Officials of the Yankee Rowe nuclear power plant in western Massachusetts announced Monday they would shut it down, complying under protest with a recommendation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff.
In a reversal of its earlier recommendations, the commission staff said new testing has "substantially reduced the staff's confidence" about the odds of a reactor containment failure."Yankee Rowe disagrees with the staff recommendation, but we have nonetheless voluntarily decided to shut down the plant today," said William McGee, plant spokesman.
He said plant officials have also asked for a meeting with the NRC commissioners and a review of the staff's recommendation with an eye toward restarting the plant before a scheduled refueling shutdown in March.
The 31-year-old plant in Rowe, Mass., on the Vermont state line, is the nation's oldest operating nuclear power plant.
The four-member commission has scheduled a meeting on Yankee Rowe for Wednesday and may vote on the recommendation then, according to NRC spokesman John Kopeck. The commission had asked its staff to examine questions raised about the plant's steel reactor containment vessel, a 30-foot-tall pressurized drum that surrounds the reactor core.
Critics of Yankee Rowe, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, urged the NRC to shut down the plant, arguing that the steel vessel had become brittle with age and might crack in a nuclear emergency. That could lead to the release of radiation and a possible meltdown.
Yankee Rowe managers said modification in a pumping system would greatly reduce the chance of a reactor vessel failure.