For Immediate Release                                                                         

March 16, 2000                                                                                         

Contact:  Jim Warren

919-490-0747

Emergency at CP&L Nuclear Plant

Loss of Primary and Back-up Cooling Creates a Near Miss

A combination of system failures at the Brunswick Nuclear Power Plant created an emergency situation for nearly nine hours on March 3^RD.   A loss of off-site electrical power caused loss of cooling water flow for the reactor core and spent fuel storage pool at Unit 1 of the Wilmington, NC plant, according to reports obtained by NC WARN from the NRC.  

After cooling was restored by two emergency back-up diesel generators, a second cooling stoppage occurred when one of the back-up generators failed, causing a total loss of cooling for 18 minutes, which caused “minimal temperature increase” in the reactor core, according to the report.  The back-up generators were restarted, but the primary cooling system was out of service for almost nine hours.

The situation was  reported by Carolina Power & Light to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission but apparently not to the public.

The emergency occurred during refueling of one of the plant’s two reactor units.  Although the reactor core was not generating electricity during refueling, cooling capacity must be maintained due to intense heat inside the core as well as in the pool of “spent” fuel (nuclear waste), which at Brunswick is located in the same building as the reactor.  Overheating of either the reactor core or the spent fuel pool – or both – could have led to a meltdown event and a very large release of radioactivity into the atmosphere.  The Brunswick plant does not include a fortified containment building.

“The nuclear industry boasts that it is virtually impossible for both primary and back-up cooling systems to fail at the same time,” stated NC WARN director Jim Warren.  “This emergency proves that such ‘probability calculations’ are bogus.

According to David Lochbaum, nuclear safety expert with Union of Concerned Scientists: “In this event, CP&L was two thirds of the way to a nuclear accident.  They had a human failure, followed by a technical failure.  Fortunately, they didn’t also have the third element – an initiating event such as a pipe rupture.  And fortunately, they were able to get the diesel generators restarted.”

An additional mishap occurred during primary cooling loss when an emergency fire system automatically activated, pouring fire-retardant chemicals into the basement of the diesel generator area.  “The plant fire brigade responded but found no immediate evidence of a fire,” according to the report.  Then, for unspecified reasons, the plant’s Unit 2 reactor had to be partially shut down, to 60% power.

The NRC reports stated no reason for the initial power failure.  The importance of the emergency is that, with off-site power lost for so long, the back-up generators provided only a single line of defense against an extended loss of total cooling.  If they had failed for a longer time, heat-up could have occurred inside the reactor core and in the interconnected spent fuel pool, which contains much more  nuclear material than the reactor core.                                                                                                     

NC WARN believes Brunswick has separate cooling systems for its two spent fuel pools.  But at its Harris Plant in Wake County, CP&L is currently seeking a controversial license amendment to expand to four spent fuel pools.  Nuclear experts warn against CP&L’s proposal to use only a single, interconnected set of primary and back-up cooling for the four Harris pools, especially because this system is also crucial to protecting the reactor core.                                                                                             

Also at Harris, there would be far more waste in its four pools than Brunswick’s one pool, with no second reactor to help in case of an extended off-site power outage – for example, if power lines were downed by a tornado or terrorism.  Should such an emergency occur at Harris, much greater back-up cooling capacity would be required, leaving a single line of defense against a heat-up situation and a potentially devastating nuclear accident. 

NC WARN and a coalition of community and student groups are pressing CP&L to withdraw the Harris expansion.  They also call on the company to stop its legal blockade which has so far prevented evidentiary hearings sought by Orange County, where Lochbaum and a second top expert can argue their concerns and require CP&L to answer questions about its plan under oath.  US Senator John Edwards recently joined the call for full and open hearings.

NC WARN contends that CP&L could use a proven and far safer storage plan, and that it would only cost the nuclear giant about half of one percent of its annual net profits to do so.  CP&L refuses to produce information to disprove NC WARN’s estimate.

“At Brunswick, a lot of things went wrong which nobody expected or could control,” said Warren. “Harris had 5 emergency shutdowns in 12 months.   The public isn’t going to stand by and let CP&L increase the risk of a disaster at Harris just so they can save a little money.” 

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