NRC NEWS

U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Office of Public Affairs Region III

2443 Warrenville Road

Lisle IL 60532

Site: www.nrc.gov

Blog: http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov

No. III-11-032

Contact: Viktoria Mitlyng (630) 829-9662

 Prema Chandrathil (630) 829-9663

August 26, 2011

E-Mail: OPA3.RegionIII@nrc.gov 

NRC CITES PERRY NUCLEAR PLANT FOR

ISSUES INVOLVING RADIOLOGICAL CONTROLS

Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued violations of low to moderate safety significance to Perry

Nuclear Power Plant which will result in additional NRC oversight. The plant is operated by FirstEnergy 

Nuclear Operating Co. and is located in Perry, Ohio, about 35 miles northeast of Cleveland.

The NRC evaluates a nuclear plant’s performance with a color coded process that classifies 

regulatory findings as green, white, yellow or red, in order of increasing safety significance. After 

consideration of the information the NRC staff has characterized the inspection finding as “white” or as 

having a low to moderate safety significance.

The violations involved the failure of Perry personnel to make adequate preparations for 

retracting a radioactive source range monitor from the reactor core that could have resulted in an 

overexposure to workers performing this activity. A source range monitor measures nuclear reactions 

during start up, low power operations and shutdown conditions. 

On April 21, while four workers were retracting the monitor from the reactor core they detected a

rapid increase in radiation levels. They stopped the activity and immediately left the area. At the time, the 

plant was shut down for a refueling outage. 

A NRC Special Inspection team was dispatched to the plant on April 25, to review the 

circumstances surrounding the incident and impact on the workers.

“Even though there was no overexposure to the workers, no impact on the safety of the plant or 

the public, plant staff failed to conduct an adequate radiological evaluation of the activity and to 

implement necessary controls to eliminate a potential for overexposure ” said Region III Administrator 

Mark Satorius. “We have inspected the plant’s actions to make sure plant staff are prepared to conduct 

activities in accordance with safety requirements and we will conduct additional inspections to ensure 

plant activities continue to be performed safely.”

In addition to the source range monitor violations Perry has had other incidents involving the 

same area of weaknesses with the control of radiation exposure to certain workers in the plant. Taken 

together, these occurrences will result in significantly increased NRC oversight. The NRC will conduct 

further comprehensive team inspections to look at the plant’s ability to assess and plan for activities 

involving elevated radiation levels for workers and their ability to identify and resolve problems. 
The utility workers will also have to understand why these issues occurred, develop corrective 

and preventive actions, and implement them. The NRC will inspect Perry’s efforts in this area and Perry’s 

evaluation as to whether deficiencies in the area of safety culture caused or significantly contributed to the 

issues.

The final significance letter issued to Perry with more information will be available under the 

accession number ML112371689 and the NRC inspection report detailing the finding is available under

ML11187A121. Both can be retrieved through the ADAMS at the NRC website.

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