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NRC NEWS
U. S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION |
| Office of Public Affairs |
Telephone: 301/415-8200 |
| Washington, DC 20555-001 |
E-mail: opa@nrc.gov |
No. 96-113 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Wednesday, August 14, 1996)
NRC ISSUES ORDER REQUIRING INDEPENDENT
ASSESSMENT OF MILLSTONE CORRECTIVE ACTIONS
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued an immediately effective
confirmatory order that requires Northeast Nuclear Energy Company to
contract for an independent assessment of the results of programs aimed at
resolving existing design and management deficiencies at the three
Millstone nuclear power plants in Connecticut.
The licensee has agreed to obtain the services of highly qualified
and independent engineers who will independently verify the results of the
corrective action programs at the plants, currently shut down. NRC must
approve the team's qualifications and independence of the licensee. The
team's findings will be provided concurrently to the NRC and the licensee.
The order further requires that the independent assessment plan must
include:
--An in-depth review of selected plant systems since initial
licensing.
--Risk and safety based criteria for selecting the systems.
--An audit plan to ensure that the quality of results of problem
identification and corrective action programs of selected systems is
representative of plant systems overall.
--Procedures for reporting findings concurrently to the licensee and
the NRC and for commenting on the licensee's resolution of team
recommendations.
An NRC headquarters team lead by a senior executive will oversee the
independent verification team's work and will conduct its own inspection
and review of the licensee's corrective actions and their implementation.
The licensee is required to provide progress reports on its
implementation of the independent verification team's recommendations to
the NRC's Regional Administrator in Region I, King of Prussia,
Pennsylvania, and the Director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation,
at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Maryland.
Millstone Unit 1 was shut down last November for refueling. Unit 2
was taken out of service in February due to a safety injection system being
declared inoperable. Unit 3 was shut down in March after the licensee
determined that containment isolation valves for a feedwater pump were also
declared inoperable.
NRC inspections have identified significant failures to comply with
the conditions of licenses, NRC regulations and the plants' updated Final
Safety Analysis Reports. The NRC issued letters requiring the licensee to
provide, before restart, information to assure the plants will be operated
safely and in accordance with all regulatory and license conditions. In
addition, the Commissioners will have to approve restart before the plants
can resume operation.
Any person adversely affected by the confirmatory order, other than
the licensee, may request a hearing within 20 days of its issuance. The
request should be submitted to the Secretary, Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, Attention: Chief, Docketing and Service Section, Washington,
D.C. 20555.
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Editors: The text of the confirmatory order has been posted on the
Internet at this address: http://www.nrc.gov/OPA/reports.
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