Federal Reports

The objective of this review was to determine if the fire protection systems were adequately maintained and mitigating actions are taken to minimize the impacts of fires at TVA fossil plants. During our review, we identified a number of issues related to fire protection at TVA fossil plants. We found numerous impairments exist with fire protection systems at a number of sites, and most systems are not returned to service in a timely manner. During calendar year 2010, there were 30 impairments at Cumberland, 10 at Gallatin, 6 at John Sevier, 20 at Paradise, and 49 at Shawnee. The impairments in 2010 that have since been closed lasted between 40 and 158 days, depending on the site. We also found some fire brigade members have concerns about fire response preparedness. These concerns included poor fitting equipment, the condition of fire trucks, an inadequate staging area, bad communication equipment, not enough training, and insufficient staffing. Additionally, we found that lessons learned from fire events were not being consistently communicated across the fleet. Lessons learned were shared in different ways and were not always shared with fire brigade members. We also identified opportunities for improvement with fire prevention. During our review, we observed areas of significant coal dust accumulation and evidence of smoking at several sites. Lastly, we found instances of noncompliance with TVA policy regarding testing, inspection, and maintenance of fire protection equipment, pre-fire plans, and use of fire equipment. We identified some systems that were not inspected and tested as required, pre-fire plans were in need of updating, and fire equipment was being misused.We recommended the Senior Vice President, Fossil Generation 1) take immediate steps to restore all impaired fire protection systems to service and determine if additional personnel or resources are needed to expedite repairs of fire protection systems in the future; 2) determine (a) the equipment needs of fire brigade members, including protective equipment and emergency communication devices, and take steps to provide that equipment, (b) what additional training is needed for fire brigade members and take steps to provide that training, and (c) if increased staffing is warranted for fire brigades; (3) create and implement a formal process for capturing and sharing lessons learned from fire events across the fleet, and capture all fire incidents and report them in a consistent manner in the OIC; (4) perform regular coal washdowns at all plants to minimize coal dust accumulations, and strictly enforce TVA's "No Smoking" policy; and (5) evaluate whether additional personnel are needed to properly inspect, test, and maintain fire protection equipment, update pre-fire plans to reflect current conditions, and reinforce that fire equipment is only to be used by fire brigade personnel. TVA management agreed with the recommendations.

Incident Management

The objective of this review was to determine whether TVA was meeting all requirements and planned actions for the removal of equipment containing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). We found there were currently no requirements for the removal of PCB equipment, and previous planned actions for PCB equipment removal were not always completed. We believe continued use of PCB-containing equipment poses significant risk to TVA, as (1) TVA maintains one of the largest inventories of PCB equipment in the electric utility industry; (2) the condition of some PCB equipment at TVA increases the risk of an incident; and (3) TVA does not have an accurate inventory of its PCB-contaminated equipment.We recommended the Chief Operating Officer (1) expedite removal of PCB equipment by (a) providing dedicated funding and (b) developing a standard methodology for assessing risk of PCB contaminated equipment to prioritize its removal; and (2) provide dedicated funding to expedite efforts to determine PCB-contaminated equipment inventory to prioritize and allocate funding, accordingly, for the removal of this equipment. Until the PCB-contaminated equipment inventory is completed, TVA should treat all fires involving electrical equipment as if it contained PCBs until determined otherwise.