Plant plan's rating-cellar exit

Not happening until sure it’s safe, vows NRC official

RUSSELLVILLE -- It will take Arkansas Nuclear One at least two years to shed its poor performance rating, a representative of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday.

The commission this year placed the plant, owned by Entergy Arkansas, in "column four" of its overall performance rating, the lowest level for an operating nuclear power plant.

The designation means the plant gets the commission's highest level of inspection oversight.

"The NRC will not remove this plant from column four until Entergy has clearly demonstrated sustained safety performance improvements," Neil O'Keefe, an inspection branch chief for the commission, told about 90 people at a meeting Tuesday night.

A team of inspectors spent 9,100 man-hours last year at Arkansas Nuclear One, about 40 percent more time than the 6,600 man-hours of inspection that most plants receive.

Three full-time inspectors at Arkansas Nuclear One each complete about 2,000 hours of inspections in a year. The remaining hours were completed last year by dozens of specialists from the commission's regional office and headquarters.

The safety culture at Arkansas Nuclear One needs to be thoroughly evaluated, said Marc Dapas, regional administrator for the commission's Region IV, which includes Arkansas.

"The safety margins have been reduced [at the plant]," Dapas said. "Entergy, through its own evaluations, needs to determine to what extent those margins have been reduced and how extensive is the gap between the existing safety culture and focus and the desired state."

The federal commission requires Entergy to have an independent, third-party safety evaluation, Dapas said in an interview.

"Then we come in and look at it and determine that there was sufficient scope and what the methodology was," Dapas said.

The independent survey has been conducted, Jeremy Browning, site vice president and the highest ranked Entergy executive at Arkansas Nuclear One, said in an interview. About 800 employees, or 80 percent of the workers at the plant, took the survey, Browning said.

Then about 250 were interviewed extensively.

"The conclusion from that team is that the culture at [Nuclear One] is sufficient for safe operation of the facility," Browning said. "There is not a safety culture issue that is going to challenge the safe operation of the plant."

The regulatory commission has not completed its evaluation of the study, Dapas said.

Arkansas Nuclear One has the worst performance rating of all 100 nuclear plants in the country.

Column one nuclear power plants, 80 percent of the plants in the country, require the fewest inspections. Plants in column five aren't permitted to operate, the commission says.

Arkansas Nuclear One was moved from column one to column four as a result of an industrial accident on Easter Sunday in March 2013. Two findings of "substantial safety significance" during the accident pushed the plant's rating into column four.

The accident involved a 1 million pound turbine stator that fell 30 feet while it was being moved by a contractor, killing one worker, injuring eight others and causing significant damage in a non-nuclear part of the plant. Arkansas Nuclear One has two nuclear reactors.

The second finding of substantial safety significance is related to the 2013 accident but was not filed until January. It involved Entergy's failure to design, construct and maintain the seals that protect safety-related equipment in the emergency diesel fuel storage building from flooding.

When the stator fell, it damaged a water main, Victor Dricks, a spokesman for the federal commission, said last week.

The fire pump discharged thousands of gallons of water into the turbine building, Dricks said, where floor seals should have prevented the water from flowing down into an auxiliary building.

"But the seals were defective, so water flowed into areas where it shouldn't have been," Dricks said.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not have an inspector at the plant when the accident occurred, said Brian Tindell, a commission resident inspector at Nuclear One. But inspectors hurried to the plant when they learned of the accident, Tindell said.

Entergy effectively has addressed the cause of the two safety failures, but the utility still needs to determine why the possibility of those events occurring never showed up in previous safety inspections, Browning told those at the meeting.

"It is absolutely unacceptable to have issues self-reveal themselves," Browning said.

More than a dozen people at Tuesday's meeting asked questions about the plant, many addressing whether the plant's operations are a danger to the community. Representatives of the federal commission and Entergy assured them that the plant poses no danger.

"The plant is safe to operate," Dapas said. "Operator performance has been strong at this plant. Operators have responded well when challenged."

The consequences of the stator accident would have been much worse if it had not been for "the excellent response" by the operators in the control room, Dapas said.

"Of course, we will continue to monitor operator and equipment performance for any notable changes," Dapas said.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the authority to close Arkansas Nuclear One if it is necessary, Dapas said.

Business on 05/14/2015

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