The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2011

UCS is releasing today 1at 11am the attached report and stand-along executive summary on the NRC and nuclear plant performance in 2011. It's the second in a planned annual series of reports.

Chapter 2 summarizes the 15 near-misses at U.S. nuclear plants last year. They occurred at 13 different plants because Palisades and Pilgrim each scarfed up two each. Both are Entergy plants; hmmm.

Chapter 3 summarizes positive outcomes achieved by the NRC last year. Topping the list were the measures NRC took in 2010 that helped prevent flood waters from topping barriers around the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant last June.

Chapter 4 summarized negative outcomes by the NRC last year. CDBI's topped that list. Here in Tennessee, they might be mistaken for Charlie Daniels Band Inspections, but the NRC calls them component design basis inspections. The NRC looks at a very very very very small group of items for insights on the owners' broader progams. But the NRC treats their CDBI findings as if they'd turned over every rock and peeked into every closet. The owners only have to fix the small number of violations identified during the NRC's very very very very small audit. The owners do not have to repair the gaping holes in their own testing and inspection regimes that prevented them from either finding or fixing the problems until NRC pointed them out.

Eight of the 15 near-misses last year involved items within the scope of CDBIs. If the NRC doesn't start taking CDBI findings in proper context, they will never induce the programmatic fixes necessary to drive the number of near-misses downward. Instead, we'll have nuclear groundhog days featuring near miss after near miss.

Chapter 4 also notes that the NRC is aware of 47 reactors operating despite violations of fire protection regulations and 27 reactors operating despite seismic hazards being greater than their seismic protection levels -- 8 reactors are on both lists. Safety IOUs protect no one.

Chapter 5 points out what NRC needs to do -- enforce it's own regulations. They did so at Fort Calhoun. They have not done so at many other reactors.

Thanks,
Dave Lochbaum

UCS

Download: UCS Annual Nuclear Safety Report