Federal regulators announced they have fined Florida Power & Light $140,000 for violations in the maintenance of its emergency response facility at its Turkey Point nuclear power plant.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said FPL failed on two occasions to maintain a fully functional Technical Support Center because workers disabled parts of the ventilation system, meaning “response personnel may not have been protected from radiological hazards in the manner for which the facility was designed.”
The NRC also criticized FPL for failing to report that the support center was “not fully functional during a seven-month period in 2010-2011.”
Regulators said the violations were considered “of low to moderate safety significance” that might require additional NRC inspections and oversight.
FPL spokeswoman Bianca Martinez Cruz said Tuesday the support center is “currently fully operable and we have taken a number to steps to ensure this type of situation does not occur again.”
She noted the center is “one of four on-site emergency response buildings inside the plant\’s protected area that would be used by engineering staff in the highly-unlikely event of an emergency.” She said the problem was “not at all related to the safety of the plant\’s day-to-day operations, and at no point was the safety of our employees or the public in question.”
Source: Miami Herald