The following special report is being made in accordance with the requirements of
Technical Specification (TS) 6.7.2(1)(c) which states in part: There shall be a report not later than the following day by telephone or similar conveyance to the NRC Headquarters Operation Center of any reportable occurrence as defined in
TS 1.3.
TS 1.3 defines an observed inadequacy in the implementation of administrative or procedural controls, such that the inadequacy caused the existence of a condition which results in a violation of technical specifications as a reportable occurrence.
Specifically, on Thursday July 14, 2011, while performing routine surveillance checks, an operator left the control room while the console key remained in the console key switch and the switch was in the TEST position. This is in direct violation of the staffing requirements defined in TS 6.1.3(1)(a) which states a licensed reactor operator must be in the control room when the reactor is not secured. The reactor was not secured by the fact that the console key switch was not in the OFF position and the key remained in the console key switch. However, all control elements were fully inserted, the reactor was shut down, no work was in progress involving core fuel, core structure, control elements or drives and no experiments were being moved. This condition remained for a period of approximately 7 minutes until the cognizant senior reactor operator entered the control room and secured the reactor.
- * * UPDATE FROM ROBERT AGASIE TO PETE SNYDER ON 7/18/11 AT 0846 EDT * * *
After a records review the licensee determined that: the actual event time was 1055 AM CDT and the actual duration of time that the operator was not in the control room was 85 seconds.
Notified R3DO (Duncan) and
NRR (Tran).