| Keep Reactor Shut Until Safety Standards Are Met | | Print | |
| Written by PEGGI STURMFELS, Asbury Park Press | |||
| Sunday, 09 November 2008 01:00 | |||
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How on earth has this been allowed to happen? During relicensing, the owners of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lacey used faulty math to make it appear that the reactor's radiation barrier met minimum standards. When citizens tried to bring this critical error in computation to the attention of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, they were rebuffed at every turn. In a recent opinion, the federal Atomic Safety Licensing Board, the NRC's advisory board, agreed with citizens and recommended the analysis be sent back to a federal laboratory for review. There is now hope that crucial safety issues surrounding the corrosion of the drywell, the reactor's steel containment vessel, might finally be addressed. The plant is currently shut down as it undergoes refueling. It should not reopen until the new review is completed, especially since inspectors last week found new evidence that corrosion is likely to be ongoing despite past assurances to the contrary by AmerGen, the plant owner. Prior to any relicensing decision, a federal inquiry must be conducted to determine why these safety issues that were readily apparent to a team of experts retained by citizens and the former chief nuclear inspector for New Jersey were not identified and acted upon by the NRC. The ASLB last month validated citizens' concerns and recommended the NRC return a crucial piece of analysis to the Sandia National Laboratory to determine whether AmerGen inflated its safety analysis by overestimating a factor in an equation to determine the strength of the drywell shell. The choice of the factor, known as the capacity reduction factor, made the drywell shell appear to be 60 percent stronger than Sandia believes is justified. When the drywell is analyzed, it is divided into 10 bays, or sections. Using Sandia's recommended factor, each of the 10 bays must on average be thicker than 0.844 inches. Even with AmerGen's faulty math, two of the bays still were less than 0.844 inches. Consequently, there is no assurance today that the drywell shell meets the safety requirements. Under NRC 's own regulations, this means the plant should not be in operation. Why is it? In addition, during the course of the September licensing board hearing, NRC staff boldly proclaimed they do not conduct any in-depth review of technical analyses carried out by reactor operators. While the judges rightly demanded that NRC staff do their job on this issue at Oyster Creek, how can the public be assured of the validity of both the NRC review of all issues at Oyster Creek and the review of all the other relicensing applications that have been carried out nationwide? Given the lack of review, it is not surprising the NRC has so far approved every single application it has received. These shortcomings lead to an inevitable question: What other safety issues have been missed during Oyster Creek's relicensing? We won't know until all of AmerGen's raw data and safety analyses are made public for independent review. Our legislators, the public and the union at Oyster Creek, which has traditionally fought long and hard for public disclosure, should join together in calling for the release of all safety-related raw data and safety analyses. Public disclosure is essential. Elected officials should not forget that if citizens had not entered into a legal battle to ensure the validity of Oyster Creek's safety review, AmerGen would have succeeded in overestimating the safety margins and pretending there is no problem at Oyster Creek. Our senators, congressmen and Gov. Corzine should waste no time in demanding that the plant, which began its annual refueling in October, remain closed until Sandia determines whether current safety standards are being met. It is outrageous that AmerGen would place the 3.5 million people living in the vicinity of this plant in harm's way by trying to overestimate the safety margins to avoid closure. Even more outrageous is the fact the NRC staff would have allowed AmerGen to pull the wool over the public's eyes if citizens had not intervened. The public will be even more enraged if our elected officials do nothing about it. This situation demands an immediate investigation by the federal Government Accountability Office and the state attorney general. Until then, keep the plant closed.
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Post Office Box 7933