Yikes! I’m not going to sleep so soundly tonight knowing that Progress Energy’s Shearon Harris nuclear plant is nearby and its hapless crews can’t bolt a reactor lid properly.
Makes me wonder why the NRC is still so chummy with utilities.
Emphasis mine:
Nine of the 12 workers who performed the reactor vessel assembly were not qualified. Some received “just-in-time” (i.e., last minute) training before the Fall 2011 refueling outage, but not specifically in stud tensioning.
The workers didn’t know how to read the instrumentation and torqued the reactor vessel lid’s studs at 1,300 pounds per square inch instead of 13,000 psi. In other words, there were off by one zero, and screwed the studs at 1/10th the required pressure.
Some the bolts were left so loose they could be turned by hand, the NRC said. Others turned easily with a wrench.