Pipe seals failed during maintenance, allowing 'highly radioactive' water to leak onto the floor
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has found that Entergy's Waterford 3 power plant allowed "highly radioactive" coolant water to leak inside the plant during a 2009 refueling shutdown. The incident resulted in increased radiation exposure to workers.
View full sizeThe Waterford 3 nuclear power plant in Killona was photographed in September 2010. The plant is located in Taft, on the west bank of St. Charles Parish.
The preliminary finding made public Thursday said the plant "failed to keep highly radioactive water from leaking onto work areas around the reactor coolant pumps, despite knowledge that this condition could occur. This failure resulted in high levels of radioactive contamination and unexpected and unintended dose to plant workers."
Waterford spokesman Carl Rhode said Friday that incident did not endanger the public or the workers, whose radiation exposure is monitored in real time, and who leave the area well before the maximum safe exposure. The water did not escape the plant's containment building, he said.
The finding means that Entergy will meet with NRC officials to determine what could have been done better.
The finding was classified as a "White" level infraction, the second of four levels of concern. More serious concerns are classified as Yellow and Red, while the least serious is Green.
The problem was caused by modified pipe seals "de-staging" when being depressurized for maintenance, allowing water to leak onto the floor. The company has since mounted a trough system that routes the water into an interior drain system, according to the report..
"They thought we could have prevented more dose in one of about a thousand jobs," during the turnaround, Rhode said of the NRC. "At no time did any of the workers go over NRC limits. "But they still felt we could have done more, so we've used that as an opportunity for learning, and in fact, they found that our radiation protection performance in the following outage, in the spring of 2011, was excellent."