ML20149M200
| ML20149M200 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Millstone  |
| Issue date: | 10/19/1996 |
| From: | Blanch P AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED |
| To: | Mulley G NRC |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20149M049 | List:
|
| References | |
| NUDOCS 9612130080 | |
| Download: ML20149M200 (2) | |
Text
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l From:
PAUL M. BLANCH <PMBLANCH91x.netcom.com>
To:
GEORGE MULLEY < GAM 9nrc. gov >
Date:
10/19/96 6:15am
Subject:
Today's News Regulators digging in at Millstone By MIKE McINTIRE This story ran in the Courant October 19, 1996 j
Federal regulators said Friday they expect to be encamped at the Millstone Nuclear Power Complex for up to two years,
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with a team of 30 employees headed by the man who oversaw response to the Three Mile Island accident.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is setting up a special projects office comprising many of the engineers and inspectors who already have been at the power facility in Waterford for much of this year. Heading the office will be William D.
Travers, who was stationed at Three Mile Island in the 1980s as director of the NRC's cleanup efforts at that infamous Pennsylvania plant.
Meanwhile, NRC Chairwoman Shirley Jackson said in a speech to NRC employees Thursday that problems at Millstone and the Connecticut Yankee plant in Haddam have given the agency a black eye. Jackson indicated that Northeast Utilities' four Connecticut reactors will be the NRC's focus for the foreseeable future as it struggles to reform its reputation, as well as its regulatory philosophy.
Unfortunately, much of what we have accomplished has been seriously over-shadowed by events in New England,"
Jackson said. 'It would be a serious mistake on our part to dismiss the events at Millstone, in particular, as presenting merely an interesting set of technical problems.
'If we honestly assess the performance of the utilities in question, and our own, we would have to agree that not all aspects of nuclear regulation and nuclear operations are as they should be, despite all our efforts to the contrary, she said.
The intense scrutiny that the NRC has planned for Millstone is not unprecedented.
j In the 1980s, the agency set up special projects offices to oversee regulatory activities at the Comanche Peak nuclear plant in Texas and at the Tennessee Valley Authority's nuclear plants.
The three Millstone plants in Waterford are shut down because of serious management and safety-related problems, some stemming back years. They are on the NRC's watch list of troubled plants i
and will not be allowed to restart without full commission approval.
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Connecticut Yankee, which is also shut down and has been found to have similar problems, will probably not reopen. NU has made a preliminary decision that it does not make economic sense to i
l restart the 28-year-old plant, which is NU's smallest.
l Both NU and the NRC have much at stake in the recovery efforts going I
on at Millstone. NU's very survival hinges on whether it can withstand the financial drain caused by having its nur. lear plants shut down and the costs of fixing them - NU has said it expects to spend $500 million just on replacement power while Millstone is off-line.
In her speech, Jackson said the NRC's experiences in Connecticut offer lessons that potentially affect the operation of all nuclear plants in the United States, as well as the way regulators police them.
Although we have much to learn about the situation at Millstone, we do know enough about the conditions at the plants to begin to ask ourselves some thought-provoking, probing questions about whether we have succeeded in establishing the safety culture we have been trying to establish throughout the industry, she said.
Paul M. Blanch Energy Consultant 135 Hyde Rd.
West Hartford CT 06117 Voice 860-236-0326 Fax 860-232-9350 1
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