Hearing Examines Nuclear Oversight Plans

Press Release

Hearing Examines Nuclear Oversight Plans

Improvements are being made to federal safety inspection standards for the countrys nuclear plants, witnesses told U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfields Subcommittee on Monday.

Monday's hearing in the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations focused on the effectiveness of the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions (NRC) Reactor Oversight Process (ROP). Created in 2000, ROP is an oversight and assessment program that monitors conditions at each of the countrys 103 nuclear power plants.

Whitfield, the Chairman of the Subcommittee, called for the hearing in response to concerns about ROPs ability to identify and resolve significant safety issues. According to a report prepared by the Government Accountability Office, the ROP has been effective at identifying problems at nuclear power plants, but few of those problems have been categorized significant threats. As a result, NRC has not subjected many plants to higher levels of oversight.

Whitfield pointed to a 2002 incident at the Davis-Beese nuclear power plant in Ohio as evidence that NRC had to strengthen their inspection standards. A large hole created by acid corrosion forced a reactor at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio to be shut down. Until that point, however, NRC inspectors had given the Davis-Besse plant a clean bill of health.

Witnesses from the NRC told the Subcommittee that the agency has made a number of improvements to its safety inspection procedures since the Davis-Besse incident. Edward McGaffigan, a Commissioner at the NRC testified that enhanced procedures were being implemented to monitor unidentified leakage and reactor failure problems like those that affected the Davis-Beese plant. McGaffigan said that the NRC also now makes safety assessment reports public each quarter for all of the nuclear plants operating in the country.

Whitfield credited the NRC for working to correct its inspection procedures and said such reforms were critical to ensure that future nuclear energy production happened safely in the U.S.

"The NRC must continue to adapt the reactor oversight process to anticipate new safety challenges presented by new reactor designs, and also adapt to new safety challenges associated with aging component issues NRC and the nuclear industry have yet to discover," said Whitfield.

Source