By Teresa Hansen, Associate Editor
In late August 2005, management at Entergy Operations’ Waterford 3 nuclear power plant in Taft, La., (20 miles west of New Orleans) learned that a storm named Katrina was likely going to come ashore near the plant. They promptly began to prepare the facility as they had done in similar situations previously, such as in 1998 when Hurricane Georges came on shore just east of the plant and in 2002 when the plant was threatened by Hurricanes Lili and Isidore.
Like the previous storms, Katrina was not a direct hit. Nevertheless, it had much more impact on the plant than any previous hurricane, said Jack Lewis, Waterford 3’s emergency planning manager.
The plant shut down commenced at 10:59 a.m. on August 28 and the next morning, on August 29 at 7:59 a.m., off-site power was lost. Power was not fully restored until 10:20 p.m. on September 2-four days, 14 hours and 21 minutes later. During this time, on-site emergency backup diesel generators provided all necessary power.
“The biggest plant impact from Katrina was the loss of off-site power,” said Lewis. “The plant had never run on diesel generators for that long.”
The good news was that all plant operating and safety systems, including the diesel generators, worked just as they were supposed to work. All procedures worked as they had been written. Plant operations and safety were never in jeopardy.
“This isn’t to say that some things could not be improved or that there weren’t lessons learned,” Lewis stressed, “but the plant and its personnel operated correctly throughout the event.”
Weathering the Storm
Lewis said that plant staff followed two basic procedures. They followed the plant’s emergency operating procedure that tells them what to do under various emergency operating conditions. They also followed a supplemental procedure that covers severe weather events, including hurricanes.
Procedures require the staff to begin plant shutdown 12 hours before hurricane-force winds are expected at the plant site. Because plant personnel expected an off-site power loss, they chose to bring the unit down while full off-site power was still available, ensuring an uncomplicated and safe shutdown.
Once the plant was completely shutdown, Waterford 3 went into lockdown mode. In this mode, two full shifts of core employees (numbering 138, including two Nuclear Regulatory Commission-NRC-inspectors) who were already identified in procedures were sequestered on-site.
All core/essential personnel were on-site by August 27, two days before the storm hit. They were locked down in the plant’s reactor auxiliary building by 8:00 p.m. on August 28. The reactor auxiliary building includes the control room and is built to withstand extreme weather conditions, including high winds and flooding. It is, therefore, the safest place for plant personnel during severe inclement weather. Once locked down, personnel are not allowed to leave until the emergency is over.
After the Storm
The core plant personnel were in lock down until the immediate storm threat passed at 2:00 p.m. on August 29. But they remained on site until August 31 assisting with storm recovery and plant restart efforts until turnover to employees returning to the area could be established. “After the storm threat was over, the next step was to get plant personnel back on site to relieve the core employees,” said Lewis. That proved to be more difficult than originally thought.
Most of Waterford 3’s employees lived near the plant and most of their homes were intact (although some employees did lose their homes), but they still faced problems. There was no electricity in the region; banks were closed and ATMs were not operating, so cash wasn’t available; gas pumps were not operating so gas was unavailable; and grocery stores were short on supplies or closed altogether because they had no power.
Waterford immediately began assisting its employees. Entergy Operations provided meals and cash advances and allowed employees to obtain gasoline at the plant site. “We had resources we were able to share with our employees and we worked quickly to make them available,” Lewis said.
Waterford also set up an RV park on-site and brought in RVs and travel trailers-independent of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) efforts-to house employees and their families. The plant’s training center was converted into a “family living center” that included a laundromat, entertainment area (with TV, movies, games and so on) and a children’s center. Several employees and their families stayed at the plant for as long as five weeks after the hurricane.
Lewis said the company has decided to leave both the RV park and parts of the family living center intact in case of future events.
Bringing Waterford Back
Once off-site power was restored and employees’ immediate needs were met, plant personnel began working to get the plant back on-line. “Nuclear power plants are designed to withstand major wind events and the plant did just fine,” said Lewis. Some ancillary buildings and structures at the site sustained damage, but the plant itself required little repair. Anytime a nuclear power plant is taken off-line in an emergency situation, however, extensive NRC and FEMA rules and regulations must be satisfied before it can be brought back on-line.
Lewis said that the NRC and FEMA were required to review and approve Waterford’s request to come back up. Waterford, the state of Louisiana and local parishes had to produce documentation and undergo field evaluations proving they could respond to a radiological event based on the current condition, which included extensive hurricane damage to the surrounding local infrastructure.
The NRC and FEMA authorized the plant to start back up on September 9-record time for such approvals. However, even though it could safely operate, management chose to leave Waterford 3 off-line for a few more days because of concerns about power grid stability.
Because Katrina was more of a flooding than a wind event, many of the surrounding electrical substations were under water. The region’s power grid was unstable and bringing the plant back on-line had to be carefully orchestrated.
The plant began providing power on September 13, little more than two weeks after Katrina slammed on shore.
Lessons Learned
In addition to the extended off-site power loss, Waterford 3 also lost most of its communication capabilities.
“The loss of communications had significant impact on the plant,” Lewis said. “The entire 504 area code was lost, so Waterford had no working landline phones. Many cell towers were damaged, destroyed or their backup power exhausted so most cellular phone service was also out.”
Lewis explained that the plant intentionally installed phones with several different prefixes so that if one or two local prefixes were lost in an emergency, plant personnel would still have access to phone service. That wasn’t enough, however. “We didn’t anticipate losing the entire area code,” he said. The power station had two satellite phones for use as backup communications systems prior to the hurricane. It added additional satellite capability as part of the recovery effort.
During post-Katrina restoration, Waterford installed 30 phones with a 501 (Little Rock, Ark.) area code, while waiting for its own 504 area code to be repaired. Lewis said Waterford 3 management opted to keep the Arkansas area code after the local 504 area code was restored to help ensure the plant doesn’t face a similar communication disruption during future events.
“When the hurricane hit, we had two satellite phones. We now have nine,” Lewis said. “Although we still had dedicated hot lines and radios for communication post-Katrina, we could have used a lot more. We learned that we needed to be even better prepared.”
What Worked Well
Entergy’s nuclear plant operators work a five-week rotating shift and every fifth week they attend 40 hours of classroom and simulator training. They are, therefore, well prepared for any event. Even so, when it became clear that Waterford was in Katrina’s path and personnel would need to implement emergency procedures, management decided to put the core operators through just-in-time training to review shutdown and loss-of-offsite power procedures. The operators reviewed the procedures and conducted the operations on the plant simulator shortly before the operations were performed for real. Lewis said he believes this was a good idea.
Waterford also contacted other nuclear plants, as well as other fossil plants, that had been through hurricanes to learn how they responded. “It was sort of a quick best practices exercise,” Lewis said.
Lewis credits the plant’s record restart to the strong, open relationship between Waterford personnel, parish (county in other states) officials and area industry. Parish officials organized twice-a-day meetings at their Emergency Operations Center set up for all area industries. During these meetings, the status of the restoration process was updated and individuals talked about their companies’ needs and how resources could be shared to speed up the restoration.
“There was a lot of collaboration between all the parties to get the power plant back up and then the other industries, especially refineries, running,” said Lewis.
The area around the plant includes an array of infrastructure and industry that is critically important to the region and the nation. “Waterford 3 was a cornerstone for the region’s restoration,” Lewis said.
Waterford not only did its best to take care of its employees and get the plant back up, it also contributed greatly to the wider region’s restoration effort. The plant site became a temporary home to about 800 people, who worked to restore power to the region.
These 800 individuals-who included contracted tree trimmers, linemen and construction workers-were housed in three large tents. Another tent housed a kitchen and provided an area for meals to be served. The temporary housing complex was called, fittingly enough, “Camp Katrina.”