Dec. 23--The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a notice of violation against the operator of the Kewaunee nuclear power plant and determined that a potential flooding problem there was of "substantial importance to safety." Advertisement

The matter was determined to be a "yellow" finding in an NRC classification that uses "red" for the most severe problems. Yellow is the second-worst category, one that results in stepped-up regulatory inspections and meetings with plant management.

A September 2004 inspection found that parts of the turbine building could become flooded as a result of seismic conditions -- primarily earthquakes -- or equipment failures, the NRC said. The flooding could lead to a malfunction of equipment needed for safe shutdown of the plant.

Kewaunee was shut down in February for extensive system and structural modifications to address the potential flooding problem.

Dominion Resources Inc. of Richmond, Va., owns and operates the plant. Wisconsin Public Service Corp. of Green Bay and Wisconsin Power & Light Co. of Madison owned the plant at the time of the September 2004 inspection, which resulted in the identification of problems cited in the announcement Thursday.

The $191.3 million sale of the plant was completed in July, after the reactor was shut down more than four months for repairs of those problems and related ones.

"The Kewaunee plant took extensive corrective measures, including work performed in a four-month outage earlier this year," James Caldwell, NRC regional administrator, said in a statement.

"However, the plant missed an opportunity to discover and correct this issue in 2003, when minor flooding in the turbine building showed the potential to challenge the function of certain safety equipment."

Charlie Higley, executive director of the Wisconsin Citizens' Utility Board, said the NRC ruling is more evidence that customers shouldn't have had to pay for the Kewaunee shutdown this summer.

The state Public Service Commission ruled last week that WPS customers would have to pay $47 million in fuel costs linked to the shutdown.

Although they found some fault with WPS' management of the plant, commissioners Dan Ebert and Mark Meyer said there wasn't enough evidence to show what Higley's group asserted -- that WPS was negligent or careless in its oversight of Kewaunee.

NRC spokesman Jan Strasma said the agency considers that most of the problems identified in this case were fixed during the long shutdown this year.

But he also said the plant will be inspected in depth in 2006, as a result of the violation announced Thursday.