Plymouth nuclear plant offline again
Plymouth nuclear plant offline again
By Sean Philip CotterThe Patriot Ledger
Posted Apr 30, 2018
PLYMOUTH — The Pilgrim nuclear power plant is back offline after just eight days of generating power.
Plant workers powered it down after they found a potential issue with the one of the two feedwater regulation valves, said Entergy Corp. spokesman Patrick O’Brien. Entergy owns the 46-year-old Manomet plant that was built by the former Boston Edison Co.
Those valves are used to control the amount of water that comes to the reactor.
Entergy doesn’t announce ahead of time when the plant will reconnect to the grid because that is proprietary information, O’Brien said.
The plant only had been online for eight days after spending 43 days offline amid a series of storms and mechanical problems. The station was initially powered down on March 6 so crews could repair a small leak in a feedwater heating system and then kept offline as a precaution during a March 13 nor’easter. While preparing to start the plant up after the storm, crews discovered a problem with a startup transformer that eventually required it to be replaced. It eventually came back online April 19.
These have been the latest in a long line of problems for the plant, which Entergy Corp. has said will be permanently shuttered by May 31, 2019. The company has said it is no longer financially viable to operate.
The closure of the plant has been the source of heated debate among local residents, many of whom see an economic benefit of the big plant that employs 600 people wanting to keep it open as long as possible. On the other side are a conglomeration of people including those who oppose nuclear in general, as well as people who are open to it but worry about how many issues have beset the 45-year-old Pilgrim specifically.
Since 2015, federal nuclear regulators have classified the Plymouth plant has been classified in Column IV of the agency’s performance matrix. The status, shared with two other nuclear reactors that are also owned by Entergy, is one step above mandatory shutdown. The regulatory body said earlier this year it had seen improvement, but the plant still needed to improve in several areas before its standing would get better.
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