Home > Electronic Reading Room > Document Collections > News Releases > 1997 > IV-97-073

	NRC NEWS U. S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, REGION IV 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 400, Arlington TX 76011
	CONTACT:	Breck Henderson (817) 860-8128/e-mail: bwh@nrc.gov

RIV: 97-73

December 2, 1997

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has proposed a $110,000 fine against the Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD), the operator of Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville, Nebraska, for failing to meet NRC requirements that power reactor licensees have measures established to ensure prompt identification and correction of conditions adverse to quality. Conditions adverse to quality include failures, malfunctions, deficiencies, deviations, defective material and equipment, and nonconformance.

The violations, which involve nine examples of failure to meet this requirement, were recorded during NRC inspections conducted last summer. They were discussed by NPPD and NRC officials on October 17 during a predecisional enforcement conference at the NRC Region IV office in Arlington, Texas.

The first two examples were considered the most significant. The other seven similarly concerned situations in which NPPD inadequately identified or corrected conditions adverse to quality.

In the first example, NPPD failed to identify and correct a problem that could have resulted in water inadvertently backflowing into the standby gas treatment system, which is designed to filter radioactive materials from the reactor containment building under certain accident conditions. This condition was not corrected for more than two years and could have rendered the two trains of the system inoperable under certain circumstances.

In the second example, NPPD failed to identify and correct a significant problem in which mud clogged a heat exchanger in the residual heat removal system, which is designed to remove heat from the reactor after it is shut down. NPPD failed to recognize the problem even after it was identified by the NRC and failed to take corrective actions to prevent its recurrence.

Ellis W. Merschoff, Regional Administrator of NRC Region IV, said in a letter to NPPD, that the circumstances surrounding the violations "indicate contemporary weaknesses in your staff's ability to recognize and correct problems."

The NRC has categorized the nine examples as a single Severity Level III violation. The agency's enforcement system uses four Severity Levels, with Level I being the most serious.

Severity Level III violations carry a $55,000 base civil penalty, which can be adjusted based on the circumstances surrounding identification and corrective actions. The penalty in this case was adjusted to $110,000 because NPPD was not given credit for identifying the violations or for corrective actions.

NPPD has 30 days to respond to the NRC's citation, during which time it may pay the civil penalty or protest it. If the protest is denied, the utility may ask for a hearing.

###