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Published: Monday, Sep. 10, 2012 / Updated: Wednesday, Sep. 05, 2012 11:20 AM

NRC to discuss Catawba Nuclear Station power loss Sept. 11

ATLANTA -- 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has scheduled a regulatory conference Sept. 11 with officials of Duke Energy to discuss inspection findings and apparent violations related to an event in April where the plant lost offsite power.

The meeting will be held at 1 p.m. at NRC’s Region II office, 245 Peachtree Center Ave., NE., suite 1200, Atlanta. The public is invited to observe. NRC officials will be available to answer questions.

NRC and Duke officials will discuss the safety significance of the inspection findings and violations, which involved the loss of offsite power after a modification to the generator protection circuitry on Unit 1.

The NRC evaluates regulatory performance at commercial nuclear power plants with a color-coded system which classifies findings as green, white, yellow or red, in increasing order of safety significance. The NRC’s preliminary evaluation determined that the issues at Catawba could be as high as Yellow, which means at least one may have substantial safety significance. The NRC staff continues to evaluate the significance, including any additional information presented at the conference.

No decisions on the final safety significance or other NRC actions will be made at the conference. Those decisions will be made by NRC officials at a later time.

The NRC inspection report in which the issues are documented is publicly available online at www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html . The number to access the report is ML12207A614.