The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week cited a Westinghouse fuel facility in South Carolina with two violations of federal nuclear rules, but details were scarce this week.
The two Severity Level IV violations were identified in an inspection of the Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility (CFFF) from Nov. 18-21, 2019, according to a Jan. 10 letter to plant manager Mike Annacone from Eric Michel, chief of Projects Branch 2 at the NRC’s Division of Fuel Facility Inspection.
These are the latest troubles at the plant in recent years, and come as Westinghouse attempts to renew its NRC operating license.
The letter did not provide any details on the violations. A detailed inspection report was not made public, and an agency spokesman declined to elaborate on the findings.
“The enclosed inspection report contains security-related information, and its disclosure to unauthorized individuals could present a security vulnerability,” Michel wrote in the letter to Annacone. “Therefore, the material in the enclosure will not be made available electronically for public inspection in the NRC Public Document Room or from the NRC’s document system.”
Westinghouse did not respond to a query regarding the NRC findings.
Severity Level IV violations are “those of more than minor concern,” according to the NRC. However, they are not considered serious enough to warrant an escalated enforcement process, which is a more detailed review of an issue. Two types of notices can occur with a Level IV violation.
An official notice of violation is documented when the licensee failed to restore compliance; failed to place the violation in its corrective action program; the violation was repetitive and NRC-identified; or the violation was willful. Westinghouse received a notice of violation, but it is unclear which of these four instances the violations fell under. The letter mentions that Westinghouse failed to identify the violations.
The other action is a non-cited violation, which would have simply shown up on the inspection report with no further need for documentation. According to the letter, neither violation constitutes as a non-cited infraction.
Agency spokesman Joey Ledford said Westinghouse has taken corrective actions following the inspection, but would not elaborate on what those involved. “Any enforcement actions have yet to be determined,” he said by email.
Ledford also declined to provide details on what type of penalties Westinghouse could face, or a timeline for when any penalties would be enacted.
Westinghouse in 2014 applied for a 40-year license renewal for the 550,000-square-foot plant in Hopkins, S.C., where the company has been producing nuclear fuel for power plants since 1969. The current operations license expires on Sept. 30, 2027.
In July 2016, the conversion area operations of the CFFF was shut down due to safety concerns over a ventilation scrubber, a tool used to absorb toxic gas or vapors. Operations resumed three months later after Westinghouse met all of the restart safety commitments outlined by the NRC.
In a June 2018 assessment, the NRC found there would be no significant impact to the environment if Westinghouse received its license renewal. But subsequent events at the plant prompted the agency to rescind that decision.
Those included an equipment leak in July 2018 that resulted in uranium entering the subsurface of the facility, and a December 2018 discovery that uranium levels in the groundwater below the plant were above drinking standards.
In May, Westinghouse workers found rainwater had leaked through the roof of a carrier that was transporting a drum of uranium. The water then leaked into the drum inside the carrier, causing a trace amount of uranium within to also leak out. On July 12, a drum filled with uranium had just been sent to a storage facility when a chemical reaction caused it to catch fire and the drum lid to pop off. There were no injuries or contaminations in either incident.
Lastly, in September, the NRC discovered during an inspection that trace amounts of uranium were found on barrels of uranium that were shipped from the facility to Washington state.
In November, the NRC accepted public comments on its draft environmental assessment for the license renewal. Released in October, the assessment acknowledged these incidents at the plant, but still concluded that a license renewal would result in no significant impact. The NRC is currently reviewing the comments as it decides if it will renew the operating license.
