CJ wrote:Rheems1 wrote:Tannre wrote:
Its completely ridiculous, and as I mentioned, they produce them knowing they will get sued.
A Whelen with some strange cage around it isn't going to protect its true identity.
ATI didn't get sued because the siren looks like a Whelen... they got sued because thier system was subpar. The design, while it bears a resembelence to a Whelen, is ATI's own design. They are poorly built sirens and no matter what the speaker looks like.. it is still ATI sounds boards.
Dave
Heh, you can see it's poorly designed and made just by seeing it. (of course, it's a rotating censor beeper.) They were sued for non-performance?
Sorry CJ I didn't see your posting until now, yep they got sued for non-performance. I guess that Pennsylvania Power and Light was not happy with the system as a whole and wound up filing a lawsuit. Here is a reprint of article I found throug Google:
JOURNAL NEWS: Indian Point's siren vendor fired, sued in Pennsylvania
Sunday, September 16, 2007
By GREG CLARY
(Original publication: September 16, 2007)
BUCHANAN - Indian Point isn't the only nuclear plant having trouble
installing a new emergency siren system.
A Pennsylvania power company has fired and is suing Acoustic
Technology Inc., the Boston company that Indian Point's owner,
Entergy Nuclear, hired to install its 155 new sirens. ATI so far
has missed three federal deadlines.
The lawsuit filed by PPL Corp., the former Pennsylvania Power and
Light, claims ATI failed to install a new alerting system for the
PPL Susquehanna Nuclear Power Plant near Wilkes Barre.
"It was theirs to deliver and they didn't do that," PPL spokesman
Lou Ramos said of ATI. "Hindsight is 100 percent, but we selected
a vendor that from the get-go never had the capacity to deliver."
ATI officials declined to address specifics of the case, citing
the litigation, which was filed Tuesday, but disputed PPL's
contention that the system fell short.
The one clear difference between the two locations is that
federal regulators told Indian Point its new system doesn't pass
muster, while PPL didn't present its system to the Federal
Emergency Management Agency for approval.
"We never got as far as the FEMA tests," Ramos said. "We wanted
to make sure they met our testing requirements first."
Laura Burns, a vice president of ATI, said her company "went
above and beyond what was required" at Susquehanna. She called
PPL's demands "a little bit unreasonable."
Indian Point spokesman Jim Steets said Entergy has spoken to PPL
since ATI was fired.
"We expect to continue to work with ATI," Steets said.
In what were both very technical installations, the details
created most of the headaches for officials from the two power
companies and their common vendor.
Both carried large-scale replacements of decades-old systems that
would continue to be used until the new systems were approved.
PPL's 76 sirens totaled about half of Indian Point's, and that
part of the installation in each case has been finished.
PPL's major obstacle, Ramos said, remains an inability to sound
different configurations of sirens based on potential scenarios
within its 10-mile emergency planning zone.
Indian Point's problems, according to an eight-page letter from
FEMA that calls the system "inadequate," center on volume,
sustainability of the sirens' sound and overall reliability.
One national siren expert pointed to the density of the Lower
Hudson's population as a unique difficulty for ATI to overcome.
"You have some places there that are over 10,000 people per
square mile," said John Fuoto, a siren consultant who has
evaluated emergency notification systems for FEMA for about 13
years. "Most nuclear plants are pretty much located in outer
boondocks. Indian Point is not a typical location. The more
people around, the louder the outside noise is. You have to be
louder in volume for high-population areas than in lower
population areas."
Fuoto said the hilly topography of the area should present no
more problems for a siren system than it has in similar locations
in California, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
"Topography, all it means is that you would need more sirens to
cover a given amount of area to have the same loudness," Fuoto
said. "Other nuclear plants have that same and similar type of
topography, and they've managed to solve it. Topography may make
it harder to do, but it does not make it impossible."
Fuoto said a key issue in putting in a new alert system is how
close the actual delivered system comes to reaching the original
design.
FEMA's eight-page analysis letter delivered Tuesday states that
what has been delivered so far at Indian Point doesn't meet the
design specifications that FEMA originally approved and that
nuclear plant officials were "willing to have a system that does
not meet its own emphatically stated design objectives, as long
as FEMA will allow them to."
Entergy Nuclear's chief executive officer, Michael Kansler,
released a statement late Friday saying the company would do all
that was required to get the system in place and thanked local
residents for their patience.
"We failed to meet a key communications goal - listening,"
Kansler said in the statement. "We did not listen to those voices
- such as (FEMA) or county emergency planning personnel - when
they said the system needs to be louder. We understand the trust
you have placed in Entergy Nuclear to safely and securely operate
Indian Point. We take this responsibility seriously, and demand
nothing less of ourselves than your highest expectations for
performance."
ATI's Burns said her company is confident that the issues at
Indian Point can be resolved.
Alan Nelson, the director of emergency preparedness for the
Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade association, said
Entergy has been a victim of its own efforts to install a
top-flight alert system.
"The Indian Point people, to give them credit, were willing to
say, 'We're going to put in the world's best system, state of the
art,' " Nelson said. "Often when you do that, it's a prototype."
He said about a third of the country's 104 nuclear plants have
changed their alert systems, but most are not making changes the
size of Indian Point's. He said power companies are watching
projects like Entergy's closely as more and more look to replace
outdated siren systems.
"Sirens are not the only way in which people can be notified,"
Nelson said, noting burgeoning technologies such as reverse
telephone calling and other electronic options.
The Indian Point installation is making use of those technologies
as well, to allow the company flexibility as alerting options
move beyond the Cold War practice of blaring sirens.
"With any type of prototype, you're going to have your starts and
stops and bumps and misses," Nelson said. "I think at the end
you're going to have a system that is second to none."
Reach Greg Clary at
[email protected] or 914-696-8566.
Copyright ? 2007 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper
serving Westchester, Rockland and
Putnam Counties in New York.
It talks mostly about the system at Indian Point but it mentions that a suit was filed by PPL.