAO investigators found.
And the GAO report said the risk-based approach itself faces significant
challenges including a shortage of "people with fire modeling, risk
assessment and plant-specific expertise" to assure the safety efforts are
focused on the right priorities.

[Submitted by Hemp4Fuel]

Monday 30 June 2008 - 21:13:27 by Hemp4Fuel
Posted in Nuclear | Comments: 3 |        

News Categories