Clams clog pipes at nuclear reactor

Press, 24 September 1980, Page 24

Clams clog pipes at nuclear reactor

NZPA Little Rock Arkansas An Arkansas nuclear plant that was forced to shut down one of its reactors when Asian clams clogged its pipes is not the first power plant to be plagued by the tiny creatures.

“This thing is a nightmare,” said an Arkansas Power and Light Company spokesman, Mr Gene Herrington.''

Thousands of clams clogged the flow of water into the reactor building’s emergency cooling system, forcing the shutdown of Unit 2 on September 4. Clams also have been found in the water supply of Unit 1, which already had been shut down because .of an equipment malfunction.

Other facilities that depend on river water have had problems with the clams in recent years. A nuclear power plant at

Browns Ferry, Alabama, had to curtail operations to clean out the clams. The Illinois Power Company plant at Baldwin had to shut twice daily until clams were removed. At the Potomac Electric Power Company, in Southern Maryland, the clams caused $150,000 worth of damage.

The clams — named Corbicula fluminea — were believed to have been brought to America in the mid-19305, as food for Chinese labourers building a dam in the state of Washington. For decades the clam has spread south and east through water channels. Each clam has the reproductive organs of both sexes, and so the Corbicula fluminea reproduces prolifically. The . nuclear plant’s water supply comes from Lake Dardanelle, which is supplied by the Arkansas River. The river, and now

the lake, have become a home for the clams. The clams worked their way into the nuclear plant, near Russellville, as larvae too small to be stopped by a screen that catches everything bigger than three-sixteentns of an inch. Once inside, the lai? vae grew into clams about an inch long and started reproducing. Mr John Griffin, A.P.L.’s director of nuclear operations, said that the inside of the emergency cooling system looked in places, like an oyster bed in an ocean.

He said that utility workers cleaned out an intake bay where water was drawn from the river, and ended up with two big buckets that ’ were eacn filled with 173 kilograms, to 218 kilograms of clams. Inside, they had attached themselves to the pipe, the walls of ths pipe, and to one another, Mr Griffin said.