Three Mile Island Training Program Found Adequate

WASHINGTON — A Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing board ruled Friday that an operator training program at Three Mile Island is adequate to ensure safe operation of the plant’s undamaged nuclear reactor.

In a setback for anti-nuclear activists, the three-member Atomic Safety and Licensing Board said plant owner General Public Utilities Corp. had taken steps to improve its training program and to prevent any recurrence of cheating by plant personnel on NRC reactor operator tests.

“The board concludes that (GPU) has made an appropriate response to the 1981 cheating episodes and to the concerns set out” in previous NRC deliberations on the training program, the licensing panel said.

The training program is one of the key issues in NRC proceedings to determine whether GPU, of Parsippany, N.J., has the required integrity and competence to safely operate Three Mile Island’s undamaged reactor.

Shut Down Since 1979

The undamaged Unit No. 1 reactor has been shut down since the nation’s worst commercial nuclear accident in March, 1979, caused its sister reactor, Unit No. 2, to overheat and partially melt down into a pile of radioactive rubble.

Equipment failures played a major role in the accident, but government investigators also blamed the failure of Three Mile Island operators to properly interpret conditions inside the stricken reactor and take corrective action.

While finding the training program adequate, the licensing board required the utility to evaluate the on-the-job performance of reactor operators to determine the effectiveness of its training program.

In another development, the General Accounting Office reported earlier this week that federal inspectors say staffing limitations and a heavy schedule of inspections have kept them from making detailed examinations of nuclear power plants.

The report said NRC inspectors responding to a GAO survey attributed the staffing constraints to the expanded schedule of inspection requirements instituted after the Three Mile Island accident.

Those constraints “did not allow them to make the detailed reviews of power plant operations they believed were necessary,” the GAO report said.