Nuclear safetySeismic safety worries about South Carolina nuclear fuel facility

The worries about the seismic safety of nuclear energy-related facilities, worries which have only grown since the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, extend not only to nuclear power reactor, but to other facilities as well.

The most recent example is a Westinghouse facility outside Columbia, South Carolina. The plant, which opened in 1968 and which expanded later, is a 550,000-square foot fuel factory located on Bluff Road between I-77 and Congaree National Park. It employs 1,200 workers, and is one of only three facilities in the United States which make nuclear fuel for commercial reactors.

The Heraldonline reports that the facility does meet current safety standards, but federal inspectors, but that federal inspectors, in a 30 April report (the Web version was updated 3 May), say that Westinghouse failed to follow through on safety improvement recommendations made in 2003. Those safety improvements were meant to allow the facility to withstand a big tremor and lessen the risks of radiation leaks.

The HearldOnline quotes Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspectors to say that Westinghouse “was unable to provide evidence that any of these recommendations had been scheduled or implemented, nor was an explanation provided for the inaction.”

The NRC’s April report says that earthquake dangers should not be dismissed. Central South Carolina contains a large earthquake fault system. Some scientists predict the state will one day suffer a large earthquake, like the famous killer quake in Charleston during the late nineteenth century.

Citing a consultant’s recommendations in 2003, the NRC’s report said structural walls could collapse and equipment could topple over at the Westinghouse plant during a severe earthquake. If this were to happen, uranium could leak and a burst of radiation could occur, the report said. Those most likely to be exposed would be plant workers, officials said.

The HearldOnline quotes Marvin Sykes, chief of the NRC’s regional fuel facility inspection branch, to say that he would like to know why Westinghouse did not follow through on the 2003 safety improvement recommendations made by the consulting engineers, recommendations which called for the facility to improve the seismic safety measures so that they would exceed existing earthquake standards.

He told HearldOnline that the upgrades were not required by federal law, but could provide an extra margin of safety, he said. “We’re saying to Westinghouse: ‘You had recommendations that there were reasonable things you could have done to (improve) this facility, and you said in 2003, they were good ideas. Yet you dropped the ball in implementing them,’” Sykes said. “This is not a violation of NRC requirements, but it does create a question in our mind.”

— — Read more in “Columbia Generating Station 1Q/2012 Performance Summary”; and this 5 March 2012 NRC letter to M. E. Reddemann, CEO, Energy Northwest