Late notification faulted during Oyster Creek drill

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has notified both the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station and the New Jersey State Police of a "serious" deficiency in a recent emergency drill.

"Due to the potential negative impact on public health and safety, we have classified this as a Deficiency, the most serious category," FEMA's acting Regional AdministratorMichael F. Moriarty said of the Oct. 6 drill in a letter to Maj. Dennis McNulty, commanding officer of the State Police's emergency management section.

A number of towns did not receive notice of the Protective Action Decision for over an hour. That decision recommended that a number of Emergency Response Planning Areas (ERPAs) be evacuated and sheltering-in-place be initiated for the rest of the ERPAs in the Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ), according to the letter.

"This could have had an impact on public health and safety if the municipal emergency management directors were unaware that their populations were being advised to evacuate or shelter-in-place," Moriarty said in the letter.

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission notified Exelon, Oyster Creek's owner, of the problem in a Nov. 3 letter to Senior Vice President Charles G. Pardee.

"The NRC encourages Exelon to work with the appropriate off-site governmental agencies to ensure a timely resolution of this issue," James M. Trapp, the NRC's chief of Plant Support Branch 1, Division of Reactor Safety. "The NRC will continue to monitor the status of this issue."

The NRC is responsible for on-site emergency response, NRC spokesman Neil A. Sheehan said.

"We want to make sure the company is making the right calls as far as notifying the outside world properly and communicating what is going on with the reactor and the safety systems," Sheehan said.

It's FEMA's responsibility to make sure the state and counties are communicating properly and making the right decisions as far as evacuation and communicating with the towns, he said.

"The issue that came up during the emergency drill was an apparent breakdown in those communications," Sheehan said. "They have to make those decisions in a very timely manner. When it went from a site area emergency to a general emergency and there was a dramatic change in the condition in the reactor, they did not get that information out in a timely manner."

Oyster Creek spokesman David Benson said "an outside agency" was responsible for the deficiency, not Exelon.

"No," Benson said. "It wasn't Exelon's responsibility."

He declined to name the outside agency. But the FEMA letter was addressed to the New Jersey State Police.

"Look at the FEMA letter," Benson said. "It was not addressed to Oyster Creek. It was an outside agency that had a deficiency. Oyster Creek did very well in the drill. We were commended for our work. Another agency had a deficiency and we are going to work with them."

The simulated scenario for the emergency drill involved a nonterrorist incident in which a dump truck crashed into a building housing the plant's emergency diesel generator. That triggered an increase in the amount of cold water flowing into the reactor, which caused it to shut down. The control rods did not automatically insert into the reactor and plant operators were unable to insert them manually. That led to a Site Emergency Declaration, the NRC's Sheehan said.

The water levels inside the reactor dropped to a point where nuclear fuel damage occurred and high radiation levels were found inside the containment building. That triggered a General Emergency Declaration, the highest of four levels of emergency classifications. The containment building was then breached, which led to a release of radioactivity into the environment. Exelon then recommended evacuation, according to the drill scenario.

"As with most emergency exercises for nuclear power plants, the goal is to put the many players through their paces and observe how they handle a variety of developments," Sheehan said.

FEMA defines a deficiency as "an observed or identified inadequacy of organizational performance in an exercise that could cause a finding that off-site emergency preparedness is not adequate to provide reasonable assurance that appropriate protective measures can be taken in the event of a radiological emergency to protect the health and safety of the public living in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant," Moriarty said in the letter to the state police.

A repeat drill on only the deficient issues is slated for Dec. 8. FEMA, but not the NRC, will be on hand to observe, Sheehan said.

"It's really in FEMA's space right now," he said. "FEMA issued the decision. They are fully engaged in trying to get this resolved. If it came to us, we'd certainly have our own experts take a look at this."