nuclear-news

Workers falsified fire inspection records at SC nuclear plant, feds say, The State, BY SAMMY FRETWELL, FEBRUARY 24, 2020 

In a Feb. 13 letter to plant owner Dominion Energy, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the utility violated federal rules by failing to ensure fire safety checks were done as required.

Dominion did not respond to questions about whether the two contract employees still worked at the power plant near Columbia. But a federal official said they didn’t get the job done.

“They provided inaccurate information,’’ NRC spokesman Roger Hannah said.

An inspection report accompanying the agency’s Feb. 13 letter says federal inspectors found problems with records used to document that workers had made fire safety checks inside an auxiliary building at the Summer nuclear site in Fairfield County.

Workers were supposed to conduct regular fire watch checks every 20 minutes while fire suppression systems in a section of the plant were shut down for repairs.

“Inspectors reviewed the completed logs for Sept. 26, 2019, and discovered multiple discrepancies when compared to the observations that the inspectors made’’ in the auxiliary building, the inspection report said. “The fire watch log readings were recorded as being completed at times and locations when the NRC inspectors observed that fire watches had not been conducted.’’………

The agency’s Level 4 violation notice follows a radioactive water leak in 2019 that prompted Dominion to shut the plant down while repairs were made. The company said the water came in contact with reactor fuel, but never escaped the plant’s containment building. The leak occurred in piping that connects the nuclear reactor with steam generators, The State reported last year. ….. https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article240486456.html