NRC plans inspection of Richland nuclear power plant

Until the inspection team arrives Monday, Energy Northwest will not know specifically what its concerns are. But it anticipates it will want to talk about five events that occurred while the plant was shut down from early April until this month for scheduled refueling and replacement of its condenser.

Three of the incidents were linked to loss of some of the water covering the fuel in the reactor, which Energy Northwest believes may be the special inspection's main focus. As a third of the fuel assemblies are replaced during refueling outages every other year, additional water is added to keep the used fuel under water, which provides radioactive shielding, as it is being removed.

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