2 Aug (NucNet): The Dresden nuclear power plant in northern Illinois will receive additional oversight from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) after an inspection finding involving the plant’s failure to establish a procedure that would effectively address the possibility of flooding.
The NRC said the finding was identified by NRC inspectors during one of the agency’s post-Fukushima reviews of US reactors.
The NRC uses a colour-coded system to classify inspection findings, which range from green, for an issue of very low safety significance, to red, for a finding of high safety significance. In this case, the NRC determined the inspection finding to be white, meaning it has a low to moderate safety significance.
NRC inspectors said plant operator Exelon Generation Company failed to establish a procedure addressing all of the effects of flooding on the plant. Specifically, the existing procedure did not account for an effective way to add water to the reactor if the plant had a leak resulting in the lowering of the coolant level in the reactor during a severe flooding event. This situation could cause the coolant water in the reactor to become dangerously low, the NRC said.
The NRCC said the issue is not a current safety concern because Exelon has revised the procedure and is now in compliance with NRC requirements.
Dresden has two commercially operational boiling water reactor (BWR) units and one BWR that was shut down permanently in 1978.
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To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Dalton at david.dalton@nucnet.org
