Federal regulators have proposed $137,500 in fines against Commonwealth Edison Co. for safety problems last year at two nuclear power plants, including one incident in which workers were sprayed with slightly radioactive steam.
Immediately following the Oct. 4 steam release at Edison`s Braidwood plant, southwest of Joliet, the three workers showered and were
decontaminated, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. One of the workers also received a small burn from the steam.
The accident occurred during maintenance, when an engineer opened a valve near where the workers were standing, Edison spokesman Gary Wald said Monday. The plant was shut down at the time.
Wald said Edison has not decided whether to pay or appeal the $87,500 fine levied by the commission for the accident. The utility has until March 1 to make a decision.
Edison also has until March 1 to pay or challenge a $50,000 fine for an Oct. 27 incident when a control-room operator accidentally shut down the Quad Cities nuclear plant, on the Mississippi River near Cordova, Ill.
The commission said the incident ”had minor safety consequences” but
”indicated a significant lack of management oversight, poor communications among the operating staff, lack of training and procedural inadequacies.”
Wald said Edison has retrained workers, changed policies and added supervisors to the control rooms at both plants to try to prevent the problems from recurring.
The fines come less than a month after the commission announced it had added Edison`s Zion nuclear power plant north of Waukegan to a watch list of reactors with operating problems that could lead to safety problems if not corrected.
