The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) flagged two violations at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant over the course of a three-month safety and federal compliance inspection. One of these violations was for failing to adequately protect the public in the event of a radioactive release.
From July 1 to Sept. 30, eight federal regulators inspected the plant for health, emergency preparedness and operational issues. Both of the problems found were labeled “green,” which means they had “a very low safety significance,” according to an NRC letter sent on Oct. 31 to Vermont Yankee Vice President Christopher Wamser.
Vermont Yankee parent company Entergy identified the first violation, which was for failing to properly “implement a preventive maintenance procedure,” as the inspection report reads. A motor was labeled incorrectly during an inspection, which led to “a missed opportunity to replace degraded components” and caused a recirculation pump to malfunction. Entergy then cleaned the motor and replaced the necessary components that were damaged.
“The inspectors determined that the issue was more than minor because it resulted in … an event that upset plant stability,” the report reads.
NRC Reactor Chief Ronald Bellamy told Wamser in the letter that “because of the very low safety significance, and because the issue has been entered into your corrective action program, the NRC is treating this finding as a non-cited violation.”
Asked about the importance of labeling an incident a “non-cited violation,” NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said: “There is no true significance to that because they both end up being followed up by our inspectors. Whether it’s cited or non-cited it has to be put into their corrective action plan.”
The NRC identified the second violation during a surveillance test. Operators are required to be in the “immediate vicinity” of containment valves when they are open, so that they can be closed immediately in the case of an emergency. Such valves act as portals in and out of the containment facilities that house the nuclear reactors.
According to the report, “The operators were significantly beyond the required immediate vicinity when they left the reactor building.”
“The inspectors determined that the issue was more than minor because it is associated with … Human Performance … and affected the cornerstone objective to provide reasonable assurance that physical design barriers … protect the public from radionuclide releases caused by accidents or events,” reads an earlier portion of the finding’s summary.”
The valve was left unattended for 37 minutes, according to the report.
“They were doing some work and should have been keeping close observation on this valve and our inspector realized that they failed to do that,” said Sheehan about the incident. “When we looked at the incident we found it was of very low safety significance.”
