Was There a Major Safety Issue Found at Comanche Peak Recently?

Though I'm not a full-time journalist, I do attempt to publish only substantiated stories here, and not rumors. However, the cat is out of the bag that I'm following a lead about major safety issues recently found at Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant.

Since I covered the Michael Burgess Town Hall meeting this summer, and he mentioned Nuclear power as being in his preferred list of options, I've wanted to do a few blogs to thoroughly explore the issue, explaining as best I can in layman's terms how nuclear energy works. I put out the first in my 3 part series about Nuclear Energy this summer, and have been sitting on part II waiting on some time after the elections to get more news resources and examples of the various types of safety failures I was trying to explain.

That's why it piqued my interest when I heard on KERA 90.1 FM (our local NPR affiliate) on Friday, Dec. 8th that inspectors had found 2 major problems in the nuclear power plant in Glen Rose: Firstly, that a water tank designed to flood and cool the reactor in the case of an emergency situation had been left dry, and apparently may have been dry for a period of years. Secondly that some of the chemical mixtures for the reactor had been improperly formulated.

Today, when I went googling for that story, I was unable to turn it up anywhere, so I sent an email inquiry to one of the local bloggers down in that area at the Somervell County Salon to see whether they had heard anything of this story.

I've been unable to find a report of it on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's websites for Comanche Peak:
Comanche Peak Reactor #1
Comanche Peak Reactor #2
This of course assumes that it was the NRC that found the problem. I suppose it could have possibly been the NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration).

At any rate, I'll keep looking for information on the problem, and will publish an update when I find it. In the mean time, if anyone reading this knows where I might find a copy of the report or the citation, either confirming or discrediting this story, please contact me, or post a comment.

If I understand the problem correctly, this was a failure of the safety system that would have been used in the case that the reactor needed emergency cooling water to quench the heat and/or slow the reaction by using a chemical mixture that reduces neutron flux. I'm speculating to some extent because I'm not a nuclear chemist, nor am I familiar with the plant's design, nor have I seen the report - only heard it on the radio.

To put this in an analogy I think is fair, imagine going in to get a tire changed on your car, and you discover that lo and behold, your brake is totally missing on that wheel. Further, your car shows evidence that it's been missing the brake for years. All this time, even after taking your car to the shop for professional maintenance, you've been driving with only 75% of your braking power. Now imagine that instead of a 2 ton car capable of thousands of dollars in damage, and killing several people, you're driving a rig that has an output rated in gigawatts and kilotons, and is capable of killing thousands and costing billions in damage. If the story is true, it's quite disturbing.

In the event of a meltdown or containment breech at Comanche Peak, residents of Glen Rose would be the first to buy the farm, but depending on weather conditions, the DFW Metroplex could see mass casualties as well