COURTESY PILGRIM NUCLEAR POWER STATION
PLYMOUTH – Entergy’s Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station has returned to normal, baseline oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) this week.
The plant moves from Column 4 to Column 1 in the agency’s Reactor Oversight Program.
“We’re pleased that the process has been successfully completed. This has been a significant effort on the part of NRC inspectors involving thousands of hours of review,” said NRC Spokesman Neil Sheehan.
“Before we got to this point that where we decided that the plant could move out of column 4 of our action matrix, we wanted to make sure that Pilgrim had demonstrated sustained performance improvement, that it had addressed all the issues that we had raised and led to heightened oversight, and they had completed all of the corrective action measures that they needed to complete.”
Entergy Spokesman Patrick O’Brien credited the more than 600 employees at the plant who worked to get it to column 1 before the shutdown in June.
“They really upped their performance and worked hard on corrective actions to close any gaps we had,” O’Brien said.
“This included thousands of hours of inspections by the NRC in an enhanced review, so it’s really nice to see the performance noted by the NRC, and we get to finish plant life as an operating plant on a high note.”
The action came following the NRC’s closure of a Confirmatory Action Letter issued in August of 2017.
In October of 2015 Entergy announced the permanent shutdown of Pilgrim by June 1, 2019.
“The employees at Pilgrim are some of the finest nuclear professionals I have known. Their dedication, along with the support from our company’s nuclear division and other plants, was evident throughout this multiyear performance improvement effort,” said Chris Costanzo, senior vice president of nuclear operations for Entergy.
The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station employs about 600 workers. It began generating electricity in 1972.
By TIM DUNN, CapeCod.com News Center
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