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Editorials |
Article published Sunday, November 24, 2002
When safety doesn’t come first
Critics have been sounding off for years that
in a deregulated power market, nuclear power producers would
sacrifice safety for production.
The near-rupture of the
reactor vessel at Davis-Besse outside Oak Harbor - where undetected
boric acid corrosion ate away 70 pounds of steel - shows they were
right. And a new report, not intended for public consumption, by the
Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, says the same mindset could
cause similar problems at nuclear plants around the
country.
The industry group’s analysis said First Energy
Nuclear Operating Company, which runs the Davis-Besse reactor, east
of Toledo in Ottawa County, had an "excessive focus on meeting
short-term production goals" and "a lack of sensitivity to nuclear
safety."
What happened here, the men who ran the plant have
said repeatedly, is that they did not inspect the reactor head with
any regularity. Why? Because it was hard to get to and because they
assumed if there was no trouble in other areas, there was likely no
trouble there. They ignored any signs to the contrary.
Yet,
even as the area of corrosion was enlarging, First Energy sought to
increase Davis-Besse’s power output 12.8 percent over its production
set in 1978, when the plant opened.
One function of the
institute is to bring lagging reactor operators up to an industry
standard, the better to head off more federal regulation. It’s
important that top-echelon managers pay better attention to its
findings than those at Davis-Besse did.
A year ago in July,
the institute addressed the corrosion problem after it cropped up at
a plant in South Carolina. The Davis-Besse people read the report
but still didn’t bother to order more careful inspections. Human
nature being what it is, other operators could easily be as lax
after reading its story.
Only the wishy-washy have no idea of
what constitutes quality safety inspections of a nuclear plant. They
are thoroughly detailed, commonsensical, conducted on specified days
at regular intervals and at all specified locations every year, and
with checklists reminiscent of those pilots use preparing for
takeoff. They consider not only the safety of staff, but also the
safety of neighbors and the environment. And they are constantly
enhanced by employee observations as to what isn’t covered that
should be.
There have been management shake-ups at
Davis-Besse in the wake of the belated discovery of the corrosion
that has kept the plant inoperable for so long.
Hopefully,
institutional memory will last long enough to assure that a gaffe of
this order doesn’t happen again, here and wherever there are nuclear
power plants.
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