U.S. Nuclear Regulator Lets Industry Help With the Fine Print

[kristopher]

U.S. Nuclear Regulator Lets Industry Help With the Fine Print
by John Sullivan, Special to ProPublica April 13, 2011, 8:05 p.m.

In the fall of 2001, inspectors with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were so concerned about possible corrosion at Ohio’s Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station that they prepared an emergency order to shut it down for inspection. But, according to a report from the NRC inspector general, senior officials at the agency held off – in part because they did not want to hurt the plant’s bottom line.

When workers finally checked the reactor in February of 2002, they made an astonishing finding: Corrosive fluid from overhead pipes had eaten a football-sized hole in the reactor vessel’s steel side. The only thing preventing a leak of radioactive coolant was a pencil-thin layer of stainless steel.

The Davis Besse incident has resurfaced in the wake of the ongoing nuclear crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant. Stories recounting close ties between Japanese nuclear regulators and utilities there have reinvigorated critics who say the NRC has not been an aggressive enough U.S. watchdog.

The NRC says that is not the case, and commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko defended the agency’s independence and professionalism. “I have a great staff who are dedicated to public health and safety, and people who interact with this agency, they know that and they see that,” he said in an interview.

Critics of the NRC say...

http://www.propublica.org/article/u.s.-nuclear-regulator-lets-industry-write-rules

[madokie]

1. I think we dodged a bullet with that one

not sure how all that works but something tells me that they went to a lot of trouble making that part the way they did for it to not have been pretty damn important. Those two shafts looks like something that had seals on them at one time keeping something either in our something out.

Plus how did they cast that hole in there the way they have it right there? Did they use a lost foam casting process maybe? ;-)

rec

[kristopher]

2. More photos here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=290806&mesg_id=290846

And this citizen's group has a log of stories related to the incident.

It's reverse chronology, so the first stories are towards the end. Mar 3rd is the first I think...
http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/electric/nuc2002a.html

If this hadn't happened in the run-up to war after 911 it would have been a far more well known incident. As it is it shows that the problems with nuclear are built into the Rube Goldberg nature of the technology demanded by the dangers associated with failure.

[madokie]

3. No doubt about it we got lucky on that one

What does it take to be able to whistle on past this kind of potential harm to life on earth?

[kristopher]

4. Culture of Complicity Blamed in Japan’s Nuclear Disaster

Culture of Complicity Blamed in Japan’s Nuclear Disaster

By Patrick Corcoran on April 27, 2011

As nuclear experts and industry watchdogs seek explanations for the institutional breakdown in Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi disaster, many are pointing to a culture of cozy relationships among companies, regulators and politicians that produced a blase attitude toward safety.

As The New York Times reports, in 2000, Kei Sugaoka, a Japanese-American nuclear inspector, went to the nation’s main nuclear energy regulator with a startling find: the Tokyo Electric Power Co. was covering up a cracked steam dryer at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

Despite a whistleblower law that should have protected Sugaoka, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, or NISA, divulged the inspector’s identity to the power company, ruining his career as an inspector in Japan. Instead of forcing Tepco to undergo expensive repairs, the regulators let it slide.

Such was the culture of complicity in Japan’s nuclear industry, critics say, leading up to the nuclear disaster at Fukushima triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

More evidence of...

http://www.fairwarning.org/2011/04/culture-of-complicity-blamed-in-japans-nuclear-disaster/