The Clinton Power Station is located 23 miles southeast of Bloomington, Illinois and has one General Electric boiling water reactor with a Mark III containment that began operating in 1987.

In December 2017, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) dispatched a Special Inspection Team to the plant to investigate a transformer failure that prompted the operators to manually scram the reactor. That event nearly duplicated a transformer failure/manual scram event that happened at Clinton in December 2013.

The ink had scarcely dried on the NRC’s special inspection report when Clinton experienced yet another electrical power problem. Some progress has been made—this time it did not involve a transformer failure causing the reactor to be shut down. This time, the reactor was already shut down when the power problem began. This time, the failures involved several workers over several days failing to follow several procedures to disable an emergency power supply. This time as in the past, the NRC dispatched a special inspection team to figure out what when wrong. Read more >

The Clinton Power Station located 23 miles southeast of Bloomington, Illinois has one General Electric boiling water reactor with a Mark III containment that began operating in 1987.

On December 8, 2013, an electrical fault on a power transformer stopped the flow of electricity to some equipment with the reactor operating near full power. The de-energized equipment caused conditions within the plant to degrade. A few minutes later, the control room operators manually scrammed the reactor per procedures in response to the deteriorating conditions. The NRC dispatched a special inspection team to investigate the cause and its corrective actions.

On December 9, 2017, an electrical fault on a power transformer stopped the flow of electricity to some equipment with the reactor operating near full power. The de-energized equipment caused conditions within the plant to degrade. A few minutes later, the control room operators manually scrammed the reactor per procedures in response to the deteriorating conditions. The NRC dispatched a special inspection team to investigate the cause and its corrective actions. The NRC’s special inspection team issued its report on January 29, 2018.

Same reactor. Same month. Nearly the same day. Same transformer. Same problem. Same outcome. Same NRC response.

Coincidence? Nope. When one does nothing to solve a problem, one invites the problem back. And problems accept the invitations too often. Read more >