The Union of Concerned Scientists, a nuclear watchdog group, lists a Duke Energy nuclear power plant among last year's significant industry mishaps the organization calls "near misses."

None of the 15 incidents cited by the UCS posed immediate danger to nuclear plant employees or to the public. But the UCS says that 15 such reports -- more than one a month -- is unacceptably high for a mature industry. The problems typically involved impaired equipment or faulty procedures.

The organization says the NRC was lax in addressing safety concerns in those instances, though in other cases the federal agency performed its functions admirably. The UCS report, called "The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2011: Living on Borrowed Time," was written by UCS scientist David Lochbaum, who took a break from the organization several years ago and worked for the NRC for a year.

Nuclear safety officials have concluded that a fluke mishap last year at Progress Energy's Brunswick nuclear plant near Wilmington was caused by the lack of worker qualification for more than a decade.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued its preliminary findings yesterday, but the federal safety agency is continuing its investigation to determine the safety significance of the incident.

The unusual mishap that shut down the Brunswick Unit 2 reactor last November may be the only such incident in U.S. nuclear history.
 

Progress Energy's trouble-prone H.B. Robinson nuclear plant in South Carolina declared an emergency after a fire was reported at the facility.

The Robinson plant was in shutdown mode for a refueling outage Monday evening when the electrical fire occurred in a control cabinet of a polar crane, a heavy-duty crane with a bridge and trolley system. There were no injuries reported.

The nuclear plant is coming off a period of troubled performance during which it experienced four unplanned shutdowns, two electrical fires and a power failure between 2009 and 2010.

Last year the Nuclear Regulatory Commission removed the Robinson plant off the nation's worst-performers list after a period of trouble-free performance.

Emergency alerts at U.S. nuclear plants surged in 2011, reaching twice the levels seen in the past decade, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

The 62 events and alerts were caused by a spike in two areas: the Aug. 23 earthquake that rattled plants up and down the East Cost, and an unusually high number of events related to toxic and flammable gas.

Figuring among the 2011 statistics were all three nuclear plants owned by Progress Energy in the Carolinas, as well as N.C. State University's research reactor in Raleigh.

"2011 presented the greatest number of emergency classification notifications for the years we have analyzed starting in 2001," the NRC report said.

Nuclear safety officials dinged Raleigh-based Progress Energy for a minor safety violation at its Brunswick nuclear plant near Wilmington.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this morning that the plant's emergency diesel generators were not properly protected from possible flooding during a hurricane. The generators are needed as a backup source of electric power to operate pumps and other emergency equipment required to keep nuclear fuel from melting down and releasing radioactivity.

The generators were not properly protected because the Brunswick plant had not sealed off the fuel-oil tank room that stores the diesel to run the generators.

The agency said the oversight was of "low to moderate safety significance." It did not merit a fine, but the NRC will increase its oversight of the nuclear plant with an extra inspection.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said today it will conduct a special investigation at Progress Energy's Brunswick nuclear plant near Wilmington after a highly unusual mishap caused boiling water to flow out of a reactor chamber that was not properly sealed.

The federal inspectors will spend much of next week at the twin reactor Brunswick plant to understand what went wrong in the incident regarded as so unusual it may be unprecedented in U.S. nuclear history.

The incident, at Brunswick's Unit 2 reactor, posed no risk to the safety of employees or the public, and the moderately radioactive water that spilled out collected in a drain for normal processing. Raleigh-based Progress is also investigating the mishap, and Brunswick's Unit 1 has been generating electricity without interruption.

The NRC will issue a report within 45 days of the special inspection, which could include fines and other enforcement actions. A special inspection involves NRC specialists pulled from headquarters, regional offices or other nuclear plants to work with NRC's on-site inspectors at the plant to determine how the malfunction happened.

Brunswick's Unit 2 reactor has been shut off since the overflow was discovered early morning Wednesday. At one point, moderately radioactive water, coming directly from the reactor core, was pouring out of the reactor vessel at 10.1 gallons per minute, which is about 100 times more volume than would flow out under normal circumstances.

Progress Energy's H.B. Robinson nuclear plant, ranked earlier this year among the nation's worst-performing nuclear plants, is shut down again after more than 300 days of trouble-free operation.

The plant in South Carolina automatically shut off Monday at 11:45 a.m. a failure was detected in the reactor's emergency coolant system. Raleigh-based Progress has not said when the plant will be returned to operation.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is investigating the cause of the reactor trip. Nuclear plants are designed to trip off automatically if malfunctions or problems are detected.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a public meeting next week to update residents about measures taken to address recent concerns at Progress Energy's H.B. Robinson nuclear plant, located about 80 miles southeast of Charlotte.

The NRC had ranked the Robinson plant among the nation's worst-performing nuclear plants after a string of emergency shutdowns, fires and other mishaps. Last month, after more than six months of error-free performance, the NRC removed the Robinson plant from the list.

The NRC concluded that Raleigh-based Progress had made necessary improvements in safety and training, among them, replacing about a dozen executives and managers at the nuclear plant.

A nuclear watchdog group that has long criticized nuclear safety issued recommendations today on how to improve nuclear plant operations in the wake of the dangerous radiation releases caused by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

The two dozen proposals by the Union of Concerned Scientists can be summed up as: make U.S. standards stricter.

The tenor of the organization is an indication that operating nuclear plants in this country is going to become more expensive. Federal regulators as well as officials at Progress Energy and Duke Energy said they expect new, tougher standards to assure public confidence in nuclear safety.

A Progress Energy nuclear power plant that recently experienced an unusual number of emergency shutdowns, fires and other mishaps has been removed from a list of the nation's worst-performing nuclear plants.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said last week that Progress has made sufficient improvements in safety and training to warrant removing the H.B. Robinson plant in South Carolina from the NRC's "Degraded Cornerstone" ranking.

The degraded ranking was a cause of consternation for officials at Raleigh-based Progress, prompting a management shakeup at the Robinson plant that resulted in the dismissal of about a dozen executives and managers.