Press Release-II-11-041, NRC Schedules Regulatory Conference to Discuss Apparent Violation at Farley Nuclear Plant

Press Release-II-11-041: NRC Schedules Regulatory Conference to Discuss Apparent Violation at Farley Nuclear Plant

ML11187A120
Person / Time
Site:	Farley
Issue date:	07/06/2011
From:	Office of Public Affairs Region II
To:
Category:Press Release
References
Press Release-II-11-041
Download: ML11187A120 (1)

Text

NRC NEWS U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region II 245 Peachtree Center Ave., NE, Suite 1200 Atlanta, GA 30303-1257 Site: www.nrc.gov Blog: http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov No: II-11-041 July 6, 2011 CONTACT: Roger Hannah (404) 997-4417 E-mail: OPA2.Resource@nrc.gov Joey Ledford (404) 997-4416 NRC SCHEDULES REGULATORY CONFERENCE TO DISCUSS APPARENT VIOLATION AT FARLEY NUCLEAR PLANT The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has scheduled a regulatory conference with officials of Southern Nuclear Operating Co. on July 12 to discuss an apparent violation of plant procedures that led to a fire in the control room of the Farley Nuclear Plant.

NRC and Southern Nuclear officials will discuss the significance of the inspection finding, which involved the failure to maintain the proper configuration of a system that supplies oil to the reactor coolant pumps. This condition resulted in an electrical short causing a fire in a switch on the Unit 1 main control board on Nov. 10, 2010 when that unit was not in operation. The fire was extinguished within approximately one minute. The risk was to both units since the plant has a shared control room.

The regulatory conference is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. EDT in the NRCs Region II office, located at 245 Peachtree Center Ave., NE., Suite 1200, in Atlanta. The public is invited to observe and NRC officials will be available to answer questions.

The NRC evaluates regulatory performance at commercial nuclear power plants with a color-coded system which classifies findings as green, white, yellow or red, in increasing order of safety significance. The NRCs preliminary evaluation determined that the violation at Farley was white, which means it has a low to moderate safety significance.

No decisions on the final safety significance or possible enforcement action will be made at the conference. Those decisions will be made by NRC officials at a later time.

The NRC inspection report in which the apparent violation is documented is publicly available online at www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. The number to access the report is ML111590912.

News releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address:

http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC homepage at www.nrc.gov also offers a SUBSCRIBE link. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's website.