10 CFR 50.54 Conditions of Licenses, paragraph (q), requires, in part, that licensees maintain an
emergency plan that meets the planning standards in
10 CFR 50.47(b) Emergency Plans.
10 CFR 50.47(b)(4) requires use of a standard emergency classification and action level scheme. Contrary to the above, on March 20, 2013,
FENOC identified that existing instrumentation was inadequate to assess and determine if abnormal radiological conditions existed such that the Emergency Action Level (
EAL) declaration process would not declare an Alert or a Site Area Emergency in an accurate and timely manner. Specifically, the maximum readable values for the containment elevated release radiation monitor low-range channel (RM-1VS-110 Channel 5) and for the
cooling tower vent radiation monitor mid-range channel (RM-1GW-109 Channel 7) were less than the
EAL threshold values specified for an Alert and Site Area Emergency, respectively, in
FENOCs EAL scheme.
FENOC entered this issue into their corrective action program as CR-2013-04092. The inspectors determined this finding to be of very low safety significance (Green) in accordance with
IMC 0609, Attachment 4, Initial Characterization of Findings, and Section 5.4 of
IMC 0609 Appendix B,
Emergency Preparedness SDP because the finding was an example of an ineffective
EAL, such that an Alert would not be declared and an example of an ineffective
EAL, such that a Site Area Emergency would be declared in a degraded manner.
