IR 05000254/2003001

Annual Assessment Letter - Quad Cities Nuclear Power Station. (Report 05000254-03-001; 05000265-03-001)

ML030640482
Person / Time
Site:	Quad Cities
Issue date:	03/04/2003
From:	Ring M NRC/RGN-III/DRP/RPB1
To:	Skolds J Exelon Generation Co
References
IR-03-001
Download: ML030640482 (8)

Text

rch 4, 2003

SUBJECT:

ANNUAL ASSESSMENT LETTER - QUAD CITIES NUCLEAR POWER STATION (REPORT 50-254/03-01; 50-265/03-01)

Dear Mr. Skolds:

On February 11, 2003, the NRC staff completed its end-of-cycle plant performance assessment of the Quad Cities Nuclear Power Station. The end-of-cycle review involved the participation of all technical divisions in evaluating performance indicators (PIs) for the most recent quarter and inspection results for the period from January 1, 2002, through December 31, 2002. The purpose of this letter is to inform you of our assessment of your safety performance during this period and our plans for future inspections at your facility so that you will have an opportunity to prepare for these inspections and to inform us of any planned inspections that may conflict with your plant activities.

Overall, Quad Cities operated in a manner that preserved public health and safety and fully met all cornerstone objectives. Plant performance for the most recent quarter, as well as for the first three quarters of the assessment cycle, was within the Licensee Response Column of the NRCs Action Matrix, based on all inspection findings being classified as having very low safety significance (Green) and all PIs indicating performance at a level requiring no additional NRC oversight (Green). Therefore, we plan to conduct only baseline inspections at your facility through March 31, 2004.

Additionally, the staff has identified a substantive cross-cutting issue in the area of human performance involving a number of findings. Examples include the catastrophic failure of the 2B control rod drive pump due to improper setting of a constant level oiler, starting up Unit 2 with the reactor head vent isolation valves open, failure to recognize that the Unit 2 residual heat removal system was inoperable for several months, and inadvertent isolation of the Unit 1 reactor water cleanup system while being used for decay heat removal. Notably, most of the examples occurred during plant outage periods. We understand that you have made human performance a focus area for improvement at Quad Cities. We will continue to monitor human performance through the baseline program and will discuss this issue with you at our end-of-cycle meeting.

The enclosed inspection plan details the inspections scheduled through March 31, 2004. The inspection plan is provided to minimize the resource impact on your staff and to allow for scheduling conflicts and personnel availability to be resolved in advance of inspector arrival onsite. Routine resident inspections are not listed due to their ongoing and continuous nature.

The inspections in the last 6 months of the inspection plan are tentative and may be revised at the mid-cycle review meeting.

As you are aware, since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the NRC has issued several Orders and threat advisories to enhance security capabilities and improve guard force readiness.

We have conducted inspections to review your implementation of these requirements and have monitored your actions in response to changing threat conditions. For calendar year 2003, we plan to continue these inspections, conduct portions of the security baseline inspection program, as well as perform additional inspections to evaluate your compliance with new requirements that may be ordered. Based on our final determinations in this regard, we will notify you of any inspection plan changes.

In accordance with 10 CFR 2.790 of the NRCs Rules of Practice, a copy of this letter and its enclosure will be made available electronically for public inspection in the NRC Public Document Room or from the Publicly Available Records (PARS) component of NRC's document system (ADAMS). ADAMS is accessible from the NRC Web site at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html (the Public Electronic Reading Room).

If circumstances arise which cause us to change this inspection plan, we will contact you to discuss the change as soon as possible. Please contact me at 630/829-9703 with any questions you may have regarding this letter or the inspection plan.

Sincerely,

/RA/

Mark A. Ring, Chief Reactor Projects Branch 1 Division of Reactor Projects Docket Nos. 50-254; 50-265 License Nos. DPR-29; DPR-30 Enclosure: Quad Cities Inspection/Activity Plan See Attached Distribution