Karen Schaefer: Regulators, critics, and the company agree. Sam Collins, a senior manager at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who heads Nuclear Reactor Regulation, says it best. The biggest impact the damage at the Davis-Besse plant has had on the nuclear industry is that of being taken completely by surprise.
Sam Collins: You can't ever assume that you know it all. And we lost confidence in that area. Now, there was no accident. But we found out something that we didn't suspect. And we never want to be in that position.
KS: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission thought it knew all there was to know about the potential for boric acid corrosion at the nation's 69 water-pressurized reactors. It had an inspection program in place to control boric acid. But it was leaking boric acid that ate a football-sized hole through the top of the reactor at the Davis-Besse plant. At a November meeting with local residents in Oak Harbor, about eight miles from Davis-Besse, the NRC's Art Howell reviewed actions the agency has already taken.
Art Howell: The first step is to conduct a lessons learned review and to identify issues and make recommendations and we've done that. And I just wanted to point out that, even though we have made 51 recommendations, some of the more important ones are already being addressed. For example, the NRC has already issued another bulletin which would suggest that more stringent inspections may be needed.
KS: In order to forestall those inspections, as part of repairs to Davis-Besse FirstEnergy is proposing to to install a leak detection system already in use for a decade in a dozen European and Canadian plants. The technology would be the first of its kind in the U.S.. But at a meeting last week in Washington, the NRC's Brian Sheron said the agency won't necessarily mandate installation of detectors.
Brian Sheron: If there is a system out there that would make leak detection a little more reliable, then, yes, we are interested. Would we eventually be requiring it? If it's necessary to ensure public health and safety, then, yes, we could require it. But otherwise we would have to look at the cost benefit associated with such a system.
KS: NRC officials say an insider industry group might push for leak detectors and other first-of their-kind safety modifications FirstEnergy is making. The Institute for Nuclear Power Operations - or INPO - was formed after the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979. It has a quasi-regulatory authority conferred on it by the industry itself. When an incident occurs, INPO issues a confidential report to nuclear plant operators, encouraging the industry to police itself and head off tighter federal regulations.
Two weeks ago, the INPO report on Davis-Besse was leaked to the New York Times. In it, the group warns utilities that the root cause of the Davis-Besse damage - putting production ahead of safety - could be a broader problem in the industry. INPO spokesman Terry Young wouldn't discuss details of the report. But he says the U.S. nuclear industry is taking the lessons learned at Davis-Besse to heart. He says in recent years, the proportion of nuclear plant problems attributable to human failings has risen. Paul Gunter of the Nuclear Information Resource Service - a nuclear watchdog group - agrees.
Paul Gunter: We've seen numerous events where production was prioritized over safe operations. Most recently prior to Davis-Besse we saw it at Indian Point. However the industry's primary mission was revealed at Davis-Besse to promote electricity production by reducing federal oversight. That condition has not changed and that's very alarming.
KS: Gunter is not alone in criticizing the NRC for failing to make long-term changes that would intensify regulation. Industry watchdog David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists shares Gunter's belief that the agency is under industry and government pressure to keep the costs of nuclear plant owners down. But he says there's a still another lesson that's yet to be learned.
David Lochbaum: I think the one issue still lying under the rug is the issue of NRC resources. The NRC has conceded that part of the problem for Davis-Besse has been that the agency didn't give it much attention over the last few years, because there were other plants that were getting a lot of regulatory attention. If instead we reallocated those resouces so more time was spent inspecting the operating plants, rather than reacting to these regulatory surprises, maybe we'd have fewer surprises.
KS: The NRC's funding comes from annual fees charged to the nuclear industry it oversees. It's a budget that Congress has frequently threatened to cut. But some Congressional leaders from Ohio are beginning to question the wisdom of allowing federal regulators to proceed along the same old path. Congressman Dennis Kucinich held a field briefing in Cleveland on Davis-Besse in October. And both he and Senator George Voinovich are still calling for a Congressional hearing on regulatory failures at the Davis-Besse plant sometime in the new year. In Cleveland, Karen Schaefer, 90.3.