House Panel Calls for Firing of Nuclear Commissioner

With disturbing frequency in recent years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has sacrificed public safety for the sake of “coziness” with the nuclear industry, yielding to its “ultimatums” after closed meetings with its leaders, a House subcommittee charges in a scathing report to be issued today.

Bearing the brunt of the report’s criticisms is NRC Commissioner Thomas M. Roberts, who has been entangled since last spring in controversy over his alleged role in the destruction of sensitive documents that were leaked to a Louisiana utility under investigation.

In the report, the Democratic majority of the House Interior Committee’s subcommittee on general oversight and investigations accuses Roberts of malfeasance and calls on President Reagan to fire him. The report was adopted 3 to 2 in a party-line vote.

The majority’s findings have already drawn some sharp dissent from NRC officials, industry representatives and the subcommittee’s two GOP members, who labeled the report “overly critical and in some cases vicious.”

Changes Seen Likely

Nevertheless, some major reform measures seem likely. The agency has come under increasing criticism and congressional scrutiny in recent months, as even supporters conceded that the NRC’s five-commissioner structure has made it, in the opinion of one Republican aide, “unworkable.” A single administrator is generally seen as the preferred alternative.

The subcommittee Democrats concluded that the NRC, which licenses and oversees the nation’s 108 licensed nuclear plants, “has demonstrated an unhealthy empathy for the needs of the nuclear industry to the detriment of the safety of the American people . . . (and) has acted as if it were the advocate for, and not the regulator of, the nuclear industry.”

The report, capping a six-month inquiry, offers little in the way of new disclosures about the regulatory agency, but it does seek to piece together past events to show “an extremely disturbing pattern of the NRC doing the (nuclear) industry’s bidding,” said Chip Partner, press secretary to Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-Conn.), who heads the subcommittee.

Report’s Recommendations

Areas of specific criticism and recommendation for reforms include:

--Drug use by nuclear plant workers. Despite “an alarming increase” in reports of employees using drugs and alcohol on duty, the report asserts that the NRC “relented to industry pressure” and “has left it to the industry to regulate itself. . . . It mandates nothing.” The report urges institution of a binding policy on drug and alcohol use at power plants.

--Internal NRC investigations. The report charges that top-level agency staffers “undermined” an investigation into alleged wrongdoing at a licensed utility. “This was not an isolated instance,” the report says in calling for Congress to establish an independent unit--outside the NRC--to investigate such cases. The subcommittee’s Republican dissenters also support such a move, already initiated in the Senate.

--Commissioner Roberts. The report maintains that Roberts, showing a “disdain for the process of government,” wrongfully destroyed evidence in the leaking of sensitive information; that he interfered in an ethics investigation and ignored the inquiries of a U.S. attorney into allegations of criminal wrongdoing by a Michigan utility. “He’s the prime example of what’s wrong” with the NSC, Gejdenson said of Roberts.

In a lengthy statement Friday, Roberts reiterated that he has “done nothing to warrant resignation.” Rebutting the report’s charges point by point, he called its conclusions “unproven (and) unfounded.”

Reagan Withholds Comment

A White House spokesman said that Reagan would not comment on the subcommittee’s call for Roberts’ dismissal until the report has been fully reviewed. Numerous calls to the Justice Department to inquire about the status of a criminal investigation into Roberts’ actions were unreturned Friday.

It was primarily the recommendation that Roberts be fired that prompted the subcommittee Republicans’ dissent from the report, one source said. At least a half a dozen congressmen have called for Roberts’ dismissal in recent months, but the formal appeal of a congressional panel was thought to carry more weight.

The two Republicans, Reps. Denny Smith of Oregon and James V. Hansen of Utah, called the report’s recommendations a “Band-Aid solution,” and urged “complete reorganization” of the NRC with a single-administrator structure replacing the five commissioners. The single-administrator approach is also backed, with some differences on details, by the Democrats on the subcommittee. In addition to Gejdenson, they are Reps. George Miller of Martinez and Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon.

Lobbyist Hits Agency

Scott Peters, spokesman for the U.S. Council for Energy Awareness, a lobby that works primarily for the nuclear utilities, said that the NRC, rather than making life easier for the utilities as the report suggests, “makes things harder for us” through its lack of direction and unpredictability in policy. He called the panel’s findings “Monday-morning quarterbacking . . . Big Brother government stuff,” and said the nuclear utilities’ safety record is “unmatched by any other high-technology industry.”

NRC Chairman Lando W. Zech Jr., while not specifically addressing the issue of Commissioner Roberts or other charges in the report, said: “We do not hesitate to take action to assure that the public is protected.” With nine of the 108 licensed plants now shut down for safety deficiencies, he said, “surely that is evidence that we are a tough regulator.”