Nuclear Regulation

A GAO review of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) oversight of nuclear power plants reveals that for some plants, NRC has not taken aggressive action to force plant operators to fix long-standing safety problems on a timely basis. As a result, conditions have worsened in these plants, making safety margins narrower. NRC allowed safety problems to persist because it was confident that redundant design features kept nuclear plants inherently safe and because it relied heavily on assurances from plant operators about their intentions to make changes. Moreover, NRC lacks a process for ensuring the plant operator uses competent managers. Finally, NRC was slow to place plants on its "watch list," which triggers more regulatory attention at an early stage. Although NRC is implementing various reforms, such as expanding its inspection program and revamping its process for identifying plants with long-standing safety problems, changing the agency's culture of tolerating problems will not be easy. Fundamental reform will require NRC to hold plant operators accountable for fixing problems more promptly and addressing management issues more directly.

GAO noted that: (1) to achieve NRC's safety mission, it is critical that NRC maintain a high degree of confidence in its regulatory program's ability to ensure that the nuclear industry performs to high safety standards; (2) while GAO is not making judgments on the safety of plants, the many safety problems identified in some plants raises questions about whether NRC's regulatory program is working as it should; (3) determining the safety of plants is difficult because NRC does not precisely define safety; (4) instead, NRC presumes that plants are safe if they operate within their approved designs and in accordance with NRC's regulations; (5) according to recent findings in some plants, NRC is no longer confident that all plants are still operating as designed and is requiring all 110 nuclear plant licensees to certify that they are maintaining their plants in accordance with their approved plant designs; (6) NRC is also concerned that as nuclear plant owners pursue cost-cutting strategies to meet future competition, safety priorities may be jeopardized; (7) NRC is responsible for laying out clear requirements for operating nuclear plants and for overseeing its licensees to ensure that they are performing as they should; (8) NRC has on-site inspectors that prepare reports on the plants' activities about every 6 weeks, and comprehensive assessments are assembled every 12 to 24 months for all nuclear plants; (9) NRC also collects and publishes safety performance indicators; (10) these data, which are supplied by the licensees, show that the overall safety performance of the nuclear industry, is good and improving but that some plants are chronically poor performers; (11) currently, NRC has placed 14 nuclear plants on its "Watch List," which includes those plants whose declining safety performance triggers additional oversight attention by NRC; (12) 37 percent of the nation's nuclear plants have been on the list at some point over the past 11 years, and many of these plants have stayed on the list for many years; (13) for some plants, NRC has not taken aggressive enforcement action to force the licensees to fix their long-standing safety problems on a timely basis; (14) as a result, the plants' conditions have worsened, making safety margins smaller; (15) NRC's ongoing reforms, which include expanding its inspection program and revamping its process for identifying plants with long-standing safety problems, show a strong commitment to strengthen NRC's oversight capability; and (16) achieving fundamental reform starts with holding licensees accountable for fixing their plants' problems more promptly and addressing management issues more directly.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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