News

During Cook’s recent refueling outage, a challenge arose with the plant’s circ water valves. Requesting support through a USA fleet jump up call, fellow USA members offered input and feedback.

During the call, it was discussed how PSEG Nuclear’s Salem Generating Station had previous operating experience dealing with the same issue of taper pin failures on the valves. A follow up discussion was coordinated to see what additional support PSEG could provide.

“Salem has had similar issues in the past,” explained PSEG’s Doug McCollum. “We inspect our taper pins on a scheduled preventive maintenance frequency and also monitor for disk flutter which is an effective indication of pin wear.”

Cook had originally identified disk flutter about 20 years ago. This occurs when the circ water valve is full open and the 13,000 pound disk has no load and will start to shake wearing the pins and elongating the disk holes.

Based on previous OE at Salem, McCollum provided analysis for using oversize taper pins including the dimensions Salem uses. He also warned how changing the taper pin material will make the valve shaft the weak link.

I appreciated the quick response we received from USA and the Salem team on the issue affecting a condenser inlet valve on our circulating water system,” said Josh Caithaml from the Cook outage team. “They shared with us their experiences in dealing with repairs they’ve conducted to the taper pins located on these critical butterfly valves necessary for the reliable and efficient operation of the plant.

“Undoubtedly, the insights they provided us were crucial in getting right to the solution we needed to ensure our success path did not push the critical path and extend our outage longer than necessary.”