Vermont Yankee back up after 26-day shutdown for maintenance and refueling

by Andrew Stein April 15, 2013 vtdigger.org On April 4, the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant booted back up after a routine refueling and maintenance outage.
The plant operates on 18-month cycles with about a one-month pause for maintenance and refueling in between. This past cycle, plant officials say Vermont Yankee operated for 493 days.
The maintenance work consisted of tasks such as replacing roughly one-third of the plant’ s fuel assemblies, an electrical transformer and a large recirculation pump.
During the 26-day outage, several incidents gave Department of Public Service Commissioner Chris Recchia cause for concern. Namely, Recchia took issue with a panel that blew out due to over pressurization and faulty manhole seals that led to the flooding of a switchgear room.
These incidents prompted Recchia to write to the William Dean, regional administrator for Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Recchia inquired into how the NRC evaluated the plant when it relicensed Vermont Yankee in 2012 to operate for another 20 years after its initial federal license expired..
Weeks after Recchia’ s letter, Gregory Jaczko, former chair of the NRC, said that all of the U.S.’ s 104 nuclear reactors present a safety hazard and should be replaced. As the New York Times reported, Jaczko said at the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference that many plants, which received 20-year licenses to operate beyond their original 40-year licenses, would likely be inoperable by the time their licenses expired. He also spoke out against the notion that aging nuclear plants should be eligible for a second license extension to operate for a total of 80 years.