Outages of Watts Bar reactor trigger more regulatory oversight

TVA’s newest nuclear power reactor will remain under greater regulatory scrutiny this year due to an excessive number of reactor outages in the fourth quarter of last year.

In its annual assessment of the Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the unit 2 reactor at Watts Bar exceeded the usual number of reactor scrams in the final three months of 2017 and, as a result, will be subject to extra NRC review in the coming months. But the TVA unit, which began generating power in 2016, has since improved its performance and remains in full compliance with all NRC standards, NRC officials said Thursday.

Regulators gave the unit 2 reactor at Watts Bar a top green color-coded rating for 17 major safety items, but rated the newest unit at Watts Bar in the second highest category overall because of a number of reactor trips late last year.

“A a result of one white performance indicator in the fourth quarter of 2017 for excessive unplanned shutdowns on unit 2, (the TVA reactor) is being subjected to additional oversight, in addition to the NRC’s normal levels which entail thousands of hours of inspections each year,” NRC spokesman Roger Hannah said.

The unit 1 reactor at Watts Bar, which TVA started up in 1996, received the top NRC rating in its annual review and will not be subject to the extra NRC oversight.

“The NRC concluded that overall performance at your facility preserved pubic health and safety,” Joel Munday, director of the NRC’s Division of Reactor Projects, told the TVA officials.

In 2015, the NRC determined that whistle blower concerns voiced by employees at Watts Bar were still not being adequately heard and addressed and the commission said TVA had a “chilled work environment” at Watts Bar for employees raising safety concerns.

But Munday said TVA appears to have addressed problems in the way concerns were raised and handled and the number of safety concerns has dropped.

“The NRC acknowledges that TVA has made progress toward improving the Safety Conscious Work Environment at Watts Bar,” he said.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will discuss the 2017 safety performance of TVA’s Watts Bar nuclear power plant at an open house from 5-6 p.m. next Thursday, June 7 at the Spring City Municipal Building, 229 Front St., in Spring City, Tennessee. NRC employees responsible for plant inspections, including the resident inspectors based full-time at the site, will be available to discuss the performance and safety of the Watts Bar plant.

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfree press.com or at 757-6340.