Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), a watchdog group tracking the nuclear power industry, applauded the U.S. Senate’s Y2K Special Committee’s announced efforts to “encourage additional measures” and “afford an extra level of scrutiny” at the nation’s 103 operating reactors and 14 permanently closed reactors with onsite nuclear waste storage ponds, in order to protect public health and safety during the Y2K transition.
NIRS filed formal requests to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 1998 calling on the regulator to provide specific Y2K regulations for the operators nuclear power stations. The NRC recently rejected all three NIRS petitions for new Y2K specific regulations.
U.S. Senators Robert Bennett (R- Utah) and Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) were responding to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s November 15th twenty-two page answer to a November 1 letter from the Chair and Vice-Chair Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem. The Senate requested answers to a series of questions focused on the nuclear agency’s regulatory oversight of the nuclear power industry’s activities to reduce risks associated with computer and chip failure introducing the potential loss of reactor monitoring and control, the loss of offsite power and the associated loss of emergency equipment.
At the same time, the watchdog group criticized the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s response to the Senators’ questions as falling far short of doing their job and so further eroding public confidence in nuclear power station readiness for the Y2K roll-over, now only weeks away. A recent Roper Starch Survey reported by Gannet News Service revealed that malfunction of nuclear power reactors is the # 1 concern adults have about the arrival of Y2K.
“Unfortunately, NRC stands for ‘Never Really Confirmed’ that reactor operators effectively tested that critical safety systems will work, calling into question whether the reactors really are Y2K ready,” said Paul Gunter, the Director of the Reactor Watchdog Project of Washington, DC-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service.
Gunter was referring to the response to a question posed to NRC by the Senate Special Committee and also to a recommendation from the U.S. General Accounting Office focused on the conservative testing of Y2K vulnerable systems and independent validation and verification, as used by many other industries in preparing their systems for Y2K. NRC had responded that “the agency does not have a categorized list showing specifically how each nuclear power station validated Y2K readiness.”
The GAO, recognizing a distinction between industry self review and independent assessment of Y2K systems recommended as early as March 6, 1998 the important inclusion of Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) in supporting industry assurances that critical systems will be operable. The NRC and industry continue to ignore this important validation and verification process.
NIRS voiced particular concern over the agency’s answer to the Senate Committee’s question on NRC’s proposed suspension of technical regulations. The NRC response detailed that under the agency’s current Y2K contingency plan, recognizing that some software, applications, equipment and systems may remain susceptible to Y2K problems, NRC can suspend enforcement of operator violations of the reactor safety blueprints as a result of Y2K-related failure that would otherwise require a reactor to shutdown in order to keep the reactor in operation and powering the grid. Reactor operators will be able to make snap judgements and based on a phone call to NRC headquarters take the reactor into potentially dangerous areas of operation.
“NRC's current plan is to give reactor operators responding to a Y2K-related failure a furlough from safety,” said Gunter. “Allowing operators to depart from reactor safety guidelines is particularly dangerous because the NRC is aware that many nuclear utilities have already lost control of the documenting their design blueprints,” Gunter noted.
In October, 1996, NRC required every nuclear utility CEO to inform the agency of inaccuracies in their reactor's basic design documentation used to make safely operate the plant. At the same time, NRC issued an amnesty program for operating outside safety regulations and provided that NRC would defer fining the utility so long as the violation was documented. The NRC amnesty program has been extended to beyond the Year 2000 with potentially many violations still unreported by industry.
“January 1, 2000 presents an unprecedented challenge to nuclear power safety. For the first time in the history of nuclear power, every reactor will be challenged on the same day. Business as usual is not an adequate response, and yet the NRC sites business as usual as the industry’s approach to Y2K readiness programs,” said Mary Olson, who heads up the NIRS Y2K Project. “This is the level of disregard of basic prudent precautions within an industry that brought us Three Mile Island and Chernobyl,” concluded Olson.
“Even at this late date there is still time for meaningful and significant risk reduction measures, ” said Olson. “We urge the Senate to pursue their charge that extra measures be taken. Creative ideas including rolling the clock forward at reactors that are currently refueling, providing extra diesel fuel and rail road locomotives stationed on the rail spurs at reactors for additional back-up power, propping internal electronic doors on site open during the roll-over, and other ideas could help to reduce nuclear risks. Apparently no one can say for sure if these potential nuclear hazards are addressed as of today, since none have been validated. These are precautions that can be taken, even with 44 days to Y2K.”