NRC Sessions on Diablo Plant Hinted Illegal

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission probably acted illegally when it met in closed session four times last summer to discuss licensing of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant near San Luis Obispo, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee report concluded Tuesday.

The report by the subcommittee staff raises “profoundly disturbing” questions about whether the commission deliberately ignored safety issues to avoid delaying operations at the Diablo Canyon reactor, said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the energy conservation and power subcommittee.

The study was issued the day before Markey’s panel was to question NRC commissioners about charges of irregularities in the Diablo Canyon licensing process. The prime allegation--that the commission illegally refused to call a public hearing on earthquake-related safety questions at the plant--will be considered later this summer by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The 1954 Atomic Energy Act, which governs the licensing of reactors, requires public hearings on all significant issues before a reactor is allowed to produce power. Critics of the controversial reactor contend that the commission licensed the plant without considering how a major earthquake might affect Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s emergency evacuation and rescue plans for reactor accidents. The Diablo Canyon plant sits a few miles from a geologically active undersea fault.

Except for James K. Asselstine, a sharp critic of the Diablo Canyon licensing decision, the five NRC commissioners have said that the plant is built soundly enough to eliminate any need for further earthquake precautions. The subcommittee staff’s 22-page analysis of transcripts of the closed commission meetings contends that such a conclusion is not justified.

Instead, the report concluded, the commission rejected its own lawyers’ urgings that there be a public hearing “based on consideration of the cost of a delay” in starting up the reactor’s first unit.

Anonymous Information

The report also agrees with charges, leveled earlier by Asselstine, that the commission relied on anonymous, secret information in deciding that the earthquake issue was not a barrier to licensing the reactor. The federal Administration Procedures Act requires the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other regulatory agencies to base their decisions solely on information that is in the public record.

“It appears that the NRC elevated the economic cost of a delay in plant operation over these cardinal principles” in the Atomic Energy Act and the Administrative Procedures Act, Markey said in a prepared statement Tuesday. “The NRC is supposed to make these decisions on the basis of public health and safety, not on the basis of the economic interests of the nuclear power industry.”

Today’s hearings on the Diablo licensing, he said, will study “whether the NRC abused the regulatory process by resorting to a giant shell game to keep the public confused and in the dark” about safety issues at the plant.

Commission officials could not be reached for comment. The subcommittee hearing was requested by California Reps. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley), George Miller (D-Martinez) and Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles).