Safety Inspections Are a Bigger Deal Than I Thought

Dear God,

Remind me not to go to horror movies.

Or even to watch horror webcasts.

Yesterday I stumbled upon a story in the Toledo Blade, which pointed me to a webcast of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board hearing into whether and how significantly to punish the two engineers convicted of covering up vital information about the Davis-Besse nuclear plant weeks before its old reactor head nearly blew apart. Yesterday's hearing was to consider whether one engineer, David Geisen, should be allowed to resume work in the nuclear industry. He had been banned until January, 2011. On Thursday his convicted co-engineer, Andrew Siemaszko, will have his turn with the ASLB. He is seeking either acquittal or a new trial.

As I've explained to you only last month, Lord,

It was during a refueling shutdown that engineers discovered that, over the course of six years of inadequate inspections, corrosive coolant had been leaking from the core. The coolant had created a six-by-five-by-four inch cavity in the liner of the core. All that remained of the liner was a warped piece of steel a little thicker than tin foil. It and it alone contained approximately 2200 psi of highly radioactive internal environment. Had the pressure burst through the remaining lining and into the reactor containment building, it might have set in motion a core meltdown, and just 21 miles away from Toledo.

Lord, even I, who constantly put a big smiley-face on the kisser of nuclear power, cannot take this incident lightly. The webcast (which I encourage you to check out for its really cool, scary evidence, only don't waste your time with anything before, say, 15 minutes 30 seconds) included detailed explanations about what went wrong, what the engineers supposedly ignored, and, most disturbingly to me, the preposterous danger presented by evidence that could easily be (and easily was) explained away by Davis-Besse's FirstEnergy management team as indicative of minor problems that weren't minor at all. And, of course, while I watched this today, we, the management team at Vermont Yankee, are still rationalizing a few additional cracks on the steam dryer and a few pesky cooling tower problems blah blah blah. Different plants; different parts of the plant; different levels of safety concern, perhaps, but my job is to rationalize, publicly, and today rationalizing got a bad name, at least in that pesky webcast.

Some questions, Lord:

1—Apparently an engineer can get indicted and have his life and reputation shattered for downplaying the dangers of miscellaneous, "minor" problems in a nuclear reactor. Can a PR guy?

2—If so, can I get paid extra for time spent at trial?

3—Were those engineers really at fault? If so, were they the only ones at fault? David Geisen's "co-conspirator"—a Polish immigrant named Andrew Siemaszko—made an excellent case at trial that he was just the whistle blower. He had ordered maintenance for the reactor lid, but that maintenance could have cost the plant about $1 million a day in lost revenue. So it was never completed. Scaffolding was taken down less than 24 hours into the job, and without his consent. So how is any of this his fault?

4—Why didn't Sam Collins get indicted? He is our NRC administrator in charge of enforcing safety; at the time of the Davis-Besse near-disaster, he was the NRC administrator in charge of enforcing safety at Davis-Besse. Sam had the power to shut the plant down, and, according to a second Toledo Blade article, he'd seen a photo of huge rust streaks that raised his suspicion. Still, he let the plant's management team bargain with him about timing—and about people's safety. (Alarmed by the photo, Sam wanted to shut down the plant three months ahead of a planned schedule. He negotiated with the management team and agreed to shut it down only 6 weeks earlier than scheduled.)

5—Why didn't the management team in charge of the plant get indicted? They, according to yet another Toledo Blade article, had developed a "mantra" or rallying cry of "Let's win this war" when Sam initially moved to shut down the Davis-Besse plant.

God, according to (I know this is getting ridiculous) yet another Toledo Blade article, after investigating this mess the NRC Office of the Inspector General issued a report saying that the NRC had become a complacent regulator, sympathetic to a profit-over-safety mentality at Davis-Besse. Engineer Andrew Siemaszko's lawyers argued that even though he tried to initiate maintenance, he ended up the scapegoat because he has a Polish accent, was an immigrant, and, I don't know, maybe even looked the part of a guy you'd see in jail.

Lord, we've been accused of having a profit-over-safety mentality at Vermont Yankee. And I've defended our mentality time and again, and this time we're arguing sticky points like fenceline radiation levels, proximity of the dry storage casks to the river, Vermont Yankee's spent fuel plan, new cracks in the steam dryer and, most alarmingly, a high probability of the Mark I containment at Vermont Yankee rupturing when needed to protect the public in a severe accident. Vermont Yankee has acknowledged the insufficiency and installed an automatic vent. Yet that vent could itself be the path for the release of radioactive fission, and Vermont Yankee's management team has told the NRC essentially that.

In the event of an accident or near accident, I ask for your protection, Lord. Please don't let me develop a Polish accent. And please protect Sam Collins's accent, too.

Amen,

Fake-Rob