GAO: Regulators missed nuke corrosion
Ohio plant was shut down for two years to make repairs
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission failed to identify and prevent corrosion at an Ohio nuclear plant more than two years ago, an oversight that was the most serious safety incident since the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster, according to a report released Tuesday by the investigative arm of Congress.
On March 7, 2002, an inspection at FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Oak Harbor, which is east of Toledo on the shore of Lake Erie, turned up corrosion forming on the protective barrier that houses the nuclear reactor core.
If the pineapple-size hole had grown larger and been able to breach the reactor's protective barrier -- and if backup cooling systems had failed -- the plant's nuclear core would have melted down and nuclear material would have been released into the environment, the report by the General Accounting Office said.
"NRC should have, but did not, identify or prevent the corrosion at Davis-Besse because its oversight did not generate accurate information on plant conditions," the 137-page GAO report said.
"NRC inspectors were aware of indications of leaking tubes and corrosion; however, the inspectors did not recognize the indications' importance and did not fully communicate information about them."
The report called the incident "the most serious safety issue confronting the nation's commercial nuclear power industry since Three Mile Island."
"NRC was aware of the potential for cracked tubes and corrosion at plants like Davis-Besse but did not view them as an immediate concern," the report said. "NRC's process for deciding to allow Davis-Besse to delay its shutdown lacks credibility."
The NRC had asked operators of Davis-Besse-type reactors to inspect them by December 31, 2001, for possible cracking, or that operators justify why the reactors were sufficiently safe to continue operating without being inspected.
The inspection required plants to shut down, and FirstEnergy requested a delay until the end of March 2002 to coincide with an already scheduled shutdown for refueling, according to the GAO report. Soon after the reactor's shutdown, the corrosion was discovered.
The Davis-Besse plant restarted operations just two months ago, after two years of increased NRC oversight and considerable repairs by FirstEnergy, according to the report.
The report went on to say that because the nation's nuclear power plants are aging, the NRC should take more "aggressive actions to mitigate the risk of serious safety problems occurring at Davis-Besse and other nuclear power plants."
It added that while the NRC has taken some corrective actions, it "has no plans to address three systemic weaknesses underscored by the incident." The report said those three areas are:
Identifying early indications of deteriorating safety conditions at plants.Deciding whether to shut down a plant.Monitoring actions taken in response to incidents at plants."Both NRC and GAO had previously identified problems in NRC programs that contributed to the Davis-Besse incident, yet these problems continue to persist," the report said.
FirstEnergy Corp., based in Akron, Ohio, was cited by an investigative task force for being largely to blame for last August's power outage that plunged parts of eight states and a Canadian province into darkness. (Full story)
CNN's Octavio Blanco contributed to this report.
