Whistleblowers Say Nuclear Regulatory Commission Watchdog Is Losing Its Bite

[bananas]

http://www.propublica.org/article/whistleblowers-say-nuclear-regulatory-commission-watchdog-is-losing-its-bar

Whistleblowers Say Nuclear Regulatory Commission Watchdog Is Losing Its Bite
by John Sullivan and Cameron Hickey, Special to ProPublica July 27, 2011, 2:04 p.m.

When he retired after 26 years as an investigator with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of the Inspector General, George Mulley thought his final report was one of his best.

Mulley had spent months looking into why a pipe carrying cooling water at the Byron nuclear plant in Illinois had rusted so badly that it burst. His report cited lapses by a parade of NRC inspectors over six years and systemic weaknesses in the way the NRC monitors corrosion.

But rather than accept Mulley's findings, the inspector general's office rewrote them. The revised report shifted much of the blame to the plant's owner, Exelon, instead of NRC procedures. And instead of designating it a public report and delivering it to Congress, as is the norm, the office put it off-limits. A reporter obtained it only after filing a Freedom of Information Act request.

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Now, Mulley and one other former OIG employee have come forth with allegations that the inspector general's office buried the critical Byron report and dropped an investigation into whether the NRC is relying on outdated methods to predict damage from an aircraft crashing into a plant.

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Lots of interesting comments with the article such as:

Peter Crame
Yesterday, 9:55 p.m.

I have great respect for Dave Lochbaum’s views, and he has had far more contact with George Mulley than I have over the years. But my last contact with Mulley was when I was asking OIG to look at the fact that the NRC staff, in a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, had seriously misrepresented the findings of a National Academies of Science report on potassium iodide. (This produced an extremely sharp response from HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt.) Mulley, who at the time was Allegations Coordinator, told me that OIG declined to look at the allegation. He explained, in more or less these words: “The first thing we do is ask what federal statute has been violated. And there is nothing in the U.S. Code that makes it a crime to lie to another federal agency.” The NRC could not have continued to misinform other federal agencies and the public for so many years without OIG’s consistent refusal to look at these events. From my point of view, George Mulley was not the crusading housecleaner, making sure OIG did its job, but very much part of the problem. I wish that the attitude he is displaying now had been more in evidence when he was in a position to do something about it.

—Peter Crane, Counsel for Special Projects, USNRC (retired)

[kristopher]

1. "there is nothing in the U.S. Code that makes it a crime to lie to another federal agency"

Incredible,

K&R

[bananas]

2. And that's one of the good guys. nt