Nuclear Regulatory Commission not learning from its mistakes

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http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1130578917165080.xml&coll=2

Agency report says it keeps repeating errors

Saturday, October 29, 2005
John Mangels and John Funk
Plain Dealer Reporters

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission failed to learn lessons from its most serious oversight lapses at several of the nation's nuclear plants, the agency's own task force has found.

The same types of problems -- from complacent, unquestioning inspectors and poor communication to inadequate regulations and missed warning trends -- have occurred repeatedly during the last decade or more, the newly released report reveals.

They were major factors in the run-up to a near-disaster at Ohio's Davis-Besse reactor in 2002.

The NRC identified its oversight failures multiple times prior to Davis-Besse, and in many cases took steps to fix them. But the reforms often stalled, were forgotten as time passed or managers changed, or were even inadvertently scrapped when the agency made other changes, the reviewers discovered...



Davis Besse Closes for Maintenance

October 28, 2005

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?section=local&id=3584426

- OAK HARBOR, Ohio (AP) - ...

Akron-based FirstEnergy Corporation owns the plant. It says the plant is scheduled to return to full power early next week.

Davis-Besse has been under a constant watch by federal regulators since 2002 when a routine inspection revealed an acid leak that nearly ate through a six-inch-thick steel cap on the reactor vessel.

The company agreed last month to pay a record $5.4 million dollar fine for failing to stop the leak.

The plant was closed for two years but returned to full power last year.



Nuclear Negligence: We Almost Lost Toledo

http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/article.php?story=20030101111808332&mode=print

Wednesday, January 01 2003

Contributed by: World Information Service on Energy

NIRS - In early March 2002, First Energy (FE), true to its name, revealed a policy to drive electricity production ahead of federal safety requirements. This official policy of mismanagement pushed its Davis-Besse nuclear plant to the brink of disaster. Moreover, senior engineers at the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) realized a "high likelihood" that the reactor was so damaged that the risk of a nuclear accident grew greater with continued operation. Yet, federal officials were unable to issue an order to immediately shut the reactor for the necessary inspection and repair. Instead, the agency chose to ignore safety regulations and gamble with disaster to accommodate the financial interest of yet another corporate delinquent.



An NRC bulletin issued in August 2001 called for utilities operating pressurized water reactors (PWR) to inspect for dangerous cracks found in nozzles that penetrate the top of the reactor and house control rod drive mechanisms (CRDM). The NRC bulletin followed the discovery of cracks in Duke Power's Oconee reactor (see WISE News Communique 553.5309, "US: NRC ignores widespread safety flaw for decade"). Operators were instructed to look for "popcorn-like" traces of boron crystals as reactor coolant escaping from nozzle cracks. The bulletin warned that unchecked cracking in nozzles could grow to component failure, a loss-of-coolant-accident and reactor core damage. NRC required all operators to report inspection results to the agency by 31 December 2001.



However, Davis-Besse operators were eager to complete its two-year operating cycle scheduled for a refueling in April 2002. Company management sought a waiver from the inspection and an extension to the reporting deadline to meet their outage date. NRC engineers reviewing the Davis-Besse response were concerned that six of the seven other Babcock & Wilcox's (B&W) reactors like Davis-Besse had already found cracking. Only Davis-Besse had not fully inspected. A rare NRC "Order" to shut Davis-Besse for inspection by December 31, 2001 was finalized in November but never issued. In its place, a senior NRC officer reached a private compromise with the company to extend reactor operation to February 16, 2002.

When FE did inspect, workers found not only cracks but one of the 69 nozzles had come loose from the vessel head as a result of extensive corrosion around its base (see WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor 565.5385, "Millimeters from disaster")...