Study Faults NRC on Problems at Nuclear Plants

A nuclear industry group conducting inspections of the nation’s 56 commercial nuclear reactor plants found a range of operational problems that apparently were neither investigated nor made public by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to a study by a watchdog group.

The group, Public Citizens’ Critical Mass Energy Project, said that its conclusions are based on a comparison of secret safety reports prepared by the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations--a nuclear industry group that regularly inspects commercial nuclear reactor operations--and of public reports issued by the NRC, which oversees the nation’s nuclear power plants.

The institute’s reports identified shortcomings ranging from rusted and poorly maintained reactor components to unrealistic emergency training exercises, according to the project, an anti-nuclear organization founded by consumer activist Ralph Nader.

The institute’s findings were made available to NRC inspectors. But when the commission issued its own public reports on the operation of the nation’s plants, the agency took note of fewer than half the shortcomings identified by the institute, according to the Nader project.

All the reports were for the years 1992 and 1993. Critical Mass Project declined to say how it obtained copies of the confidential findings and their authenticity could not be determined independently.

The Nader group said that inconsistencies between the findings of the NRC and the institute “draw a shocking picture of an industry in decline and a government agency that has abandoned tough regulation,” said Bill Magavern, director of the project.

A spokesman for the NRC disagreed, saying that the industry group conducts inspections that go beyond the safety and public health issues regulated by the NRC and therefore could be expected to generate a more detailed list of problems.

“The NRC really focuses primarily on safety issues in its inspections of nuclear power plants, and safety is always uppermost in all our efforts,” said NRC spokesman William Beecher.

But authors of the Nader group’s report maintained that many of the problems found by the institute are indeed safety-related. Problems found in the area of training and qualification, for instance, could determine whether or not nuclear reactor operators take effective measures in an emergency situation to prevent the release of radioactivity, said James Riccio of the Critical Mass Project.

While the institute cited a total of 35 problems with training and qualification of operators at plants nationwide, the NRC addressed only 13.