Unnamed security violations at the Zion nuclear plant in Illinois are likely to result in a civil penalty of $17,500 for a subsidiary of EnergySolutions.
Commonwealth Edison powered down the plant's reactors for the last time in 1998, and EnergySolutions began decommissioning them in 2010. At some point between June 2013 and February of this year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission conducted an inspection and the company disclosed security regulation violations that have since been fixed. The NRC is highly secretive about its inspection process to assess security at civilian nuclear sites, and the agency did not disclose what, exactly, the violations entailed. The public version of the notice of violation sent to the plant described them only as a severity level III problem and proposed the dollar amount of the fine accordingly. EnergySolutions still has an opportunity to challenge the NRC's decision.
Zion generated power near Chicago for more than 20 years before it shut down. Decommissioning is expected to be complete in 2020, and crews recently began transferring fuel from the reactors' spent fuel pools to dry casks.