Inspectors find safety violations at N.J. nuclear plants

WILMINGTON, Del. — Federal officials found five safety violations at a New Jersey nuclear-power complex about 20 miles south of here, according to reports issued earlier this month.

All of the violations at the Salem-Hope Creek facility were characterized as having very low safety significance, and no citations were issued, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports.

The Salem and Hope Creek nuclear generating stations share an island in the Delaware River in Lower Alloways Creek Township, N.J. Salem has two reactors, and Hope Creek has one.

"Each of the findings are for gaps previously identified," said spokesman Joe Delmar of Newark-based Public Service Enterprise Group (PEG), the power company that owns the plants. "Once identified, we enter these items into our corrective action program.

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"Upon receiving the NRC's official finding on these gaps, we do an additional review to ensure that we have taken appropriate measures that we outlined in our corrective action program," he said.

At Salem, four violations were identified:

• Failure to maintain an appropriate preventive maintenance schedule for containment cooling fans.
• Failure to properly test equipment.
• Removal of a barrier designed to prevent the release of radiation.
• Lack of preventive maintenance on the facility's ventilation radiation monitor.

Separately, the commission inspectors found one violation at Hope Creek, saying workers did not follow proper procedures to document and correct an issue related to the loss of heat and air conditioning in the main control room during a station blackout. An extraordinary rare event, a station blackout occurs when the plant losses both onsite and offsite backup emergency power.

PSEG also identified one item of a low safety significance to inspectors: Failure to put in place a security plan for eight shipments of radioactive disposal from Salem between 2010 and 2014. The power company already has entered corrective actions to resolve this violation.

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Because the violations were labeled low level," federal regulators will give the power company time to address the issues without follow-up until the next inspection, said Neil Sheehan, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman. If the company is slow to correct the violations, the federal officials then would pursue additional enforcement action.

In some cases, companies already start to resolve the NRC's concerns before release of the safety report, Sheehan said.

Although the infractions were not viewed as particularly dangerous, Sheehan said the number of violations at the Salem plant were more than what is typically found at during an inspection.

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"Four is higher than you usually see," he said. "Usually you only see one or two violations."

Safety concerns were raised in in 2014 when workers found that all of dozens of bolts used to secure water-moving impellers had broken or sheared off in all four of Salem's 30-foot reactor coolant pumps. While some bolt heads and pieces weren't found after a month, others were discovered in the bottom of the reactor core itself.

Federal inspectors allowed PSEG to investigate and complete the necessary repairs without putting a formal hold on operations. The latest concerns rcome as PSEG prepares for next month's mandatory regulatory review of its proposal to build one or more nuclear plants just north of the Salem/Hope Creek complex.

The federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will conduct a March 24 hearing in Rockville, Md., on PSEG's early site permit application.

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