NRC says Dresden Nuclear plant operated safely in 2022

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a discussion at the Canalport Community Center, 100 Nettle St. in Morris, on the Dresden nuclear power plant Thursday in a public open house, where its employees explained that the plant operated to the highest safety standards.

Dresden’s performance indicators were “green,” or of very low safety significance. This means that Dresden will remain under the NRC’s baseline level of oversight, which entails thousands of hours of oversight each year.

This oversight comes from resident inspectors like Jakob Steffes, who lives in the area and monitors licensee activities on-site on a daily basis.

“Every single day, we go to the site and monitor plant activities,” Steffes said. “What that means, the big picture is that we attend meetings, engage in conversations and walk the plans or control room every single day.”

Steffes said inspectors go through monitoring equipment and monitoring activities to ensure every rule and regulation is followed.

Every single day, we go to the site and monitor plant activities. What that means, the big picture is that we attend meetings, engage in conversations and walk the plans or control room every single day.”

—  Jakob Steffes. nuclear inspector

Any challenges or concerns get brought up for immediate resolution.

Each site, Steffes said, gets around 2,000 hours of baseline inspections every year. These inspections are all-inclusive and account for plant performance and the plant’s progressive response when something needs maintenance.

“Sites are designed as such that they have multiple barriers and multiple systems,” Steffes said. “So multiple trains have a certain system and then we’ll have multiple backups to those systems to ensure there are multiple avenues for the licensee to combat any accidents.”

These measures are preventative, a way to ensure there are multiple plans in place to keep the plant running properly at all times.

NRC Public Affairs Officer Prema Chandrathil said that everything is tracked at the lowest level so it doesn’t get to a point where there’s an impact on the public or the environment.

Reactor Projects Chief Robert Ruiz said there’s a backstop in place, too: The NRC has the authority to shut the plant down if a plant ever reaches “column five,” the unacceptable performance standard.

Ruiz said nearly 100% of the time, though, the issues found are just degradation of the margin.

Steffes said the green rating, put simply, shows that Dresden is in a normal level of oversight from the previous inspection area.

All information about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is available online at their website, nrc.gov. The commission also has a digest created to share more information for those curious on the health of local nuclear power plants, which can be found here.