Washington Post
April 12, 2005

NUCLEAR PLANTS NOT KEEPING TRACK OF WASTE

GAO Study Faults Federal Government for Failing to Implement
Safeguards

By Shankar Vedantam

Pervasive problems plague the control of radioactive waste at the
nation's nuclear power plants, in part because the federal government
has been sluggish in instituting and enforcing safeguards, according
to a federal report issued yesterday.1

The Government Accountability Office's indictment of the nuclear
facilities and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the most
comprehensive reckoning to date of problems that have begun to emerge
at a number of plants in recent years.

Inadequate oversight and gaps in safety procedures have left several
plants unsure about the whereabouts of all their spent fuel, the GAO
said, and problems in tracking the materials suggest that radioactive
rods could be missing from more than the three plants that are widely
known to have problems.

"NRC inspectors often could not confirm that containers that were
designated as containing loose fuel rods in fact contained the fuel
rods," the report said. "The containers, in some cases, were closed or
sealed and, in other cases, the contents were not visible when looking
into the spent fuel pool. Thus, spent fuel may be missing or
unaccounted for at still other plants."

The commission said it agreed with the GAO's findings of "uneven"
control of spent nuclear fuel. NRC spokeswoman Beth Hayden said the
agency had been forced to prioritize safety concerns after the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks, and that this had caused delays in implementing
security measures to safeguard the spent fuel rods.

The nuclear industry pointed out that the GAO had not found evidence
of adverse health consequences. Problems in accounting for the fuel
are being addressed, said Steven Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear
Energy Institute.

Critics, however, said close ties between federal regulators and the
commercial facilities they supervise has dulled the edge of oversight.

"I would respectfully remind the NRC that the 'R' stands for
'regulatory," " said Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), who, with other
members of Congress, had asked the GAO to study the issue. Rep.
Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) added: "The days of letting the nuclear
industry self-regulate without proper federal oversight must come to a
long overdue end."

Three plants have reported missing or unaccounted-for spent nuclear
fuel in recent years: Millstone in Connecticut, Vermont Yankee, and
Humboldt Bay in California.

The report said federal regulations do not make clear how plants
should conduct physical inventories of spent fuel, nor how they should
control and account for loose fuel rods and fragments.

Plants had different notions about how to monitor their inventories of
spent fuel, consisting of highly radioactive rods that have been
removed from reactors and are generally stored in large swimming pool-
like structures.

Some plants had failed to match paper records with the contents of
spent fuel containers, the report said.

The GAO said the government has sufficient warning of the scope of the
problem to begin implementing changes, but the NRC's Hayden said the
agency is still in the process of getting the information it needs.

"Until we have that detailed information, we can't just go out and do
additional inspections or levy additional requirements," she said.
"When we are dealing with nuclear safety and security, we need to move
in a very careful and deliberate way."

Hayden said the requirement that the agency fund 90 percent of its
budget from fees on the industry in no way compromises its
independence.

But Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and
Environmental Research, a nonprofit group that studies energy issues,
said GAO surveys of commission inspectors showed that the public ought
to be concerned: Despite the range of problems identified, 28
inspectors said the agency does not need to exercise more oversight,
while only 24 said increased control is needed.

Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Watchdog Project for the Nuclear
Information and Resource Service, a nonprofit clearinghouse opposed to
the use of nuclear power, said the GAO report is the latest in a
string of independent assessments that have found fault with the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission's oversight of commercial facilities.

"The consistency of these findings suggests the NRC is more interested
in shielding production margins at power stations than it is in
prioritizing public health and safety," he said.

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