Monday, March 16, 2009

Court papers reveal nuclear feud at Turkey Point

The Miami Herald http://www.miamiherald.com 

Posted on Thursday, 03.12.09

Court papers reveal nuclear feud at Turkey Point

The top nuclear operator at Turkey Point resigned after a huge outage because he felt his bosses were demanding an unsafe restart.

Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant in South Miami-Dade County in a 2001 file photo.
http://media.miamiherald.com/smedia/2009/03/12/00/308-844993.embedded.prod_affiliate.56.JPG
TIM CHAPMAN / MIAMI HERALD FILE PHOTO

BY JOHN DORSCHNER

jdorschner@MiamiHerald.com

The report noted that similar concerns had been voiced in previous surveys, ``but little or no progress has been made in reversing the perception.''

Spokesman Veenstra said the utility works very hard to be open. ``FPL vigorously encourages anyone working at any of our nuclear power plants or our other facilities to identify any safety concerns without fearing reprisal of any kind.''

Some workers are not convinced. ''Most are afraid of coming forward,'' said Mike Kohl, a nuclear operator at Turkey Point.

Kohl is one of 20 operators who filed a lawsuit against FPL, accusing the utility of underpaying workers for overtime -- a crucial issue since the lawsuit says that most operators have ``an average workweek of 60 to 70 hours or more.''

Federal regulators, concerned that operators can't stay alert for such long stretches, have set new guidelines, starting Oct. 1, so that operators don't work more than 54 hours a week on average.

''FPL has com plied, and continues to comply, with all federal regulations governing work-hour limits for operators,'' Veenstra said. The current maximum is 72 hours a week, but that will drop to an average of 54 later this year. (In-depth looks at overtime problems and retention bonuses are available at MiamiHerald.com.)

POINTS OF CONTENTION

In Hoffman's case, his complaints against FPL became public only because the utility filed a lawsuit demanding that he pay back the bonus. Hoffmann responded that he didn't need to return the money because he was essentially forced out on Feb. 26 for refusing to violate federal procedures, which could cause him to ``lose his license to work in the nuclear field, as well as being subject to possible jail.''

Hoffman was the senior license holder at Turkey Point, ''for which he held direct responsibility to the federal government's Nuclear Regulatory Commission,'' he said in court filings.

In those filings, Hoffm an said he complained to the utility several times about issues in which he thought executives let cost-cutting ''interfere with the proper maintenance'' of the Turkey Point reactors.

His complaints reached a boiling point on Feb. 26, when a field engineer working at a substation in West Dade caused a voltage drop in the grid that took down 38 substations and five power plants, including Turkey Point.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has found 25 or more violations of reliability standards because of the incident, and FPL is now facing millions of dollars in fines.

According to Hoffman's resignation letter, top FPL officials rushed to the Turkey Point plant and ordered one of the reactors to start producing power in 12 hours, by 2 a.m.

Hoffman said that was too fast, considering all of the systems that needed to be checked, particularly the ''status of xenon,'' he wrote.

E.C. Morse, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Ca lifornia at Berkeley, said in an interview that xenon is a chemical element that is a byproduct of nuclear fission and ''gobbles up neutrons,'' reducing the fission process.

During regular operation, the xenon's effect is neutralized, but when control rods shut down the core, the xenon process keeps going for another 10 hours or so. To bring a reactor back online after only 10 or 11 hours ''is really asking for trouble,'' Morse said.

The biggest nuclear disaster in history, at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986, happened because operators tried to restart the reactor too soon after a shutdown, Morse said.

In his resignation letter, Hoffman complained that his restart fears ''fell on deaf ears,'' and he left.

In the end, it took FPL a week to get both reactors restarted.


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