Westinghouse Gets Go-Ahead To Restart US Fuel Fabrication Facility

21 Oct (NucNet): Westinghouse Electric Company has received authorisation from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restart conversion area operations at its Columbia fuel fabrication facility in South Carolina after the area was shut down in July 2016 due to safety concerns over a ventilation scrubber. In May 2016, during an annual maintenance shutdown, plant employees discovered an accumulation of uranium-bearing material in a scrubber system, which is designed to remove unwanted material from a number of plant processes. There were no safety related consequences as a result of the accumulation of the material, but the potential for such consequences may have existed, the NRC said at the time. The NRC launched an inspection to review the issue and outlined a series of corrective actions that needed to be carried out before operations involving the scrubber system could be resumed. Those actions included performing a “root cause analysis” investigation of the event and installing physical modifications to the system. The NRC said Westinghouse would train personnel operating and maintaining the system, review other potentially affected systems, and retain an external nuclear criticality safety expert to oversee such functions. The facility is part of Westinghouse’s nuclear fuel and components manufacturing business and is one of the largest facilities of its kind in the world. The site houses commercial nuclear fuel manufacturing facilities, product engineering and testing laboratories, and fuel marketing and contract administration functions.