Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 55.49, Integrity of examinations and tests, requires that facility licensees shall not engage in any activity that compromises the integrity of an examination. The integrity of a test or examination is considered compromised if any activity, regardless of intent, affected, or, but for detection, would have affected the equitable and consistent administration of the test or examination. Contrary to the above, on April 30, 2013, a compromise of an annual operating test scenario occurred. An operator was performing a
job performance measure behind the simulator while another group was simultaneously performing a dynamic simulator scenario. The group in the simulator made an announcement on the Public Address system which was heard by the operator performing the
job performance measure. This divulged the nature of the major casualty in the scenario, which the operator was scheduled to be evaluated on later in the day. The licensee recognized the compromise and substituted a different scenario for this operator as a result, and documented the deficiency in Notification 50560089. The compromise of an operating test scenario is a violation. The violation is more than minor because it adversely impacted the human performance attribute of the
mitigating systems cornerstone objective of ensuring the availability, reliability, and capability of systems that respond to
initiating events to prevent undesirable consequences. Additionally, if left uncorrected, the violation could have become more significant in that allowing a licensed operator to return to the control room without a valid demonstration of appropriate knowledge on the annual operating test could be a precursor to a more significant event if latent knowledge deficiencies went unidentified. Using
NRC Manual Chapter 0609,
Significance Determination Process, Phase 1, worksheets, and the corresponding Appendix I, Licensed Operator Requalification
Significance Determination Process, the finding was determined to have very low safety significance because, although a compromise of the integrity of an operating test scenario occurred, the compromised scenario was replaced before it was administered and therefore did not affect the equitable and consistent administration of the test.
