Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2021
On Saturday, August 28, just before hurricane Ida slammed into Louisiana with winds reaching 153 mph, operators of the Waterford 3 nuclear reactor in Killona, 25 miles west of New Orleans, shut the reactor down as a precaution. Then Sunday, August 29, when Ida crashed ashore, the electric grid went down cutting off electricity to 830,000 homes and to the Waterford reactor. “Plant power is being provided via emergency diesel generators,” the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. Off-site electric power is required by reactors during shutdowns to prevent overheating, reactor meltdowns, and a major radiation release. This is because electric pumps circulate cooling water through both the extremely hot reactor core and the pool that cools the extremely hot waste fuel rods. Entergy Nuclear Inc. maintained cooling water circulation by using emergency electric generators, but these back-up systems don’t always prevent disaster. The emergency generators in Fukushima, Japan were all destroyed by the earthquake and the tsunami that led to simultaneous meltdowns of three separate reactors. On August 31, Entergy also suffered “a major loss of communications capability …between the NRC and the [reactor] Control Room,” the NRC reported, and the Emergency Notification System (ENS) was completely lost for 30 minutes. Full ENS communications weren’t restored for nearly six hours. Off-site power was not restored to the reactor until 11:45 p.m. Tuesday, August 31. — Sacramento Bee, Aug. 31; and NRC Event Reports 55435, 55436, and 55443 for Aug. 30 and 31, 2021
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