Vermont Yankee officials are baffled by cooling tower collapse
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Vermont Yankee officials walk by the damaged cooling tower at the nuclear power plant in Vernon. The huge fan blade can be seen above. Vyto Starinskas/Rutland Herald |
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By Susan Smallheer Rutland Herald - Published: August 25, 2007
VERNON — It's been a long week at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant: A strike of unionized workers appeared imminent and Entergy Nuclear officials cut power production, and revenue, by 50 percent because of the partial collapse of a cooling tower.
Company officials Friday said they still had no idea how a three-story section of one of its giant cooling towers unexpectedly collapsed Tuesday, even though the tower was inspected earlier this year.
But the threat of a strike appeared to have been averted when a company official announced Friday evening that a tentative agreement was reached shortly before 9 p.m.
"This averts any action tomorrow," said company spokesman Larry Smith, referring to the promise by the union to strike Saturday afternoon if a deal wasn't reached.
Smith said members of the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers, Local 303, Unit 8, were slated to vote on the new offer Monday afternoon.
Contract talks were held all day in a motel in nearby Brattleboro as the strike deadline set by 157 unionized workers for Saturday afternoon grew closer. But around suppertime, a union rally scheduled for Saturday in Brattleboro was abruptly cancelled.
With the threat of a strike looming, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had sent a special team to the Vernon plant Friday to ensure that if there was a strike, Entergy Nuclear's contingency plan of operating the reactor with managers would go smoothly.
Plant officials let news reporters and photographers view the damage to the cooling tower for the first time Friday, relenting after three days of turning down requests for photos or a tour.
John Dreyfuss, director of quality assurance for Entergy Nuclear, said Friday that Entergy was dismantling the damaged tower but still didn't know what caused its collapse earlier in the week.
The plant remained at 50 percent power, which forced Vermont utilities to find replacement power on the spot market.
"We don't understand the cause of [the collapse] yet," Dreyfuss said Friday afternoon, as mist from the one operating cooling tower fell on plant workers, keeping them cool on a very hot day.
Barricades had been erected to keep construction workers from the high-security part of the nuclear plant.
Dreyfuss said the company would take down the wooden timbers that survived the collapse "piece by piece" to try to determine what caused the collapse.
Dramatic photos taken within minutes of the collapse, either by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or Entergy staff, were obtained and circulated by the anti-nuclear group New England Coalition on Wednesday night. Those photos show a 54-inch broken pipe gushing 350,000 gallons of water a minute onto the ground, amid a pile of debris.
Dreyfuss said the company had heard sounds coming from the cooling tower last week, but he said that sounds are not usual, since there is only 1/8-inch clearance between the giant fans and their housing. He said that section of the plant is usually reviewed twice a day.
But he said the collapse Tuesday took the company by surprise, even though the company knew something was wrong and was getting ready to reduce power and take that cooling tower off-line so it could investigate.
Dreyfuss said there had been no talk about seeking a waiver from the state Agency of Natural Resources or relief from the state Environmental Court so that it could discharge hotter water back into the Connecticut River and use just the one, undamaged cooling tower.
The company has state approval to use the cooling towers less and discharge hotter water back into the river, but that discharge permit has been successfully fought by environmental groups, forcing the company to use the cooling towers and adhere to earlier, lower temperatures. Under the new permit, Entergy was given permission to increase the temperature of the Connecticut River by 1 degree; the water it discharges routinely can hit 100 degrees.
"That 1 degree would be helpful to us right now," Dreyfuss said.
The towers had been under regulatory scrutiny for the past two years or more, since the New England Coalition had raised questions about their safety in light of the 20 percent power boost. Larger and heavier fans were placed on top of the cooling towers to help dissipate the additional decay heat generated by the reactor.
Raymond Shadis, senior technical adviser for the New England Coalition, said the best thing would be if Entergy shut the entire plant down, instead of running at 50 percent.
"If they do a thorough exam on the cooling towers, they either have to shut the plant down, or seek emergency relief from the Environmental Court."
The green shroud that housed a giant fan on top of the structure had been removed and placed on the ground next to the two banks of towers.
Dreyfuss, who is directing the cleanup and repair effort, said the plant would remain at 50 percent power for the foreseeable future, and he said there was no pressure from Entergy Nuclear executives to get the plant back on line with hotter weather unfolding over New England. He refused to say how much money the company was losing at 50 percent power.
The cooling tower, one of two structures south of the reactor building, sits on top of a 1.5 million-gallon cooling water reservoir. The water, taken from the nearby Connecticut River, is piped through the towers and allowed to trickle down inside the wood, fiberglass and metal structure, which company officials called a "rain forest."
Dreyfuss said the two cooling towers were the most "low-tech" equipment at the Vernon reactor, and he downplayed the collapse, saying it didn't affect the safety of the plant. Giant cranes were in place next to the west cooling tower, which also contains that one cooling cell that is needed for safety backup of the reactor.
Workers on the picket line Friday afternoon said the dispute centered on wages and cuts in health insurance, and they said they were the lowest-paid workers in Entergy's nuclear plants, at wages $3 to $9 per hour less.
One worker, Marleen Souligny of West Brattleboro, who said she has worked at 40 different nuclear plants in radiological protection, said that the top Entergy brass were making big increases, while the workers were not sharing in record revenue and profits.
A lot of experienced workers are leaving Vermont Yankee for work at other nuclear power plants because of low-for-the-industry wages, said several workers.
Dave Truesdell of Shelburne Falls, Mass., said he had worked at the plant for 36 years — dating back to when it was under construction.
Truesdell, who works in the water chemistry department, said workers were also concerned that health benefits for retirees were being cut.
Truesdell and others said that this was the first full three-year contract under Entergy ownership, and that it was a very different contract atmosphere since the multi-state corporation had taken over.
He said there had been two other strikes at Vermont Yankee, in 1974 and 1979; one lasted one week, the other five weeks.
Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that strikes at nuclear plants were rare. There was an 11-week strike at the Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey in 2003, he said, and strikes at plants in Virginia in 2002.
"Strikes do occur but they're rare," he said.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
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