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By JERRY LYNOTT; Times Leader Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 26, 1994 Page: 3A
PLAINS TWP. — First a power surge damaged tubes holding the uranium fuel
pellets in Reactor One at the Susquehanna nuclear power plant on Tuesday
morning.
Then radioactive steam leaked into the containment building. Later workers
had trouble locating the leak at the plant near the Luzerne/Columbia county
line in Salem Township.
Whether they plugged it is unknown. It was just an emergency drill
conducted by Pennsylvania Power & Light at its Susquehanna Steam Election
Station, and it ended without a resolution.
“This is our graded Nuclear Regulatory Commission annual exercise,” Herb
Woodeshick said more than midway through the drill at the utility’s Media
Operations Center in Plains Township, where PP&L and emergency management
officials monitored the developing emergency.
“Every nuclear power plant has one full-scale graded exercise per year.”
How the utility fared won’t be known for at least another 60 days, when the
NRC issues its report card on procedures and handling of emergency
declarations.
Woodeshick, PP&L’s special assistant to the president, said he was pleased
with the way the drill went. It began about 7:30 a.m. and ended about 1:20
p.m.
The utility set up three other centers as part of the drill: one inside the
containment building; one outside the fence enclosing the plant; and one in
the corporate offices in Allentown. Approximately 250 people participated.
“Anybody that is participating has no knowledge prior to today what is
going on,” Woodeshick said. “The day unfolds as it unfolds.”
The utility’s emergency planning group developed the mock emergency with
the approval of the NRC.
do you think it’s clear that this didn’t really happen?
In the exercise scenario, operators at the plant detected a “spike,” or
energy surge in Reactor One around 7:41 a.m. A heater on a pipe leading into
the reactor core failed. The unheated water mixed with heated water in the
core, causing the uranium fuel pellets to generate more energy and damage the
zirconium metal casing on the tubes.
Plant officials upgraded the “alert,” the second lowest emergency
classification, to a “site emergency,” the second highest classification,
around 9:11 a.m. with the radioactive steam leak. The site emergency posed a
serious problem to plant safety and prompted operators to shut down the
reactor manually. Reactor Two, located in a separate area from the other unit,
continued to operate.
At hourly intervals, PP&L officials and a representative of the
Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency gave updates and answered questions
from the media and from referees — employees who will critique the officials
on their handling of the situation in a separate review from the NRC.
TIMES LEADER/DON CAREY
PP&L spokesman Ira Kaplan answers questions posed by the media during a
nuclear emergency drill Tuesday at the company’s Media Operations Center in
Plains Township.