On Saturday night, June 28, 1980, operators reduced power at Browns Ferry Unit 3 in Alabama for a scheduled maintenance outage. Tradition called for the plant to be manually tripped when power dropped to about 30 percent. An operator depressed the trip pushbuttons, and control rods raced into the reactor core. But not all of them--76 of the 92 control rods on half of the core were not fully inserted. In fact, many of these control rods had hardly moved in at all. The reactor was still running.

About two minutes later, the operator depressed the trip pushbuttons again. This time, 59 of the stubborn rods remained withdrawn. The operator depressed the pushbuttons again. There were still 47 control rods withdrawn.

The third time may be a charm, but it was the fourth time at Browns Ferry that night. When the operator depressed the pushbuttons a fourth time, all of the control rods fully inserted. It had taken four tries and about fifteen minutes to shut down the Unit 3 reactor.

No one knows what happened that night. The theory is that something plugged one of the scram discharge headers. The fourth scram attempt allegedly dislodged this mystery plug and blew it into the reactor building's sump, where it hid amid considerable other gunk and grime. [11]

Safety in Numbers?

What are the chances of a nuclear accident? Here's what the NRC said in 1984:

"The most complete and recent probabilistic risk assessments suggest core-melt frequencies in the range of 10-3 [one in one thousand] per reactor year to 10-4 [one in ten thousand] per reactor year. A typical value is 3x10-4 [three in ten thousand]. Were this the industry average, then in a population of 100 reactors operating over a period of 20 years, the crude cumulative probability of [a severe core melt] accident would be 45 percent."

Hence, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported about a 50-50 chance of a core meltdown occurring by 2004. Time is running out! [12]

Power Plant Porno

Pornography may or may not have social value, but a skin magazine may have damaged important equipment at a California nuclear plant in March 1984:

A misplaced magazine was sucked into a crucial cooling water system at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, breaking a giant pump, a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. spokesman said yesterday. A plant worker apparently set the magazine too close to a pipe that sucks in air to cool the pump engine, said startup engineer John Sumner. Sumner said it was rumored the offending magazine may have been a forbidden "girlie" publication that a plant worker hastily stashed near the air intake. [13]

The NRC should not adopt regulations protecting nuclear power plant equipment from pornography. If it did, testing and inspections would be required to verify that the regulations were being satisfied.

Nuclear plant owners essentially banned pornography in the late 1980s when they placed restrictions on non-technical materials in the workplace. The "nudie" magazines were replaced with "nukie" magazines.

Asleep at the Switches

On March 24, 1987, the NRC heard from a whistleblower that operators at the Peach Bottom plant were sleeping on duty in the control room. The NRC immediately sent inspectors out to the Pennsylvania facility to investigate. The inspectors reported:

"At times during various shifts, in particular the 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM shift, one or more of the Peach Bottom operations control room staff (including licensed operators, senior licensed operators and shift supervision) have for at least the past five months periodically slept or have been otherwise inattentive to licensed duties." [14]

During a midnight shift, NRC inspectors found all three operators asleep and the shift supervisor reading a magazine. On another shift, the shift superintendent, the shift supervisor, and two operators were asleep while the remaining operator was awake, but he was not in the control room. Finally, the NRC inspectors found the operators on another shift gathered around a console playing a computer game. [15]

Although sleeping operators make fewer mistakes than awake operators, the NRC still became disenchanted. They ordered Peach Bottom shut down.

A spokesman for the nuclear industry's trade group explained why operators sleep on duty: "The problem is that's its an extremely boring job." [16]

Before a gathering of local townspeople, an NRC staffer complimented the Peach Bottom operators: "If they are awake, they can do the job very well." [17] Glowing praise, indeed.

The two units at Peach Bottom remained closed for over two years. Then, with a brand new management team--and very well-rested operators--the plant owner restarted the reactors.

Patriot Games

On February 5, 1997, the owners of the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona informed the NRC that a plastic bag containing material believed to be marijuana had been found in November 1996. The bag fell out of the folds of an American flag which had been stored since 1980. Workers threw the bag in the trash. When supervisors later learned of the discovery, a search of the trash failed to locate the bag. [18]

Coincidentally, there are unconfirmed reports that all of the bags of potato chips and pretzels in the vending machines at the site also disappeared.

Coffee Break

An employee allegedly tried to kill his supervisor at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Alabama in 1980. Reportedly, the employee became disenchanted with his supervisor over some real or imagined slight. When the supervisor sat down for his mid-morning coffee break, fumes spewed from his coffee thermos as soon as he opened it. The supervisor, in charge of the chemistry group, had the contents of the thermos analyzed. The results showed that the coffee contained high amounts of hydrochloric acid.

A security investigation quickly determined who did what to whom and why. The plant's owner elected to downplay the situation. It's rather poor public relations to have it widely known that workers at a nuclear plant are trying to kill each other, so they convinced the supervisor not to have the employee arrested or otherwise disciplined. But the supervisor, rightly so, didn't want the individual working for him anymore. Management transferred the employee to another group at the plant.