NRC NOV – NOV (White)

On August 17, 2007, parallel White finding was issued to Southern Nuclear Operating Company as a result of inspections at the Joseph M. Farley Nuclear Plant. The parallel White finding was identified during a supplemental inspection to assess the licensee's evaluation associated with unreliability and unavailability reporting in the Support Cooling Water Systems Performance Indicator (PI) within the Mitigating Systems Performance Index (MSPI). Failures of the licensee's existing safety-related breakers associated with this PI predominantly contributed to the indicator crossing the threshold to White in the second quarter of 2006. This PI was subsequently reported Green in the 3rd quarter of 2006. The supplemental inspection for the White PI identified significant weaknesses related to the thoroughness and quality of several root cause evaluations that challenged the licensee's ability to implement effective overall corrective actions. The licensee's evaluations of the individual failures that contributed to the White PI did not effectively review for systemic aspects of circuit breaker failures. In addition, more recent problems were identified concerning the thoroughness of design reviews for the installation of new breakers. Based on these NRC-identified weaknesses, a parallel PI inspection finding (White) was opened to allow the NRC to continue to monitor activities in this area.