Nuclear Regulatory Commission finds fault with Three Mile Island exam
By Sean Adkins, York Daily Record, Pa. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Inspectors with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have determined the level of difficulty for a small section of an annual operator requalification exam performed at Three Mile Island Unit 1 is potentially inadequate and overly simplistic.
TMI administered the job-performance measures section of the exam to the
plant's control room supervisors as part of its annual requalification exam. The
weeklong, three-part exam is composed of multiple sections including a written
test, simulator scenarios and several job-performance measures.
Earlier this year, the commission performed an inspection of Three Mile
Island Unit 1 in Dauphin County and found two "green" violations of
very low safety significance.
One infraction referred to two fire barrier doors that had been left open and
another involved a piece of safety-related equipment damaged by the placement of
seismic scaffolding.
The plant built the scaffold above a valve so workers could inspect and
replace a hydraulic snubber -- a piece of equipment that resembles a large shock
absorber designed to handle seismic stresses.
As part of its function, the valve's metal position-indicating rod travels in
and out of the equipment. With the valve open, the rod made contact with
scaffolding and became bent.
Despite the damage, plant engineers determined that valve was operable and
functioned smoothly in both directions.
The NRC has yet to determine a level of enforcement in regard to the
job-performance-measures section of the operator requalification exam.
"We will have our risk analyst look at the safety significance of the
issue to see what would have happened if the problem would have gone
unchecked," said Neil Sheehan, an NRC spokesman.
The inspectors' review found that the job performance measure in question
tested how plant operators would properly classify a plant emergency.
The NRC has four stages of emergency: an unusual event, an alert, an on-site
area emergency and a general emergency.
Commission inspectors determined the specific part of the
job-performance-measures section of the exam involved only a single challenge
and had been "overly simplistic," according to the report.
"One challenge," said Ralph DeSantis, spokesman for AmerGen Energy.
"That's the way (an event) happens sometimes. These tests are very
challenging."
Sheehan said plant operators must be able to make timely emergency
classifications.
"We found that they came up short in that area," he said. "We
found that this job-performance measure could have been more challenging."
Three Mile Island operators have had problems passing exams in the past.
In February 2004, the NRC penalized TMI Unit 1 with a green, or base-level,
violation when two of its control-room operator crews failed simulator exams
that evaluated how licensed workers would respond to multiple plant emergencies.
In December, the National Nuclear Accrediting Board discovered similar
concerns at TMI and put the plant's control-room-operator training program on
probation.
AmerGen plans to go before the board this month to renew its accreditation.
While the NRC did not penalize TMI for current issues with respect to its
job-performance measures, AmerGen did respond to the training inefficiency
within its corrective-action program.
"We will continue looking at the (job-performance measures) to make sure
they meet the standards," DeSantis said. "We are always looking to
improve everything we do."
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