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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff gave the South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company the best rating possible during a Wednesday, May 14, meeting at the Bay City Civic Center.
The NRC continually reviews the performance of the South Texas Project and other commercial nuclear power facilities and uses a color-coded classification system to rank the overall safety of the plants.
The rating system starts with green, which shows the presence of very low safety concerns, and increases to white, yellow or red, the most severe and most serious rating. The NRC recently completed an assessment of the safety performance at the Matagorda County STP plant for the 2007 calendar year.
“[The plant in Matagorda County] had nothing but green inspection findings and green performance indicators,” said John Dixon, Senior Resident Inspector at STP. “Last year’s inspection activities, including the scheduled refueling outage, went off essentially flawless.”
The meeting on Wednesday also provided an opportunity for the NRC staff to answer questions from the public on the safety performance of South Texas Project, as well as the NRC’s role in ensuring safe plant operation.
“ We sincerely appreciate this feedback from the NRC,” said James J. Sheppard, president and chief nuclear officer at STP. “We are always striving to maintain nuclear safety and the public health safety. We take all precautions very seriously.”
Sheppard said their main goal was to improve lives through the production of efficient energy generation. The plant management wants to provide clean, efficient energy, provide economic stimulus and provide high paying good careers to their employees, he added.
“We pledge to continue to improve performance and move toward excellence,” Sheppard said.
There are a total of 104 NRC inspected nuclear plants across the nation, and of those, 87 received solid green inspection results. There were eight plants with a white rating, one yellow, and none with the most severe red rating.
John Braden is a reporter/photographer for the Matagorda Advocate. Contact him at 979-244-1330 or jbraden@vicad.com.