The South Carolina nuclear plant owned by Dominion Energy concerns officials after numerous cracks were found on the facility's fuel line.
Because of this, the American energy firm is accused of safety violations since federal regulators found out that its utility workers failed to fix the cracking problems over the past 20 years.
South Carolina Nuclear Plant Fuel Line Cracks Concern Officials
According to Fox News' latest report, Federal authorities issued a warning after they discovered a substantial safety violation at the V.C. Summer plant near Columbia.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that small cracks were identified in a backup emergency fuel line. NRC officials said that for the past 20 years, they have been seeing numerous cracks in the nuclear plant's pipes.
These cracks are concerning since the pipes carry fuel to emergency generators, which provide cooling water for a reactor if electricity fails in the nuclear plant of Dominion Energy.
Because of this, the US NRC decided to issue a preliminary "yellow" warning to the American energy firm's nuclear facility.
To give you an idea, the yellow warning is considered to be the 2nd most serious warning category issued by NRC. Aside from this, only seven yellow warnings have been issued across the United States since 2009.
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How Serious Are Dominion Energy Nuclear Plant's Cracks?
The North Anna Power Station operated by Dominion Energy remains offline after losing offsite power in the wake of yesterday's 5.8 earthquake on August 24, 2011, near Mineral, Virginia. The epicenter of the quake, the East Coast's largest since 1944, was located a few miles outside of Mineral, a town of 430 people.
The State reported that NRC the V.C. Summer's diesel generator system is one of the most essential backup safety systems at the atomic power plant.
Since NRC officials continue to identify cracks in the nuclear plant's emergency fuel pipeline, they concluded that Dominion Energy violated an atomic safety standard that could put the power plant under more scrutiny.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission confirmed this in an enforcement letter it sent to the energy firm's operations president, Eric Carr, who received it on Oct. 4.
"We are considering escalated enforcement for the apparent violation," said the NRC division of reactor projects acting director LadDonna Suggs.
David Lochbaum, one of the national energy experts of NRC oversight, said that this cracking issue could have been avoided. He added that there were already signs revealing the cracks in the pipeline.
However, these were overlooked by Dominion Energy, as claimed by Lochbaum. This simple mistake allowed the problem to grow to a point where the diesel generator failed to work during testing.
"You're supposed to find and fix problems that occur," the national energy expert explained.
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