NRC TO MEET WITH EXELON FEBRUARY 13 TO DISCUSS
RADIATION PROTECTION FINDINGS AT QUAD CITIES NUCLEAR PLANT

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff members will meet February 13 in Lisle, Illinois, with representatives of the Exelon Generation Company to discuss recent inspection findings on radiation protection at the Quad Cities Nuclear Power Plant. The plant is located in Cordova, Illinois.

The meeting, called a Regulatory Conference, will begin at 1 p.m. CST in the Third Floor Conference Room of the NRC's Region III Office, 801 Warrenville Road, Lisle. Participants will discuss an inspection finding that preliminarily has been assessed as "white" in safety significance. Color assessments are used to determine the NRC's response to the findings which may include additional meetings with plant officials as well as follow-up inspections to review the company's response.

A white inspection finding is one that has low to moderate safety significance.

The meeting is open to public observation and will be available through videoconferencing in Room O-5B2 at NRC Headquarters, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike in Rockville, Maryland. NRC staff members will be available after the session to address questions and comments from members of the public.

The Quad Cities regulatory conference will cover a potential white finding associated with planning problems concerning occupational radiation doses that were incurred during a recent refueling outage when workers were replacing safety relief valves.

NRC inspectors found that planning problems caused the actual radiation dose for the valve replacement work to exceed the projected doses by more than 50 percent. Specifically, inspectors found that a related cooling and ventilation system was out of service at the time of the valve work which resulted in higher temperatures in the work area. Because of the higher temperatures, individual workers could only be in the required area for a short length of time, but cumulatively, the workers spent more time in the area than what was originally projected. This resulted in the higher cumulative dose for workers. Additionally, inspectors found that less experienced workers performed the valve replacement job, also contributing to more time spent in the work area and consequently higher cumulative dose.

Although the cumulative dose for the job exceeded the company's projected dose for all workers involved in the valve project, no individual worker received radiation doses above NRC occupational limits.

The NRC uses a four-category rating system for its inspection findings; from green, through white and yellow, to red, depicting increasing safety significance. A similar rating system is used for the quarterly performance indicators, which are statistical measures of the safety performance of various plant functions.

Further information on these inspection findings, including the text of the inspection reports, is available on the NRC's web site at:

<http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/QUAD1/quad1_pim.html>

Following the February 13 meeting, the NRC staff will continue its review of the finding and determine its final assessment and the agency's resulting actions. The outcome of the NRC staff's review of these findings, which normally takes four to six weeks, will be on the NRC's enforcement web page at:

<http://www.nrc.gov/OE/> Select the "enforcement actions" link.

Additional information on the NRC's reactor inspection and assessment program is on the web site at:

<http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/index.html>.

NRC news releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site.

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Friday, December 05, 2008