NRC Says Point Beach Nuclear Plant Operating Safely, But Needs Fixes

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says both reactors at the Point Beach plant near Manitowoc are operating safely, but two issues that have come up since the NRC’s last annual assessment still aren’t completely resolved.

The NRC’s Viktoria Mytlang says a problem occurred with maintaining a safety-related pump. She says the immediate problem has been fixed, but another NRC inspection of Point Beach unit 2 is in store. “The inspection looks at, more broadly, whether actions have been taken to prevent recurrence of the problem, not just, ‘has this problem specifically been solved?’”

Mytlang says unit 1 at Point Beach is now listed as having a degraded level of performance because of the pump issue and concerns about protecting against potential flooding, “because it does not specify what kind of installation of barriers would be necessary such that there would be no gaps between the barriers that could allow the water to flood in.”

Point Beach’s owner, Next Era, says:

“It’s important to remember the NRC letter refers to matters that were fully addressed last year, not current issues. The bottom line is that there are no safety issues associated with the operation of Point Beach. We take all feedback from the NRC seriously and have taken action to ensure that these issues are not repeated.”