Braidwood nuclear plant aims to increase public awareness through educational efforts

BRAIDWOOD – Just getting around the staggered rows of concrete blocks and barbed wire on the way to the front door of the Braidwood Generating Station suggests that a tour of a nuclear plant is unique.

There are checks for security, checks for radiation and lots of waiting before moving through iron turnstiles and steel doors.

“If you brush up against anything, let us know,” Peggy Warnick, communications manager at the Braidwood plant, said at the start of a tour last week.

Not that you’ll do any harm to the plant, said Adam Fuson, a reactor engineer doubling as a tour guide last week. But someone will be sent out to check just to make sure.

“Every piece of equipment has its rules,” Fuson said.

The Braidwood Generation Station, which began producing nuclear power in 1988, was re-licensed earlier this year to keep operating until 2048.

Confidence in the future of nuclear power, however, may have been shaken in June when Exelon Generation, which owns and operates all six nuclear plants in Illinois, announced that it would close two – Clinton and Quad Cities – when it did not get state legislation seeking subsidies the company claims would even the playing field with solar and wind energy.

The company is gearing up for another push to get the legislation passed.

Braidwood’s future does not appear to be threatened, since the plant’s economic viability is enhanced by its proximity to the Chicago power market.

In the meantime, Exelon is happy to provide tours of its plants, provided visitors go through the necessary background checks. The company encourages tours, Warnick said. She is required to line up at least 15 a year.

“We do a lot to educate,” Warnick said. “We found that the best way to defuse fear it to make people more aware.”

Nuclear waste

One of the most worrisome aspects of nuclear energy is what to do with the spent fuel.

Nuclear waste now is stored on-site at plants, including Braidwood. No national storage site has been approved, although one in Nevada has been proposed for years. The United States does not allow re-use of nuclear fuel.

The tour at Braidwood included a stop at the spent fuel pool, where rods are easily visible in the electric blue water. Fuson pointed out the 88 shiny rods with new fuel, which recently arrived, and the darkened rods that have already been used.

Asked what would happen if the water was not covering the roads, Fuson gave a direct answer: “We’d be dead.”

But with an engineer’s assurance, he described the process of keeping the rods underwater even when they are moved to dry casks, which are submerged into the pool for the transfer, to be stored outside and make more room in the pool. The casks have 26-inch thick walls made of concrete and steel, Fuson said.

At other points in the tour, Fuson noted procedures and policies in place as safeguard the plant.

Two of everything

“We always have an extra turbine on hand,” he mentions during a visit to the Turbine Building.

The two immense turbines connected to each of the two reactors produce the steam that creates the 2,389 megawatts of power that the Braidwood plant is capable of generating.

“If anything’s important here,” Fuson said, “we have two, if not four, of them.”

In the Control Room, two operators are dedicated to each reactor, monitoring dials and screens and checking constantly for needed adjustments.

Supervisor Chuck Winters pointed out that when a reactor operator needs to make an adjustment, the assistant checks on what is done to ensure it’s correct.

The control room operators go through training every five weeks, he said.

“Everything that’s going on in the plant is monitored from here,” Winters said. Other operators constantly walk through the plant looking for leaks or other problems that might develop.

“This plant’s clean,” said Duke Morrison, a senior radiation protection technician who also chairs a Safety Committee that looks for hazards in the plant. “We’re very aggressive to make sure we have our areas as clean as possible.”

Morrison manned a checkpoint where visitors as well as workers headed for the spent fuel pool were monitored for radiation. Whole Body Monitors and then Portal Monitors equipped with red lights and green lights and buzzers to keep workers standing in position until the radiation check is done.

“Everyone who comes in this way has to go out this way,” Morrison said.

Nuclear future

More than 800 workers are employed at the Braidwood Generating Station.

Their jobs do not appear to be jeopardized by Exelon’s plans for the Clinton and Quad Cities stations.

State Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, whose district includes the Braidwood plant, said she has talked with Exelon representatives and has not been told of any interest in closing Braidwood.

Rezin, whose district also includes Exelon’s Dresden station in Morris and the LaSalle station, said those plants appear safe as well. But Rezin does back legislation sought by Exelon and hopes to see it considered in the coming year.

“One of the advantages of having a business in Illinois is the low cost of power,” Rezin said. “That’s why it’s important to address this legislation that allows these two nuclear plants to continue, so we don’t lose our base load of power.”

If Exelon gets what it wants, it’s going to have some cost to ratepayers, something which Gov. Bruce Rauner has noted. Exelon has pegged the average cost at 25 cents a month, but opponents have placed it at $3.

Opponents question Exelon’s claim that it wants a level playing field.

Tim Judson, executive director with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, noted that the nuclear plants were built with support from utility rates.

“To have a level playing field, they’d have to do more for renewables than nuclear, that’s for sure,” Judson said. “The playing field is stacked in favor of nuclear and fossil fuels.”