NRC oversight of Palo Verde won't change -- for now

Washington (Platts)--26Dec2006

Palo Verde is not being moved to a higher level of NRC oversight, at least not
now. In a December 22 letter, released December 26, NRC said it was
classifying a recent violation, involving the chemical fouling of heat
exchangers, as "green," indicating "very low safety significance." NRC had
initially rated the finding as "greater than green," but changed to "green"
after obtaining information from operator Arizona Public Service and
performing risk calculations, NRC Region IV spokesman Victor Dricks said. Palo
Verde is already under increased NRC regulatory oversight. A finding more
serious than green -- white, yellow or red, in NRC's safety significance
characterization -- would have pushed the plant into the most intense NRC
oversight short of shutdown. The plant still faces a final decision on two
other preliminary white findings. Those findings deal with a different
technical issue but result from similar "underlying causes," Dricks said. In
the letter, NRC termed the amount of degradation of "key safety systems" as
"egregious" and a further example of the types of performance problems the
agency has identified at the plant since 2004.