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DURHAM – In the past year, the Shearon Harris nuclear power plant near Raleigh
has had eight systems failures, along with nine fire violations and two
industry-wide design flaws – any of which could lead to a catastrophic loss of
cooling water. The nuclear watchdog group North Carolina Waste Awareness and
Reduction Network (NC WARN) has urged Progress Energy CEO William Cavanaugh III
to order correction of systems failures and design flaws at all Progress Energy
plants, and to acquaint the public with the company’s plans to do so.
A pair of reports this fall by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) charged
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) with “regulatory malpractice” for
allowing a design flaw in the back-up cooling system at 69 pressure water
reactors – including three owned by Progress Energy – that creates a one in
three chance of a meltdown in the U.S. within the next three years. The NRC has
been aware of the defect for 20 years, but has given the industry until 2007 to
correct it.
Also, instead of
forcing plant owners to protect vital control cables from fire – thus protecting
the reactor core – the NRC is considering rule changes to retroactively legalize
a plan to allow plants to designate technicians who would run through the plant
and operate equipment by hand if the cables had burned away.
“To call NRC attitude toward the industry ‘slavish’ is not much of
an overstatement,” said Stan Goff, the NC WARN security analyst. “The
agency’s fire inspection at Harris describes a response procedure that could
kill the worker required to perform it by smoke inhalation or electrocution,
leaving the fire to spread and the reactor core to melt.” Goff said the NRC
classifies the procedure a minor violation by claiming there is a low
probability of fire. “This is like saying you don’t need to put babies in
protective car seats, because you probably won’t have an automobile
accident. This is a reprehensible mutilation of the most elementary safety
logic.”
NC WARN told Cavanaugh in a letter that nuclear power plants are “highly
complex system[s] of aging and decaying parts with a steadily increasing
potential for sudden catastrophic failure.” Harsh criticism was leveled at the
NRC for its “shocking irresponsibility” in allowing serious hazards to go
uncorrected for years without penalty while lowering the number of safety and
security violations by re-classifying many of them as “non cited.”
UCS’s David Lochbaum, one of the nation’s leading authorities on nuclear risks,
has also been the NRC’s leading critic, citing the agency’s consistent pattern
of acquiescence to industry financial priorities. Commented Lochbaum, “We
hope the US Congress will do now what it would do in its post mortem
inquires into a tragic PWR accident – just skipping the part where thousands of
Americans get harmed and a large region of our country gets ruined for decades.”
NC WARN told Cavanaugh that, “instability in an old automobile held together
with a hodge-podge of parts might only sideline its passengers along the road.
At worst, it will cause an accident involving a few people. But with Shearon
Harris’s series of systems failures, cooling and fire flaws, and extreme
vulnerability to attack, we have to recognize that the consequences of a
catastrophic alignment of unintended consequences are far graver than being
stuck on the side of the road. A nuclear power plant cannot be a second-hand
car.”
The group urged Progress’ Cavanaugh to exceed a “compliance mentality.” Goff
added, “The NRC doesn’t even claim to define a standard for protection of
the public. Instead, its regulations are designed to define the limits of
industry responsibility. This is a very significant distinction.”
NC WARN’s director Jim Warren said, “With this many different problems,
you must respect the law of unintended consequences. The federal regulators
continue to fail. We are appealing directly to the one decision-maker who can
reduce these risks with the stroke of his pen, and in doing so become the
standard-bearer for the rest of the nuclear power industry.”
VIEW THE LETTER TO CAVANAUGH |
