NRC NEWS

 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

 2443 Warrenville Road

 Lisle IL 60532

 Web Site: http://www.nrc.gov E-mail: opa3@nrc.gov

No. III-06-009 March 15, 2006

CONTACT: Jan Strasma (630) 829-9663 

Viktoria Mitlyng (630) 829-9662 

NRC TO DISCUSS 2005 PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW

SAFETY CULTURE SURVEY FOR POINT BEACH NUCLEAR POWER PLANT

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with representatives of Nuclear

Management Co. on Thursday, March 23, to discuss the agency’s assessment of safety performance for

last year at the Point Beach Nuclear Power Plant. The two-reactor facility is located at Two Rivers,

Wis.

The NRC staff and Nuclear Management Co. representatives will also meet separately to

review the results of the company’s safety culture survey of the staff at the Point Beach plant.

Both meetings, which are open to public observation, will be held in the Two Creeks Town

Hall, 5128 E. Tapawingo Rd. The Town Hall is at the intersection of Tapawingo Road and Highway

42 north of Two Rivers. 

The annual performance meeting is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., and the safety culture meeting

is scheduled for 1 p.m. Before each meeting is adjourned, NRC staff will be available to answer

questions from the public.

“The Point Beach plant continues to operate safely,” said James Caldwell, NRC Regional

Administrator. “While it has been under heightened NRC scrutiny since 2003 as a result of significant

safety issues with a backup cooling system, we have seem improvements in performance during the

past year," he added. 

“The performance meeting will provide an opportunity for a discussion of our annual

assessment of safety performance with the company and with local officials and residents who live

near the plant,” Mr. Caldwell continued. “Our goal is to explain the NRC oversight process and make

as much information as possible available to the public regarding our regulation of these facilities.”

The afternoon meeting will cover a late 2004 survey of plant employees to evaluate their

attitudes toward safety and ability to raise safety issues. Nuclear Management Co. officials will

discuss their actions to address issues raised in the survey.

In previous years, the NRC has noted performance issues at Point Beach in the areas of

Problem Identification and Resolution – how the plant staff finds, evaluates, and corrects problems –

and in human performance.
NRC inspections during 2005 determined that the plant had made improvements in both of

these areas, called “cross-cutting issues.” The number and significance of Human Performance related

events declined during 2005, and an in-depth NRC inspection of Problem Identification and Resolution

activities showed improvements in this “cross-cutting” area. As a result, the NRC will reduce its focus

on these two areas of past concern.

A letter sent from the NRC Region III Office to plant officials addresses the performance of the

plant during the period and will serve as the basis for the meeting discussion. It is available on the

NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/poin_2005q4.pdf .

Routine inspections are performed by two NRC Resident Inspectors assigned to the plant and

by inspection specialists from the Region III Office in Lisle, Ill., and the agency’s headquarters in

Rockville, Md. Among the areas of plant operations to be inspected this year by NRC specialists are

emergency preparedness, radioactive material handling and transportation, problem identification and

resolution, radiation protection, and fire protection.

Current performance information for Point Beach is available on the NRC’s web site at: (Unit

1) http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/POIN1/poin1_chart.html and (Unit 2)

http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/POIN2/poin2_chart.html .

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