Pipe Leak at Nuclear Plant Raises Concerns

Amanda Worley

The discovery of water flowing across the floor of a building at the Indian Point 2 nuclear plant in Buchanan, N.Y., traced to a leak in a buried pipe, is stirring concern about the plant’s underground pipes and those of other aging reactors across the country.
The one-and-a-half-inch hole caused by corrosion allowed about 100,000 gallons of water to escape from the main system that keeps the reactor cool immediately after any shutdown, according to nuclear experts. It has raised concerns about the monitoring of decades-old buried pipes at the nation’s nuclear plants, many of which are applying for renewal of their operating licenses. Indian Point 2, whose 40-year operating license expires in 2013, already faces harsh criticism from New York State and county officials who want it shut down.

“This leak may demonstrate a systemic failure of the licensee and the commission to inspect critical buried pipes in a manner sufficient to guarantee the public health and safety,” was writeen to the commission’s chairman, Dale Klein, in a letter on Thursday. The congressmen said they were “shocked” that a leak that big could develop without detection and called the system for detecting such problems “profoundly inadequate.”

At a nuclear plant, a central water system takes heat from the reactor in the form of steam and turns it into electricity. During a shutdown at Indian Point 2, that system often turns off and a pipe measuring 12 inches in diameter carries water from the tank into the cooling system to carry off excess heat. The buried portion of neither the eight-inch supply pipe nor the 12-inch pipe connecting the tank to the reactor cooling system has been visually inspected since the reactor began operating in August 1973, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nor does the commission require such inspections.

In conclusion, the buried pipes are emerging as an endemic problem as reactors age, although so far most of the attention has been to the substance that is leaked — not to a pipe’s role in ensuring the reactor’s safe operation over all. As we explore alternative energies, we must consider the alternatives that are still being used out there that need scientific advancements as well as those yet to be discovered.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/nyregion/02nuke.html?ref=science