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Kewaunee Plant Faces Scrutiny Again: Nuclear Agency Says Start-Up Procedures Were Not Followed

Posted on: Saturday, 20 May 2006, 03:06 CDT

By Thomas Content, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

May 20--The Kewaunee nuclear plant is under extra scrutiny from federal inspectors for the second time in as many months.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday launched a special inspection at the single-reactor plant east of Green Bay to investigate an attempted restart of the plant this week.

The NRC said it is looking into a situation "in which plant operators did not follow procedures while starting up the reactor" on Wednesday. The plant, owned and operated by Dominion Resources Inc. of Richmond, Va., had been shut down since April 26 for equipment repairs.

Jim Norvelle, a Dominion spokesman, said his company is also investigating what happened. The start-up was delayed, he said, when a problem was detected with the plant's turbine generator.

"During that start-up, operators may not have performed procedures adequately," Norvelle said. "That's what we're looking into. We want to make sure that these procedures were adequate and that they were strictly followed during start-up."

In a statement, the NRC said both the agency and Dominion have questions concerning actions taken by a senior reactor operator who changed procedures during the plant's start-up on Wednesday, as well as concerns about Dominion's procedures, which had recently been revised.

The launch of the special inspection doesn't prevent Dominion from restarting the plant, agency spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng said.

"They don't need our approval to restart," she said.

As of Friday, the reactor remained out of service, Norvelle said.

"We just want to make sure that we've reviewed everything we need to review before start-up," he said.

The inspection comes just as the NRC is finishing up a report concerning problems at the plant in late April.

At that time, Dominion declared the first alert at any of the state's nuclear plants since the NRC adopted a new emergency response system after the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979.

There was no evacuation and no hazard to plant employees or the public from the incident, but questions were being raised about whether Dominion went too far by declaring an alert. The alert mobilized emergency response personnel in Manitowoc and Kewaunee counties as well as at the state Capitol.

A report on the first special inspection has not yet been made public. That review was recently concluded, and its results should be made public in the next 30 to 45 days, Mitlyng said.

The Kewaunee plant was sold last year by Green Bay-based Wisconsin Public Service Corp. and Madison-based Wisconsin Power & Light Co. to Dominion, which sells the electricity from the nuclear plant back to the two state utilities.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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Source: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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