On 1-16-99 the Raleigh News & Observer reported that the 860 megawatt Shearon Harris nuclear generation plant automatically shut down on the morning of 1-14-99 after two technicians cut power to two of the three cooling pumps. Fortunately, the control rods "dropped automatically into the reactor core and the plant went dead." Carolina Power & Light's explanation according to the journalist: "...two workers put a piece of paper as required inside power equipment they were testing to block contact and forgot to remove the paper when they were done." The N&O journalist wrote: "CP&L would not divulge what, if anything, it's spending on replacement power from other power companies until Harris is operating at full capacity again early next week." According to the article the last automatic shutdown at the plant was in 1995. My personal feelings, I'm so thankful that they waited 48 hours to report this. Any earlier and I would have panicked! Thank you, Sir, May I have another!?

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), January 16, 1999

Answers

I used to live in the shadow of this nuclear facility when I lived in Fuquay Varina, NC.

One of my friends was a technician there. One day he was telling me about what he had to do in order to change a light bulb in an exit sign over a door. It literally took over one hundred man hours to do the job. Requests filed, queries sent back, explanations returned, manuals passed back and forth, blah blah blah balh blah. When he recieved final c;earance to initiate the task, it took him five minutes to screw out the old burned out buld and screw in the new one. But, it had cost more than a thousand dollars to do the job.

Then he was required to be part of a study to determine why a five minute task should have cost more than a thousand dollars and what could be done about rducing the costs.

Anyway, I can't wait to see how they handle a real problem when it comes up. And lots of them all at once.

-- Paul Milne (fedinfo@halifax.com), January 16, 1999.

Pud: I'm not sure who you are blaming for not keeping you informed; the N & O or CP&L. If you desire to keep track of all reactors in the US, I suggest visiting the NRC's webpage. Panic when the reactor shuts down automatically? It would seem that the time to panic is when the reactor doesn't shut down automatically. Mr. Milne: My cousin's best friend's ex-husband heard about a guy who woke up without his kidneys! Thousand dollar light bulbs are the stuff of legend. Deregulation of the electric power industry makes for a pretty tight pocketbook . As for how they will handle a real problem? Wasn't this event a real problem? My guess: flawlessly. BTW, my plant rolled our clocks forward about two weeks ago; worked just fine.

-- nucpwr (nucpwr@hotmail.com), January 17, 1999.