CORPORATE MELTDOWN
Keisling, Bill & Perrone, Ed
Corporate meltdown The lessons of Three Mile Island Bill Keisling and Ed Perrone Pennsylvania's recent nuclear accident produced a raw, gut fear in thousands of people not the fear of a known...
...At 2 p.m...
...Water began pouring over the core at 1,600 pounds per square inch...
...On February 9, Unit 2 was reduced to 92 per cent power output while a heater drain pump and heater drain valve were repaired...
...Then he ran out...
...This permitted Met-Ed to claim a $12 million investment tax credit and a $20 million depreciation allowance on its 1978 Federal tax return...
...Soon the plant foreman and shift supervisor arrived on the scene...
...It didn't...
...But with water still pouring in, a pressure disc on the tank's side blew, draining the highly radioactive water into a nearby auxiliary building...
...The water in the primary loop doesn't usually boil because it is held under tremendous pressure...
...ANI said the outstanding safety of the nuclear industry has allowed insurers to increase this credit each year...
...In all, twenty-two major design defects were found in Three Mile Island's Unit 2 during the construction phase...
...Like all nuclear power plants in the United States, Three Mile Island had no definite plans for disposal of its atomic waste...
...Repeatedly...
...There the human chain reaction quickened...
...The two control room operators, Craig Faust and Ed Frederick, began to sweat...
...Six-and-a-half minutes after the first emergency core cooling pump had been shut off, up to a minute after the second had been shut off, both pumps were thrown back on...
...The expenses incurred buying replacement electricity would be picked up by the customers...
...Other control room operators, trained to assume a failsafe system, said they would have done the same thing...
...Later, Harold Denton of the NRC identified this as the time the valves leading from the auxiliary feedwater system had been closed...
...At eleven o'clock on that memorable Wednesday morning, before the full impact of the events had soaked in, Three Mile Island's public relations man, Bill Gross, was still insisting, "At this point, we're not concerned about public safety, but the economics of the situation...
...This was called a "future test year...
...Last February 23, the judge who presided at the rate hearings recommended to the PUC's commissioners that Met-Ed be granted a rate increase, noting that TMI-2 had been in service since December...
...What the computer didn't know was that the auxiliary feedwater system had been shut off at valves between the auxiliary pumps and the steam generators...
...It would remain there until the early evening...
...that Unit 1, down for refueling but expected back up to full power by Monday, should resume operation on schedule...
...Two explanations are offered as to how the auxiliary feed-water valves were finally opened...
...Guards stopped them at the gates and ran geiger counters over their automobiles...
...Unit 2 closed for five days on December 16 while a main feedwater pump was repaired...
...But as water from the auxiliary feed-water system finally entered the massive, drying steam generators, the malfunctioning pressurizer gauge returned on scale and suddenly decreased...
...When citizens tried to testify Who will pay the bill...
...A race car driver will tell you that there's a point as an automobile reaches its limits when a slight shudder can be felt running through the machine...
...Pump problems plagued Unit 2, as did accidental valve closings...
...Numerous shutdown repairs occurred before December 30...
...Kevin Molloy, director of Dauphin County Emergency Preparedness, received a call at his home at 7:05...
...The control room operators listened to the reactor coolant pumps through earphones, detecting cavitation...
...Metropolitan Edison has given you and us conflicting information...
...The computer had been programmed to assume this wouldn't happen...
...He had learned the hard way...
...At the same time, the computer monitoring Unit 2's operations automatically directed the reactor's control rods to descend around the cylinders of uranium pellets, halting nuclear fission, shutting off the reactor...
...Not that the NRC's inspectors weren't concerned...
...Maybe it shouldn't have been...
...The residents of central Pennsylvania are no strangers to fear...
...The noise gushed into the darkness...
...Worse yet, gauges in the control room indicated tremendously high water pressure in the pressurizer, when actually little water pressure was there...
...Within fifteen seconds after the valve had opened, the pressure in the primary loop had returned to normal...
...By 7:30 in the morning, it was pandemonium at Unit 2. Sudden increases in pressure pointed to blockage of the cooling system, perhaps to a hydrogen explosion in the reactor vessel...
...In utility jargon, TMI-2 was now "in the rate base," meaning that the costs incurred by Met-Ed's second nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island could now be passed on to the utility's customers...
...Not for one day, let alone two weeks...
...But he accurately pinpointed the initial cause of the malfunction in Three Mile Island's Unit 2 and the ensuing chain reaction of panic and confusion...
...The publicist said nothing...
...In testimony before the PUC, a spokesman for Met-Ed said that the utility would go bankrupt by July 1 if the rate increase were not immediately implemented...
...Problems in that reactor's emergency core cooling system had been detected...
...But with the flood, the residents were dealing with something they understood...
...ing the state policemen standing guard at the observation center were issued dosimeters...
...From this building, a constant stream "a...
...TMI-2 was out for twenty weeks beginning April 23, 1978, while main steam relief valves were replaced...
...The NRC and Met-Ed say they are not familiar with the procedures used for checking valve positions at Three Mile Island...
...Though the auxiliary feedwater flow had begun, the pressurizer gauge still was off the high end of the scale...
...A protest rally scheduled for that Sunday was hastily canceled when news spread of plans to "burst the bubble...
...That's how the people of the Susquehanna Valley were baptized into the nuclear age...
...Unit 2, where the accident occurred, went into commercial operation on December 30, 1978...
...it was never meant to hold anything radioactive...
...Responding to the resulting sudden pressure increase, a relief valve on the pressurizer of the reactor's primary cooling system opened, venting the excess steam, relieving the pressure...
...Nine days after Unit 2 "came on the line," NRC inspector J.S...
...Criswell wrote his superiors that "voids" could occur in pressurizers designed by Bab-cock & Wilcox makers of TMI's primary steam system when feedwater flow is cut...
...The vice president for generation, John G. Herbein, told reporters the situation was under control...
...Some nearby residents would later tell reporters that the sound had been loud enough to wake Bill Keisling and Ed Perrone are editors ofHarrisburg Magazine...
...Reporters watched it from the observation building, but state and Federal regulatory officials did not learn about it until later...
...The sound of escaping steam was a warning that these two men would soon be flying a nuclear power plant by the seats of their pants...
...Molloy was told a site emergency had been declared at his neighborhood nuclear power plant...
...that afternoon, hydrogen exploded in the containment building, triggering the injection of 500 gallons of sodium hydroxide, a fire extinguisher, into the radioactive soup...
...The men in the control room realized with horror they had been led by a blind gauge...
...In this second November accident, core coolant escaped through valves that didn't close, further complicating the problem...
...Denton later would backpedal, saying he thought the valves had been closed only for several days...
...And the nuclear core was being exposed to the air...
...Several days before December 30, Met-Ed was given a green light by the NRC despite what one inspector described as the lack of test data concerning several plant functions...
...there is nothing to worry about.' " That prediction, too, held true...
...The article, "Tomorrow's Disaster at Three Mile Island," by Larry Arnold, appeared in the August 1978 issue of Harrisburg, a non-profit monthly newspaper devoted to public issues in central Pennsylvania...
...The mass hysteria was real then, too...
...On March 22, 1979, just six days before the accident at Three Mile Island, the Pennsylvania Utility Commission gave final approval to a $49 million rate hike requested by Metropolitan Edison Company, the utility which operates T.M.I...
...Workers in the control room donned masks...
...On April 19, the PUC officially called for an investigation into the effects the accident could have on the utility service to its customers, and at the same time delayed implementation of the rate increase pending the outcome of the investigation...
...Within seconds, the nuclear core's primary cooling system overheated...
...Already the metal tubing that held the uranium pellets was melting, bending, in the nuclear steam...
...The rushing water, pouring directly over the reactor core to cool it, was highly radioactive, carrying small particles of the uranium itself...
...A Babcock & Wilcox engineer said feedwater is heated to increase its efficiency in turning the turbine and also to prevent thermal shock...
...Met-Ed had originally planned to open Unit 2 in May, but mechanical problems and a local anti-nuclear group that filed two petitions with the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission slowed the utility...
...Eight minutes after the turbine had shut down, the auxiliary feedwater valves were opened...
...Helicopters carrying utility executives and hordes of journalists and cameramen touched down on the lawn of the observation building...
...that perhaps only 1 per cent of the fuel rods in Unit 2 had been damaged...
...This caused the shutdown of the secondary feedwater system, which carries heat away from the radioactive primary cooling system by way of two large steam generators...
...Both pumps were shut down...
...Instead of the four or five days Met-Ed had once taken to repair the reactor before going on the line with it, Unit 2 this time was restarted the next day...
...Inside the observation building a plant foreman rushed into a front room screaming, "I think there's a mixup somewhere here...
...And everybody would know exactly when it was safe to return...
...On March 23, 1979, one day after the Pennsylvania PUC granted Met-Ed a $49 million rate increase, five days before Unit 2 would become world famous, Met-Ed Vice President Herbein issued a press release about the status of the nuclear insurance industry...
...them from sleep...
...One nuclear worker accidentally shut valves near the water demineralizers on November 3, 1978, stopping the feed-water flow, automatically scramming the reactor...
...He was about to begin two feverish weeks of drawing up the plans for the evacuation of Dauphin County...
...Robert C. Arnold, a Met-Ed vice president, testified before the PUC in 1978 that various decommissioning schemes would be considered by the utility...
...With little water left to cool it, the reactor was dangerously close to going completely out of control...
...At four o'clock in the morning on March 28, 1979, the loud whistle of highly pressurized steam escaped the confines of Three Mile Island's Unit 2 nuclear power plant...
...One technician described the scene in the control room as "twenty people doing the work of 150...
...The tank was never designed to handle the amount of water it eventually received...
...At 6:18 A.M., the stuck pressure relief valve was discovered and closed, but only after 250,000 gallons of radioactive water had been spilled onto the containment room floor...
...What Herbein didn't report in his press release was how the money would be split...
...He opens them from the control room, after discovering the problem on the flashing, ringing control panel...
...Two minutes into the accident the computer switched on the three emergency core cooling system pumps...
...His account concluded: "This scenario is not as fictitious as some readers might believe...
...Within thirty seconds, the computer's logic circuits turned on the auxiliary feedwater system to cool the steam generators, since the main feed-water system had shut down with the turbines...
...The other explanation is more mundane: Either the control room operators had to be informed by management that the valves were closed, or checklist procedures on the emergency system, which the utility should have conducted before the accident, were hastily run through until the problem was isolated...
...At the PUC hearings, Met-Ed's overall financial picture was examined...
...Included in that list of unknown functions was the opening and closing of the pressurizer's electromatic relief valve the same valve that failed to close on March 28, spilling 250,000 gallons of water onto the containment room floor...
...James B. Lieberman, general counsel for General Public Utilities, Met-Ed's parent corporation, said the company had borrowed $30 million before the accident occurred, $28 million more in April, and expected to borrow $20 million in May and $19 million in June...
...The water would rise just so far, it would recede after so long, and it would cause just so much damage...
...While these reassurances were being given out, workers in the control room had opened a valve beneath the reactor core itself, and water was pouring from the emergency core cooling system, over the nuclear fuel, and onto the containment building's floor...
...But the reactor temperature had now gone over 600 degrees...
...No accidents involving radiation release, which posed even a minor threat to the general public, have occurred from insured nuclear plants, including Met-Ed's Three Mile Island Units 1 and 2, or any other nuclear operations," Herbein declared...
...The NRC agreed with Met-Ed, and Class 9 incidents were not discussed...
...Gauges shouldn't be made to "cover all anticipated occurrences," Criswell was told...
...Unit 2 was shut down 71 per cent of the time between March 28, 1978 exactly one year before its crippling accident when its reactor first went "critical," and December 30, 1978, when commercial production began...
...But Boyce Grier, director of NRC's Region 1 Office of Inspection and Enforcement, defended Met-Ed by drafting a memo stating, "The plant staff was supplemented and changes occurred in advance of the licensing of Unit 2, to preclude the dilution of management attention to the operating unit...
...Three Mile Island's Unit 2 was put into commercial operation literally at the eleventh hour of 1978...
...of low-level radiation would be vented into the atmosphere over the next two weeks...
...On Sunday, when President Jimmy Carter and Governor Richard Thornburgh toured TMI's control room, Scranton remained at the gate of the plant, chatting with reporters...
...In 1978 Met-Ed had twenty-eight rate hearings before the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission (PUC...
...But in the control room, Craig Faust was watching the pressurizer gauge rise off the scale...
...in screaming, "I think there's a mixup somewhere here...
...Met-Ed and its regulators cooperated to keep Unit 2 "used and useful...
...By March 22, just one week before the accident, the PUC had approved a $49 million Met-Ed rate increase...
...nuclear technology that was publicly characterized as fail-safe [has] failed...
...he asked...
...Other choppers circled the island like flies around a piece of spoiling meat...
...The American Nuclear Insurers, Herbein continued, "recently announced a premium credit of 29.5 per cent applying to all new and renewal property insurance policies for nuclear facilities written on or after March 1, 1979...
...It was telling him, incorrectly, that the core's coolant was still present and terribly pressurized...
...Waste disposal facilities will be available in the 1980's, O'Leary declared...
...They are arms proliferation, siting, and licensing of nuclear generating plants and nuclear waste disposal...
...On March 6, the turbines again shut down, scramming the reactor...
...until about 1:30 p.m., Three Mile Island discharged into the airstream detectable amounts of radiation...
...Ten minutes into the mishap, a second emergency core cooling pump was shut off...
...At about eleven o'clock, three telling events occurred: First, radioactive steam began escaping from the auxiliary building...
...When pumps malfunctioned on November 7, the feedwater flow was again cut, again scramming the reactor...
...In the past century the Susquehanna River has twice flooded its banks, causing millions of dollars in damages and sending residents fleeing...
...Unit 2's power output went down to 90 per cent until February 26, when the heater problem was apparently solved...
...Babcock & Wilcox plants were safe, responded an NRC safety and licensing board...
...But others, less noted by the press, said they heard nothing, continued to sleep, unaware of the drama that was about to engulf them...
...Again and again, NRC's middle and upper management sided with the utility...
...about the dangers of damage to the uranium core at NRC hearings in 1977, the commission refused to hear testimony...
...If the nuclear workers at Unit 2 were the beleaguered pioneers of the new technology, Met-Ed's management looked to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ride in like the cavalry...
...At that point, the valve should have closed...
...Still the official stance from industry and government was (and is) that 'nuclear energy is safe...
...And their important gauges weren't working...
...They knew what it meant...
...But five-and-a-half hours later he had to admit, "This situation is more complex than the company first led us to believe...
...But at four o'clock in the morning, the men in the control room of Unit 2 had no time to ponder how their actions would later be viewed...
...The half-million people who live in the Har-risburg area still vividly recall the record flood of 1972, when fire trucks passed through the streets at midnight, broadcasting the grim eviction message over loudspeakers...
...However, after the March 28 accident which crippled the reactor, Pennsylvania Consumer Advocate Mark Widoff petitioned the PUC for a rehearing on the rate increase...
...The surveillance was subsequently repeated and proper documentation was obtained...
...Within an hour a hydrogen bubble had floated to the top of the reactor pressure vessel...
...The increase was granted on the basis that Unit 2 was then "used and useful in the public service," as required by Pennsylvania utility law...
...About 9:30 fifty TMI employes were evacuated from the island, pouring to the shore in a caravan of cars...
...Second, Lieutenant Governor William Scranton III told a crowd of screaming reporters at the capitol building in Harrisburg that he understood from utility officials that the situation was under control, that radiation was no longer being leaked...
...At 11 p.m., December 30, almost on the eve of the new year, the first switches were thrown...
...Under the "Energy Adjustment Clause" of the utility law, Met-Ed has the right, after sixty days, to include the cost of purchasing power in customers' bills without prior PUC approval...
...Water normally pressurized at 2,000 pounds per square inch for the purpose of quenching the nuclear core was pouring from the valve...
...When the water from the emergency pumps hit the melting nuclear core, the oxygen in the water combined with the zirconium, releasing hydrogen in the form of bubbles...
...From 11 a.m...
...foreman rushed...
...The company sought a rate increase to cover the costs of Unit 2. To justify the increase, Met-Ed outlined its projected costs for operating Unit 2 for the year beginning March 31, 1978...
...During the next forty-five minutes, the systems began to stabilize...
...In all probability the overall safety may become worse over the next year due to this increased work load...
...In November 1978 the NRC told of one inspector's report that "the licensing of Unit 2 will have an impact on the site/corporate staffs...
...Soon a floor sump pump came on, draining the water into a wastewater storage tank...
...In a complex nuclear reactor, can valves be opened and closed, or overlooked for weeks, like the basement tap to the garden hose...
...But the NRC, ever ready to promote nuclear energy as reliable, ruled out an immediate closing of Unit 1 because the "loss of this large block of generating capacity could adversely affect electric-system reliability...
...Met-Ed and its regulators cooperated to keep Unit 2 "used and useful" ' On February 17, Unit 1 on Three Mile Island shut down for refueling, scheduled to reopen April 2. NRC officials met March 16, just twelve days before the accident at Unit 2, to decide whether to allow Unit 1 to reopen on schedule...
...Four-and-a-half minutes into the accident, Faust shut off the first emergency core cooling system pump...
...TMI employes arriving for the eight o'clock shift were sent to an auditorium on the island...
...Some workers drove to a substation down the road to be checked for radiation contamination...
...It was like the fear one would experience reaching into the darkness for a light switch and finding, instead, a large, rough, hairy hand...
...This was the sound some people heard in the night...
...There it mixed with the rest of the primary coolant...
...Meanwhile, the water from the emergency core cooling system was following the rest of the coolant through the relief valve, which remained open...
...The rehearing would be to determine whether or not Unit 2, which could be out of service for several years, was still "used and useful," and therefore permitted to remain in the company's rate base...
...Racing to his office in downtown Harrisburg, Molloy was told over his radio that Three Mile Island had declared a general emergency...
...But Met-Ed executives insisted that Unit 2 be "on the line" by year's end for tax and rate purposes...
...Others traveled to an observation tower across the river from the island on the Middletown side...
...The plant's generating turbine had for some reason shut down...
...Fifteen minutes after the original turbine trip, the tank was filled...
...O'Leary said, "There are three areas that require attention to assure the continued availability of nuclear generated electricity...
...Unfamiliar with the instruments, the troopers pointed them at the ground, twisting them as though they were kaleidoscopes...
...One emergency cooling system was useless...
...The automatic pressure relief valve in the system's pressurizer had done its job...
...As Unit 2 worked into February 2, Met-Ed announced "surveillance performed on nuclear instrumentation was not properly documented...
...The temperature of the system should have been decreasing, cooled by the flow of water from the auxiliary feedwater system...
...According to NRC regulations, Denton said, one auxiliary feedwater valve may be closed a short while for pump testing, but the plant must never operate with both valves closed...
...Department of Energy, spoke at Unit 2's dedication ceremony...
...Third, the owners of the plant, Met-Ed, held a press conference on the lawn of the observation building...
...By seven o'clock, someone on Three Mile Island got around to calling the state and Dauphin County emergency management agencies...
...The same way an outboard motor stirs air into the water behind it, the delicate reactor coolant pump rotors were now running the risk of destroying themselves because they were churning air bubbles...
...Not exactly sure how Three Mile Island would handle its waste problem, Arnold said, "In any event, the option which results in the minimum expenditure consistent with an acceptable risk to the public would be selected...
...The core would now be cooled as the cooler water was heated and drawn upward, then out of the reactor at its top...
...About 45 per cent of the loans taken after the accident would be used to purchase replacement power, since both of the reactors at Three Mile Island are now .shut down...
...About that time a reporter pointed to the steam rising from the stricken reactor...
...The disaster made Met-Ed eligible to receive up to $560 million in property and liability insurance from ANI...
...This continued until one in the afternoon...
...When the press discovered this three days later, it caused a panic...
...With the electromatic valve open, however, the coolant was boiling...
...A PUC spokesman said that the Commission was not taking immediate action to prevent collection of this surcharge, since it could not go into effect, in any event, until June...
...By six in the morning the temperature of the reactor core was somewhere off the gauge scale...
...The men in the control room of Unit 2, working Three Mile Island's graveyard shift, heard the sudden escape of steam...
...The first pictures Frederick as the quick-thinking, experienced control room operator: He doesn't assume fail-safe, doesn't assume the valves are open...
...At that point, the company would reach its legal borrowing limit of $97 million...
...The NRC ignored problems in other ways...
...cold water splashing into hot steam generators could create cracks in the system...
...These voids, wrote Criswell, could cause gauges to malfunction during accidents...
...And, as the judge had pointed out on February 23, Unit 2 had been in commercial operation since December 30...
...Their records tell a disturbing story...
...The next day, Thursday, in his capacity as chairman of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, Scranton visited Three Mile Island and received an eighty-millirem dose of radiation...
...The water remaining in the primary loop was superheated and vented as steam through the stuck electromatic valve...
...An important value judgment made by the PUC affecting this decision was whether Unit 2 was "used and useful...
...The NRC simply overlooked this problem...
...Within one week of issuing the nuclear insurance press release, Herbein was on the telephone to his insurers, and the nuclear power industry would never be the same...
...Both times the auxiliary feedwater system pumped water into the steam generators, carrying heat away from the primary loop...
...At ten o'clock on Wednesday mornA nuclear crystal ball The nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island was foretold more than nine months ago in a fictitious account that came chillingly close to predicting what actually happened...
...Radiation run amok doesn't come in such a neat package...
...Like the rest of the primary coolant, it splashed onto the floor of the containment building...
...Three Mile Island is within eyesight of his home...
...On September 19, 1978, John F. O'Leary, deputy secretary of the U.S...
...The building had no radioactive shielding...
...Corporate meltdown The lessons of Three Mile Island Bill Keisling and Ed Perrone Pennsylvania's recent nuclear accident produced a raw, gut fear in thousands of people not the fear of a known and tangible enemy, but the bone-chilling fear of the completely unknown...
...A heater drain pump, said a Met-Ed official, was a small pump meant to carry condensate from a feedwater heater...
...The computer, programmed to assume the valves were open, began to lose control of the nuclear power plant...
...that he expected things to be back to normal in a few weeks...
...In December, feedwater problems continued...
...That's not radioactive, is it...
...Surrounding populations faced with imminent radioactive catastrophe learned of their plights days or months later...
...Workmen had to repair steam leaks, primary system valves, water leaks at electrical connections in the steam generators, bearing supports on the turbine generator's main shaft, and blown fuses indicating defective electrical equipment and other components...
...When the white warning light for the emergency core cooling system flashed, Faust feared the highly pressurized water in the primary loop would back up into the emergency pumps, crippling them...
...But by this time the computer was useless...
...B. K. andE.P...
...But this method was less efficient than using pumps, and the core temperature began to rise again...
...But another problem developed...
...Arnold missed the actual date of the accident by only about three months (he had it happening on December 21, 1978), and his account depicts a full meltdown leading to considerably wider devastation...
...Some of these bubbles blocked the cooling channels, while others rose to the top of the reactor's pressure vessel like the bubbles in a bottle of champagne...
...A "Class 9" nuclear incident, or "hypothetical sequence failures" resulting in nuclear core damage, argued Met-Ed's attorneys, was too improbable to warrant serious consideration...
...Within a minute, the two steam generators were drying out...
Vol. 43 • June 1979 • No. 6
