Fort Saint Vrain Gas Cooled Reactor Operational Experience

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) performed an operational events assessment of Fort St. Vrain (FSV) nuclear power plant during 1981–1989. As part of that assessment, the ORNL principal investigator filed 96 monthly reports detailing the results of each month's analysis. This project reviewed those 96 monthly reports and identified pertinent operating experiences that occurred at FSV which may be applicable to current or future gas cooled reactor (GCR) designs. Two hundred seventy–nine events were catalogued into seven general categories: (1) water incursion events or failures of moisture detection systems; (2) air or other unwanted gas incursion events and failures of gas detection systems; (3) fuel failures or anomalies; (4) failures or cracks in graphite, pipes, and other reactor structural components; (5) failures of nuclear instrumentation systems; (6) human factors and operator performance issues; and (7) other events or conditions that may be relevant to current GCR designs. Several events were reviewed over a period of years and appeared in more than one monthly report.