Feds post some past Babcock & Wilcox files online

By Ray Reed

Published: May 14, 2008

Almost four years’ worth of reports about in-plant events at the Lynchburg area’s Babcock & Wilcox plant have now been posted for public viewing on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Web site.

The postings are called “event notification reports” and the NRC emphasized they are not new reports. Many of them “involve events of low safety significance,” the agency said in a news release.

The reports had been withheld for security reasons cited by the Office of Naval Reactors at the U.S. Department of Energy from 2004 until September 2007. The NRC changed its policy for withholding the reports in September.

Many of the reports involved sensors’ detecting excess radiation from

incoming shipments of nuclear materials, or malfunctioning smoke detectors or fire-suppression equipment.

Two of the events were somewhat more notable.

On July 13, 2005, lightning struck an alarm system, resulting in local law enforcement agencies immediately being put on alert. The alarm system was repaired within about 10 hours.

On May 8 2007, the plant declared an onsite alert because of a fire in a radioactive waste drum.

The fire was extinguished by on-site personnel. “Analysis of samples taken during the emergency indicated no detectable activity” involving radiation, the NRC report said.

The plant initially requested offsite assistance with the fire, but called it off after extinguishing the flames.

Fire departments in Campbell County and Amherst County had been notified.

Those reports were among 58 previously withheld ones posted on the NRC site.

Many of the reports did not involve Babcock & Wilcox, but instead were filed by Nuclear Fuel Services, a fabrication facility in Irwin, Tenn.

For more information, go to the NRC Web site, http://www.nrc.gov

On the left-hand side, click on “Event Reports”

On the “Reports Associated with Events” page, click “Event Notification Report”

On the page that comes up, click on “2008” and then May 12.

The formerly withheld reports are among the 65 numbered reports that appear.