NRC approves Areva’s work in Lynchburg

By Ray Reed

Published: July 24, 2008

For the sixth year in a row, Areva’s nuclear fuel processing and equipment work in Lynchburg has won the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval.

“No specific areas needing improvement were identified,” said Charles Payne, the NRC’s chief of an Atlanta inspection branch that oversees Areva and two other nuclear-fuel plants.

In fact, the NRC will reduce its upcoming inspections for one part of Areva’s operations in the city so the agency can use its resources at other fuel plants, Payne said Thursday.

The NRC approval from its 2006-08 inspection period was granted even though radiation was detected on an Areva shipment in February. That event involved a package of fuel-cleaning equipment delivered from Lynchburg to a plant in Tennessee.

The external-radiation event was included in the NRC’s inspection report, and it “was considered a relatively significant event,” Payne said Thursday during a public meeting at Areva’s offices in Lynchburg.

“It was a one-time event, it was very focused, and the licensee Areva took prompt attention to figure out what the problem was and took corrective action,” Payne said.

Dominique Grandemange, manager of Areva’s Mount Athos Road site, said during the meeting that new and lower thresholds of tolerance have been set for shipments of equipment. In addition, the shipments probably will be enclosed in trailers instead of moving on flatbed trucks, he said.

Payne said that because Areva responded quickly, “it wasn’t a basis for us to conclude there was a trend of declining performance” in transportation and radiological controls.

The inspection also focused on four other areas of operation at Areva: safety; safeguards on material handling; facility support including maintenance and surveillance; and licensing.

Payne used the phrase “No specific areas needing improvement were identified” for each of the five categories.

Maintenance and surveillance were so efficient that the NRC will give it less attention in the upcoming two-year inspection period, Payne said.

So few areas within maintenance and surveillance needed attention that “we are able to conduct a satisfactory inspection program with reduced effort. We are going to take that effort and focus it in other areas in the agency where we might need additional attention,” Payne said.

Alphonse Gooden, the NRC official who oversaw the Areva inspection, said the company’s six-year record in Lynchburg is better than other facilities the NRC inspects.

“Some facilities are on annual performance assessment” instead of the two-year cycle at Areva, Gooden said. For those plants, “in some cases one year is real positive, and you’ll find that the next year it is not so good.

“For Areva, this is actually six years that we have not had any areas for improvement,” Gooden said.

Areva has about 2,000 employees in the Lynchburg area.