Community Corner
NRC: Oyster Creek Won't Be Fined For Discovery Of Unused Monitors Stored In A Non-Security Area
No danger to public, says Exelon and Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
LACEY – An decades-old box of uranium 235-containing monitors were found under a pallet in a secured warehouse by Exelon personnel outside of Oyster Creek's designated material access area, according to app.com.
"They were relocated by Exelon plant personnel to a location now under the supervised control of Oyster Creek’s Radiation Protection program and staff," plant spokesperson Suzanne D'Ambrosio said. "There was never a radiological hazard to the public or employees. Radiological surveys confirmed no radioactivity from the devices, which appear to be at least 30 years old. The LPRMs (local power range monitors) were never used at Oyster Creek.""
The box of eight local power range monitors was found Oct. 6 under a pallet and other material inside the warehouse, where they mostly likely sat for decades, according to a letter from Exelon sent to the the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nothing on the box marked the contents as containing radioactive material, according to the letter.
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The monitors, which measure power inside of the nuclear reactor, contained less than a gram of uranium-235, said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“You’re talking about a very small quantity of this material," said Sheehan. "The public was not in any risk because of this."
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Exelon did not own the monitors. They could possibly date back to part of a test program in place between 1975 and 1990, according to a company analysis.
Sheehan said the monitors might have been shipped there by mistake, but why they remained at the site is something Exelon will have to try and answer. He does not expect that Exelon will be fined.
"We were promptly made aware of this," Sheehan said. "The company took appropriate steps to address this, and we've already done some inspection follow up on this."
“They don’t know where it came from," said Janet Tauro, board chairperson of Clean Water Action NJ and founding member of GRAMMES (Grandmothers, Mothers, and More for Energy Safety). “You wonder what else do they have laying around. It’s frightening. It’s sloppy.”
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Image: Patricia A. Miller
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