Groups: Nuclear plant is unsafe

RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA - Five public interest groups are asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend the operating license of Progress Energy's Shearon Harris plant or levy hefty fines until the plant fixes longstanding flaws in fire safety systems.

A petition - filed by the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and two other groups - contends that the violations make the plant unsafe. The groups demand that regulators take an emergency action - either shut down the plant or fine it $130,000 a day per violation.

Some of the fire safety violations date to the early 1990s and are industry-wide issues. The groups contend that Progress Energy has relied indefinitely on compensatory measures such as having personnel assigned to look for fires, rather than correcting the problems.

"Progress Energy has known of the fire protection violations since at least 1992," said Jim Warren, executive director of N.C. WARN, based in Durham. "It obviously has made a business decision to not correct them."

Officials at Progress Energy and the NRC said Shearon Harris has taken temporary measures to ensure the plant is safe. A fire broke out at the plant in 1989, shutting it down for two weeks, followed by a planned outage.

Currently, Progress has assigned personnel to patrol the plant looking for fires, constructed barriers and beefed up some inadequate insulation. Progress has until 2015 to correct fire safety problems at its plants under an agreement with the NRC and plans to make Harris a priority, a spokesman said.

Fire is a concern at nuclear plants. It can interfere with a quick shutdown and keep operators from controlling hundreds of cooling system components that prevent fuel in the reactor core from overheating and causing a meltdown.

Nuclear plants are required to have multiple backup fire protection methods to keep fires from damaging safety systems. They include fire barriers such as insulation, fire detection systems and sprinklers.

"We are in compliance with fire safety regulations right now," said Julie Hans, a spokeswoman for Progress Energy. "We are using compensatory measures, but those measures bring us into compliance. We have been addressing the problem."

Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Shearon Harris was not in compliance with all fire safety regulations.

"There are some areas where they are not meeting the current regulations," Hannah said. "But they are meeting the safety standard that we expect them to adhere to."

The NRC first will decide whether to accept the groups' petition for review. If it does, then it typically takes six months to act. NRC officials declined to comment on the petition, saying they hadn't seen it.

"They're not new issues," said Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Part of the feeling is that without a petition, they are never going to be resolved. The petition will hopefully serve as a way to get them done sooner rather than later, to replace the I.O.U.'s with action."

Shearon Harris is one of the first nuclear plants to start changing to new fire safety standards, endorsed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, based on risk of fire. Utilities will analyze the risk of fire in parts of the plant and make changes where needed for fire protection. It also may allow utility officials to avoid spending money to correct fire safety violations in some areas, if they can make a case that the risk of fire is low.

"Right now, what is required by the NRC is a cookie-cutter approach," Hans said. "The same fire protection standard exists in every part of the plant, no matter the risk of fire in that location."

Hans said that Progress Energy had until 2015 to correct fire safety issues at all its plants, and it planned to make modifications at Harris first. She said the company had spent $13 million in recent years making changes.

The watchdog groups criticized the approach, saying it allowed more years of delay under a different regulatory guise.

The filing might be a prelude to a broader legal challenge by the groups to Progress Energy's plans to seek a 20-year extension of its operating license. The Harris plant, about 25 miles southwest of Raleigh in southern Wake County, has been in commercial operation since 1987.