NRC: South Texas Project operating safely despite equipment failures; Unit 2 receives white finding

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the Bay City Council on a presentation night that the South Texas Project nuclear plant continued to operate safely in 2024 even as inspectors documented a string of equipment failures and a ‘white’ regulatory finding for Unit 2.

John Vera, senior resident inspector at the South Texas Project, told the council, “We are your resident inspectors, are your local inspectors. We work at the plant every day, and we are responsible for safety, oversight emergency response and baseline inspection.” Vera outlined that 2024 included forced outages tied to oil leaks, failures of steam-generator power-operated relief valves, a cracked spring on an atmospheric relief valve that rendered it inoperable, and several “complicated” reactor trips in which safety systems did not fully operate as designed.

Why it matters: a white finding signals low-to-moderate safety significance in NRC terms and moved STP Unit 2 into the NRC’s column 2 — the “light regulatory response” level — triggering a planned follow-up inspection. Tricia Vossma, branch chief for the NRC’s Arlington Regional Office, emphasized the overall assessment: “This plant is operating safely.” She said the NRC will bring a team for a follow-up inspection later this year to review corrective actions.

Vera described the agency’s regulatory framework, noting that the NRC uses performance indicators and inspection findings to populate an “action matrix” that ranges from column 1 (best performance) to column 5 (most severe regulatory response). He said most performance indicators remained green for STP across 2024, but performance declined on some equipment-reliability indicators and that early 2025 data showed improvement after station actions. Vera said the 07/24/2024 Unit 1 trip involved a shunt-reactor electrical device and also was classified as a complicated reactor trip because of a failed relief valve during the event.

Vossma and Vera described the plant’s voluntary “recovery” program and said the licensee is addressing root causes — including human-performance and management concerns such as leadership presence, training gaps and workforce knowledge transfer — that underlay repeated equipment failures. Vera and Vossma said the white finding specifically relates to Unit 2’s performance and that corrective-action verification is scheduled for later this year.

Council members asked how the plant could move from reactive repairs to more preventive steps. Vera and Vossma said the station’s recovery effort targets underlying causes, including workforce and procedural gaps, not only replacing failed parts. Vera noted one example in which a cracked spring was discovered during scheduled preventative maintenance and repaired as planned.

The NRC presentation did not result in any council action; it was a briefing and a public Q&A. Documents and inspection reports for STP are available on the NRC website, the presenters said.