Byron Nuclear Generating Station
Encyclopedia
The Byron Nuclear Generating Station is a nuclear power plant
located in Ogle County, Illinois
, 2 miles (3.2 km) east of the Rock River
. The reactor buildings were constructed by Babcock and Wilcox
and house two Westinghouse
pressurized water reactor
s, Unit 1 and Unit 2, which first began operation in September 1985 and August 1987 respectively. The plant was built for Commonwealth Edison
and is currently owned and operated by Exelon Corporation.
The plant provides electricity to northern Illinois and the city of Chicago
. In 2005 it generated on average about 2,300 MWe
, enough power to supply about 2 million average American homes. The station employs over 600 people, mostly from Ogle and Winnebago Counties and features two prominent 495-foot (150.9 m) cooling tower
s. The Byron plant has been subject to some controversy since its construction began, starting with a 1981 lawsuit and continuing into the present with concerns over tritium
contaminated groundwater
. Tritium contamination at Byron and other Illinois
nuclear power plants led the state of Illinois to pass legislation requiring plants to report such contamination to the state within 24 hours. Plant security was increased after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of 10 miles (16.1 km), concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about 50 miles (80.5 km), concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity.
The 2010 U.S. population within 10 miles (16.1 km) of Byron was 25,679, an increase of 5.9 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within 50 miles (80.5 km) was 1,273,771, an increase of 14.5 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Rockford (17 miles to city center).
(7.2 km²) site, 17 miles (27 km) southwest of Rockford, Illinois
, south of the city of Byron
in Ogle County. The firm of Sargent and Lundy acted as consulting engineer during construction and Babcock and Wilcox
oversaw the completion of the reactor vessel
s. Before construction was completed on the reactor vessels and facilities, at least three groups joined in a 1981 lawsuit to halt Byron Nuclear Generating Station's completion. The League of Women Voters
, DeKalb Area Alliance for Responsible Energy, and others were involved in the lawsuit over the safety of and need for the plant. In 1984 the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, a division of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC), stopped the planned nuclear station at Byron by refusing its owners, then Commonwealth Edison
, permission to begin operation. The decision stemmed from concerns about the quality control of independent contractors hired during construction. Ultimately, the board overturned its decision in October 1984 and permission was granted to operate after a re-inspection of over 200,000 items and components within the plant.
Byron Station consists of two pressurized water reactor
s, termed Byron Unit One and Byron Unit Two, and the surrounding grounds and facilities. Byron Unit One received its operating license from the NRC on February 14, 1985 and Unit Two received its license on January 30, 1987. On September 16, 1985, Unit One entered commercial service and power began to be generated at Byron. The operating licenses for the two reactors expire two years apart: Unit One's license expires on October 31, 2024, and Unit Two's on November 6, 2026.
The two Westinghouse four-loop pressurized-water reactors each have an electrical output of over 1,000 MWe
. Byron has 2 units capable of generating approximately 2,336 net megawatts (MW) of electricity. In 2009 the reactors operated at 96.4% capacity and produced 19.7 million MWh of electricity
; enough power for 2 million average American households. The two cooling tower
s at Byron rise 495 feet (151 m) over the site.
The plant utilizes non-contact cooling water from the Rock River
, situated 2 miles (3.2 km) to the west. The water used in the process of generating electricity is cooled in the station's two cooling towers and recirculated via the plant's blowdown line back into the Rock River. Other water, from Byron's Radioactive Waste Treatment system, is transferred to the Refueling Water Storage Tank (RWST), where it is analyzed and sampled for contamination. Once it passes through analysis, the water is discharged down the blowdown line into the river.
According to plant owner Exelon
, the Byron station is operated by about 850 Exelon employees and another 50 permanent contractors. Most of Byron's employees reside in Ogle and Winnebago
Counties in northern Illinois. The plant paid US$
31.1 million in taxes in 2009 to various local taxing bodies.
s within the first 230 feet (70.1 m) below the power station: the upper aquifer is known as the Galena-Platteville Aquifer and the lower aquifer is known as the St. Peter Sandstone Aquifer. The two bodies of water are separated by a layer of shale
and thus not connected.
In February 2006, Exelon reported elevated tritium
levels in the groundwater
beneath the site. Tritium levels were elevated in two of six test wells, according to an Exelon release in February which noted that tritium concentrations of 86,000 pCi/L
were detected in standing water in underground concrete vaults along the plant's blowdown line. The company iterated that the levels posed no risk to public or employee safety. The report coincided with ongoing tritium concerns at the Exelon-owned Braidwood Nuclear Generating Station
near Braceville, Illinois
. In September, elevated tritium levels were found at Byron in three monitoring wells adjacent to vacuum breaker vaults along the blowdown line. Two of the areas with elevated tritium were found in the shallow portions of the Galena-Platteville Aquifer, while the third location contained elevated tritium levels at the bottom of the same aquifer. None of the September levels exceeded the 20,000 pCi/L U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
drinking water standard.
On April 12, 2006 the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
(IEPA) issued a violation notice to Exelon concerning Byron Nuclear Generating Station. The notice cited the company for violations of state environmental laws related to the "impairment of resource groundwater", discharging waste-containing contaminants from areas other than the permitted points, and violations of other requirements of the plant's discharge permit.
Due to the tritium contamination at Byron, Braidwood and Dresden
nuclear power plant
s in Illinois, the state government passed a law requiring power plants to report the release of radioactive contaminants into the soil, surface water or ground water to the state within 24 hours. Before the law was passed, companies operating nuclear plants were only required to report such releases to the federal NRC. The law was introduced by Illinois State Representative Careen Gordon
and State Senator Gary Dahl
, and was signed by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich
on June 11, 2006 and became effective immediately upon his signature. The state government only found out about the tritium releases at the Exelon-owned plants after local officials near the Braidwood plant informed them. Following that revelation, other information about spills at Braidwood, Byron, and Dresden came to light. The state of Illinois contended that it was not informed of the leaks by Exelon in a timely manner. The law also required all Illinois nuclear power plants to submit to quarterly inspections by the IEPA and the Illinois Emergency Management Agency
.
As of the second quarter of 2007, Byron Nuclear Generating Station scored in the "green" in every NRC inspection category but one. The NRC
has four levels of inspection findings, the levels are color-coded and the colors equate with risk levels. Green inspection findings represent very low risk significance. Higher levels, from white, to yellow, to red, show increasing levels of risk. For any inspection findings greater than green, the NRC conducts follow-up inspections. Unit One scored "green" in every category, while Unit Two scored "white," a step down from "green," on the inspection of the heat removal system. The inspection covered several other significant areas, including unplanned scram
s, the alert and notification system and the emergency AC power
system. From 2001–2005, no inspections of Byron Nuclear Generating Station found any condition that merited a greater than "green" designation, during the same time period inspection found 71 green conditions at the Byron plant.
Byron, like most U.S. nuclear plants, has been the subject of various actions by the NRC. Escalated Enforcement Actions represent one type. From 1997–2007 the Byron plant has received five such actions, two of which resulted in a total of $150,000 in fines. A $100,000 fine was issued on February 27, 1997 due to problems with excessive silt build up in two separate locations at the Byron facility; the NRC fined the plant $50,000 for each problem. The NRC levied an additional $55,000 in fines in October 1997 when the plant failed technical specifications surveillance guidelines. Specifically, they violated rules that require the Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) pump casing and discharge piping high points be vented once every 31 days. The potential safety consequence of the violation affiliated with the second fine was considered "low." As of 2007, the last NRC Escalated Enforcement Action against the Bryon Station came in 2005 when an engineer deliberately falsified surveillance reports to show he had completed work that was incomplete, though the plant could have been fined up to $60,000 the NRC chose not to impose the fine.
A small fire occurred at the plant on the morning of February 24, 2006. The fire was confined to the Unit 1 Refueling Water Storage Tank (RWST) heater. Initial attempts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful, following those attempts a breaker was opened and the heater was allowed to deenergize which extinguished the fire. Units 1 and 2 were operating at 100%, but neither reactor was shut down as a result of the fire. As a result of the fire the plant declared an "unusual event," the least serious of the four categories of emergency declarations by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Security at Byron, was provided by Wackenhut until the sleeping guard incident occurred. Now security is handled in-house by Exelon Corp. in which owns and operates the power plant. Retrieved 30 August 2007. After the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, a "security zone" was established by the United States Coast Guard
around the Byron Nuclear Generating Station. The security zones were established in hopes of preventing a similar attack on the protected facilities. On December 10, 2004 the security zone at Byron was removed to allow for a security zone around the Hammond Intake Crib on Lake Michigan
.
Nuclear power plant
A nuclear power plant is a thermal power station in which the heat source is one or more nuclear reactors. As in a conventional thermal power station the heat is used to generate steam which drives a steam turbine connected to a generator which produces electricity.Nuclear power plants are usually...
located in Ogle County, Illinois
Ogle County, Illinois
Ogle County is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 53,497, which is an increase of 4.8% from 51,032 in 2000. Its county seat is Oregon, and its largest city is Rochelle...
, 2 miles (3.2 km) east of the Rock River
Rock River (Illinois)
The Rock River is a tributary of the Mississippi River, approximately long, in the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Illinois. It rises in southeast Wisconsin, in the Theresa Marsh near Theresa, Wisconsin in northeast Dodge County, Wisconsin approximately south of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin...
. The reactor buildings were constructed by Babcock and Wilcox
Babcock and Wilcox
The Babcock & Wilcox Company is a U.S.-based company that provides design, engineering, manufacturing, construction and facilities management services to nuclear, renewable, fossil power, industrial and government customers worldwide. B&W's boilers supply more than 300,000 megawatts of installed...
and house two Westinghouse
Westinghouse Electric Company
Westinghouse Electric Company LLC is a nuclear power company, offering a wide range of nuclear products and services to utilities throughout the world, including nuclear fuel, service and maintenance, instrumentation and control and advanced nuclear plant designs...
pressurized water reactor
Pressurized water reactor
Pressurized water reactors constitute a large majority of all western nuclear power plants and are one of three types of light water reactor , the other types being boiling water reactors and supercritical water reactors...
s, Unit 1 and Unit 2, which first began operation in September 1985 and August 1987 respectively. The plant was built for Commonwealth Edison
Commonwealth Edison
Commonwealth Edison is the largest electric utility in Illinois, serving the Chicago and Northern Illinois area...
and is currently owned and operated by Exelon Corporation.
The plant provides electricity to northern Illinois and the city of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. In 2005 it generated on average about 2,300 MWe
MWE
MWE may refer to:*Manufacturer's Weight Empty*McDermott Will & Emery*Midwest Express, an airline*Merowe Airport - IATA code*Multiword expressionMWe may refer to:*Megawatt electrical...
, enough power to supply about 2 million average American homes. The station employs over 600 people, mostly from Ogle and Winnebago Counties and features two prominent 495-foot (150.9 m) cooling tower
Cooling tower
Cooling towers are heat removal devices used to transfer process waste heat to the atmosphere. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and cool the working fluid to near the wet-bulb air temperature or in the case of closed circuit dry cooling towers rely...
s. The Byron plant has been subject to some controversy since its construction began, starting with a 1981 lawsuit and continuing into the present with concerns over tritium
Tritium
Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. The nucleus of tritium contains one proton and two neutrons, whereas the nucleus of protium contains one proton and no neutrons...
contaminated groundwater
Groundwater
Groundwater is water located beneath the ground surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which soil pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock...
. Tritium contamination at Byron and other Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
nuclear power plants led the state of Illinois to pass legislation requiring plants to report such contamination to the state within 24 hours. Plant security was increased after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
Surrounding population
The Nuclear Regulatory CommissionNuclear Regulatory Commission
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is an independent agency of the United States government that was established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 from the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and was first opened January 19, 1975...
defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of 10 miles (16.1 km), concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about 50 miles (80.5 km), concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity.
The 2010 U.S. population within 10 miles (16.1 km) of Byron was 25,679, an increase of 5.9 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within 50 miles (80.5 km) was 1,273,771, an increase of 14.5 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Rockford (17 miles to city center).
History
Construction on Byron Nuclear Generating Station began in 1975, at a 1,782-acreAcre
The acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.The acre is related...
(7.2 km²) site, 17 miles (27 km) southwest of Rockford, Illinois
Rockford, Illinois
Rockford is a mid-sized city located on both banks of the Rock River in far northern Illinois. Often referred to as "The Forest City", Rockford is the county seat of Winnebago County, Illinois, USA. As reported in the 2010 U.S. census, the city was home to 152,871 people, the third most populated...
, south of the city of Byron
Byron, Illinois
Byron is a city in Ogle County, Illinois, United States, probably best known as the location of the Byron Nuclear Generating Station, one of the last nuclear power plants commissioned in the United States. Byron is located in Byron Township, along the Rock River. The population was 3,753 at the...
in Ogle County. The firm of Sargent and Lundy acted as consulting engineer during construction and Babcock and Wilcox
Babcock and Wilcox
The Babcock & Wilcox Company is a U.S.-based company that provides design, engineering, manufacturing, construction and facilities management services to nuclear, renewable, fossil power, industrial and government customers worldwide. B&W's boilers supply more than 300,000 megawatts of installed...
oversaw the completion of the reactor vessel
Reactor vessel
In a nuclear power plant, the reactor vessel is a pressure vessel containing the Nuclear reactor coolant and reactor core.Not all power reactors have a reactor vessel. Power reactors are generally classified by the type of coolant rather than by the configuration of the reactor vessel used to...
s. Before construction was completed on the reactor vessels and facilities, at least three groups joined in a 1981 lawsuit to halt Byron Nuclear Generating Station's completion. The League of Women Voters
League of Women Voters
The League of Women Voters is an American political organization founded in 1920 by Carrie Chapman Catt during the last meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association approximately six months before the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave women the right to vote...
, DeKalb Area Alliance for Responsible Energy, and others were involved in the lawsuit over the safety of and need for the plant. In 1984 the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, a division of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is an independent agency of the United States government that was established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 from the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and was first opened January 19, 1975...
(NRC), stopped the planned nuclear station at Byron by refusing its owners, then Commonwealth Edison
Commonwealth Edison
Commonwealth Edison is the largest electric utility in Illinois, serving the Chicago and Northern Illinois area...
, permission to begin operation. The decision stemmed from concerns about the quality control of independent contractors hired during construction. Ultimately, the board overturned its decision in October 1984 and permission was granted to operate after a re-inspection of over 200,000 items and components within the plant.
Byron Station consists of two pressurized water reactor
Pressurized water reactor
Pressurized water reactors constitute a large majority of all western nuclear power plants and are one of three types of light water reactor , the other types being boiling water reactors and supercritical water reactors...
s, termed Byron Unit One and Byron Unit Two, and the surrounding grounds and facilities. Byron Unit One received its operating license from the NRC on February 14, 1985 and Unit Two received its license on January 30, 1987. On September 16, 1985, Unit One entered commercial service and power began to be generated at Byron. The operating licenses for the two reactors expire two years apart: Unit One's license expires on October 31, 2024, and Unit Two's on November 6, 2026.
Facilities and output
MWE
MWE may refer to:*Manufacturer's Weight Empty*McDermott Will & Emery*Midwest Express, an airline*Merowe Airport - IATA code*Multiword expressionMWe may refer to:*Megawatt electrical...
. Byron has 2 units capable of generating approximately 2,336 net megawatts (MW) of electricity. In 2009 the reactors operated at 96.4% capacity and produced 19.7 million MWh of electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
; enough power for 2 million average American households. The two cooling tower
Cooling tower
Cooling towers are heat removal devices used to transfer process waste heat to the atmosphere. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and cool the working fluid to near the wet-bulb air temperature or in the case of closed circuit dry cooling towers rely...
s at Byron rise 495 feet (151 m) over the site.
Rock River (Illinois)
The Rock River is a tributary of the Mississippi River, approximately long, in the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Illinois. It rises in southeast Wisconsin, in the Theresa Marsh near Theresa, Wisconsin in northeast Dodge County, Wisconsin approximately south of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin...
, situated 2 miles (3.2 km) to the west. The water used in the process of generating electricity is cooled in the station's two cooling towers and recirculated via the plant's blowdown line back into the Rock River. Other water, from Byron's Radioactive Waste Treatment system, is transferred to the Refueling Water Storage Tank (RWST), where it is analyzed and sampled for contamination. Once it passes through analysis, the water is discharged down the blowdown line into the river.
According to plant owner Exelon
Exelon
Exelon Corporation is an electricity generating and distributing company headquartered in the Chase Tower in the Chicago Loop area of Chicago. It was created in October, 2000 by the merger of PECO Energy Company and Unicom, of Philadelphia and Chicago respectively. Unicom owned Commonwealth Edison...
, the Byron station is operated by about 850 Exelon employees and another 50 permanent contractors. Most of Byron's employees reside in Ogle and Winnebago
Winnebago County, Illinois
Winnebago County is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 295,266, which is an increase of 6.1% from 278,418 in 2000...
Counties in northern Illinois. The plant paid US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
31.1 million in taxes in 2009 to various local taxing bodies.
Groundwater contamination
There are two underground aquiferAquifer
An aquifer is a wet underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock or unconsolidated materials from which groundwater can be usefully extracted using a water well. The study of water flow in aquifers and the characterization of aquifers is called hydrogeology...
s within the first 230 feet (70.1 m) below the power station: the upper aquifer is known as the Galena-Platteville Aquifer and the lower aquifer is known as the St. Peter Sandstone Aquifer. The two bodies of water are separated by a layer of shale
Shale
Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. The ratio of clay to other minerals is variable. Shale is characterized by breaks along thin laminae or parallel layering...
and thus not connected.
In February 2006, Exelon reported elevated tritium
Tritium
Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. The nucleus of tritium contains one proton and two neutrons, whereas the nucleus of protium contains one proton and no neutrons...
levels in the groundwater
Groundwater
Groundwater is water located beneath the ground surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which soil pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock...
beneath the site. Tritium levels were elevated in two of six test wells, according to an Exelon release in February which noted that tritium concentrations of 86,000 pCi/L
Litér
- External links :*...
were detected in standing water in underground concrete vaults along the plant's blowdown line. The company iterated that the levels posed no risk to public or employee safety. The report coincided with ongoing tritium concerns at the Exelon-owned Braidwood Nuclear Generating Station
Braidwood Nuclear Generating Station
Braidwood Generating Station is located in Will County in northeastern Illinois, USA. The nuclear power plant serves Chicago and northern Illinois with electricity. The plant was originally built by Commonwealth Edison company, and subsequently transferred to Com Ed's parent company, Exelon...
near Braceville, Illinois
Braceville, Illinois
Braceville is a village in Grundy County, Illinois, United States. The population was 793 at the 2010 census. Braceville annexed a small portion of land in Will County in 2005.-Geography:Braceville is located at ....
. In September, elevated tritium levels were found at Byron in three monitoring wells adjacent to vacuum breaker vaults along the blowdown line. Two of the areas with elevated tritium were found in the shallow portions of the Galena-Platteville Aquifer, while the third location contained elevated tritium levels at the bottom of the same aquifer. None of the September levels exceeded the 20,000 pCi/L U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
United States Environmental Protection Agency
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...
drinking water standard.
On April 12, 2006 the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency of the state of Illinois is the primary body concerned with the protection of the environment for the state...
(IEPA) issued a violation notice to Exelon concerning Byron Nuclear Generating Station. The notice cited the company for violations of state environmental laws related to the "impairment of resource groundwater", discharging waste-containing contaminants from areas other than the permitted points, and violations of other requirements of the plant's discharge permit.
Dresden Nuclear Power Plant
Dresden Generating Station is the first privately financed nuclear power plant built in the United States. Dresden 1 was activated in 1960 and retired in 1978. Operating since 1970 are Dresden units 2 and 3, two General Electric boiling water reactors...
nuclear power plant
Nuclear power plant
A nuclear power plant is a thermal power station in which the heat source is one or more nuclear reactors. As in a conventional thermal power station the heat is used to generate steam which drives a steam turbine connected to a generator which produces electricity.Nuclear power plants are usually...
s in Illinois, the state government passed a law requiring power plants to report the release of radioactive contaminants into the soil, surface water or ground water to the state within 24 hours. Before the law was passed, companies operating nuclear plants were only required to report such releases to the federal NRC. The law was introduced by Illinois State Representative Careen Gordon
Careen M. Gordon
Careen M. Gordon is a former member of the Illinois House of Representatives, representing the 75th District since 2003 as a Democrat. She was voted out of office on November 2, 2010 when voters of the 75th district elected Republican Sue Rezin...
and State Senator Gary Dahl
Gary G. Dahl
Gary G. Dahl was a Republican member of the Illinois Senate, representing the 38th district from 2005 until his December 2010 resignation for personal reasons....
, and was signed by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich
Rod Blagojevich
Rod R. Blagojevich is an American politician who served as the 40th Governor of Illinois from 2003 to 2009. A Democrat, Blagojevich was a State Representative before being elected to the United States House of Representatives representing parts of Chicago...
on June 11, 2006 and became effective immediately upon his signature. The state government only found out about the tritium releases at the Exelon-owned plants after local officials near the Braidwood plant informed them. Following that revelation, other information about spills at Braidwood, Byron, and Dresden came to light. The state of Illinois contended that it was not informed of the leaks by Exelon in a timely manner. The law also required all Illinois nuclear power plants to submit to quarterly inspections by the IEPA and the Illinois Emergency Management Agency
Illinois Emergency Management Agency
The primary responsibility of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency is to better prepare the State of Illinois for natural, man-made or technological disasters, hazards or acts of terrorism...
.
Safety
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is an independent agency of the United States government that was established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 from the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and was first opened January 19, 1975...
has four levels of inspection findings, the levels are color-coded and the colors equate with risk levels. Green inspection findings represent very low risk significance. Higher levels, from white, to yellow, to red, show increasing levels of risk. For any inspection findings greater than green, the NRC conducts follow-up inspections. Unit One scored "green" in every category, while Unit Two scored "white," a step down from "green," on the inspection of the heat removal system. The inspection covered several other significant areas, including unplanned scram
Scram
A scram or SCRAM is an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor – though the term has been extended to cover shutdowns of other complex operations, such as server farms and even large model railroads...
s, the alert and notification system and the emergency AC power
AC power
Power in an electric circuit is the rate of flow of energy past a given point of the circuit. In alternating current circuits, energy storage elements such as inductance and capacitance may result in periodic reversals of the direction of energy flow...
system. From 2001–2005, no inspections of Byron Nuclear Generating Station found any condition that merited a greater than "green" designation, during the same time period inspection found 71 green conditions at the Byron plant.
Byron, like most U.S. nuclear plants, has been the subject of various actions by the NRC. Escalated Enforcement Actions represent one type. From 1997–2007 the Byron plant has received five such actions, two of which resulted in a total of $150,000 in fines. A $100,000 fine was issued on February 27, 1997 due to problems with excessive silt build up in two separate locations at the Byron facility; the NRC fined the plant $50,000 for each problem. The NRC levied an additional $55,000 in fines in October 1997 when the plant failed technical specifications surveillance guidelines. Specifically, they violated rules that require the Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) pump casing and discharge piping high points be vented once every 31 days. The potential safety consequence of the violation affiliated with the second fine was considered "low." As of 2007, the last NRC Escalated Enforcement Action against the Bryon Station came in 2005 when an engineer deliberately falsified surveillance reports to show he had completed work that was incomplete, though the plant could have been fined up to $60,000 the NRC chose not to impose the fine.
A small fire occurred at the plant on the morning of February 24, 2006. The fire was confined to the Unit 1 Refueling Water Storage Tank (RWST) heater. Initial attempts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful, following those attempts a breaker was opened and the heater was allowed to deenergize which extinguished the fire. Units 1 and 2 were operating at 100%, but neither reactor was shut down as a result of the fire. As a result of the fire the plant declared an "unusual event," the least serious of the four categories of emergency declarations by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Security
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...
around the Byron Nuclear Generating Station. The security zones were established in hopes of preventing a similar attack on the protected facilities. On December 10, 2004 the security zone at Byron was removed to allow for a security zone around the Hammond Intake Crib on Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America and the only one located entirely within the United States. It is the second largest of the Great Lakes by volume and the third largest by surface area, after Lake Superior and Lake Huron...
.