NRC ISSUES SAFETY EVALUATION REPORT WITH OPEN ITEMS FOR INDIAN POINT NUCLEAR PLANT LICENSE RENEWAL APPLICATION

           
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has issued its Safety Evaluation Report (SER) with Open Items for the proposed renewal of the operating licenses for Indian Point nuclear power plant, Units 2 and 3.

Entergy submitted an application to the NRC in April 2007 to extend the Indian Point licenses by 20 years. The plant, operated by Entergy, is located in Buchanan (Westchester County), N.Y. The current 40-year operating licenses expire Sept. 28, 2013, for Unit 2, and Dec. 12, 2015, for Unit 3.

The SER documents the results of the NRC staff’s review of the license renewal application and site audit of Indian Point’s aging management programs to address the safety of plant operations during the period of extended operation. Overall, the results show that Entergy has identified actions that have been or will be taken to manage the effects of aging in the appropriate systems, structures, and components of the plant and that their functions will be maintained during the period of extended operation.

In a letter dated Jan. 15, Brian Holian, director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation’s Division of License Renewal, provided Entergy with the SER and requested responses to the open items by March 16. The SER is available on NRC’s Web site at http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applications.html.   Issuance of an SER with Open Items is a typical milestone in a license renewal review. The SER identifies open items that still need to be addressed by the applicant before the staff can complete its review. The open items in this SER involve scoping of plant systems and components, aging management reviews, and aging management programs.

After Entergy provides satisfactory information to address the open items, the NRC staff will present its final conclusions on the license renewal application in an update to this SER. A Final SER is estimated to be issued in late July 2009.

The SER and the license renewal application have also been provided to the NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS), an independent body of experts that advises the NRC on reactor safety matters. An ACRS subcommittee is expected to discuss the SER with open items during a meeting in March. The meeting, which will take place at NRC Headquarters in Rockville, Md., will be open to the public and will be announced on the agency’s web site at http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/public-meetings/index.cfm. The full ACRS will later issue a report discussing the results of its review.

A copy of the letter and the Safety Evaluation Report with Open Items will be available in the NRC’s Agencywide Documents Access and Management Systems (ADAMS) under accession number ML090150414 . ADAMS is accessible via the agency’s web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. Help in using ADAMS is available by contacting the NRC’s Public Document Room at 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737, or by e-mail at PDR.Resource@NRC.GOV.

Additional information concerning license renewal in general and the Indian Point application in particular can be found at http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal.html.

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Friday, January 16, 2009