The James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant is located near Oswego, New York on the southeast shore of Lake Ontario. The plant contains one eight hundred and thirty eight megawatt General Electric boiling water reactor. The reactor was built by the Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation and put into operation in 1975 with a forty year license to 2014. Ownership passed to the Power Authority of the State of New York and eventually to Entergy. An extended license was issued in 2008 to operate until 2034.
The population in the NRC plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of ten miles around the plant contains about thirty five thousand people. The NRC ingestion pathway zone with a radius of fifty miles around the plant contains about nine hundred thousand people. The NRC estimates that there is a very low risk of an earthquake that could damage the plant.
In late 1991, the NRC sent a Diagnostic Inspection Team (DET) to the plant. On November 27th of 1991, the reactor was voluntarily shut down. The report of the inspection team was issued on December 3rd of 1991. The report detailed deficiencies in the plants programs for operation, maintenance, testing and engineering. Especially troubling was the finding that the isolation valves in the core spray system could not be relied upon to close properly and prevent the release of radioactive materials in the event of an accident. The operators of the plant agreed to plant upgrades and management changes to fix the problems revealed in the DET report. As the work proceeded additional problems were uncovered in the fire protection systems and the original design for the isolation valve system. Ultimately, the plant was closed over a year in order to make the necessary changes. The NRC issued a warning to other plants about the isolation valve problems that were uncovered at FitzPatrick.
During the extended outage, the operators of the plant reported dozens of safety problems that had been known for years including deficiencies in the fire protection systems, the isolation valves already mentioned, failure to test equipment properly and flawed electrical installation. Of grave concern is the fact that the NRC had repeatedly inspected the FitzPatrick plant over the preceding years and yet had not identified many existing problems.
In 1999, poor maintenance led to a hydrogen fire on the roof of the control building which forced a shutdown of the plant.
Once again, a plant with a wide variety of problems continued to operate because the NRC failed in its oversight function for years. We have design flaws, fire suppression problems, electrical problems and failures to test equipment properly. Fortunately, in view of all the long-standing problems at FitzPatrick, there was not a serious accident that endangered the public.
