After four unplanned shut downs of its oldest reactor last year, the Sequoyah Nuclear Power Plant is still under extra oversight by federal regulators.
But in its annual assessment of the TVA nuclear plant near Soddy Daisy, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded Sequoyah is being operated in a safe manner and gave top ratings in all but one area reviewed by regulators in their assessment completed in February.
Because of an unusually high number of unplanned scrams or rapid shutdowns of the Unit 1 reactor during 2015, the NRC wants to meet with TVA officials to review what steps have been taken to address potential problem that caused the shutdowns and to see how TVA has responded to the incidents. Although the outages didn’t present any risk to plant workers or the public, the unplanned scrams lowered the safety rating in one of the 17 areas reviewed for each unit at Sequoyah.
The Unit 2 reactor at Sequoyah operated at the highest safety levels in all areas, according to a letter to TVA released last week by Mark Franke, the acting division director or the NRC Division of Reactor Projects.
Unit 1 at Sequoyah had three unplanned shutdowns during the third quarter of last year, which exceeded NRC guidelines for top-rated plants and triggered extra inspection and review by regulators.