The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has divided the country into four regions for the regulation of operating nuclear power plants. Region I is New England, Region II is the South East. Region III is around the Great Lakes and Region IV is the Western half of the country. Recently David Lochbaum, the director of the Nuclear Safety Project gave his evaluation of the performance of the NRC in Region I.
Lochbaum had created a check list for the evaluation of nuclear power plant operators back in the late 1990s. He was looking at 10 nuclear power plants that varies from well run to poorly run. Here is the list of questions.
1. Who identified the problem?
2. How was it identified?
3. Was it evaluated properly?
4. What caused the problem?
5. When was it identified?
6. Had the problem occurred before?
7. If so, had the problem been fixed?
8. If so, was the fix effective?
9. Has the problem been corrected?
This set of questions was originally created to evaluate performance of nuclear power plant operators but in the new statement by Lochbaum, the same set of questions can be used to evaluate the performance of the NRC.
Generally, Lochbaum said that if a problem is found during the aggressive investigation of another problem at the same facility or another problems at a different facility, that is a good indication of proper regulation of a powerplant. If a problem reveals itself to the operators or a problem keeps repeating, then that is an indication of poor regulation of a facility.
The seventeen nuclear power plants in Region I include Beaver Valley, Limerick, Peach Bottom, Susquehanna and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania; Calvert Cliffs in Maryland; Fitzpatrick, Ginna, Indian Point, and Nine Mile Point in New York; Hope Creek, Oyster Creek, and Salem in New Jersey; Millstone in Connecticut; Pilgrim in Massachusetts; Seabrook in New Hampshire; and Vermont Yankee in Vermont. There have been problems with these reactors but Lochbaum says that they do not show that the NRC could have found the problems sooner or that the NRC is guilty of not applying sufficient solutions to the problems. Lochbaum concludes that Region I is performing better with respect to dealing with problems than the other three Regions.
Lochbaum points out that his system of scoring performance is the opposite of that used in judging performance in sports such as Olympic figure skating. In skating, the best and worst performances are thrown out and the rest are averaged. In contrast, Lochbaum focuses on the best and the worst performances in nuclear power plant regulation. The best performance serves as an example of what can be done and the worst performances indicate where more work needs to be done.
While it is encouraging to see proper regulation of nuclear power in Region I, it can be discouraging to consider that much more work needs to be done to improve regulation in the other three Regions.
