Nuclear safety net: Scientists skeptical of industry complianceApr 7 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Rachel Morgan Beaver County Times, Pa.
Nuclear plants across the country are walking a perilous tightrope. At least that's the argument of a report released in March by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report, written by the director of UCS's Nuclear Safety Program, Dave Lochbaum, tallies a list of what the UCS defines as "near-misses" in 2012 -- 14 to be exact. A "near-miss," the report says, is an event that increases the likelihood of a core meltdown by at least 10, thus prompting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to dispatch an inspection team to the plant in question. "The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is tolerating the intolerable: a ripped nuclear safety net," Lochbaum said. "Granted, nuclear reactors do not fall into the net every day. And so far the United States has been lucky -- with limited and notable exceptions -- reactors that have fallen have avoided the ripped portion of the safety net. "The more often the net is used and the more the net itself is abused, however, the more likely it becomes that someday workers or the public will be harmed by a nuclear reactor accident." Lochbaum also outlined just how many "near-misses" occurred at U.S. nuke plants in the last three years. "Over the past three years, 40 of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors experienced one or more near-misses," he said. "That is a rate greater than one near-miss per month. The NRC must take two steps to reduce the frequency of near-misses before some reactor falls through the ripped section of the net." In these "near-misses" or events, "a combination of broken or impaired safety equipment and poor worker training typically led owners of nuclear plants down a pathway toward potentially catastrophic outcomes," Lochbaum said. However, the report also says that none of these near-misses resulted in harm to plant workers or the public. COLOR CODED The NRC refers to an incident's severity in terms of colors, NRC officials say. "We don't use the term 'near-miss,' which can have varying degrees of subjectivity attached to it," said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan. "Through our Reactor Oversight Process, we do classify inspection findings by color." The color classification of safety issues rank from green (the lowest safety significance) to red (the highest), he said. Some of these near-misses were not a surprise, the report says. "Many of the near-misses last year involved design and operational problems that had already existed for years -- sometimes even decades -- prior to the incidents in question," Lochbaum said. "The plants' tests and inspections are supposed to find and fix such problems, yet failed to do so." REGULATORY INEPTITUDE Also in the report, UCS cites NRC's failure to enforce essential regulations and failure to enforce these regulations in a timely, consistent or effective manner. "These examples of tolerating the intolerable should be case studies for regulatory ineptitude," Lochbaum said. "Failing to enforce existing safety regulations is literally a gamble that places lives at stake. The NRC must enforce its own regulations." An example of this failure occurred at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant in Decatur, Ala. The plant, the report says, was granted an additional delay in fire protection compliance regulations by the NRC. These fire protection measures were created in 1980 after a fire in 1975 -- at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant. According to the latest timeline, the plant will not have been operating for 35 years out of compliance with the same fire protection regulations that its own fire spurned the creation of. The UCS report also mentioned a series of surveys on the NRC's safety culture conducted last year. The survey reported that "half of the NRC's workforce had heard about co-workers who received negative reactions from supervisors and senior managers after raising a concern." But the NRC said they are always looking for ways to improve their oversight practices. "We value feedback on our reactor oversight process," Sheehan said of the UCS report. "Along those lines, we actively solicit suggestions each year on ways to improve it. The current oversight process has been in place since 2000, and we are always looking for ways to improve and strengthen it. If there are weaknesses in our oversight brought to light by the report, we would certainly seek ways to address those deficiencies." The UCS report wasn't all bad. It praised the NRC for its proactive efforts to prevent counterfeit or fraudulent items from making their way into nuke plants, when certain parts or supplies need to be replaced, such as fire extinguishers. FirstEnergy -- which operates the Beaver Valley Power Station in Shippingport and the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Perry, Ohio -- is not immune to the security issues brought to light by the report. The company's Perry plant was listed on the report's list of near-misses due to a security issue in 2012. The issue involved "failures to prevent unauthorized individuals from entering secure areas of the plant," the report said. Lochbaum cited similar problems at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in the early 1980s. "That was three decades ago," he said. "This 'discovery' at Perry came more than a decade after Sept. 11. Why did NRC's security inspections and the owner's own efforts miss such problems for so many years?" Lochbaum also said that while it's good that the NRC is requiring FirstEnergy to fix the problems of uncontrolled access to the plant's protected area, the agency isn't requiring that FirstEnergy fix the inspections and testing methods that allowed this security problem to remain undetected for years. "Both fixes are equally important and yet the NRC seems willing to accept half measures," he said. "That is fully wrong." Sheehan said the NRC does not provide exact color specifications for security-related inspection findings, but did say the Perry security issue was classified as "greater than green," which indicates an issue ranked higher than a "very low safety significance." FirstEnergy officials called the UCS report "inaccurate and misleading." "There was not a security issue at Perry that resulted in any breaches, nor did any unauthorized individuals enter the plant," said FirstEnergy spokeswoman Jennifer Young. "Perry self-identified a security improvement opportunity and has resolved the issue." But Lochbaum isn't convinced. "Calling it a 'security improvement opportunity' is nuclear spin," he said. "NRC caught FirstEnergy violating Sept. 11 security measures. Fixing security violations is technically a 'security improvement,' but it is more spin than fact." When asked to confirm if the security issue was a result of FirstEnergy violating NRC-mandated Sept. 11 security upgrades, Young said only, "The plant received an NRC finding for the issue that it self-identified and corrected. I don't have any further information to add." http://www.energycentral.com/functional/news/news_detail.cfm?did=28161515 |