USEC May Face NRC Enforcement Action Over Changes at Two Plants

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

USEC May Face NRC Enforcement Action Over Changes at Two Plants

Washington, May 3 (Bloomberg) --USEC Inc., the world's leading 
supplier of enriched uranium for nuclear power plants, may face 
federal enforcement action over changes it made at its two uranium 
reprocessing plants, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. 

The commission said it has identified seven instances, four at the 
USEC facility in Paducah, Kentucky, and three at the Portsmouth, 
Ohio, plant, where the company should have sought NRC approval before 
making changes. 

The Bethesda, Maryland-based company denies that it was supposed to 
get approval for the specific changes, such as changing an alarm 
response time from half a second to two seconds. 

``None of these examples required prior NRC approval,'' said Steve 
Toelle, USEC's manager of nuclear regulatory assurance and policy. He 
said the company followed a detailed procedure to determine whether 
officials need to talk with the NRC before instituting a change. 

USEC, created in the early 1990s as a government corporation, became 
a public company in July 1998. It enriches uranium for use as fuel in 
commercial nuclear power plants. It has about 75 percent of the North 
American market and 40 percent of the world market. 

The NRC said it found the violations at the two plants while 
reviewing documents the company prepared in April 1999 to update its 
certification. The commission held a pre-decision enforcement 
conference today to discuss the apparent violations with the company. 


The NRC staff said it should decide within the next month whether to 
take enforcement action, which could include a civil fine. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandy Perle					Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100   				    	
Director, Technical				Extension 2306 				     	
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