Reactor repair completed at Duane Arnold Energy Center

NextEra Energy has completed repairs to a serious weld flaw found on the Duane Arnold Energy Center's  reactor during recent inspections.

NextEra found the fault penetrating more than 70 percent through a pipe wall during this month's planned shutdown of the plant for maintenance and refueling. The fault penetrated more than 70 percent through a pipe wall. It was blamed on stress corrosion.

Duane Arnold Energy Center spokeswoman Renee Nelson said the work was done “in parallel” with other plant outage activities, and therefore won't force the company to extend the planned outage.

The company does not plan to disclose when the plant will be back online.

A nuclear activist from Florida, Thomas Saporito, had petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reject NextEra's petition for a variance for standard repair procedures to use a “dissimilar metal overlay” repair technique, claiming it was not proven to be safe.

NextEra countered that the kind of fault found in the reactor was not unique to Duane Arnold and that the same repair process had been used successfully in other nuclear power plants with the NRC's approval.

“Since Saporito was fired more than 20 years ago, he has made hundreds of unfounded allegations against FPL and filed numerous frivolous lawsuits against companies ranging from GE to Publix. None of his baseless claims against FPL have ever been substantiated by any agency, and this is just more of the same," said Nelson.