Babcock & Wilcox faces penalty for delay in declaring emergency in Virginia incident
By APWednesday, January 13, 2010
Babcock & Wilcox faces penalty for Va. incident
LYNCHBURG, Va. — Power generation company Babcock & Wilcox Co. faces a $35,000 civil penalty for waiting more than two hours to declare an emergency during an incident last year involving uranium at its Lynchburg facility.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced the proposed penalty Tuesday. Babcock & Wilcox has 30 days to either challenge the penalty or pay it.
According to the commission, workers discovered on July 15, 2009, that a saw used to cut fuel components discharged oil containing a small amount of highly enriched uranium into a container. An emergency wasn’t declared until more than two hours after the discovery.
Three other procedural violations were noted but the commission said it’s not proposing civil penalties for them.
Babcock & Wilcox is a subsidiary of construction and engineering company McDermott International Inc.
