ML20235U502

Forwards Check in Amount of $25,000 in Response to 870611 Submittal of Order Imposing Civil Monetary Penalty for Severity Level III Violation.Observations Re NRC Response to Bl Thomas Also Encl

ML20235U502
Person / Time
Site:	Byron
Issue date:	07/14/1987
From:	Butterfield L COMMONWEALTH EDISON CO.
To:	NRC OFFICE OF ADMINISTRATION & RESOURCES MANAGEMENT (ARM), NRC OFFICE OF ENFORCEMENT (OE)
References
3249K, EA-86-163, NUDOCS 8707220502
Download: ML20235U502 (2)

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). Commonwealth Edison'. i d AJ One Fird National Plaza, Chicago, Illinois -

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'i t $ :' =\ f Address Reply to: Post Offc) Box 767 Chicago, Illinois 60690 0767 -

July 14, 1987 l y

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.nirector, Office of Enforcement

.U.S. Nuclear' Regulatory Commission i Attn: Document' Control' Desk:

Washington, DC '20555 l

Subject:

Byron-Station Unit 1 i Civil: penalty EA 86-163 .;

NRC Docket No. 50-454 '

References'(a): June 11, 1987 letter from J.M. Taylor to J.'J. O'Connor (b): December 30, 1986 letter from B.L. Thomas to J.J. Taylor .

i Gentlemen:

Reference (a)' transmitted an Order imposing a civil monetary penalty. j and.the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's'("NRC") evaluations and conclusions

'(" Response") to Commonwealth Edison Company's (* Edison") reasons for believing-the civil penalty should not be imposed (Reference (b)). Edison has carefully considered the NRC's Response and has enclosed some observations for the record.

The Response clearly indicates that the NRC has conclusively determined to exercise'its discretion to consider this incident a Severity Level III event-and'to impose a civil penalty of $25,000. Under these circum-stances and because this: exercise of discretion is not clearly outside the range of acceptability, Edison believes that its best course is to pay the civil penalty. Accordingly, a~ check for $25,000 has been enclosed. On July 9, ,

1987, Edison was granted a one week extension on the due date for the response l

.to the Order.

Sincerely,

)(g \ l L. D. Butterfield l Nuclear Licensing Manager 1m

' Enclosures- p LJI00 B707220502 870714 7 .

PDR ADOCK 05000454 W (D 3249K G PDR Qd g;(L I l

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ENCLOSURE l

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NRC's RESPONSE ,

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A. Minimal Safety Significance The Response does not dispute Edison's conclusion that the event which actually occurred had minimal safety significance. Rather, the NRC  !

considers the event significant because the failures which led to it could  ;

have resulted in a more safety-significant event. Edison recognized that j such a potential was a proper cause for concern. Indeed, Edison instituted extensive procedures to preclude repetition of such an event. The scope of these corrective actions is material to the issue of whether they are sufficient to preclude the recurrence of a similar, possibly more safety significant event. However, the potential occurrence of such other events is immaterial to the issue of the safety significance of this event for i

which a substantial civil penalty has been imposed. Unfortunately, the analysis of safety significance confuses more general concerns about this f event with the narrow inquiry into its own safety significance, j B. Separate Violations Aggregated The Response, without explanation, implicitly rejects Edison's asssertion that violations which are unavoidable consequences of another violation, in this case Violations A and C which followed unavoidably from violation B, should not be treated independently for the purposes of aggregation to increase the Severity Level of an event. Moreover, the further aggregation of these violations with the separate event which led to violation D, an event which the NRC acknowledged was separate, was justified as necessary to " focus attention on the need for improvement in the maintenance, control and testing area". This reasoning is troublesome.

Nevertheless, the Enforcement policy provides the NRC Staff considerable discretion to accumulate violations for evaluation in the aggregate.

Because such exercises of Staff discretion have traditionally been sustained by the Commission, we have determined that the probability of successfully challenging the Staff's determination to evaluate these deficiencies collectively is too low to warrant appealing this decision.

3249K