Title

Spotlight On Safety At Nuclear Power Plants: The View From Oyster Creek

Comments

Published at 26 Pace Environmental Law Review 365 (2009)

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This article shows that the ongoing litigation over the relicensing of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant (“Oyster Creek”) and a few other nuclear power plants continues to put a spotlight on the regulation of safety by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (“NRC”). The glare of the spotlight has already revealed that the NRC Staff has largely lost touch with the basic purpose of the agency, which is solely to regulate -safety, not to promote nuclear power. Instead, at Oyster Creek (and some other nuclear plants), the Staff has appeared more concerned about dismissing any concerns raised by their safety reviews rather than enforcing the safety requirements, which are themselves often unclear or ambiguous. This misguided agenda has been evident in decisions about both ongoing safety and relicensing. Happily, even though the litigation procedures are inadequate, when certain decisions have been vigorously litigated, some relief has been forthcoming from administrative adjudicatory bodies such as the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (“ASLB”) and the Commission itself. However, the current procedures are extremely hostile to effective intervention by public-interest groups and many decisions, such as relicensing, can be taken without a hearing or Commission action in the absence of intervention. Therefore, many decisions taken by the NRC Staff go into effect without any searching internal or external review. This lack of effective review reduces the quality of these decisions. Thus, without serious reform of both the safety culture of the staff and the internal and external review procedures, the ability of the NRC to carry out its mandate to ensure that nuclear power plants within the United States are operated safely is seriously in doubt. One element of reform should be to ensure that before major decisions, like relicensing, are taken there is an effective internal review of NRC Staff actions by the ASLB and then the Commission. However, experience has shown that even the Commission is subject to strong pressure from the regulated community. Robust external review of NRC decisions is therefore critical if the agency is to avoid recapture by the industry. The best approach to providing such a review is to actively encourage citizen involvement in the decision-making processes of the NRC through greater transparency, opportunities for funding, and the use of fairer procedures.