NRC STAFF TO HOLD REGULATORY CONFERENCE
WITH NEBRASKA PUBLIC POWER DISTRICT

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will hold a regulatory conference with officials of Nebraska Public Power District, operator of the Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville, Nebraska, on Tuesday, December 18. Conferees will discuss three potential "white" inspection findings involving NPPD's implementation of emergency preparedness actions.

The meeting, which is open to public observation, will begin at 8:30 a.m. in NRC Region IV offices in Arlington, Texas. NRC officials in Arlington will be available after the meeting to answer questions.

The three potential "white" findings, defined as regulatory problems with low to moderate safety significance, involve emergency preparedness. The NRC found, after an Alert was declared on June 25, that Cooper did not provide timely notification to state and local response organizations, activate the emergency response facilities in a timely manner and maintain an adequate emergency operations facility to support emergency response.

An "alert" is the second of four emergency response levels mandated by the NRC. A "notice of unusual event" is the lowest level, followed by "alert," "site area emergency," and "general emergency." Cooper declared an "alert" when a fire affected the station's start-up transformer, which is one of the systems suppling power to the plant's safety equipment.

The NRC evaluates regulatory performance at commercial nuclear power plants with a color coded significance determination process which classifies regulatory findings as being in one of four color categories: green, white, yellow, or red in increasing order of regulatory safety significance.

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