Nuclear Agency Orders Reactor Closed, Cites Sleeping on Duty

Pennsylvania’s Peach Bottom nuclear plant was ordered shut down Tuesday. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it had found an unprecedented pattern of control room operators sleeping on duty at the plant.

The Philadelphia Electric Corp. facility began an orderly shutdown Tuesday morning, commission spokesman Joe Fouchard said.

“They may not restart without our approval. These are very serious matters, and we plan to probe them thoroughly,” he said.

Plants have been shut down before, but Fouchard said, “This is the first time we’ve taken an action as the result of information of this type.” Before the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, the commission ordered five plants shut down pending resolution of seismic considerations in their design.

An NRC investigation found that “inattention to duty” at the utility was not confined to one or two instances.

“At times during various shifts, in particular the 11 p.m.-to-7 a.m. shift, one or more of the Peach Bottom operations control room staff (including licensed operators, senior licensed operators and shift supervisors) have for at least the past five months periodically slept or have been otherwise inattentive to license duties,” the NRC report said.

It said that shift supervisors and superintendents “have either known of or condoned” the sleeping or they “should have known.” The managers of the plant in rural Delta, Pa., also should have known, the commission said.

Philadelphia Electric operates two boiling-water reactors at Peach Bottom. Unit No. 2 was already closed for refueling. The NRC said that the other “must be brought to cold shutdown within 36 hours.”

Philadelphia Electric spokesman Neil McDermott said the utility “is as interested as the NRC is to get to the bottom of this.” He said that company officials had no knowledge of employees sleeping on duty until the commission notified them Tuesday morning.