| WASHINGTON - May 16 - Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) strongly criticized the move by Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Board to restart the Browns Ferry Unit 1 nuclear power station, idled since 1985 for noncompliance with federal safety standards and poor economic performance, as a desperate political effort that threatens the public health, safety and security.
“For years TVA placed power generation ahead of safety documentation and that’s why Browns Ferry closed,” said Paul Gunter, Director of the NIRS Reactor Watchdog Project. “Now TVA thinks they can counterfeit missing documents to make the reactor look safe for operation again,” said Gunter.
Unit 1’s closure originally came when TVA failed to accurately maintain the basic design basis documentation for the reactor including operational technical specifications, equipment modifications, and compliance records for safety equipment. While other commercial nuclear power plants maintained two sets of designs for each reactor, the original design drawings and the “as-built” design plan, TVA only maintained one set of design drawings for Browns Ferry Unit 1. Consequently, TVA lost track of fundamental design modifications to the operational safety blue print of the reactor. It became impossible for reactor operators to verify with confidence to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that Unit 1 had not drifted outside its safety specifications with growing margins of uncertainty for safety system reliability. TVA voluntarily shuttered the reactor in 1985 and placed the unit into “Administrative Hold.” Under this unprecedented status, TVA proceeded to defer all obligations to respond to safety bulletins and generic letters issued by the federal safety regulator that required the licensee to analyze reactor conditions and configurations. In every case, TVA responded that the reactor was now defueled and under “administrative hold” and that these issues would be addressed at an undetermined later date.
“Unit 1 has been frozen for 17 years in a state of non-compliance with federal safety standards without NRC oversight and inspection,” said Mary Olson, Director of NIRS Southeast Office in Asheville, NC.
“How can TVA justify bringing this abandoned atomic relic back on-line with any legitimate claim that public health and safety is a priority,” said Olson
‘The same problems that closed this plant in 1985 and ignored for 17 years have only gotten worse due to disrepair and neglect, not better,” she continued.
TVA will now seek approval for a restart plan with a barrage of reconstituted documents to the NRC. The federal regulator will be faced with the challenge to validate the utility’s analyzes and verify the reliability of a myriad switches, pumps, motors, hundreds of miles of electrical cable and mechanical piping, and multiple barrier systems whose designated function is to protect the public and the environment from fiendishly toxic and long-lived radioactive contamination.
“Its more likely TVA and NRC have forgotten where the all problems really are, “ said Gunter. “The walk down of this plant conveniently starts a clean slate for a really bogus reactor,” he concluded.
In addition to operational safety concerns involved in operating the reactor, NIRS focused concern on the additional vulnerability of security at the nuclear power plant site in the post September 11th world.
“Because this reactor was never analyzed for attack by aircraft, it is just one more target for a terrorist to turn into a nuclear bomb,” said Mary Olson.
By NRC’s own standards, the containment system for the General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactor is a notoriously weak design both from accidental over-pressurization and over-temperature accidents and vulnerability to deliberate sabotage from the crash of general and commercial aircraft. The GE design was never evaluated for an external crash from an airplane. It is substantially weaker and more vulnerable than the typical large dry containment domes that cover Pressurized Water Reactors.
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