09/09/02

Now the General Accounting Office is launching an investigation into the Nu clear Regulatory Commission's handling of the Davis-Besse nuclear plant.

This is the seventh probe of Davis-Besse, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich's recent admonition is beginning to sound quite wise: "There's no way that plant should be permitted to restart without the GAO having investigated and presented its report."

Kucinich has raised his voice - as he is wont to do - because the GAO report may not be completed before FirstEnergy Corp. restarts Davis-Besse, near Toledo.

FirstEnergy hopes to get NRC approval to restart the plant by December. But the GAO report team is slated to begin its work within the next three months. Even if Davis-Besse risks missing its December deadline, it should be sidelined until the report is ready.

Without the report in hand, we fear that FirstEnergy's eagerness to get back in business and put this embarrassing incident behind it might overshadow key lessons about plant inspections. The NRC, too, which failed to follow up with tougher inspections in 1998 despite signs that Davis-Besse's staff wasn't doing its job, might be in too big a hurry for "closure."

It took up to eight long years for boric acid to bore through Davis-Besse's reactor lid. Despite long rust streaks and huge lavalike boric acid deposits, the experts didn't notice a thing.

In short, that rotted lid is a symbol of a rotten system of inspections by the company and the NRC. And if it's rotten in Toledo, are there problems elsewhere, too?

The probes by the GAO and others may not answer that question, but the question must at least be treated seriously.

The NRC and FirstEnergy botched critical safety inspections, and it would be well worth knowing how to prevent such a thing from happening again. FirstEnergy may not think that information is worth waiting for, but we do.