The
NRC last week issued “mid-cycle assessment letters” to the nation’s
nuclear power plants, a semi-annual report card on their performance.
It’s very much like the annual assessments we issued and
blogged about last March – consider it a mid-term grade, covering the first two quarters of the year, through June 30.
Looking
at the big picture, 96 of the nation’s 104 reactors were in the two
highest performance categories. Here’s how the entire fleet performed:
•
Sixty-two reactors fully met all safety and security performance
objectives and were inspected by NRC using the normal “baseline”
inspection program.
•
Thirty-four reactors were assessed as needing to resolve one or two
items of low safety significance. For this performance level, regulatory
oversight includes additional inspection and attention to follow up on
corrective actions. These plants are Braidwood 2 (Ill.); Browns Ferry 2
and 3 (Ala.); Brunswick 1 and 2 (N.C.); Callaway (Mo.); Calvert Cliffs 1
and 2 (Md.); Crystal River 3 (Fla.); Farley 1 and 2 (Ala.); Fermi 2
(Ohio); Limerick 2 (Pa.); Millstone 2 (Conn.); North Anna 1 and 2 (Va.);
Palo Verde 1, 2 and 3 (Ariz.); Pilgrim (Mass.); Point Beach 1 and 2
(Wis.); Prairie Island 1 and 2 (Minn.); River Bend (La.); San Onofre 2
and 3 (Calif.); Seabrook (N.H.); Susquehanna 1 (Pa.); Turkey Point 3 and
4 (Fla.); Waterford (La.); Watts Bar (Tenn.) and Wolf Creek (Kans.).
•
Six nuclear reactors were in the third performance category with a
degraded level of performance. For this category, regulatory oversight
includes more NRC inspections, senior management attention and oversight
focused on the cause of the degraded performance. These plants were:
Hope Creek (N.J.); Palisades (Mich.); Perry 1 (Ohio); Saint Lucie 1
(Fla.) and Salem 1 and 2 (N.J.).
•
One reactor, Browns Ferry 1 in Alabama, is in the fourth performance
category and requires increased oversight due to a safety finding of
high significance, which will include additional inspections to confirm
the plant’s performance issues are being addressed.
•
Fort Calhoun plant in Nebraska is in an extended shutdown with
significant performance issues and is currently under a special NRC
oversight program distinct from the normal performance levels. Therefore
the plant will not receive a mid-cycle assessment letter.
Comparing
these lists to the 2011 annual assessments issued last March, there is
an increase in the number of plants now at the second performance level,
requiring some additional NRC oversight – from 11 at the end of
December to 34 at the end of June.
Looked at in the historical context, however, the number is not particularly high. Several factors can influence this:
• Recent plant performance has been quite good, with a greater number of plants than usual in Column 1.
•
We recently reintegrated the security cornerstone into the action
matrix, and this resulted in a dozen plants “shifting” into the second
performance level on the public Website even though they were already in
the second performance level of the previously separate security
assessment program. That’s about half the increase.
•
Plants tend to move back and forth between the first two performance
categories as issues are identified and then resolved. Remember, these
are issues of LOW safety significance, and the Reactor Oversight Process
is designed to identify and resolve such issues before they become
major problems.
In
fact, since June, seven plants have resolved their issues and
transitioned back into the highest-performing category. These are
Callaway, Calvert 1 and 2, Crystal River 3, Limerick 2, Waterford, and
Watts Bar. So just since the end of June, the numbers have improved. The
NRC will continue to assess plant performance and respond with the
appropriate supplemental inspections as dictated by the assessment
process.
The
NRC routinely provides changes to information on each plant’s current
performance and posts the latest information as it becomes available to
the
action matrix summary
. The mid-cycle assessment letters sent to each operating reactor licensee are also available through the NRC’s Web page on the
Reactor Oversight Process. Mid-cycle construction assessments for new reactors at the
Vogtle and Summer sites and at
Watts Bar 2 are also on the NRC website.
Every
six months each plant receives either a mid-cycle or annual assessment
letter along with an NRC inspection plan. This year’s mid-cycle
assessments also include security findings after the recent
reintegration of the security cornerstone into the Reactor Oversight
Process action matrix.
These
assessments document the NRC’s efforts to ensure the safety of the
nation’s nuclear power plants and demonstrate our commitment to making
this information available to the public in a clear and
easy-to-understand manner.
Kevin M. Roche, P.E.
Operating Reactor Performance Assessment Lead
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