IR 05000237/2004001

Annual Assessment Letter, Dresden (IR 05000237-04-001 and IR 05000249-04-001)

ML040641172
Person / Time
Site:	Dresden
Issue date:	03/04/2004
From:	Reynolds S Division Reactor Projects III
To:	Crane C Exelon Generation Co, Exelon Nuclear
References
IR-04-001
Download: ML040641172 (7)

Text

rch 4, 2004

SUBJECT:

ANNUAL ASSESSMENT LETTER - DRESDEN NUCLEAR POWER STATION (REPORT 50-237/04-01; 50-249/04-01)

Dear Mr. Crane:

On February 11, 2004, the NRC staff completed its end-of-cycle plant performance assessment of the Dresden Nuclear Power Station. The end-of-cycle review involved the participation of all technical divisions in evaluating performance indicators (PIs) for the most recent quarter and inspection results for the period from January 1, 2003, through December 31, 2003. The purpose of this letter is to inform you of our assessment of your safety performance during this period and our plans for future inspections at your facility so that you will have an opportunity to prepare for these inspections and to inform us of any planned inspections that may conflict with your plant activities.

Overall, Dresden operated in a manner that preserved public health and safety and fully met all cornerstone objectives. Plant performance for the most recent quarter was within the Regulatory Response Column of the NRCs Action Matrix, based on the White Unit 3 high pressure coolant injection (HPCI) safety system unavailability PI in the mitigating systems cornerstone. This PI went White in the third quarter of 2001 due to the fault exposure hours following the Unit 3 HPCI water hammer event on July 5, 2001. On June 23, 2003, we issued the Final Significance Determination for a White finding involving your failure to promptly correct a nonconforming pipe support resulting in the Unit 3 HPCI system being inoperable from July 5, to September 30, 2001. This finding involves the same issue as the White PI. A supplemental inspection conducted in November 2003 concluded that you had appropriately addressed and resolved the finding. As a result the finding was closed at the end of the most recent quarter.

Therefore, we plan to conduct only baseline inspections at your facility through September 30, 2005.

Additionally, on June 23, 2003, a Severity Level III Violation of 10 CFR 50.9 was issued in accordance with the enforcement policy. The violation was for incomplete and inaccurate information provided to the Commission on September 27, 2001, that was material because the Commission was evaluating the operability determination for the Unit 3 HPCI system. A Severity Level III Violation of 10 CFR 50.9 was issued on August 29, 2003, for incomplete and inaccurate information provided to the Commission upon which the Commission made a licensing decision. You submitted an operator license renewal request for an individual on March 5, 2002, that stated that an individual was current on all requalification examinations when in fact the individual was not. The NRC conducted inspections to review your corrective actions for these two violations in November 2003 and January 2004, respectively. The enclosed inspection plan details the inspections scheduled through September 30, 2005.

The inspection plan is provided to minimize the resource impact on your staff and to allow for scheduling conflicts and personnel availability to be resolved in advance of inspector arrival onsite. Routine resident inspections are not listed due to their ongoing and continuous nature.

The inspections in the last 12 months of the inspection plan are tentative and may be revised at the mid-cycle review meeting. As you are aware, the NRC has issued several Orders and threat advisories to enhance security capabilities and improve guard force readiness since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. We have conducted inspections to review your implementation of these requirements and have monitored your actions in response to changing threat conditions. For calendar year 2004, we plan to continue inspections of Order implementation combined with newly developed portions of the security baseline inspection program.

In accordance with 10 CFR 2.390 of the NRCs Rules of Practice, a copy of this letter and its enclosure will be made available electronically for public inspection in the NRC Public Document Room or from the Publicly Available Records (PARS) component of NRC's document system (ADAMS). ADAMS is accessible from the NRC Web site at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html (the Public Electronic Reading Room).

If circumstances arise which cause us to change this inspection plan, we will contact you to discuss the change as soon as possible. Please contact Mark Ring at 630/829-9703 with any questions you may have regarding this letter or the inspection plan.

Sincerely,

/RA/

Steve A. Reynolds, Acting Director Division of Reactor Projects Docket Nos. 50-237; 50-249 License Nos. DPR-19; DPR-25 Enclosure: Dresden Inspection/Activity Plan See Attached Distribution