"The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2010: A Brighter Spotlight Needed"

David Lochbaum (pictured at left, alongside one of his quotes), director of the Nuclear Safety Project in the Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security Program, unveiled this report on March 11 at a UCS media event on Capitol Hill -- ironically, the very day the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe began. UCS also preparded an overview, executive summary, and media release. The report documents 14 "near misses" in 2010, having to do with operating reactor and radioactive waste storage safety risks, as well as security risks shrouded in secrecy. Delving deeper into the "near misses" of 2010, Lochbaum focuses in on three utter failures by NRC to live up to its mandate to protect public health and safety. But he also cites three instances where NRC did its job -- and urges those to serve as the model for NRC to live up to its mission in 2011. Lochbaum concluded his executive summary by stating: "That plant owners could have avoided nearly all 14 near-misses in 2010 had they corrected known deficiencies in a timely manner suggests that our luck at nuclear roulette may someday run out." Certainly, that has proven to be the case at Fukushima Dai-Ichi in Japan.

"U.S. Nuclear Regulator Lets Industry Help with the Fine Print"

The infamous Davis-Besse "red photo" of boric acid crystal and rust "lava" flowing off the severely corroded reactor lid, in NRC's possession long before the hole-in-the-head fiasco was revealed to the publicAs part of its ongoing "Nuclear Crisis" series in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, investigative journalist John Sullivan with ProPublica has cited the NRC's complicity with FirstEnergy at Davis-Besse as the poster child for industry influence over the supposed safety regulator. Beyond Nuclear, in coalition with Citizens Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Don't Waste Michigan, and the Green Party of Ohio, has challenged Davis-Besse's proposal for a 20 year license extension. In his article, Sullivan also describes the Nuclear Energy Institute's influence over NRC on the critical safety issue of license extensions. Since the year 2000, NRC has rubberstamped 66 of 66 nuclear utility applications for 20 year license extensions; 16 additional reactors, including Davis-Besse (as well as Seabrook in New Hampshire, which Beyond Nuclear is also challenging), stand poised for NRC rubberstamped license extensions. This, despite the fact that NRC's Office of Inspector General has busted the agency staff for "cutting and pasting" entire sections of nuclear utility assessments on license extension risks directly into NRC safety evaluation reports and environmental impact statements, then calling the analyses "independent." In addition, NRC OIG busted NRC staff for destroying working documents which led to decisions to approve license extensions once the rubberstamp had been completed.

NRC's rogue behavior called out by ProPublica

NRC Office of Public Affairs director Eliot BrennerProPublica editor Stephen Engelberg, in an "Editor's Note on Our Investigation Into Fire Risks at Nuclear Power Plants," wrote the following:

"...Last September, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Eliot Brenner sent an email in response to our written questions. It said the 'fire safety program leadership' had asked him 'to relay their conviction that the time devoted to ProPublica's two years of questions has taken staff away from performing mission critical safety activities on behalf of the public.'

In my more than three decades of covering the federal government, I have never seen such a response to legitimate questions about a crucial issue."

Eliot Brenner, before joining NRC as its director of the Office of Public Affairs, was Vice President Dick Cheney's communications director. Of course, Cheney's office led the "Energy Task Force Report" that promoted a "nuclear power renaissance" -- at taxpayer financial risk -- in May, 2001.

Mr. Engelberg, and ProPublica's investigative journalist John Sullivan, were facing what Beyond Nuclear and concerned citizen groups at the grassroots level have experienced for decades -- the rogue behavior and obscurity of the NRC, which is supposedly mandated to protect public health, safety, security, the environment, and the common defense from the radiological and other risks of the nuclear power industry. More often than not, however, NRC does the bidding of the very companies it is supposed to regulate. Corporate profits and construction schedules seem to top NRC's priority list. NRC's lack of transparency has persisted, despite President Barack Obama's call for full transparency and accountability within his administration on his very first day in office. However, NRC is wont to remind critics that it is an "independent agency." Apparently, this includes independence from President Obama's commitment to transparency.

Mr. Engelberg concluded his "Editor's Note" by encouraging "elected officials, and political leaders of the Obama administration to read our story and Ms. Shanahan's [a companion piece in the Center for Public Integrity's iwatch news] to judge whether the NRC is adequately addressing fire safety."

Hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods, oh my!

As reported by Matt Wald of the New York Times in his blog "Green," the five member U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission seems to have washed its hands of concern about earthquakes and tsunamis in the U.S. (despite the location of two reactors at San Onofre in southern CA and two reactors at Diablo Canyon in central CA on the Pacific coast, as but four examples), but remains concerned about other pathways to "station blackout" that could lead to reactor core meltdowns, high-level radioactive waste storage pool fires, and catastrophic radioactivity releases.

"What Will the N.R.C. Learn From Fukushima?" (As little as it can get away with?)

The New York Times' Matt Wald has reported on his blog that U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commisssion (NRC) Chairman Greg Jaczko's presentation to a gathering organized by Public Citizen raised more questions than it answered about NRC's openness to "lessons learned" from the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in Japan to be applied here in the U.S. at 23 identically-designed reactors.