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Local
Companies | Article published December 15, 2002
DAVIS-BESSE
Experts:
Plant woes hot topic when next NRC chief is
named
Findings shake global
industry
(THE BLADE)
Errors at Davis-Besse put
northwest Ohio on the edge of the biggest U.S. nuclear crisis
since Three Mile Island in 1979.
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By TOM
HENRY
BLADE STAFF WRITER
WASHINGTON - When President Bush nominates a
successor to Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Richard Meserve,
the candidate likely will be grilled with the following question:
"How will you avoid having a Davis-Besse on your
watch?"
"Obviously it’s the biggest thing happening in the
nuclear industry right now," Scott Milburn, U.S. Sen. George
Voinovich’s spokesman, told The Blade. A well-documented series of
errors at Davis-Besse put northwest Ohio on the brink of the
nation’s biggest nuclear mishap since the Three Mile Island accident
of 1979.
While information continues to pour out about the
lack of maintenance and oversight there by FirstEnergy Corp. and the
NRC, several experts predict that Davis-Besse will rise to even
greater prominence during Senate confirmation hearings for the NRC
post.
Dr. Meserve is stepping down in March to become
president of the Carnegie Institution in Washington.
Mr. Bush
is expected to nominate a successor after the
holidays.
Davis-Besse has been plagued by safety issues
discovered after it was shut down for refueling Feb. 16. The
apparent largest - a six-inch cavity in the reactor head caused by
leaking acid - was found March 6 and has sent tremors throughout the
industry domestically and abroad.
Mr. Voinvoich, a nuclear
power supporter and recipient of FirstEnergy campaign contributions,
is one of many Davis-Besse boosters whose confidence has been shaken
by what’s been learned at the Ottawa County plant.
"I think
everybody feels that way," Mr. Milburn said. Mr. Voinovich is on the
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that will consider Mr.
Bush’s nominee.
During a speech in November, Dr. Meserve said
Davis-Besse was a "direct result of a degraded safety culture" at
FirstEnergy and that the NRC "must acknowledge its own shortcomings
in connection with this event."
Those shortcomings were cited
by Dr. Meserve’s colleagues in a report by the NRC’s so-called
"Lessons Learned Task Force." The NRC’s Advisory Committee on
Reactor Safeguards aired its concerns Dec. 5. The agency’s Office of
Inspector General is soon to issue its findings. A criminal
investigation is under way. According to a published report, other
nuclear plants have been warned about the production-over-safety
focus at Davis-Besse via a confidential document that was
distributed by an industry group called the Institute of Nuclear
Power Operations.
David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for
the Union of Concerned Scientists, told The Blade it’s inevitable
that Davis-Besse will factor into the Senate hearings.
"We
would expect some very hard questions to come up, particularly about
putting production ahead of safety - with Davis-Besse being the
prime example in both significance and in the INPO report," Paul
Gunter, spokesman for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service,
said.
Howard Whitcomb, a Toledo lawyer who once worked for
Davis-Besse and before that was an NRC inspector in South Carolina,
said Davis-Besse is the "poster child for what can be expected when
you let your guard down and don’t have a safety culture."
The
industry’s chief lobbying group, the Nuclear Energy Institute, has
for months called Davis-Besse an anomaly and downplayed national
implications. That’s still true - although NEI spokesman Steve
Kerekes said it recently formed a task force to help other plants
avoid problems of Davis-Besse’s magnitude.
When asked whether
Davis-Besse will factor into the hearings, he conceded: "Certainly
there’s the potential for that."
The committee hearing the
nomination is chaired by U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R., Okla.), who has
co-sponsored legislation with Mr. Voinovich to put a $9.3 billion
liability cap on nuclear accidents. Other efforts by those two
include legislation to help jump-start nuclear plant
construction.
Mr. Inhofe is declining interviews until a new
session of Congress convenes and new committee assignments are made,
spokesman Caryn McLeod said.
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