A 30 million dollar pipe brace
New NRC tidbit has leaked out. Testing on Unit 3 at Vogtle revealed a bit too much vibration in one of the depressurization system lines. Fix is an additional pipe brace. No big deal. On a normal job, the fix would have been implemented in a day or less.
But this is nuclear. The additional pipe brace requires a license amendment. Southern hopes their request will be expedited and the start up of Unit 3 will only be delayed by a month.
The cost of the delay will be at least a million dollars per day. That will be a 30 million dollar pipe brace. A system in which this is "just the way things are" is suicidal insanity.
Added 2023/01/30. It turns out it was an installation screw up, not a design error. They failed to install two interface plates between a pipe on the 4th stage of the depressurization system and its supports. The fix is to lift the pipe slightly and slide in the plates, not an additional brace. The license amendment was to allow them to isolate the pipe to do the job. See comments below. The actual job was even easier than I originally assumed.
Nuclear power is extremely dangerous
to the fossil fuel industry. They do PR, assume 5% of revenue like any industry.
So with a $1.4E12 turnover, the fossil fuel industry will spend $7E10 per year on marketing, bizdev, influence peddling, to defend their turf.
How many US Senators can you buy with a fraction of $70 billion per year?
They are not always transparent about expressing themselves. Sometimes they create social groups such as "Friends of the Earth" that do some essential and good work--- but happen to be implacably anti-nuclear because they were founded by Fossil Fuel magnates.
Jack:
I had the same original thought as you did. But after digging more deeply into the issue, I learned my initial judgement was incorrect.
The vibration was caused by a construction defect. Here is a quote from the letter from Southern Nuclear to the NRC:
"While the elevated vibrations subsided when the reactor coolant pumps were downshifted to 50%, an investigative walkdown on January 4, 2023, identified an installation non-conformance whereby an interface plate between the U-bolts and pipe on the clamp was not installed on two pipe supports, RCS-PH- 11R0107 and RCS-PH-11R0393. Since vibration was already found to be higher than anticipated in Mode 3, and based on data review, piping analysis, and walkdown, it was concluded that the risk of vibration increases beyond design limits is likely at higher power levels. Accordingly, it was determined that the missing interface plates on RCS-PH-11R0107 and RCS-PH-11R0393 be installed to bring the as-built plant in conformance with the design. This condition was identified as a nonconformance in accordance with plant procedures.
Rework to install the pipe support interface plates..."
Thus it's not the repair that required a license amendment. The amendment requested was a temporary change to the plant's technical specifications to allow it to remain in Mode 3 and to not have to return to Mode 4 or 5 while the repairs were being completed. The NRC reviewed and approved the amendment within 72 hours of submission.
The complexity of the repair is more than I thought because of the way that the large diameter pipe has to be moved and supported.
I also suspect there is a root cause investigation being done to find out why the as-built condition did not meet the design condition. Either the original workers or the QA verifiers should have been able to avoid the problem by adhering to the design drawings.