Press Release-III-07-023, NRC Conducts Special Inspection at Fermi Plant Due to Pipe Damage

Press Release-III-07-023: NRC Conducts Special Inspection at Fermi Plant Due to Pipe Damage

ML072890370
Person / Time
Site:	Fermi
Issue date:	10/16/2007
From:	Viktoria Mitlyng Office of Public Affairs Region II
To:
Mitlyng, V
Category:Press Release
References
Press Release-III-07-023
Download: ML072890370 (2)

Text

NRC NEWS U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Region III 2443 Warrenville Road Lisle IL 60532 No. III-07-023 October 16, 2007

Contact:

Viktoria Mitlyng E-Mail: opa3@nrc.gov Phone: 630-829-9663 Web site: www.nrc.gov NRC CONDUCTS SPECIAL INSPECTION AT FERMI PLANT DUE TO PIPE DAMAGE The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting a special inspection at the Fermi Nuclear Power Station to further review recently identified damage on steamline pipes. The Fermi Plant, located in Newport, Mich., is owned and operated by the Detroit Edison Company.

On October 11, 2007, during a refueling outage, plant personnel discovered a small unexpected hole and several indentations on steamline pipes. Under certain circumstances, these pipes would relieve reactor pressure. Even if the pipes had to be used for this purpose, there would have been no radiation released to the environment.

The plant remains shutdown in a stable condition. Appropriate safety systems have been and continue to be available.

The utility has been conducting a review of what caused damage to the pipes. Tampering was initially considered as one of the potential causes. This led the utility to declare an Unusual Event, the lowest level of emergency in the NRC four-level emergency classification system.

On October 12, the utility concluded that there was no evidence of tampering and exited from the Unusual Event.

Based on interviews and reviews of maintenance activities, the utilitys preliminary conclusion is that the damage occurred during the removal of pipe insulation.

The NRC began monitoring the utilitys activities as soon as the agency was informed of the situation. The NRC reviewed activities at the plant around-the-clock from the Region III Incident Response Center, in Lisle, Ill., by resident inspectors and other regional inspectors at the plant while the plant was in an Unusual Event. The NRC continued close monitoring at the plant after the Unusual Event was exited.

On October 15, the NRC dispatched a 4-person Special Inspection team to continue this review.

The goal of the Special Inspection is to review the facts and circumstances of the incident. The inspection will focus on the events that led to the pipes being damaged; the review of the utilitys Emergency Plan in the context of security-related events; an assessment of the plants response to a potential security issue; the plants immediate and long-term corrective actions; and a review of the utilitys evaluation of the issue.

James Caldwell, regional administrator for Region III said, The plant remains safe and there is no threat to public health. However, the NRC needs to understand how and why there was damage to the piping and evaluate the plants response to the event to gain confidence that such situations will not occur in the future.

The duration of the special inspection cannot be determined in advance, but is expected to last approximately one week. The Inspection Report will be issued 4 to 6 weeks after the inspection is completed. The report will be available from the Region III Office and in the NRCs online document library at:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/web-based.html NRC news releases are available through a free list serve 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 Web site.