ML20207F145

Discusses Investigation Rept 1-94-021 Completed on 940506- 960329 & Forwards Synopsis & NOV & Exercise of Enforcement Discretion.Insp Concerning Performance of Fuel Offloading at Millstone Unit 1 Prior to 1993

ML20207F145
Person / Time
Site:	Millstone
Issue date:	05/25/1999
From:	Miller H NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION I)
To:	Necci R NORTHEAST NUCLEAR ENERGY CO.
Shared Package
ML20207F108	List: ML20207F104 ML20207F145 ML20207F152
References
EA-96-151, NUDOCS 9906080076
Download: ML20207F145 (5)

Text

NAY-25-1999: 08:00 USNRC Rl/OFC OF REG ADM 6103375241 P.02/10 k' k_ UNITED STATES

, 'NUCl. EAR RE2U1.ATURY COMMISSION

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-*- 4 ~ 475 ALLENDALE RoAo KING OF FRusslA, PENNSYLVANIA 1940614.)

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May 25,1999 EA 96-1511 Mr. R. P. Neoci, Vice President, Nuclear - -

• Oversight arx. Regulatory Affairs .

)

• /o Mr. David A. Smith, Manager Rege*,atory .  ; 3-

~ Affairs : .,

l

. Northeast Nuclear Energy Company -

.- . . 4 Post Office Box 128 ,

Waterford, Connecticut 06385 -

. i. x 1

SUBJECT:

' NOTICE OF VIOL.ATION AND EXERCISE OF ENFORCEMENT DISCRETiONr *

(Investigation Report No.1-94-021) 4 .

l

Dear Mr. Necci:

This letter refers to the investigation conducted.at the Millstone Nuclear Power Station, by the NRC's Office ofInvestigations (01), conceming the performance of fuel offloads at Millstone Unit .

1 prior to 1993. The synopsis of the 01 investigation is enclosed (Enclosure 2).

Based on the information developed during the 01 investigation, fourviolations of NRC requirements

' are being cited as described in the enclosed Notice of Violation (Notice).. Specifically, the NRC determined that, in careless disregard of NRC requirements you (1) pennned Loth partial and full core reactor fuel offloads prior to the decay times assumed in the FSAR without the appropriate engineering analyses; (2) utilized uriapproved and unanalyzed system configurations to augme,nt spent fuel pool (SFP) cooling during refueling outages, without procedures to govem those  !

activities; and (3) in two instances submitted incomplete and inaccurate information to the NRC

- related to the performance of fuel offloads that were actually being commenced before the delay

. times assumed in the analyses submitted to the NRC.

These violations, which existed for a long period of time, appear to be the result of the deficient safety culture which contributed to the shutdown of all three units for an extended period, and resulted in a number of other violations for which the NRC issued a $2,100,000 civil penalty to NNEco on December 10,.1997. That penalty was based, in part, on (1) the failure to assure that the plant was maintained in the configuration as designed and specified in the licensing basis, and (2) the failure to promptly correct nonconforming conditicns, in the letter transmitting that civil penalty, the NRC Executive Director for Operations noted that "...many of these violations and undertying causes were long-standing and iriicative of a deficient safety culture, fostered by plant L and corporate management, which neither set high standards or actively encouraged workers to identify and report safety issues or act upon issues once they were reported." The NRC concluded that management's failure to establish standards to ensure that the plant was maintained and operated as designed, and to ensure that nonconforming conditions were promptly identified and corrected, constituted careless disregard of requirements. As such, the violations that resulted from 4

, 1 9906080076 990525 POR COP 998 fWtCC

' CORRESPONDENCE PDR  ;

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.MAY-25-1999 .08:01 Us@C R1/OFC OF REG RDt1 6103375241 P.03/10

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l Northeast Nuclear Energy Company.

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G that deficient safety culture, which fostered such dismgard, are considered willfulin accordance with

. the " General Statement of Policy and Procedures for NRC Enforcement Action (NUREG.t600)"

(Enforcement Policy) ,

N.; ..' i With respect to the cited violations, you failed to meet the requirements of 10 CFR 50.5g when you performed fuel offloads commencing prior to the decay times analyzed in the FSAR during most of the refuelmg outages between ig74 and igg 1, and did not perform safety evaluations to support r these activities. .During these refueling outages, you also used the shutdown cooling (SDC) system to augment the SFP cooling system for SFP heat removal, as assumed in the FSAR analysis for the abnormal offload scenario.tlilowever, no analysis was performed at the time to assure that the design SFP heat loads were not exceeded when considering the shorter decay times.' Additionally, the SDC system was poss-tied with the SFP cooling system without approved procedures to govem the activity, contrary to 10 CFR Part 50, Appendix B, Criterion V.

. Y ,c .

Finally, you had opportunities to identify that fuel offloads were not being performed consistent with

<M 'Uthe FftMnalysis when'you prepared license. amendment requests for SFP rerecking.. However, in those requests you provided informatiori.to the NRC regarding scenarios described in the FSAR without indicating that those scenarios did not accurately reflect your refueling practices. These

scenarios were less conservative tnan the analyzed scenarios that supported the amendment requests. Also, when you reported the nonconforming conditim in Ucensee Event Report (LER)

M g3-011 in igg 3, you described a hypothetical scenario that was more conservative than conditions. .

W. # thattactually existed, and you failed to report the dates and times of occurrences that the SFP 7" - design temperature limit could have been exceeded, contrary to the requirements of 10 CFR 50.73.

l Although you were slow to recognize, after the issue was raised in June 19g2, that the performance

.M uw "of full core offloads after only 150 hours0.00174 days <br />0.0417 hours <br />2.480159e-4 weeks <br />5.7075e-5 months <br /> decay time was potentially a condition outside of the design 4.+ M basis of the plant, the NRC conduded that.the delay did not constitute.a violation of NRC

' Ww B: requirements.' This is because no core offloads.were. conducted while you were evaluating the.  ;

• C e tissue and the issue was promptly. reported once theran'alysis conducted by your contractor was - I wW n.availabler t ' .; . 1

< . a ( _ .w. .. ... m , , _2, ..

f The NRC recognizes that there were no' actual safety consequences as a result of commencing i; ' core offloads prior to the decay times specified in the FSAR, because the actual heat load never exceeded the total available SFP cooling capability, when augmented by shutdown cooling, and the temperature of the SFP never exceeded the design limit. However, the maximum actual SFP heat  !

'r ' load during most of these refueleg outages exceeded the design capability of the SFP cooling l

', ' system heat exchangers. Therefore, the potential: existed for the design temperature limit of the SFP to be exceeded, as you reported in your LER dated October 18,1993. The operation of the SDC system, cross-tied with the SFP cooling system, without approved procedures permitted operation of the systems in an uncontrolled, potentially less reliable manner.-

- The NRC is concemed that in prepdration'of your license amendment requests for SFP reracking, you either failed to recognize that core offloads were not being perfon'ned in socordance with the FSAR, or if you did recognize such, you did not inform the NRC. In support of these license

-amendment requests, your staff analyzed fuel offload scenarios to demonstrate that there was

. sufficie6t'SFP heat removal capatWlity to accommodate the increase in SFP. storage capecity

- requested in the license amendments. This analysis provided an obvious opportunity for your staff

, to consider the actual refueling practices that were used at Millstone Unit 1. However, no one

MAV-25-1999 08:01 USNRC RI/OFC OF REG.ADM. 6103375241 P.04/10

- Northeast Nuclear Energy Company '3

involved in the preparation and review process for the amendment requests questioned whether the analyzed scenarios were representative of actual omond practices. The NRC is also concerned that when you did recognize that core omoads were performed that were not consistent with the

' FSAR, you failed to ~ provide complete information to the NRC with respeict to the extent and significance of the deviation from the licensing basis.

. In consideration of (1) the undesirable consequences of performance of unanalyzed core omoads and failure to ensure that SFP heat removal was conducted in accordance with approved procedures; (2) the significance of providing incomplete and inaccurate information to the NRC; and (3) the significance that the NRC places on careless disregard of its requirements, the four violadons set forth in the enclosed Notice have been classified, in the aggregate, as a Severity I evel l Ill problem in accordance with the Enforcement Policy, issuance of a civil penalty for this Severity 1 Level lil problem would normally be considered in accordance with the Enforcement Policy. Since -

, the violations occurred more than five NWs ago, they are outside the statute of limitations for ,

' issuance of a civil penalty, with the exception of violation D for which you waived the Statute of J Limitations on October 15,1998. Even if the statute of limitations had not expired, the NRC determined that it would be appropriate to exercise discretion and not issue a civ1 penalty because:

(1) these violations at Unit 1, which has permanently shut down, were additional examples of the '

underlying performance problems at all the Millstone units for which the NRC issued the $2,100.000 civil penalty to you in December 1997; (2) you maintained all three of the Millstone units in a

. shutdown condition for approximately 2 years to address underlying performance problems at the facility; and (3) you essentially replaced the entire management infrastructure since the time these fuel omond problems occurred, and the new management team has been reasonabry effective in managing the restart and operation of Millstone 2 and 3. Therefore, I have been authorized, after consultation with the Co amission, to exercise discretion and not issue a civil penalty for these violations. In sum, discretion is appropriate because you have already implemented corrective actions to address the underlying performance problems at Millstone and further enforcement action is not necessary to achieve additional remedial actions.

Regaroing the original question concoming the Millstone 1 full core offload practices, the NRC has drawn a distinction between routinely conducting full core offloads and conducting any omoede prior to the decay times assumed in the FSAR. The NRC has concluded that enforcement action is not warranted at Millstone 1 and other facilities for conducting full core omoads on a routine basis. The use of the terms " abnormal" and ' emergency" in describing the full core omoad scenario in the FSAR could imply that full core omonds were to occur on a less freqcnt basis than partial core offloads. However, the NRC was unable to concWe that the use of these terms represented a specific commitment to limit the frequency with whic;. fall core offloads were conducted at Millstone

1. In this regard, NNECo informed the NRC staff ofits practice of omoeding the full core at Millstone

. 1 in a meeting on June 16,1988 associated with the License Amendment 40 request peliaining to SFP raracking. Further, althougi, the analytical constraints and assumptions for the full core amond were generally less restrictive than those for a partial core offload, in licensing actions (typically rerack amendments), the NRC found the plant design for removing the full core acceptable. Finally, as a way of addressing shutdown risk, the NRC encouraged, and still does, the practice of full core  !

offloads. Thus, consistent with the conclusions drawn for all other plants that routinely performed I full core offloads, additional enforcement is not being proposed for the Millstone 1 full core omoading Prachces.

. f1HY-6-AWW udiud- UbNRC N V W L & Mrb ADM 6104.175241 P.05/10

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Northeast Nuclear Energy Cornpany. 4 As noted atxwe, enforcement action is being proposed for violations associated with the timing of

) core affloads. in this regani, the Non-Cited Violation (NCV) documented in inspection Report 50-

' 245, 336,423/94 01, dated April 22l 1994, for failure to maintain the spent fuel pool analysis design p ' assumphons (based on LER 93 011) was issued without full knowledge pertaining to the extent that i offloads commenced before the assumed FSAR decay times. The NRC concludes that had it i known at the time the. extent of the issue, as well as the careless disregard toward NRC requireme, a more significant enforcement action would ~ have been warranted. Therefore, pursuant to Section Xill of the Enforcement Policy, this NCV is being reissued as a cited violation

' and is included in the enclosed Notice of Violation.

' The NRC has concluded that you have already addressed the . broad, programmatic problems that led to the violations cited in the enclosed Notice in your response to the $2,100,000 civil penalty. ,

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j Corrective actions for the specific issues associated with the vio:stions are no longer applicable

! since Unit 1 is permanently retired. Therefore, you are not required to respond to this letter. If you choose to provide additionalinfotmation, you should follow the instmetions specifed in the enclosed l . Notice.

in accordance with 10 CFR 2.790 of the NRC's " Rules of Practice," a copy of this letter will be l

placed in the NRC Public Document Room (PDR). If you have any questions, please contact Mr. .

Wayne D. Lanninis at 610-337-5126.

Sincerely, l .] /

Hubert J. Mil r Regional Adi inistrator Docket No. 50-245 License No. DPR-21

Enclosures:

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1. Notice of Violation -

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2. Synopsis of 01 Report 1-94-021 ,

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-T - MAY-55-1999; 00:02-- USNRC Rl/0FC OF REG ADM 6103375241 P.06/10 p ;, .

Northeast Nuclear Energy Company 5

.. . oc w/encia:

B. Kenyon, President - Generation Group L. Olnrier, Senior Vee President & Chief Nuclear Officer - .

M. Brothers, Vee President - Operations

' J. Carlin, Vee President - Human Services E. Harkness, Director- Unit 1 Operations i J. Price,' Director Unit 2 Operations . -

C. Schwarz, Director- Unit 3 operations D. Arnerine, Vme President - Engineering Services -

F. Rothen, Vee President - Nuclear Work Services

G. Hicks, Director - Nuclear Training Services (CT) l L Cuoco, Senior Nuclear Counsel

~ J. Egan, Esquire .

~ N. Burton, Esqu'.rs

' V. Juliano, Waterford Library'.

J. Buckingham, Department of Public Utility Control S. Comley, We The People

. State of Connecticut SLO Designee L First Selectmen, Town of Waterford D. Katz, Citizens Awareness Network (CAN)

' R. Bassilskis, CAN J. Block, Attomey, CAN S. Luxton, Citizens Regulatory Commission (CRC)

T. Concannon, Co4 hair, NEAC l . E. Woollacott, Co-Chairman, NEAC i.

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