The team identified a non-cited violation of
10 CFR 50.55a, Codes and Standards, for the failure of the licensee to follow the
ASME Code when establishing new reference curves as corrective action to address the performance of component cooling water pump AC-3A within the low required action range of the in-service testing program. Specifically, on July 29, 2011, the licensee failed to follow
ASME Code, Subsection ISTB 6200(c), in that, the new reference curves were established without performing an analysis which included verification of the pumps operational readiness at a pump level and a system level, without determining the cause of the change in pump performance, and without an evaluation of all trends indicated by available data. The team confirmed that while the pump was
inoperable from an in-service testing perspective during this period, required surveillance testing showed that pump flows and differential pressures were still sufficient to meet the assumptions used in the Fort Calhoun Station safety analysis. This issue has been entered into the corrective action program as Condition Report CR 2013-04010. This performance deficiency is more than minor, and therefore a finding, because it is associated with the human performance attribute of the
Mitigating Systems Cornerstone, and affected the cornerstone objective to ensure the availability, reliability, and capability of systems that respond to
initiating events to prevent undesirable consequences. Since this finding was discovered during plant shutdown and involved plant equipment needed during shutdown conditions, the team used Manual Chapter 0609, Appendix G, Shutdown Operations
Significance Determination Process, and determined the finding to have very low safety significance (Green) because the finding did not increase the likelihood of a loss of
reactor coolant system inventory, the finding did not degrade the licensees ability to terminate a leak path or add
reactor coolant system inventory when needed, and the finding did not degrade the licensees ability to recover
decay heat removal once it was lost. This finding has a cross-cutting aspect in the area of problem identification and resolution associated with the corrective action program component because the licensee failed to fully evaluate the degraded performance of component cooling water pump AC-3A to ensure that resolutions correctly addressed causes of the degraded performance and the cumulative impact on system operational readiness
