NRC: Millstone Took Longer Than "The Norm" To Correct 2011 Problem

This article was written by Waterford Patch Local Editor Paul Petrone.

Tuesday, federal regulators announced that Millstone Power Station was no longer getting more scrutiny than what is deemed normal for a power plant after a September inspection where it showed it corrected an issue from February of 2011. 

In February of 2011, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission discovered a “white finding” – which means a problem that causes a low to moderate safety risk – at Waterford's Millstone Power Station after an operator turned a dial the wrong way, and increased the power to Unit 2 instead of cutting it off. In November of 2011, Millstone made a similar mistake, Ronald Bellamy of the NRC said. 

Millstone went back, addressed the issue and proved to the NRC in September that they had indeed corrected the problem, Bellamy said. The power plant’s Unit 2 nuclear reactor was receiving a higher level of scrutiny by the NRC following the incident, but with Millstone proving they have corrected the problem, the NRC will go back to its normal level of inspection, Bellamy said. 

“That’s where we want to be as a licensee,” Millstone spokesman Ken Holt said. “That is a reflection of our performance over the last year.” 

Problem 

In February of 2011, a Unit 2 operator turned a dial the wrong way at the Waterford nuclear power plant, which increased the power of the reactor instead of cutting it off, Nuclear Energy Advisory Council President J.W. “Bill” Sheehan said Tuesday. Perhaps more troubling, no one at the plant immediately realized there was a problem, Sheehan said. 

The NRC issued Millstone a “white finding,” which means the plant made an error that caused a low to moderate risk, and with that finding came additional scrutiny by the NRC. Bellamy said that out of the 104 power plants in the United States, only 16 are dealing with findings of that significance.  

Millstone took the operators responsible for the error off of their regular duties and trained them on the simulator, Holt said. However, in November of 2011, a similar problem happened again, Bellamy said. 

“Obviously, we missed something in our corrective actions from our first event,” Holt said. “We had to look at our training program.” 

Holt said the training programs were redone with “a new focus.” That proved effective, as the power plant demonstrated to the NRC in September it had fully understood and corrected the mistake, and the regulatory agency went back to its standard level of inspection on Unit 2, Bellamy said. 

Overall, it took Millstone more than a year to fix the problem, Bellamy said. James Krafty, the NRC’s Unit 2 Residential Inspector, said that taking more than a year to fix a problem is “not the norm,” as it is longer than usual. 

2012 Performance 

In 2012, Bellamy said the plant operated without any notable incidents. He said the NRC deemed that for the past year, Dominion operated the plant safely.  

“They have corrected that finding and transitioned back (to standard operating procedure),” Bellamy said. 

Standing operating procedure still comes with many hours of inspection by the NRC. Three NRC inspectors are stationed at the Waterford power plant, and they inspected Millstone for 7,300 in 2012, Bellamy said.