International inspectors are visiting a rugged Japanese bay region so thick with reactors it is dubbed "Nuclear Alley," where residents remain deeply conflicted as Japan moves to restart plants idled after the Fukushima disaster.

(Picture: Kansai Electric Power Co's Ohi nuclear power plant No. 3, right, and No. 4 reactors are seen in Ohi, Fukui prefecture, north of Tokyo.)

The local economy depends heavily on the industry, and the national government hopes that "stress tests" at idled plants _ the first of which is being reviewed this week by the International Atomic Energy Agency _ will show they are safe enough to switch back on.

The New York Times

When the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future was established two years ago, after the Obama administration killed a proposed repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, one of the items on its agenda was to determine whether spent nuclear fuel was in fact waste.

Among advocates of nuclear power, considerable disagreement exists about whether the spent fuel can be...

by Bob Meyer

Read the NRC assessment of Operator actions. Good lessons learned. For instance, the Operators did not recognizing trends for several hours.

On November 16, 2011, at 2:12 a.m., operators at Brunswick Nuclear Plant Unit 2 calculated a drywell floor drain leak rate of 5.88 gpm following several hours of gradually rising floor drain leakage during a plant startup. Technical Specification 3.4.4 A was entered requiring floor drain leakage to be restored below 5 gpm within 8 hours. At 2:53 a.m., the calculated leak rate was 10.11 gpm. At 3:01 a.m., a Notice of Unusual Event (NOUE) was declared for unidentified leakage exceeding 10 gpm. At 3:09 a.m., the licensee initiated a manual reactor scram from approximately 7 percent power. Following the scram, reactor pressure was decreased and the unidentified leak rate dropped below 10 gpm within 1 hour and was less than 5 gpm within 2 hours. The leak rate at 6:14 a.m. was 3.82 gpm with reactor pressure at 228 psig.

The NOUE was exited at 8:15 a.m. on November 16, 2011, when leakage could be maintained below 10 gpm due to decreasing pressure. The unit was cooled down and reached cold shutdown at 2:38 p.m. on November 16, 2011.

On November 17, 2011, the licensee determined that the reactor head flange leakage was due to inadequate reactor vessel head stud tensioning.

Failure to Maintain a Standard Emergency Action Level Scheme , is updated as VIO 05000302/2011501-01 with a safety significance of White, and a human performance cross-cutting element of Decision-making for ensuring that risk-significant decisions are made using a systematic process and obtaining interdisciplinary input and reviews.

The NRC determined the performance at Crystal River Nuclear Plant Unit 3 to be in the Regulatory Response Column of the Reactor Oversight Process Action Matrix beginning the third quarter of 2011. Therefore, the NRC plans to conduct a supplemental inspection in accordance with Inspection Procedure 95001, “Supplemental Inspection for One or Two White Inputs in a Strategic Performance Area,” to provide assurance that the root causes and contributing causes of risk-significant performance issues are understood, that the extent of cause is identified and that your corrective action for risk-significant performance issues are sufficient to address the root and contributing causes and prevent recurrence. The NRC requests that your staff provide notification of your readiness for the NRC to conduct a supplemental inspection to review the actions taken to address the White inspection finding.

The NRC sent a letter dated January 25, 2012 to Exelon explaining the Dresden Violations.

Violation #1: A violation of 10 CFR Part 50, Appendix B, Criterion V, “Instructions, Procedures, and Drawings,” was identified on October 24, 2011, when two electrical maintenance technicians performing a clearance boundary safety verification opened a Bus 23 potential transformer (POT) fuse drawer causing an undervoltage load shed signal that resulted in the inoperability of the control room emergency ventilation (CREV) air conditioning system. Corrective actions taken included an electrical maintenance department clock reset and stand down to discuss the event and consequences of taking actions in the plant without proper guidance. Further licensee planned corrective actions include presenting to Operations and the Configuration Control Committee the possibility of installing robust barriers or locking devices on bus POT installations.

The inspectors concluded that the finding had a cross-cutting aspect in Human Performance-Work Practices. The licensee staff involved in the event failed to utilize human performance error prevention techniques commensurate with the risk of the assigned task to prevent impact to the station.

In a letter dated January 25, 2012... 

During an NRC inspection conducted between October 17 and 20, 2011, a violation of NRC requirements was identified. In accordance with the NRC Enforcement Policy, the violation is listed below:

Safety Condition S-1 of Special Nuclear Material License No.1227 requires that material be used in accordance with the statements, representations, and conditions in the license application dated October 24, 2006, and supplements thereto.

 Section 5.3.1, Management Measures, of the license application states, in part, that the configuration management program includes a requirement that prior to use in a process, nuclear criticality safety controls selected and installed are verified to fulfill the requirements identified in the criticality safety analyses.

 Nuclear Criticality Safety Analysis, E-04-NCSA-186, Supercritical Carbon Dioxide (CO2)Extraction System, Version 4, designated High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) Filter Cabinet Criticality Drain (C186DR14) as a nuclear criticality safety control.

Great job to Millstone Units 2 and 3, no NRC or self-identified violations or findings. Hats off to the entire staff.

The NRC has issued an order to Entergy Nuclear Operations confirming actions the company is required to implement at the James A. FitzPatrick nuclear power plant. The actions are intended to address multiple violations involving radiation protection technicians at the Scriba, N.Y., plant, and are in addition to steps already taken at the site. The violations, which were identified by the NRC’s Office of Investigations, stem from failures by the technicians to perform or properly execute their duties.

Details of the additional actions to be taken by Entergy, the plant’s owner, in response to the violations were determined through the NRC’s Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process. They are contained in a Confirmatory Order being issued by the agency today.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a Confirmatory Order to Entergy Nuclear Operations, owner of Palisades, and a separate Confirmatory Order to Edward Johnson, a licensed operator, for a violation in which Johnson left the control room without following appropriate requirements. The plant is located in Covert, Mich., approximately 50 miles west of Kalamazoo.

The Confirmatory Orders stem from an incident that occurred on October 23, 2010 at the Palisades nuclear power plant. The NRC conducted an investigation and concluded that Johnson, who was one of the reactor operators in the control room, left his post without providing a turnover to a qualified individual to take over his position and did not obtain permission from the control room supervisor.

The incident had no immediate impact on plant or public safety since the control room supervisor took prompt action and immediately assigned another licensed operator to the position.

As a result of separate NRC Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) meetings with Entergy and Johnson, they agreed to abide by the commitments documented in the Confirmatory Orders reached through the ADR process. ADR is a process that uses a mediator to resolve issues. The Confirmatory Orders are legally binding commitments that outline a number of actions Entergy and Johnson have agreed to take to ensure the NRC’s concerns will be addressed.

November 19, 2011, at approximately 2312 CST, during performance of regularly scheduled Turbine-Generator Quarterly Surveillance, an unplanned reactor scram occurred. Following the reactor scram, reactor water level lowered below the Group II isolation initiation setpoint (+9 in) and an actuation of Primary Containment Isolation System occurred.

The direct cause of the scram was the actuation of the Main Turbine acceleration relay (load rejection) pressure switches. The root cause is under investigation by the site. A supplement to this Licensee Event Report will be submitted following completion of the investigation and will outline corrective actions to address the root cause.