NRC ORDER – NOV (Yellow)

On February 14, 2012, the NRC issued a Notice of Violation to Palisades Nuclear Plant for a violation of 10 CFR Part 50, Appendix B, Criterion V "Instructions, Procedures, and Drawings" that was categorized as a Yellow Significance Determination Process finding. The licensee failed to ensure that the work performed on Electrical Bus D11-2 was prescribed by documented instructions or procedures of a type appropriate to the circumstances and accomplished in accordance with the instructions or procedures. Specifically, on September 25, 2011, the work order instructions did not provide critical steps and also lacked proper step progression. The work order instructions also included action steps to, "Insulate or support load side bus bars to ensure they do not fault," which were not implemented. Finally, the electricians performing work in the field attempted to remove a positive horizontal bus bar in Bus D11-2, which was not a prescribed step in the work order instructions. As a result, these performance deficiencies caused an electrical fault which caused the loss of the left train 125-Volt DC safety-related system and loss of both preferred AC sources associated with the left train DC system.