Commonwealth Edison’s Byron Nuclear station was given the go-ahead to operate at full power Jan. 30, although an environmental group claims widespread safety and procedural violations existed at the plant.

The Sinnissippi Alliance for the Environment, whose Rock River headquarters are in Rockford Ill., issued a press release Feb. 11 to make the public aware of widespread safety deficiencies and procedural violations at the plant, according to alliance spokesmen.

Diane Chavez, alliance spokesman, said ComEd is required to implement a Quality Assurance Quality Control (QAQC) program to ensure federal regulations are being met. She said ComEd can put its own QAQC program in place or delegate the responsibility to one of its contractors.

ComEd delegated the responsibility to its electrical contractor, Hatfield Electric Co. However, ComEd ultimately is responsible to make sure federal regulations are not being violated, Chavez said.

According to the release, on May 7, 1986 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) began to investigate how well ComEd checked on Hatfield, after some of Hatfield’s quality control inspectors went to the NRC with safety and procedural violations and were allegedly harassed and intimidated by their own management.

The NRC issued an 82-page report Dec. 5, 1986 notifying ComEd of the result of the 36-week special investigation. The NRC found that ComEd failed to exercise adequate control over Hatfield. One example of inadequate control was ComEd’s failure to request more than 300 reports which Hatfield should have submitted but were withheld by Hatfield management.

It is the alliance’s belief that the concerns expressed to the NRC by Hatfield inspectors represent only the “tip of the iceberg” of safety deficiencies and procedural violations at the plant, Chavez said. She said these problems would be uncovered if ComEd encouraged, rather than discouraged, employees to bring them to the attention of management.

Chavez said the NRC is considering enforcement options, such as imposing fines, if ComEd continues to fail to oversee Hatfield’s activities. She said ComEd was fined $25,000 on June 25, 1986 for an incident in which one of its subcontractors fired an employee who reported installation and inspection deficiencies to the NRC.

Chavez said, “If the NRC gets enough complaints and ComEd gets fined enough, they’ll start paying more attention to the regulations and make sure these violations don’t occur.”