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Nuclear regulators give ‘slap on the hand’ for problems

Nuclear regulators tippy-toe around problems Southtown Star

December 2, 2009

By Marlene Lang

“……………Most of the code violations identified by NRC inspectors at nuclear power plants, I’ve found, are not immediately dangerous to workers or to the public. The many minor incidents and “findings” – for which the plants are rarely cited – earn labels “of very low safety significance.”

As long as no huge disaster actually results, the findings get “Green” ratings, the lowest on a color scale. White is next on the scale of danger, representing “low to moderate risk.” Yellow means the safety risk is “substantial” and red, of course, means “high.”

I’ve never seen a Yellow or Red. Exelon’s Peach Bottom plant actually earned a White hand-slap in 2008 after a long investigation of its problem with contracted security guards sleeping on the job and after the NRC determined the culture in the plant was such that people were afraid to report dozing guard sightings to their managers…………………….

NRC reports are full of glossy language that tippy-toes around the fact of screw-ups, which, in NRC-speak, is “the human performance attribute.” In literature classes, we called this a euphemism.

It is much more palatable to speak of an “inadequacy” being “associated with the human performance attribute” than to blurt out that our safety from nuclear radiation seesaws precariously upon the fulcrum of human competence or human error…………………

listen to the NRC’s dissociative language: “The finding is more than minor because the failure of a containment isolation valve to close is associated with the Barrier Integrity Cornerstone attribute of systems and component performance and affected the objective to provide reasonable assurance that physical design barriers (containment) protect the public from radionuclide releases caused by accidents or events. The finding was determined to be of very low safety significance, since the finding did not represent an actual open pathway in the physical integrity of the reactor containment.”

We the public who are being safeguarded from radionuclide releases need to remember at all times that this is an industry with a very low error tolerance and that “minor” safety infractions are most often the result of the “human performance attribute.”

Often it is little more than luck that prevents an “actual open pathway in the physical integrity of the reactor containment” – also known as: a leak.

Nuclear regulators tippy-toe around problems :: The SouthtownStar :: Marlene Lang

December 3, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, safety, USA | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, radiation, radioactive