NRC NEWS

 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 

 801 Warrenville Road

 Lisle, IL 60532

 Web Site: www.nrc.gov

No. III-02-038 June 20, 2002

CONTACT: Jan Strasma (630) 829-9663 E-mail: opa3@nrc.gov

Viktoria Mitlyng (630) 829-9662

NRC TO MEET WITH NUCLEAR MANAGEMENT CO. TO DISCUSS SAFETY

SIGNIFICANCE ISSUE AT POINT BEACH PLANT

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet June 25 in Lisle, Illinois, with

representatives of Nuclear Management Company to discuss the safety significance of an inadequate

critique of two issues during an emergency preparedness exercise at the Point Beach Nuclear Power

Station. The two-reactor facility is located near Two Rivers, Wisconsin.

The NRC staff has completed a preliminary assessment of the problem and concluded that it is

of “low to moderate” safety significance. The meeting, called a Regulatory Conference, will seek the

utility’s evaluation of its significance.

The meeting will be held at 10 a.m. (CDT) in the NRC’s Region III Office, 801 Warrenville

Road, Lisle. Visitors should report to the Second Floor reception area. The public is invited to observe

the business portion of the meeting and will have an opportunity to ask questions of the NRC staff

before the meeting is adjourned.

NRC inspectors determined that the Point Beach staff offered inadequate critiques of two issues

during an emergency preparedness exercise held on February 12. In the first instance, Point Beach staff

offered a positive evaluation of participants’ Protective Action Recommendation (PAR) to offsite

government officials, while the NRC inspectors identified questions the staff’s critique had not properly

evaluated. In the second instance, NRC inspectors disagreed with the Point Beach staff’s positive

evaluation of the participants’ decision making on the simulated removal of non-essential personnel,

who were not members of the current shift of emergency responders, from the site.

Emergency preparedness exercises are held to identify performance and procedural deficiencies

through a critique process to ensure that corrective action takes place before these problems can occur

during an actual emergency and have an adverse reaction on public health and safety. To make safety

drills effective, the plant staff’s critiques of emergency preparedness drills must be thorough and selfcritical.

Under its safety significance determination process, NRC officials classify certain conditions at

nuclear power plants as being one of four colors which delineate increasing levels of safety significance,

beginning with green and progressing to white, yellow or red.

The NRC’s preliminary evaluation determined the Point Beach emergency exercise evaluation

problem to be a “white” finding. Information presented by the utility in the Regulatory Conference will

be used by the NRC staff, along with its inspection findings, to determine the final safety significance of

the problem.

“White” inspection findings can lead to additional NRC inspections.
The details of the NRC inspection findings are discussed in Inspection Report 2002-04 which is

available online in the NRC’s electronic reading room. This report -- with the accession number

ML021210488 -- may be viewed in the NRC’s ADAMS document system, accessible at 

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. The final significance determination will be available on

the NRC web site at http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/regulatory/enforcement/current.html/reactors. 

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