NRC STAFF TO DISCUSS AN APPARENT VIOLATION ASSOCIATED WITH
EMERGENCY CLASSIFICATIONS AT POINT BEACH
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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will hold a predecisional enforcement conference on Tuesday, January 13, in Lisle, Illinois, to discuss an apparent violation associated with making changes to the emergency plan for the Point Beach Nuclear Plant without receiving prior NRC approval. The two-reactor facility, located near Two Rivers, Wisconsin, is operated by Nuclear Management Company.

The meeting will be held at 1 p.m. (CST) in the NRC’s Region III Office, 801 Warrenville Road, Lisle. Visitors should report first to the Second Floor reception area. The meeting is open to public observation; before the meeting is adjourned, members of the public may ask questions and provide comments.

The meeting will also be available for public viewing by video conference at the NRC Headquarters, Room O-5B6 One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. Persons planning to view the video conference should contact Deidre Spaulding by phone at 301/415-2928 or by e-mail at DWS@nrc.gov ahead of the meeting to make arrangements.

During a special inspection at Point Beach last year, NRC inspectors discovered that the plant staff had made changes to the Emergency Action Level procedure that reduced the effectiveness of the emergency plan without approval from the NRC.

Emergency Action Levels designate specific events or indicators that would signal to station personnel how to classify the emergency. Properly identifying the level of emergency is crucial in providing the appropriate level of response under the station’s emergency plan. The responses will vary depending on the severity of the threat to plant and public safety.

The purpose of the predecisional enforcement conference is to discuss the apparent violation and provide the company an opportunity to respond and to provide details of its corrective actions and other additional information.

The information presented in the predecisional enforcement conference will be considered in determining the appropriate enforcement action. The enforcement action will not be determined at the meeting; a decision on the enforcement action, if any, is usually issued several weeks after the conference. If issued, the enforcement action will be available online in the NRC’s electronic reading room at: http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/enforcement/current.html#reactors. The details of the apparent violation are described in an NRC letter to Nuclear Management Company, which can be accessed online at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/web-based.html by entering accession number ML033371234 as a search term.

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Thursday, February 22, 2007