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Nuclear Event in Russia [Asia] on Wednesday, 10 November, 2010 at 04:33 (04:33 AM) UTC.
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This event happend on 27th October 2010: A scram of Reactor 2 at Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in Russia’s Far Northeast late last October took the unit out of operation for 36 hours – bringing into doubt the ongoing attempts to modernise the obsolete and worn-out equipment at this first-generation NPP, which was commissioned as far back as the 1970s. A scram of Reactor 2 at Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in Russia’s Far Northeast late last October took the unit out of operation for 36 hours – bringing into doubt the ongoing attempts to modernise the obsolete and worn-out equipment at this first-generation NPP, which was commissioned as far back as the 1970s. Andrei Ozharovsky, 09/11-2010 - Translated by Maria Kaminskaya
According to reports by the public information service of the Russian NPP operator, concern Rosenergoatom, and the press service of Bilibino’s production and engineering department, the scram occurred on October 27, 2010 at 07:12 p.m. local time. The reactor was taken back online on October 29 at 05:32 a.m. local time. The scram was ascribed to a “false signal generated by the protection equipment.” The reactor was thus offline for 34 hours, providing no power or heat to the Chaun-Bilibino energy system. One circumstance that causes additional concerns regarding the latest shutdown at Bilibino is that it occurred only two weeks after three-day unscheduled repairs – October 11 through 14 – ended at the reactor. There have been no reports as to why the repairs were needed in the first place. It can be speculated that the repairs had to do with modernising the very protection and safety systems which generated a false alarm signal and brought the reactor down on October 27.
Reactor Unit 2 at Bilibino NPP was commissioned in 1974. According to design projections, it was supposed to have run out its 30-year operational lifetime in 2004, and decommissioned after that. However – as has been common enough practice at Russian nuclear power plants, such as Kola NPP in Murmansk Region in Russia’s Far North – the reactor’s license was extended, allowing it to operate for another 15 years, or until 2019. According to a Rosenergoatom statement on Bilibino’s safety and modernisation programme, “the key measure in 2007 was the modernisation of automatic regulation systems. The work is being done in line with the decision on modernisation of the automatic regulation systems of units 1-4 of Bilibino NPP,” approved by Rosenergoatom’s technical director Nikolai Sorokin on July 6 2007.
The decision prescribes replacement of the plant’s automatic regulation systems, in operation since December 1973, by modernised ones. “The modernised systems are similar to the old ones,” the statement says, “but they are safer and more efficient and are supposed to help Bilibino NPP to continue [with] its measures for bringing its equipment into compliance with nuclear safety standards.” The more detailed Russian version of the same statement elaborated that the automatic regulation and emergency protection functions will be implemented in the new systems, which will be based on “modern hardware components” and will enhance the equipment’s reliability. The logic and the functional characteristics of the modernised safety equipment will fully correspond to the prototype, only the replacement for modern-type equipment will be implemented, the statement said. All of this means that the ancient equipment, designed in the 1960s and produced in the early 1970s, will simply be replaced with newly made analogues based on “modern hardware components.” It remains uncertain whether electronic or computer-based safety systems will ever be installed at Bilibino. What is clear for the moment is that with all the modernisation done by mid-October, the equipment continued to glitch and caused an emergency shutdown of the reactor.
As circumstances would have it, it was only one week prior to the unscheduled repairs and three weeks before the reactor was scrammed due to a false alarm signal from the emergency protection systems that the PR service of Bilibino’s production and engineering department issued a report – written in the best traditions of Soviet-style eyewash and window-dressing – attesting to the NPP's readiness to operate safely and reliably (quoted here verbatim): “An inspection commission on readiness of nuclear plant power units for operation under autumn-winter peak load […] in 2010-2011 has finished its work at Bilibino NPP […]. In accordance with the results of the performed inspection the plant was acknowledged to be ready to securely carry electric and thermal power load in the autumn-winter period: the commission recommended issuing to Bilibino NPP of a passport of operational readiness for [autumn-winter peak load] 2010-2011.” What this amounts to is nuclear officials gathering their own commissions, paying inspection visits to each other’s sites, issuing each other “passports of operational readiness,” or “passports of quality performance,” or “ecological safety passports” – but these reports may not be worth the paper they are printed on.
Experience shows, after all, that at least Reactor Unit 2 of Bilibino NPP was not ready to “securely carry” its power load. One question persists as to what would happen if the nuclear industry dared to expose its inner workings to the scrutiny of a fully independent commission, or if, before the dangerous operational license extensions were issued, the operator company had had courage enough to apply for a law-mandated state environmental impact evaluation. Would the reality of the situation make it into the public domain? Would the aged reactors at Bilibino have been stopped and decommissioned when their engineered life spans had expired? This is what Vladimir Kuznetsov, D. E. Sc., a former atomic industry oversight specialist, says on the matter: “Most of the equipment at the reactor units of Bilibino [NPP] has exhausted or soon will exhaust its [operational] resource. The reactors do not meet the requirements of safety rules and standards, and there is no making them comply with said requirements.”
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