On August 13, 2008, a Notice of Violation and Proposed Imposition of Civil Penalty in the amount of $16,250 was issued for a Severity Level (SL) III violation for circumstances surrounding an incorrect emergency action level declaration. The incorrect emergency action level declaration stemmed from an event that occurred on January 29-30, 2008, also categorized as SL III (EA-08-123), involving introduction of moisture into the Dry Conversion Process Line-2 cooling hopper containing uranium dioxide powder. At the time of this event, GNF-A instruments indicated that the cooling hopper contained uranium dioxide above the safe critical mass limit indicating a potential for criticality existed from an unsafe mass, while the system was undergoing maintenance testing. It was later determined that the cooling hopper contained a safe mass of uranium dioxide and the moisture in the powder was within normal limits. GNF-A initially declared the event as an "Off-Normal Condition" and later upgraded the event to an "Alert", without obtaining any new information. NRC concluded that GNF-A failed to follow its own procedure. GNF-A implemented immediate and long-term corrective actions to prevent this type of event from repeating. In this case, no actual consequences resulted because an inadvertent criticality accident did not occur.