Another Strike Against Nuclear
Nov 18, 2008
Author: SCP Editor
November 19, 2008 – We had previously published a criticism of nuclear power arguing that it is the wrong direction to take in addressing our country’s energy requirements in the twenty-first century. This morning the non-partisan Government Accountability Officer reinforced one of our criticisms – safety. The report stated that:
HSS (Office of Health, Safety and Security) falls short of fully meeting GAO’s elements of effective independent oversight of nuclear safety: independence, technical expertise, ability to perform reviews and have findings effectively addressed, enforcement, and public access to facility information. For example, HSS’s ability to function independently is limited because it has no role in reviewing the “safety basis”—a technical analysis that helps ensure safe design and operation of these facilities—for new high-hazard nuclear facilities and because it has no personnel at DOE sites to provide independent safety observations. In addition, although HSS conducts periodic site inspections and identifies deficiencies that must be addressed, there are gaps in its inspection schedule and it lacks useful information on the status of the safety basis of all nuclear facilities. For example, HSS was not aware that 31 of the 205 facilities did not have a safety basis that meets requirements established in 2001. Finally, while HSS uses its authority to enforce nuclear safety requirements, its actions have not reduced the occurrence of over one-third of the most commonly reported violations in the last 3 years, although this is a priority for HSS.
These shortcomings are largely attributable to DOE’s decision that some responsibilities and resources of HSS and prior oversight offices more appropriately reside in the program offices. For example, DOE decided in 1999 to eliminate independent oversight personnel at its sites because they were deemed redundant and less effective than oversight by the program offices. DOE also decided in forming HSS in 2006 that its involvement in reviewing facility safety basis documents was not necessary because this is done by the program offices and adequately assessed by HSS during periodic site inspections. Moreover, DOE views HSS’s role as secondary to the program offices in addressing recurring nuclear safety violations. Nearly all these shortcomings are in part caused by DOE’s desire to strengthen oversight by the program offices, with HSS providing assistance to them in accomplishing their responsibilities. In the absence of external regulation, DOE needs HSS to be more involved in nuclear safety oversight because a key objective of independent oversight is to avoid the potential conflicts of interest that are inherent in program office oversight.
We aren’t proponents or bureaucracy. But we are advocates of oversight and accountability – especially where national security issues are concerned. We are watching the financial markets unraveling and much of that underlying cause (albeit not all) is due to lack of oversight and accountability where the financial markets were at work. The other key underlying cause, in our opinion, was just bad policy that took a position to drive GDP with debt and leverage.
Well, here we go again. This time the GAO is firing a warning shot out that the nuclear industry is lacking appropriate oversight and accountability. And we would go a step further and suggest that, absent of any long-term storage solution and considering the cost and other security issues, as well as the time to construct plants, the impulse to develop more nukes is a bad one.
