Junk Plant Palisades Safety Culture

So basically on top of the control room sat the SIRWT. On top of of the SIRWT was the leaking roof. The roof and the SIRWT were both leaking. It looked to me the confusion with the leaking roof was intentional in covering up the Leaking SIRWT. They were certainly trying to disrupt oversight and delaying the repair of the SIRWT until proper planning and service were brought to the site.

It would be interesting when the NRC was first aware falsification was ongoing.

On June 25, 2012, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Investigations initiated an investigation to determine whether personnel at the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant(Palisades) deliberately failed to provide complete and accurate information to the NRC regarding a safety injection and refueling water storage tank (SIRWT) leak. The investigation was completed on March 10, 2015.

Would the outcome be different on my 2.206 if the NRC disclose four individuals were being prosecuted for falsifying documents on the SIRWT instead of three year later?

Mike Mulligan's 2.206 on the Palisades SIRW tank. 

November 20, 2012

Mr. Michael Mulligan

P.O. Box 161

Hinsdale, NH 03451

Dear Mr. Mulligan: 

You recently submitted two petitions addressed to Mr. William Borchardt, Executive Director for Operations at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The petitions were referred to\ the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation pursuant to Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR), Section 2.206.

In your first petition dated June 18, 2012, as revised on June 27, 2012, you requested that the Palisades Nuclear Plant (Palisades) remain shutdown. In the petition, you were critical of Entergy Nuclear, the NRC, and the programmatic aspects of the regulatory program, including the Reactor Oversight Process (ROP). You focused on a leak of the Safety Injection Refueling Water (SIRW) tank at Palisades, but also discussed past events at both Palisades and other

Entergy-owned facilities. Finally, you also discussed the lack of an adequate safety culture environment at Palisades.

You requested that the following actions be taken:

(1) The shutdown resulting from the SIRW tank leak should be categorized as unplanned. 

(2) The NRC should move the Palisades performance indicator from Red to the next level V:Unacceptable Performance. 

(3) An outside authority (not the NRC’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG)) should determine why the NRC did not force Palisades (Entergy) to thoroughly investigate the SIRW leak when the leak first appeared. 

(4) Top Palisades management staff should be fired and replaced before startup. 

(5) Entergy’s corporate nuclear senior staff should be fired and replaced before restart. 

(6) The NRC should assign two additional NRC inspectors to Palisades and to the rest of the Entergy nuclear plants. 

(7) A local public oversight panel should be formed around every plant. 

(8) An emergency NRC senior official oversight panel should be convened to reform the ROP.

(9) A national NRC oversight panel of outsiders (consisting of a mixture of professional and academic people, as well as lay people) should be convened to oversee and report on agency activities.

(10) The NRC should perform an analysis to determine the cause of the numerous findings of problems with Entergy plants during this inspection reporting cycle.

(11) The NRC should evaluate if Region III has enough personnel and resources.

(12) Palisades should remain shutdown until all procedures are fully updated and corrected, all technical and maintenance backlogs are updated and corrected, all training completed, and all reports and safety processes are fully completed and implemented. 

(13) An independent outside investigation should review the insufficient process outcome of the 2008-2009 Palisades security falsification, investigation, safety survey local and fleet-wide training and safety surveys.

(14) President Obama should fire Chairman Jazcko and the four Commissioners.

In the second petition dated June 28, 2012, you requested that Palisades remain shutdown. 

This petition was focused on roof leaks at Palisades, but also discussed past events at both Palisades and other Entergy-owned facilities. You discussed a lack of adequate safety culture environment at Palisades, and were also critical of the NRC staff for “tolerating and covering up” very serious safety problems at Palisades and throughout the Entergy organization. This petition also included specific questions related to roof leaks.

This petition duplicated many of your requests discussed in the previous petition. However, in your second petition there were new requests which are provided below:

(15) Entergy should be prevented from starting up until all the safety problems at the site have been publicly identified and the safety culture repaired. 

(16) Heads need to roll in Region III and at headquarters for tolerating and covering up these very serious safety problems at Palisades and throughout the Entergy organization. This all has the potential to gravely damage our nation.

(17) The NRC should report on why the 2.206 petition process failed, and for the agency to hold officials accountable to the plant employees and me with not doing their jobs in trying to understand what was going on at the site and not repairing the organization at the earliest point.

(18) A meeting with the Palisades inspector and other…