Word: lochbaum
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Dates: during 1996-1996
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Then, in late 1992, David Lochbaum and Don Prevatte, consultants working at Pennsylvania Power & Light's Susquehanna plant, began to analyze deficiencies in spent-fuel cooling systems. They realized that a problem had been sneaking up on the industry: half a dozen serious accidents at different plants had caused some water to drain from the pools. In the worst of them, at Northeast's Haddam Neck plant in 1984, a seal failure caused 200,000 gal. to drain in just 20 min. from a water channel next to the fuel pool. If the gate between the channel and the pool...
...agency's analysis for a fuel-pool drainage accident assumes that at most one-third of a core is in the pool, even though plants across the country routinely move full cores into pools crowded with older cores. If the NRC based its calculations on that scenario, says Lochbaum, "it would exceed the radiation-dose limits set by Congress and scare people to death. But the NRC won't do it." The NRC's Taylor told TIME that the agency analyzes dose rates at the time a plant opens--when its pool is empty. The law, he said, "does...
...Lochbaum and Prevatte reported Susquehanna to the NRC and suggested improvements to its cooling system. The NRC, Lochbaum says, didn't read the full report. He and Prevatte called Congress members, pushed for a public hearing and presented their concerns to NRC staff. Conceding that Lochbaum and Prevatte "had some valid points," the agency launched a task force and in 1993 issued an informational notice to the 35 U.S. reactors that share Susquehanna's design, alerting them to the problem but requiring no action. One of the plants was Millstone...
...GALATIS DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT Lochbaum's struggle to get fuel-pool problems taken seriously. He did know he would face resistance from Northeast, where the bonus system is set up to reward employees who don't raise safety issues that incur costs and those who compromise productivity see their bonuses reduced. (Northeast says it has a second set of bonuses to reward those who raise safety issues. Galatis never...