Signs of Nuclear Regulatory Shortcomings Proliferate

By J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, May 20, 2004 (ENS) - Two reports released this week present scathing indictments of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) oversight of the nation's aging nuclear reactors and its handling of the events that led to the shutdown of the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio. One report by Congressional investigators and another by a watchdog group warn of lax oversight.

A study of the nation's 103 commercial nuclear reactors by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) warns that many of these facilities are entering, if not already in, the most dangerous phase of their life cycles.

Many reactors are now in their third decade of operation, a phase "where safety system failures, unplanned reactor shutdowns, and accidental releases of radioactivity are becoming more likely," said Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with UCS and author of the report.

In response, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should step up its monitoring procedures in order to safeguard the American public from potential failures at nuclear power plants, the report recommends.

Twenty-seven nuclear reactors have been shut down in the past two decades for safety problems that took a year or longer to fix demonstrates that errors are abundant and margins for error still necessary, Lochbaum said.

On March 6, 2002, workers repairing a cracked control rod drive mechanism nozzle at the FirstEnergy Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station discovered a football sized hole in the reactor vessel head. It was later determined to have resulted from reactor cooling water laden with corrosive boric acid leaking onto the reactor vessel head.

Industry representatives say many reactors have been upgraded and note that accident rates and shutdowns have decreased in the past decade - even as the overall output of U.S. nuclear plants has increased some 25 percent.

The nation's 103 nuclear power plants produce 20 percent of the electricity used in the United States. (Photo courtesy Tennessee Emergency Management Agency)

And the fact these plants will remain a key part of the U.S. energy equation is reason enough for better oversight by the federal government, the UCS report says.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already renewed licenses for 12 sites - 23 reactors - and is considering an additional 11 sites with 19 reactors.

License renewal adds 20 years onto the original 40 year operational life of each unit - virtually all of the nation's nuclear plants are expected to apply for license renewals.

The UCS report cautions neither the Commission nor its regulations are adequately assessing or monitoring the safety of commercial reactors - it cites several near mishaps, in particular the problems unveiled at Davis-Besse.

"Nuclear plants seeking license renewal conform not to today's safety standards, but to a unique assortment of regulations dating back nearly 40 years, with countless exemptions, deviations and waivers granted along the way," Lochbaum wrote.

The Union of Concerned Scientists says Congress needs to step up pressure on the Commission to reform and provide ample funding for increased inspections.

The research group is not the only one to question NRC's oversight - concerns have been repeatedly sounded by the agency's own internal investigators and by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO).

And a new report released Monday by the GAO, the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, casts further criticism on the NRC's handling of problems at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant.

The Commission failed to identify or prevent the corrosion at Davis-Besse because its oversight did not generate accurate information on plant conditions, the GAO said.

The report finds the NRC was aware of the potential for cracked tubes and corrosion at plants like Davis-Besse but did not view them as an immediate concern and did not modify its inspections to identify potential problems at similar plants.

Besse reactor vessel head insulation showing the damage caused by boric acid (Photo courtesy NRC)

In October 2002, the task force reported that a web of misinformation, poor regulatory oversight and operator negligence allowed a preventable problem to become a serious safety hazard.

Operators and regulators, for example, had noted evidence of boric acid deposits in 1998 but did not take the finding seriously.

The GAO found that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission considered FirstEnergy a "good performer," a bias that resulted in fewer NRC inspections and questions about plant conditions.

The Commission established a December 31, 2001 deadline for full shutdown of the plants that it believed were of highest risk - including Davis-Besse.

But the federal agency granted FirstEnergy's request for a delay and did not issue a shutdown order for Davis-Besse until February 16, 2002, when the plant was scheduled for routine maintenance.

In March 2002 plant operators discovered that boric acid from a leaking nozzle had created a hole six inches deep and nearly five inches wide in the reactor lid.

The report detailed that the Commission's process for deciding to allow the Davis-Besse to delay its shutdown lacks credibility.

The NRC had no guidance specifically for making a decision on whether a plant should shut down, so it used guidance for deciding whether a plant should be allowed to modify its operating license, the GAO said.

But the Congressional investigators found that the agency did not follow always this guidance and generally did not document how it applied the guidance.

In addition, the risk estimate the Commission used to help decide whether the plant should shut down was also flawed and underestimated the amount of risk that Davis-Besse posed. Even though it underestimated this risk, the estimate still exceeded risk levels generally accepted by the agency, according to the GAO.

The NRC allowed the plant to restart, after forcing FirstEnergy to spend millions on remodifications, in March 2004.

The Davis-Besse plant has become the poster child for what is wrong with the NRC for agency critics. (Photo courtesy Ottawa County Emergency Management)

The GAO said the federal agency still has not taken all of its planned actions and has no plans to address the three systemic weaknesses underscored by the incident.

It has proposed no action to help it better identify early indications of deteriorating safety conditions at plants, decide whether to shut down a plant, or monitor actions taken in response to incidents at plants.

"Both NRC and GAO had previously identified problems in NRC programs that contributed to the Davis-Besse incident, yet these problems continue to persist," the General Accounting Office said in its report.

In its response to the report, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission disagreed with the recommendations that it needs develop additional means to better identify safety problems early and guidance for making decisions whether to shut down a plant.

The NRC will defend its actions today at a Senate hearing on the agency's oversight of the nuclear industry.

The Bush administration and some Congressional Republicans are eager to jumpstart the nation's nuclear industry - no new plant has been built since the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.

A key part of the effort to encourage the industry to build new plants is the Price Anderson Act, a 1957 amendment to the Atomic Energy Act that caps the cost of liability insurance coverage for any nuclear power plant accident.

Critics say it skews the real cost of nuclear power and potentially leaves taxpayers liable for damages from a severe accident.

It is still in effect for existing plants, but must be reauthorized for new plants - such reauthorization is included in the stalled energy bill.

And on Wednesday the Nuclear Regulatory Commission renewed the operating license of the R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant for an additional 20 years. Located 20 miles from Rochester, New York the plant is operated by Rochester Gas and Electric Corporation. The renewal extends R.E. Ginna's license from September 18, 2009 to September 18, 2029.