U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Region III Office of Public Affairs

801 Warrenville Road, Lisle, IL 60532-4351

NEWS ANNOUNCEMENT: RIII-97-96 November 10, 1997

CONTACT: Jan Strasma 630/829-9663

Angela Greenman 630/829-9662

E-mail: opa3@nrc.gov

NRC TO HOLD PREDECISIONAL ENFORCEMENT CONFERENCE

WITH DETROIT EDISON COMPANY ON AN APPARENT VIOLATION AT FERMI

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet

November 18 with representatives of Detroit Edison Company for a

predecisional enforcement conference on an apparent violation at

the Fermi Nuclear Power Plant. The facility is near Monroe,

Michigan.

The meeting will start at 10:00 a.m. in the Third Floor

Conference Room of the NRC Region III Office, 801 Warrenville

Road, Lisle, Illinois. It is open to public observation. NRC

officials will be available at its conclusion to answer questions

from the news media and other interested observers.

The discussion will focus on Detroit Edison’s apparent

inadequate evaluation of the safety implications when it changed

procedures affecting the emergency equipment cooling system.

This system supplies cooling water to equipment that would be

needed in certain accident conditions.

NRC’s concerns relate to an analysis done by Detroit Edison

in 1995, when it concluded that--because of the need for

additional cooling water during hot weather conditions--this

cooling water system could be used during normal plant operations

to augment a non-safety related cooling water system. The

utility made this change in the plant’s formal design documents.

Last year, NRC staff discovered a potential accident

scenario in which this cooling system would not provide enough

cooling water to emergency shutdown equipment. Under this

scenario, non-safety systems would continue to be cooled by this

cooling system instead of being automatically disconnected, thus

preventing the emergency equipment from being adequately cooled.

As a result, Detroit Edison developed procedures which

required, among other things, that plant operators manually

separate the non-safety systems during this accident scenario.

During an inspection in August through October, NRC

questioned the utility’s analysis. Inspectors noted that both

the use of the cooling system during normal operations and the
procedure changes requiring operator action resulted in new

safety questions that needed to be formally reviewed. In an

apparent violation of NRC requirements, Detroit Edison apparently

failed to identify these unreviewed safety questions during its

own safety evaluation and subsequent procedural changes.

NRC requires that new safety questions arising from changes

to a facility to be submitted to the NRC for evaluation and

possible amendments to the plant’s license.

The decision to hold an enforcement conference does not mean

the NRC has determined that a violation has occurred or that

enforcement action will be taken. Rather, the purpose is to

discuss apparent violations, their causes and safety

significance; to provide the licensee an opportunity to point out

any errors that may have been made in the NRC inspection report;

and to enable the company to outline its proposed corrective

actions.

No decision on the apparent violations or any contemplated

enforcement action, such as a fine, will be made at this

conference. Those decisions will be made by senior NRC officials

at a later date.

####