toledoblade.com -- The Blade ~ Toledo Ohio

DTE Energy has gotten itself into a jam with federal regulators for allowing Fermi 2 control-room operators to go a decade without having their senses of smell and touch examined.

An enforcement conference is being held today at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Midwest regional office in Lisle, Ill., southwest of Chicago, for executives to defend themselves from a possible "completeness and accuracy of information" violation.

The American National Standards Institute and the American Nuclear Society have required control-room operators of the nation's 104 nuclear power plants to have their senses of smell and touch tested when their licenses come up for renewal every six years, according to the NRC.

That's so the agency has some sense of assurance operators can, for example, catch a whiff of a combustible product that has not been properly secured.

Likewise, the agency wants to be assured that operators' sense of touch is good enough, for example, to distinguish between certain control knobs and handles in the dark.

Operators are central to anuclear plant's daily function. Their olfactory and tactile testing is important, according to NRC spokesman Prema Chandrathil, because operators are the public's front line of defense if a plant's safety is compromised by an "unusual" situation.

The exams are among the medical tests that operators undergo as part of their licensing.

On Aug. 13, DTE reported to the NRC that it learned it had stopped performing the smell and touch examinations in May, 1999.

Utility officials are not sure why, other than the company had made a switch in how it administered medical tests. It apparently was a simple oversight, plant spokesman John Austerberry said.

Fermi's 50 operators were kept current on other licensing requirements.

The required smell-touch examinations were administered within five days of the notification. All passed, the NRC said.

At today's enforcement hearing, the NRC will consider the utility's explanation before deciding whether it should be penalized for the neglected tests.

"We renewed and issued numerous senior reactor operator and reactor operator licenses since May, 1999, without knowledge of the incomplete medical testing, relying on incomplete and inaccurate information you provided in licensing documentations," the agency's letter to the utility states.

An NRC report further stated that "this failure had regulatory significance because the incomplete and inaccurate information was provided under a signed statement to the NRC and impacted numerous licensing decisions."

The NRC said in the letter it may forgo a fine, given Fermi 2's track record for safety and a lack of major enforcement action taken against the utility in recent years.

The agency expects to take up to 45 days to decide.

Contact Tom Henry at:
thenry@theblade.com
or 419-724-6079.

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