Comments: The NRC has close ties to the Nuclear Plants owners and the federal govt, so demand VA to keep the uranium mining ban because uranium mining is the beginning of the cycle of death: Nuke Power!
William Ostendorff, GOP-Appointed Regulator, Under Investigation For Thwarting Nuclear Safety Probe
WASHINGTON - The inspector general at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has launched an investigation into a GOP political appointee for attempting to thwart an agency probe into safety concerns at a Michigan plant, NRC insiders tell The Huffington Post.
In late May, Gregory Jaczko, then the chairman of the NRC, paid a rare visit to the controversial Palisades Power Plant on Lake Michigan. Activists are agitating for the plant's closure due to safety issues. The plant is represented in Congress by Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who has long been close to the nuclear industry.
While Jaczko was touring the plant on May 31st, according to the sources, a significant leak of potentially radioactive water was pouring into the control room.
Less than two weeks later, the plant was shut down to repair the leak. Yet Jaczko was never made aware of the issue while inspecting the plant. He asked the NRC's Office of Investigations to look into why the leak was kept from him.
Commissioner William Ostendorff, however, wanted no such investigation to take place. Shortly after Jaczko ordered it, Ostendorff shouted at the top agency investigator, Cheryl McCrary, in front of several NRC employees. He told her that the inquiry should be halted and that it was a "waste of agency resources," according to the sources, who were briefed on the exchange by witnesses.
The probe into Ostendorff is the latest tussle in an ongoing war inside the agency over how to regulate the industry -- whether to take a trusting, hands-off approach, or to apply the rules in a serious way.
It's a battle being fought all across Washington, as longtime advocates of deregulation argue that government bureaucrats are stifling job creation. Inside some industries, deregulation might tilt the balance of power away from consumers and workers, but in the nuclear industry, the consequences involve life and death.
The upheaval has altered the mood within the NRC; before the anti-Jaczko campaign, pro-regulation sources were largely unwilling to speak to HuffPost about internal disputes. But as a full-fledged war wages on, some of that resistance is slackening.
A witness to the encounter reported it to the Office of the Inspector General, which launched a probe into Ostendorff's action. McCrary did not halt her own inquiry, the sources said, despite the pressure from Ostendorff.
The NRC has since sent an additional inspector to Palisades, according to local news reports.
Neither probe is complete. An NRC spokesman said he couldn't comment on matters relating to the IG or individual commissioners. Ostendorff was traveling and unavailable to comment, his office said.
[HuffPost readers: Are you a regulator running into political interference? Let us know confidentially at ryan@huffingtonpost.com.]
It's not the first time McCrary has had to battle interference internally. Last fall, she sent a memo to top NRC officials Michael Weber and Martin Virgilio to push back on what she called "sustained and improper efforts by NRC senior leadership officials over the past 19 months to curtail the NRC Office of Investigations (OI) initiation of investigations of wrongdoing by so called 'low level' NRC licensee employees and contractors as well as attempts to influence the credible conduct and manner of conducting wrongdoing investigations."
The memo, which was obtained by HuffPost, led to a decrease in interference, NRC insiders said. The officials responded with a memo in November praising her work and assuring her there would be no interference with investigations.
"I think the final determination of that, Congressman, remains to be seen," Ostendorff said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/15/william-ostendorff-nuclear-safety_n_1778989.html
Crack contention against Davis-Besse 20-year extension bolstered by NRC FOIA revelations
Toledo attorney Terry Lodge filed this FOIA supplement, the coalition's fifth this year, since filing the original contention on January 10th, just five days after the environmental intervenors confronted NRC and FENOC about the cracking at a special public meeting at Camp Perry, OH.
The others include: (1) a Feb. 27th filing, based on U.S. Rep. Kucinich's (D-OH) revelation that the shield building's outer rebar layer was no longer structurally functional, due to the cracking;
(2) a June 4th filing, in response to FENOC's woefully inadequate Aging Management Plan (AMP) for the shield building's cracks;
(3) a July 16th filing, in response to FENOC's revised root cause analysis report, which revealed that shield building cracking was first observed not in October 2011, but rather August 1976;
(4) a July 23rd filing, based on revelations in FENOC contractor Performance
Improvement International's revised root cause assessment report, which revealed 27 areas of skeptical NRC questioning about FENOC's "Blizzard of 1978" theory of shield building cracking (the environmental Intervenors also posted documents supportive of its fourth supplement).
The environmental coalition also defended its crack contention, on February 14th, against challenges by NRC staff and FENOC.
Beyond Nuclear has prepared a report, entitled "What Humpty Dumpty Doesn't Want You to Know: Davis-Besse's Cracked Containment Snow Job," which summarizes the coalition's work in 2012 on Davis-Besse's dangerously degraded condition.
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