NRC TO DISCUSS PERFORMANCE INDICATOR ON UNPLANNED POWER CHANGES AT JAMES A. FITZPATRICK NUCLEAR POWER PLANT

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with management of the James A. FitzPatrick nuclear power plant on Friday, April 27, to discuss the facility's performance, specifically with regard to progress on and plans for addressing the number of unplanned power changes experienced during recent assessment periods. The plant is owned and operated by Entergy Nuclear Northeast.

The meeting is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. in the auditorium of the plant's Training Center, on Lake Road in Scriba, N.Y. It will be open to the public.

Under the NRC Reactor Oversight Process launched in April 2000, the agency uses several tools to assess plant performance. Among those tools are performance indicators, which utilize different colors to depict increasing safety significance. The colors range from green, which means performance within an expected range, rising to white, which is considered performance outside the expected range, to yellow and finally red. For instance, if a plant has six or more unplanned power changes during a specified period, it receives a "white" indicator.

In the case of the FitzPatrick plant, it has received a "white" indicator in the area of unplanned power changes during recent assessment periods, indicating to the NRC that there are continued problems with equipment reliability that have impacted plant operations. These problems extend back several years. As a result of the "white" indicator, the NRC staff has requested a meeting with plant management to review performance in this area.

Further information on the plant's performance indicators and inspection findings is available on the NRC's web site at: www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS

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Thursday, February 22, 2007