Palisades: Heading Back to a Yellow or Red Finding, or Worst?

You get the trend, this has repeated over and over again. The NRC attention(yellow finding) marginally drives the safety culture up for a year or two…then it goes back into steep decline.

Right, this is about holes through their titanium gonad shields and vest?  I wonder if there is boys or girls titanium gonad shields? 

It shows how ineffective the agency is.

The deal with the inaccurate dose calculations,  is they can artificially increase the efficiency of the high dose employees. The lower dose allows these employees to work more at other plants and within the radiation fields. Sometimes with big accumulated doses these employees are forced to work in non radiation fields for days, weeks and months because they are getting close to their legal dose limits.   

NRC Has Increased Oversight of Palisades Nuclear Power Plant  

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff issued a white finding of low-to-moderate safety significance to the Palisades nuclear power plant for the failure to accurately calculate radiation doses to workers during an activity last year. The finding will result in increased oversight by the NRC. The plant, operated by Entergy Nuclear Operations Inc., is located in Covert, Mich., five miles south of South Haven. The doses received by the workers were below the NRC’s annual radiation limit and are not expected to have any impact on their health. NRC inspectors reviewed of plant’s methodology for calculating doses to workers involved in replacing control rod drive housings during the 2014 refueling outage. They determined that the methodology did not meet NRC requirements. Specifically, the licensee failed to ensure that radiation dosimeters were placed in the highest exposed location of the body for this activity, which resulted in inaccurate dose calculations. In addition, the licensee failed to establish a procedure to ensure proper placement of dosimeters. This resulted in inaccurate calculation and assignment of dose for numerous workers. “Even though this incident did not result in harm to workers, our action underscores the importance of adhering to NRC requirements to ensure an accurate understanding and adequate monitoring of doses to workers at nuclear plants,” said NRC Region III Administrator Cynthia D.Pederson...

Profound financial problem with Entergy? 

Vt. AG pushes NRC to look into Entergy finances
By RICHIE DAVIS

Recorder Staff
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
(Published in print: Thursday, February 26, 2015)

Vermont’s attorney general has endorsed a petition filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission raising concerns about Entergy Nuclear’s ability to pay for decommissioning the shutdown Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, and seeking an investigation into its fiscal health in relation to the Vernon plant as well as Pilgrim Station in Plymouth and the FitzPatrick reactor in Oswego, N.Y. 

Vermont’s filing joins a similar action by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley last October and New York’s attorney general last April in the petition filed by Citizens Awareness Network in March 2013. The petition, still pending before the NRC, raises concerns about Entergy’s financial viability in anticipation of what are expected to be more than $1 billion in decommissioning costs for the plant, as well as the company’s intention to use $50 million of its decommissioning fund — now totaling about $650 million — to provide security of high-level radioactive waste stored on site. 

“The State of Vermont ... has a direct interest in ensuring that Entergy, when financing certain post-closure activities, abides by applicable NRC regulations and contractual obligations, which limit the circumstances in which Entergy can withdraw funds from its Nuclear Decommissioning Trust Fund. To determine whether Entergy — either through subsidiaries or the parent corporation — has adequate financial means without undue or unauthorized reliance on the ... fund, the NRC should fully investigate the financial qualifications of Entergy and its subsidiaries, including directing Entergy to respond to the issues raised by the Attorneys General of New York and Massachusetts,” wrote Chief Assistant Attorney General William E. Griffin. “Vermont also retains a strong interest in how Entergy intends to finance its obligations.”

CAN President Deborah Katz said, “These states are really concerned about how Entergy is going to be responsible.”
She added, “When the Memorandum of Understanding came through for Entergy to buy Vermont Yankee, the parent corporation said that it would cover expenses, and would be responsible if Entergy couldn’t come through with the money. We believe it’s really important to understand Entergy’s vulnerability, in not just an operating reactor, but for issues of safety in terms of cleanup, since they want to end the emergency planning zone and to substantially diminish what’s in the decommissioning fund.” 

Entergy Vice President Michael Twomey told members of two Vermont legislative committees last week that the company offers no guarantees it will pay to decommission the plant if the job is still not done by the end of a 60-year “SAFSTOR” period. The Associated Press reported him telling the House and Senate Natural Resources committees that he expects there would be litigation, with the state and Entergy taking different positions...