Nuclear group warns about construction

Columbia —- The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is warning the nuclear industry to be careful in its construction oversight after finding problems earlier this year at the Savannah River Site.

Specifically, the Greenville News reported Sunday, the warning addresses bad concrete and faulty reinforcing steel in the foundation of the Savannah River plant. The site will produce nuclear reactor fuel from weapons-grade plutonium.

In a report filed last week by the NRC, officials said problems discovered during construction of the plant near Aiken, S.C., just north of Augusta, and two nuclear plants in Europe are reminders of problems found during the last wave of American nuclear construction in the 1970s and 1980s.

“Although the technical issues vary, inspections repeatedly identify a lack of contractor oversight and poor quality control in concrete placement,” the NRC concluded in the report.

Construction on the $4.7 billion MOX plant at SRS began last summer. The first fuel from the facility, which will mix uranium with plutonium from the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, is expected to be produced in 2016.

A spokesman for AREVA, one of the private partners building and operating the plant, had no comment on the report.

Problems with concrete at a nuclear plant under construction in Finland, according to the NRC, “caused lengthy construction delays and had a negative impact on public confidence.”

In France, officials encountered a series of problems with steel reinforcing bars in construction of a new reactor site there. The French agency overseeing the project “considers the main issue to be the licensee’s quality management system,” the NRC reported.

“A commitment to quality, applied early in a construction project, ensures that a facility is constructed and operated in conformance with its license and NRC regulations,” the NRC concluded.

Tom Clements, Southeast nuclear campaign coordinator for the environmental group Friends of the Earth, said the problems discovered at the MOX plant appear to be “endemic” to nuclear industry construction.

“It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the project or other such projects, nationally,” he said.

He said the MOX plant is the lead project of an expected resurgence of new nuclear plant construction across the nation.

“If this is an indicator of future performance, it’s of concern,” he said.