NukeWorker Forum
Career Path => Nuclear Operator => Topic started by: SmallTownNuke on Nov 17, 2012, 09:51
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As you may have heard, Fort Calhoun has been offline since April 2011. Given the immense experience present on this board, does anyone have experience with bringing a plant back online after an extended shutdown? The station is obviously utilizing INPO for OE, however sometimes smaller issues may get drowned out by bigger ones and any additional knowledge would be greatly appreciated. I am currently a System Engineer and my end goal is to do everything possible to ensure no issues with the plant systems will "surprise" us as we get ready to change modes. Thank you in advance
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Yep, brought Fermi back after a year shutdown caused by a turbine accident.
Also virtually anyone at Browns Ferry. Brought back a reactor after a 20 year shutdown.
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Broadzilla, from your time at Fermi, how did you approach systems that were out of service for most of the outage? What about inevitable FME that manages to make it into a system and wasn't documented?
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I actually have a lot of experience with this because as a recently licensed RO I was teamed with a guy from chemistry to come up with a plan to ensure system cleanliness. Since it was a BWR anything bad would end up in the fuel.
We flushed the heck out of everything and selected a sample of FW Heaters and Condensate Demins to open up and check for debris. We'd start up condensate through it's short cycle path and progressively remove the various components from service and open up their water boxes. We used the heaters as FME traps.
So if you had 3 heaters in parallel on day one you would inspect heater 1. Place it back in service, then do heater 2, then so on.
Must have been successful as we had no FME issues. It will take a couple weeks though.