HARTSVILLE -- The report, published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, says three incidents, including two fires at the plant last March, were caused by equipment failures and unbelievably poor worker performance.
Ronnie Culpepper, 56, lives across the woods from the Robinson Nuclear Plant. He vividly remembers the night of March 28, 2010, when the two fires broke out at the plant.
"It scared me," he said, "I didn't know what was going on cause I just got in my truck and left town."
The Union of Concerned Scientists, or UCS, evaluates safety at nuclear power plants and called the Robinson fires the most significant "near-miss in the United States last year.
The UCS report says a high voltage power cable failed causing the first fire. It says hours after that fire had been put out, workers re-energized the cable that had started the first fire. The cable was still in failure and ignited a second fire.
The UCS report also cited a third incident at the Robinson plant. Last October, an electrical problem in the cooling pump led to a shutdown of the plant.
Robert Duncan is the Vice President of the Robinson Nuclear Plant. He says the March 2010 fires proved to be a turning point for them.
"The UCS is a stakeholder for us . We have to look at the fact and nature of the what the report says. The report is factual in a lot of areas," said Duncan.
The March 2010 fires led to a temporary shutdown of the Robinson plant, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, came in for a series of inspections.
The NRC evaluates inspection findings and performance indicators at commercial nuclear power plants with a color-coded system which classifies them as green, white, yellow or red, in increasing order of safety significance.
As the significance increases, the NRC heightens the level of oversight for that plant. If a plant takes appropriate corrective actions and improves safety performance, the agency returns to its normal, but still extensive, inspection schedule.
After its inspections, the NRC staff concluded that the Robinson plant operated safely in 2010. However, the NRC has decided to increase its level of oversight and inspection at the Robinson plant based on inspection findings and performance indicators. According to the NRC, Robinson exceeded the threshold for unplanned reactor shutdowns Robinson exceeded the threshold for unplanned reactor shutdowns during the year's third quarter, which resulted in a "white" performance indicator.
In addition, there were three "white" inspection findings at the plant. "White" means a finding of low to moderate safety significance. The first "white" finding involved the failure to correct a problem with an emergency diesel generator. The second and third "white" findings were identified after an NRC Augmented Inspection. The second involved the licensee's failure to adequately design and implement operator training associated with reactor coolant pump seals. The third finding was related to a failure to adequately implement required procedures following the fires in March.
Duncan said, "It allowed us to look at our operations very critically. We had a full scale event review team into the Robinson plant in advance of what the NRC brought in their inspection team. So we learned a lot about our people, our processes and our leadership." Duncan adds that at no time during the fires was the public's safety at risk.
He says they've corrected many of the problems and are working on the rest that have already been addressed by the NRC.
"We put together initiatives. Those initiatives are in the process. We've completed quite a few of these initiatives to date. Those include procedure upgrade, process understanding and process upgrades and longer term, we're going to revise the entire procedure set at the Robinson plant," said Duncan.
The additional NRC inspections will provide assurance that the root causes of the performance issues are understood and corrective actions are sufficient to prevent recurrence. The additional inspections have not yet been scheduled.
The NRC will hold a meeting about H.B. Robinson nuclear plant safety in Hartsville this week. The meeting is set for 2 p.m. Thursday, March 24 at the Coker College Library's Daniels Boardroom, 300 E. College Avenue in Hartsville.
The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session.
