NRC DOMINION NUCLEAR TO DISCUSS MILLSTONE 2 PERFORMANCE ISSUES

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with representatives of the Millstone nuclear power plant on Tuesday, May 22, to discuss performance issues at the Millstone 2 reactor. The plant is located in Waterford, Conn., and operated by Dominion Nuclear Connecticut Inc.

Known as a regulatory performance meeting, the session is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. in the plant's Leland F. Sillin Jr. Nuclear Training Center. It will be open to the public. The center is located off Rope Ferry Road in Waterford.

Under the NRC's Reactor Oversight Program, the agency uses a multi-tiered, color-coded system to assess plant performance. Indicators, colored "green," "white," "yellow" and "red," characterize increasing safety significance, with corresponding NRC scrutiny.

At the meeting on May 22, a specific topic of discussion will be Dominion Nuclear's response to a degraded assessment for mitigating, or safety, systems, as well as related issues regarding human performance and corrective actions. The degraded cornerstone assessment was based on a "white" performance indicator due to the unavailability of the plant's high-pressure safety injection (HPSI) system and a "white" inspection finding due to a failure to make timely repairs to a turbine-driven auxiliary feedwater pump. (HPSI is an emergency safety system that can be used to keep the reactor core covered and cooled during a loss-of-coolant accident. The auxiliary feedwater pump is part of a backup system that can be used to send water to the plant's steam generators, large components that convert heat from the reactor into steam; that steam is subsequently used to turn the plant's turbines and generate electricity.)

The NRC conducted a supplemental inspection in January and found that Millstone 2 staff had adequately evaluated and undertaken corrective actions in response to the HPSI system unavailability. It was also determined that plant staff had adequately addressed issues related to the repair of the auxiliary feedwater pump. Dominion Nuclear's self-assessment of progress toward addressing corrective action program deficiencies that contributed to these performance issues will be discussed on May 22.

For more information on the NRC's assessment program, visit http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/index.html

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Friday, December 05, 2008