More hiccups at Millstone

And other scary nuclear news
By Will Collette

For the first time, both nearby Millstone nuclear reactors went down at the same time. Both nuclear reactors at the Millstone Nuclear Power plant just 20 miles to the west of Charlestown SCRAMMED (went into emergency shut-down) on May 25 when incoming electricity power to the plant conked out, probably due to an electrical short. 

That outside electrical power is essential to the operation of safety systems. On-site diesel generators kicked on to make sure coolant kept flowing to prevent a meltdown.

Outside power was restored to the power plant later in the day. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission dubbed the outage “an Unusual Event” but noted that all safety systems performed as they were designed.

However Millstone was still out of commission for several more days. It finally went back on line on May 28.

The reasons for the initial May 25 SCRAMM and the inability of Millstone to be able to restart for several more days started off pretty banal – it was a “faulty relay” that caused the shut-off, However, the power-up had to be delayed because the abrupt shut-down caused two pressurized tanks for cooling water to rupture.

Radioactive water leaked from those two ruptured tanks and had to be cleaned up by Millstone workers. The outage also disabled radiation monitors. I am not making any of this up. 


The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is trying to decide whether they need to conduct a more detailed investigation or whether they will stick to their initial bland pronouncement that this was simply an “unusual event.”

Millstone’s p.r. flak Ken Holt says that now "We're making sure all systems are working the way they should."

I am alarmed about this precisely because the causes were so banal. 

Nuclear reactors and radioactive waste cooling pits require constant circulation of cooling water to prevent catastrophic events like the Fukushima disaster after Japan’s massive earthquake cut off coolant. The Fukuhima reactor cores melted down and the radioactive waste pools drained and then caught fire.

This caused the release of high levels of radiation into the air, land and water at danger levels to humans for a fifty mile radius. Charlestown is 20 miles downwind from Millstone which is one reason why I am constantly flummoxed to hear not a peep from our local energy NIMBYs or their sponsor, the CCA Party.

A simple faulty switch caused ruptured tanks and the plant needed to rely on diesel back-up generators to prevent a minor glitch from turning into a public health emergency.

Millstone, their neighbors and down-winders like us face threats from a number of very plausible sources. A direct hit from a major hurricane on Millstone is one. Sea level rise and ever warmer sea water are already occurring and are expected to get worse. The east coast of the US has had catastrophic tsunamis from undersea landslides in the past and will almost certainly suffer from them in the future.

Then there’s the threat of terrorism. Would you believe that, despite the events of 9/11, Millstone has never run an anti-terrorism drill? Their first such exercise is scheduled for next September.

After seeing what a “faulty switch” did to Millstone’s operations, I shudder to think how they will handle such events.

Nuclear power has never been safe. From the beginning, opponents warned that mountains of high level nuclear waste would plague our society for millennia. 

Millstone is, for all practical purposes, a permanent high-level radioactive waste dump. There are already millions of pounds of waste being stored on-site. Fuel rods must be kept in cooling ponds until they are safe enough to encase in steel and concrete casks that, some experts think, might have a chance of lasting long enough for the radiation levels to go down.

Cask storage for radioactive waste at Millstone

Millstone has 19 casks on site and has plans for 135 casks full of deadly waste by 2045. There is no other place to put the waste.

The federal government had plans in the works to build a permanent national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada outside of Las Vegas. After spending more than $12 billion, the Yucca Mountain project died due to public opposition.

However, for the past 31 years, all electric ratepayers – you and me – have been paying a surcharge of about $2 a year on our monthly bills to pay for the construction of that site.

The fund has collected more than $30 billion. The US Energy Department suspended collection of the fee on May 16 after the Los Angeles Times reported on it.

The idea of a national underground radioactive water depository has also suffered from major problems at a prototype project called “WIPP” (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) in New Mexico.

In addition to a February 5 underground fire that released some radiation, contaminating 22 workers, the State of New Mexico issued an order on May 19 declaring that leaking barrels at WIPP that came from the Los Alamos National Laboratory posed an “imminent and substantial” threat to people and the environment.

The New Mexico Environment Department said that 57 barrels of nuclear waste from Los Alamos had nitrate salts and kitty litter (I’m not making this up) to absorb moisture. A chemical reaction occurred and that was the source of the radiation that leaked nine days after the February 5 fire.

Here’s what the order said:

"Based on the evidence presented to NMED, the current handling, storage, treatment and transportation of the hazardous nitrate salt bearing waste containers at LANL may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to health or the environment."

That notch in the lower central part of this Google Earth screen shot is
where Millstone draws and dumps its cooling water. you can see the
water flow at at top of the notch almost dead center in the picture

One last nugget for you to consider. In earlier reports, I noted that Millstone is unusual in that it draws two billion gallons of seawater every day directly from the ocean, runs it through the power plant as coolant and then dumps it back into the sea.

There is a problem with the intake in that ocean temperature has been rising during the summer, exceeding the safety limit. That forced a shut-down of Millstone Unit Two for several days the summer before last. 

Millstone just recently convinced the friendly regulators at the NRC to increase the “safe” temperature.

There is also a problem with the outflow, as dumping hundreds of millions of gallons of heated water every day into Long Island Sound is bad for the environment.

Typical cooling tower

The usual solution to power plant cooling needs is to build cooling towers like the ones you can see from the highway at Brayton Point near Fall River. EPA was considering a mandate that Millstone build cooling towers, but has just ruled on May 19^th that it is up to the states to decide what power plants have to do to protect marine life from the effects of heated water dumped in waterways.

The state of Connecticut has been, in my opinion, lenient with Millstone, evidenced most recently by their approval of Millstone’s application to store vastly larger amounts of high-level radioactive waste on site. 

I doubt they will require Millstone to spend the big bucks it will take to shift to the towers, even though they are considered “best available technology.” Why? Millstone produces 50% of Connecticut’s electricity.