Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 1 and Part 2 first)
A second situation occurred in the second four-month period of 2020 as reported in RC 101104. Edmin Lyman is the Director of Nuclear Energy Security at the Union of Concerned Scientists in the United States. He said, “it could be dangerous if emergency supplies did not start or were disrupted before the external electricity was restarted. If that happened, the plant would suffer a complete loss of AC power. If not restored. Within a few hours, the radioactive fuel in the core of the reactor could heat up and melt eventually, as happened in three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan after a major earthquake and tsunami, which occurred in 2011.” He said that the plant is more vulnerable “when the external electricity is not available in the event of another type of accident” such as a rupture of the pipe.”
Between 2012 and 2020, Laguna Verde reported thirty three extraordinary events. The CFE estimates that it is losing almost a million dollars a day. The Laguna Verde plant started operating Unit 1 in 1990 and Unit 2 in 1995. Each Unit was licensed for forty years and a capacity of two thousand twenty megawatts.
In July, the Energy Department renewed the CNLV operating licenses for another thirty years following a review by the Nuclear Regulatory Authority of safety requirements in a process that began 2015. A 2018 report from the World Association of Nuclear Power Operators (WANO), there was an announcement that the Factory Owners Club Atomic, to which Federal Commission for Electricity (CFE) belongs, awarded Unit 2 a score of 87 on its Performance Index. This means that is thirtieth of thirty six nuclear plants rated. Unit 1 got a rating of 74.8. The assessment put the Mexican nuclear power plant in its worst quarter performance along with seven other U.S. nuclear power plants. The actions taken by the owners and operators of Laguna Verde failed to improve the performance of the plant. The plant has been under observation since June of 2018 by WANO.
Since 2014, the performance of Laguna Verde has been below the average of the facilities overseen by WANO. In 2019, its rating was twenty points below average. Lehmann said, “In some cases, loss of external energy is inevitable, as is the case with natural disasters that cause a breakdown in the power grid. Equipment malfunctions that can cause that loss can be avoided through strict inspections and maintenance.” He warned that the possibility of a power outage can be reduced by hardening the plant against such accidents.
In October of 2020, Energy Secretary Rossio Nahle told the Mexican Senate that the generator was now running without problems after an investment of two hundred million dollars in maintenance. He said, “It is very good and has the highest safety standards and standards.” Unfortunately, the records of the CFE which owns Laguna Verde tell a much different story about the safety at the plant.