BUCHANAN – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a finding that there would be no negative environmental impact should it grant Entergy exemptions for Indian Point’s fire damage shutdown procedure.

Entergy maintains that a number of operator manual actions in lieu of methods specified in the regulations to ensure a train of safe shutdown equipment are free of fire damage when redundant trains are in the same area.

NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said those continue under review.

“Some examples of an operator manual action would be closing a circuit breaker locally, to energize a motor since a control cable may have been damaged by fire, operators operating valves locally to align water source to pumps because of fire damage,” he said. “We are still considering those actions that they are requesting.”

Opponents to Indian Point and its relicensing maintain those exemptions make the facility more dangerous than they believe it already is.