NRC Begins Special Inspection at Clinton Nuclear Plant

Nuclear Regulatory Commission - Press Release

No: III-18-022 June 21, 2018

Contact: Viktoria Mitlyng, 630-829-9662 Prema Chandrathil, 630-829-9663

NRC Begins Special Inspection at Clinton Nuclear Plant

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has launched a Special Inspection at the Clinton nuclear power plant to review the circumstances surrounding the inoperability of the emergency diesel generators for approximately three days during a recent refueling outage. The inspection began Wednesday.

The three-member team will review the sequence of events, and the licensee’s root cause analysis, determine the probable causes, evaluate Exelon’s compliance to shutdown procedures, and assess the corrective actions to address the inoperability. The team will spend time both on and off site. After the inspection, a report documenting the team’s findings will be issued and made publicly available.

The single-unit plant is operated by Exelon Generation Co., and is located in Clinton, Ill., about 23 miles southeast of Bloomington.

Per NRC regulations, at least one emergency diesel generator must be operable during a refueling outage. Emergency diesel generators are safety-related systems designed to provide power to the site if there is a loss of offsite power.

During the May outage, plant workers removed each emergency diesel generator from service one at a time to perform maintenance activities. However, as they were working on the second diesel, a plant worker discovered that the first diesel was not completely restored to an operable status. Once the issue was identified, workers took immediate action to restore one diesel generator to operable service as required per regulations.