UCS's Lochbaum: "The NRC Seven: Petitioning the NRC over Safety"

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has posted commentary by its Nuclear Safety Project Director, David Lochbaum, on the 2.206 (emergency enforcement) petition submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by seven private citizens who happen to work for the NRC.

Lochbaum's "All Things Nuclear" blog begins:

Roy Mathew, Sheila Way, Swagata Som, Gurcharan Singh Matharu, Tania Martinez Navedo, Thomas Koshy, and Kenneth Miller—the NRC Seven— are not names as well known as Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton—the Mercury Seven astronauts—but their courage and service to the country are comparable.

The NRC Seven filed a petition with their employee seeking to resolve a safety problem affecting every operating nuclear plant in the United States, and the handful of new reactors currently under construction.

The Mercury Seven wore special gear to protect them from the harsh environment they could encounter during their journeys.

Hopefully, the NRC Seven will not encounter a harsh environment in response to their efforts to protect millions of Americans from a longstanding nuclear safety problem.

Lochbaum's blog then summarizes the key milestones leading to the NRC Seven submitting their petition, beginning with the reverlation of the problem on January 30, 2012 with an "open phase event" at Exelon's Byron nuclear power plant in Illinois.

An "open phase event," in short, involves dysfunction in a nuclear power plant's electrical systems, structures, and components essential for running vital safety and cooling systems, such as the Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS). In certain circumstances, the ECCS is the last line of defense against reactor core meltdown, and catastrophic radioactivity release.

Reuters, Syracuse.com, EcoWatch, and Utility Dive have reported on this story.

Update on March 6, 2016 by admin

Last December, Oconee nuclear power plant in South Carolina experienced the most recent open phase condition event. It prompted the NRC to dispatch a special team inspection to the site to investigate. The NRC's report by the special inspection team was dated February 25, 2015, and was placed in ADAMS (the Agency-wide Documents Access and Management System) last Friday. Lochbaum's commentary about this near miss, including a link to the NRC's report, is posted online at UCS's All Things Nuclear blog.

Lochbaum has also written:

Following the commentary posted Friday to UCS's All Things Nuclear blog (see http://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/the-nrc-seven-petitioning-the-nrc-over-safety), I received several inquiries about what a "phase" was and about past open phase conditions. I'm not an electrical engineering expert, but researched available files to prepare the attached backgrounders. [see links below]

The blog post provided links to the responses from individual plant owners to NRC Bulletin 2012-01 about electrical system protection schemes (or lack thereof).

But I could not find the responses for some plants, like Palisades and Shearon Harris, in ADAMS, the NRC's online digital library. I contacted the NRC's Public Document Room Friday and was told that these responses are indeed in ADAMS. But they are coded non-public so we can't see them.

So I FOIA'ed them. Why the NRC made most of the responses publicly available and hid some is beyond my comprehension, but the FOIA submittal form is not yet beyond my reach.

(Here are links to Lochbaum's two backgrounders: Three Phase Power, and Open Phase Events.)

Update on March 7, 2016 by admin

NRC has provided the following response (and hot links) to Lochbaum's requests re: the conspicuous holes in relevant documentation, mentioned above:

It seems that many of these responses are marked as non-public. I'm attaching the brief citations for these and will see about getting them made "publicly available."

All three of these plants had the same response. ML14034A405

Farley Units 1 and 2

Hatch Units 1 and 2

Vogtle Units 1 and 2

For these four plants, the original responses are ‘non-public’ (see attached citations) and then NRC requested further information and the responses to the requests for more information are public at the accession numbers noted below. I’ll see about getting the original “non-public” responses changed to “public” and will be back in touch with you about that.

Columbia Generating Station ML14049A282

Grand Gulf ML14034A359

Shearon Harris ML14034A364

Palisades ML14034A169