10 CFR 50.54(q) states, in part, that licensees may make changes to their
emergency plans without Commission approval only if the changes do not decrease the effectiveness of the plans. Contrary to the above, on August 13, 2007, the licensee implemented a change to their
emergency plan, specifically the Emergency Action Levels (
EALs), which decreased the effectiveness of the approved plan. A note was added to an approved
EAL (Notice of Unusual Event HU2), which would delay declaration of an Unusual Event for fires in containment under certain conditions. This decreased the effectiveness of the
emergency plan. Since the violation affected the NRCs ability to perform its regulatory function, it was evaluated under traditional enforcement. The inspectors concluded that implementing this change was a
Severity Level IV violation based on its similarity to the example in section 6.6(d) of the
Enforcement Policy. The licensee took immediate actions to eliminate the note from the
EAL and entered the issue in their corrective action program as CR 571572.
