NRC, PG&E to discuss apparent safety violation at Diablo Canyon
Officials with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will meet Jan. 14 to discuss an apparent safety violation at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant involving unauthorized changes to the plant’s emergency notification procedures for boats offshore of the plant.
The meeting will be held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific time at the NRC’s regional offices in Arlington, Texas. Members of the public unable to attend the meeting can participate by calling 1-888-469-0950 and entering the passcode 34924.
NRC officials will answer questions from the public after the conference is complete.
The tentative safety violation stems from an NRC inspection in 2013 that found the plant’s emergency plan did not include a recommendation to evacuate boaters from areas up to 10 miles offshore of the plant in the event of a radiation leak.
The inspection, which was initiated after PG&E brought the violation to the agency’s attention, found that PG&E had changed the procedure in 2005 without NRC approval.
The incident prompted NRC officials to tentatively downgrade the plant’s color-coded safety classification regarding its emergency plan from the optimal green color to white, which indicates a low to moderate level of safety concern.
The possible violation was discovered in early December, and the NRC has 90 days to determine if the preliminary change in the safety findings will become final. Information provided to the NRC at the Jan. 14 meeting will be used to make that final determination, which will be announced later.
PG&E officials say they did not request NRC approval because they did not identify the change as a decrease in effectiveness. The utility has corrected the error and put measures in place to prevent a recurrence.
The San Luis Obispo County Office of Emergency Services has procedures in place that include evaluating the ocean for evacuation in the event of an emergency. At no time was the public going to be allowed to stay in an area that had the potential for radioactivity in the event of a serious accident at the plant, according to the NRC.
This story was originally published December 30, 2014 at 4:54 PM with the headline "NRC, PG&E to discuss apparent safety violation at Diablo Canyon."