Coal Condition Reports

Tennessee Valley Authority business units are expected to find, analyze, and fix conditions that affect personnel safety, asset reliability, adverse trends, or other conditions that do not meet expectations. Condition reports (CR) are created to record how problems are found, analyzed, and solved. Due to the importance of finding, analyzing, and resolving concerns identified at coal plants, we conducted an evaluation of CRs at TVA coal plants to determine if (1) Coal Operations generated CRs for reported safety, environmental, and operational incidents; and (2) actions taken to address coal CRs were timely and effective We found that CRs were originated for all environmental incidents; however, some safety and operational incidents did not result in CRs being originated as required by the procedure. We also found that not all actions taken to address CRs were timely, and some CR originators perceived that actions taken were not effective. In addition, we found opportunities for improvement related to (1) classification of CRs by significance level, (2) documentation of actions taken to address CRs, and (3) discrepancies in the Standard Programs and Processes that govern this process.