NRC ORDER – ORDER

On August 9, 2017, the NRC issued a Confirmatory Order to Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC to formalize commitments reached as part of an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mediation session involving violations at the Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility (CFFF). The NRC identified the following four Apparent Violations (AVs), all of which were considered for escalated enforcement in accordance with the NRC's Enforcement Policy: (1) failure to ensure criticality accident sequences remain highly unlikely, as required by Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) 10 CFR 70.61(b); (2) failure to assure that under normal and credible abnormal conditions, all nuclear processes were subcritical including use of an approved margin of subcriticality, as required by 10 CFR 70.61(d); (3) failure to establish adequate management measures to ensure that items relied on for safety (IROFS) perform their function when needed, as required by 10 CFR 70.62(d); and (4) failure to make a one hour report, as required by Appendix A (a)(4) of 10 CFR Part 70. As part of the settlement agreement, Westinghouse agreed to take a number of actions in addition to those already completed. These additional actions include: (1) conduct an additional Nuclear Safety Culture survey; (2) implement improvements to reduce uranium carryover from the Calciner scrubbers; (3) implement additional design changes to reduce uranium carryover from filtration system; (4) develop and implement additional methods to monitor system parameters that are early indicators of an abnormal accumulation in the conversion area process off-gas scrubber from a process upset that could challenge the accumulation rate and/or criticality safety mass limits; and (5) develop and implement a criticality safety basis/IROFS database to help maintain the proper flow down of the safety basis into implementing documents. In recognition of these actions, the NRC agreed to refrain from proposing a civil penalty and issuing a No