Missing brackets blamed in Vermont (Yankee) nuke mishap

[jpak]

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/07/16/ap5221135.html

The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant remained at less than half its normal power output Tuesday as state and federal regulators zeroed in on missing brackets on support beams as the cause of a new round of problems with the plant's cooling towers.

A top official with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, director of operations William Borchardt, traveled from Washington to meet Tuesday with Entergy Corp. (nyse: ETR - news - people )-owned plant and state officials and participate in a conference call with Vermont's three congressional offices.

Borchardt told reporters after that meeting that a cooling tower leak discovered last Friday resulted from an inadequate fix to a much bigger leak that struck one of the towers' 22 sections, or cells, last August.

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Vermont Yankee operates under strict limits on the temperatures of water it can return to the river - the limits are designed to protect fish and other aquatic life. It uses the cooling towers in summer to help it meet the river temperature limits. With the cooling towers out of operation since Friday - plant spokesman Robert Williams said one row of 11 was ready to return to service as of Tuesday - the plant had to reduce its flows, which in turn forced it to reduce power.

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[damntexdem]

1. Oh, yeah -- now we know how to run nukes, so we should build more.

No chance at all of messing up hundreds of square miles of the environment for thousands of years.

Safe, safe, safe -- and, oh so reliable!

;-)