nuclear-news

The report’s author — Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear safety expert who once trained NRC inspectors — wrote that the NRC has been complicit in allowing utilities like Duke to ignore deadlines for years.

“What’s protecting the people around Oconee from fire risk? Luck,” Lochbaum wrote. “What’s protecting Oconee’s owner from the cost and bother of legally managing the fire risk? The NRC.”…….

Last year, The Greenville News reported on an NRC whistleblower’s analysis detailing dam concerns that spanned decades.

The NRC had held the analysis from public view on grounds that it contained security-related information, but the document has since been released in largely unedited form.

The News also reported on hundreds of internal emails that show NRC staffers expressing frustration over superiors they said were cowing to the industry instead of holding it accountable for the threat of a dam failure.

ust one month after the Fukushima meltdown, Lochbaum wrote, the NRC met with the public but didn’t mention the long-held concerns.

“The exact same flooding hazard that exists today at the Oconee nuclear plant was not mentioned by the NRC — so the public was actually misled into believing no such problems existed,” Lochbaum wrote………http://www.wltx.com/story/news/2014/03/10/safety-enforcement-at-nuclear-plants-inconsistent/6251227/