FULTON, Mo. -- The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently completed an inspection of the Callaway Plant and found one violation that had not been properly cited.
The results of the March 31 inspection were shared with plant staff April 5.
One violation of low safety significance was found during the inspection by four NRC inspectors, including Scott Schwind, who was appointed senior resident inspector at the plant in February. The NRC is treating the violation as a non-cited violation.
Plant inspectors reviewed the non-cited violation revealed to them by plant staff. The licensee of the Callaway Plant, Ameren Missouri, "...failed to implement the required technical specification actions for a failure of the train A class 1E switchgear room air conditioning system," the NRC inspection report states.
Ameren determined the system should have been declared inoperable Oct. 25, according to the inspection report. But it was not done. NRC regulations require immediate actions to compensate for the failure, as well as other actions within one hour or to place the plant in hot standby for six hours. Neither of these took place.
Ameren produced a condition report to document the issues, and also replaced the entire valve that failed. Similar valves were also replaced. The NRC labelled the failure to recognize the inoperable condition as a performance deficiency.
On Oct. 25, Ameren found condensation and frost on thermal expansion valve one at the plant. This is a sign of a valve failure. On Oct. 27, an air conditioning unit was found not running at the plant. It then later failed to start. One additional tracking item is noted in the NRC's inspection report, and is related to the thermal expansion valve failure found Oct. 25.
The Callaway Plant remained "at or near rated thermal power" for the NRC inspection period.
Other areas examined by NRC inspectors include reactor safety, fire protection, maintenance effectiveness and drill evaluation.