[Federal Register Volume 79, Number 38 (Wednesday, February 26, 2014)]
[Notices]
[Pages 10846-10847]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2014-04208]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
[Docket No. 50-333; NRC-2014-0034]
James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant, LLC
AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
ACTION: 10 CFR 2.206 request; receipt.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is giving notice
that by petition dated July 25, 2013, David L. Lochbaum, on behalf of
the Alliance for Green Economy, Beyond Nuclear, Citizen's Awareness
Network, and Union of Concerned Scientists (together referred to as
petitioners) has requested that the NRC take enforcement action with
regard to James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant. The petitioners'
requests are included in the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section of this
document.
ADDRESSES: Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2014-0034 when contacting the
NRC about the availability of information regarding this document. You
may access publicly-available information related to this document
using any of the following methods:
Federal Rulemaking Web site: Go to http://www.regulations.gov and search for Docket ID NRC-2014-0034. Address
questions about NRC dockets to Carol Gallagher; telephone: 301-287-
3422; email: [email protected].
NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System
(ADAMS): You may access publicly available documents online in the NRC
Library at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. To begin the
search, select ``ADAMS Public Documents'' and then select ``Begin Web-
based ADAMS Search.'' For problems with ADAMS, please contact the NRC's
Public Document Room (PDR) reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-
4737, or by email to [email protected]. The ADAMS accession number
for each document referenced in this notice (if that document is
available in ADAMS) is provided the first time that a document is
referenced.
NRC's PDR: You may examine and purchase copies of public
documents at the NRC's PDR, Room O1-F21, One White Flint North, 11555
Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: On July 25, 2013, the petitioners requested
that the NRC take action with regard to James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear
Power Plant (ADAMS Accession No. ML13217A061). The petitioners
requested that the NRC take enforcement action by imposing a regulatory
requirement that all the tubes in the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear
Power Plant's condenser be replaced prior to the restart of the plant
from its fall 2014 refueling outage.
As the basis for this request, the petitioners stated that the
enforcement action is needed to protect the public from the owner of
the plant opting to defer correcting a potential safety problem. James
A. Fitzpatrick Nuclear Power Plant is experiencing abnormally
[[Page 10847]]
high occurrences of condenser tube failures. The condenser tube leaks
could cause the normal heat sink to become unavailable, which in turn
can complicate the operator's response to a reactor shutdown. The
petitioners pointed out that the NRC's reactor oversight process also
recognizes the elevated risk associated with a reactor shutdown with
complications. Operating experience indicates that condenser tube leaks
have contaminated the reactor coolant with impurities from the
condenser cooling water and caused extensive damage to nuclear power
plant components. The petitioners explained their concerns with
comparison of historical data of U.S plants' condenser tube leaks that
showed that the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant has
experienced over 30 percent of the condenser tube leak events of the
entire U.S. fleet in the past decade.
The request is being treated pursuant to Title 10 of the Code of
Federal Regulations (10 CFR) 2.206 of the Commission's regulations. The
request has been referred to the Director of the Office of Nuclear
Reactor Regulation. As provided by 10 CFR 2.206, appropriate action
will be taken on this petition within a reasonable time. The petitioner
and the co-petitioners met with NRC's Petition Review Board (PRB) on
November 13, 2013 (transcript at ADAMS Accession No. ML14036A234) to
further discuss their concerns. The results of that discussion were
considered in the board's determination regarding the petitioner's
request for action and in establishing the schedule for the review of
the petition. A copy of the petition is available for inspection under
ADAMS Accession No. ML13217A061.
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 12th day of February 2014.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Jennifer Uhle,
Deputy Director, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
[FR Doc. 2014-04208 Filed 2-25-14; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 7590-01-P