What were the issues and technology involved?
NRC finds Palisades Nuclear Plant safety violation involving monitoring
workers for radiation
on December 11, 2014 at 1:09 PM, updated December 11, 2014 at 1:10 PM
<http://media.mlive.com/kalamazoogazette/photo/2014/08/21/-f057ef043130a22d
.jpg> Palisades Nuclear Plant in Covert Township, Mich., shown in May
2014.MLive file
COVERT TOWNSHIP, MI Federal regulators found a safety violation involving
monitoring of workers for radiation exposure at the Palisades nuclear power
plant <http://topics.mlive.com/tag/palisades-nuclear-plant/index.html> in
Covert Township <http://topics.mlive.com/tag/covert/index.html> early this
year, according to a report.
Workers at Palisades were performing equipment maintenance during a
refueling outage in February and March, but followed an inadequate procedure
to measure how much radiation workers received, said Viktoria Mitlyng,
senior public affairs officer with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Mitlyng said no workers were overexposed to radiation nor were workers in
any danger. The plant did not use proper methodology to measure the
radiation levels workers received.
"This is more of a control and exposure issue," Mitlyng said.
Mitlyng said if Palisades does not contest the finding it becomes final and
the plant's safety rating would be downgraded, requiring additional safety
oversights.
The plant received the findings earlier this month, said Lindsay Rose,
Palisades spokeswoman.
Rose said the plant tried to use a technology to more accurately monitor
workers' radiation exposure, but did not implement the technology correctly.
"We are very confident no workers exceeded federal safety limits," Rose said
of radiation exposure.
Meanwhile, David Lochbaum, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists'
Nuclear Safety Project, expressed concern Thursday about a report recently
released that showed NRC inspectors examined 20 components at Palisades and
found 10 low-level safety violations. Lochbaum said it is alarming that the
problems were found by NRC inspectors and not first by Entergy workers.
"You have to do more than fix these violations," Lochbaum said, adding that
to prevent recurrences requires that Palisades operators get to the root of
the problems.
Regards,
Sandy
Retired, Consultant
