Dive Brief:
- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will bolster oversight of the St. Lucie Unit 1 nuclear facility after a report revealed the plant operators’ failure to ensure the reactor’s auxiliary building was watertight.
- Florida Power & Light, which runs the St. Lucie nuclear facility in St. Lucie County, did not dispute the NRC findings, which labeled the flooding violation “white,” or of low to moderate safety significance.
- Commission staff has also proposed requiring facilities to consider flood assessments into the security measures put in place following a the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown caused by a tsunami in Japan, E&E Publishing reported.
Dive Insight:
In January, heavy rains caused an auxiliary building at the St. Lucie facility to flood, disabling pumps. The finding, originally documented in a Sept. 24 NRC inspection report, was found to be of low to moderate safety significance.
"With the white finding, St. Lucie Unit 1 will receive an increased level of inspection and oversight," NRC said in a statement.
Regulators said FPL agreed to corrective actions that include repair of flood seals, flood response procedure revisions, additional site visual inspections of flood protection features and program improvements to ensure external flood barrier integrity.
“The St. Lucie plant continues to operate in a way that protects public health and safety,” said Victor McCree, the NRC’s Region II administrator. “However, the NRC wants to make sure that all nuclear plant operators recognize the importance of protecting safety equipment from possible flood damage.”
In addition to the white finding, NRC also assessed a Severity Level III violation against FPL for failure to provide the NRC with complete and accurate information on the condition of the flood barriers at St. Lucie. NRC said civil penalties for that violation were waived because St. Lucie has not been the subject of escalated enforcement actions for the last two years and has undertaken the necessary corrective actions.
