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Re: St. Lucie exposures
Et al,
If the exposures were in the range of a few mrem, I cannot fathom how it
would be a regulatory issue, unless a "safety significant radiation exposure
or technical specification control" failed.
Baring the aforementioned, here is my take on the issue (without much
information to the contrary):
I see things haven't change much since my days as an inspector with the NRC.
Its a "knee jerk reaction" from below the NRC's Regional Administrator (RA)
by middle management that may not have a firm grasp on real operational
health physics issues. Once the RA inquires as to the seriousness of the
incident the reaction can go several ways, but most times, they (middle
management) elect to send an inspector down for showing the flag, and get
brownie points from upper management for the foresight to conduct a
"reactive inspection". No matter how versed the inspector is in the
going-on's at the plant and the level of confidence the inspector has in the
plant's radiological protection staff, he is generally out voted on picking
up on the incident during the next scheduled inspection. Inaction by the
regulator, even though the facts of the case are clearly known and no
egregious violations of regulations has occurred, is an aspect that weighs
heavily on the regulators when considering the expected response (flack)
from those (Congressional, local anti's, national anti's, senior NRC
management, etc.) critiquing the RA's performance regarding the situation.
Action, though unwarranted, is rarely found in disfavor. I have personally
been involved in several responses that could have been critiqued in the
office and written up as a no-never-mind, but NRC management cannot fathom
anyone understanding a situation without a visit to the incident site. It
really a case of management's trust in the inspectors knowledge of the
situation and the health physics ability of the licensee. Which, no matter
how many platitudes the inspector or the plants has received in the area of
health physics, it all falls through the cracks when nervous managers
(lacking in good health physics knowledge) must convince upper managers
(with very little health physics experience) that all is okay and the
incident can be followed up during the next scheduled inspection. This is
the typical reason why a site visit is conducted for a trivial exposure.
Not to say that other pressures, to numerous to detail, are at work forcing
the unnecessary expenditure of the limited health physics resources in the
NRC.
The NRC's regulatory program does a very good job overall, but sometimes
gets caught up in the minutia of the "what if" world of Norm and Susan, and
the philosophy that "they are doing something wrong - find it". This
attitude is a hold over from the 70's and early 80's when things were less
than adequate at many plants/facilities in the HP arena. For the most part
large nuclear facilities are conducting their HP ops in a first class
manner, concentrating on the big ticket items that can get them in serious
trouble. The amount of procedures to maintain and implement, personnel to
training, interfacing with internal and external regulators, and response to
anti-nuke assertions of harm, is immense and a never ending pressure on the
plant staff. Most jobs conducted during an outage are recurring, and have
been revised and improved upon each time it is done. The ALARA staff at a
plant is constantly looking for ways to improve the plant's performance on a
job (worker efficiency and exposure).
I was once told by a Deputy Regional Administrator that 1st level
supervision (Branch Chiefs) need not be technically versed in the area they
are supervising. The meeting came about when a person with a PhD in metal
sciences, and no practical HP experience was promoted to Branch Chief in the
Nuclear Materials Safety Division (well, it is nuclear "materials")
supervising HP inspectors.
Well, enough of my musings.
H. Dean Chaney, CHP
"In science there is only physics; everything else is stamp collecting."
--Ernest Rutherford
----- Original Message -----
From: <Paul_Prichard@DOM.COM>
To: <radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 6:55 AM
Subject: RE: St. Lucie exposures
> For those of you critiquing the performance of the FPL spokesperson, have
> you sent your comments to FPL? I would think that they would appreciate
> the views of observers. I've been trained in meeting the media but have
> yet to experience the hot seat. This may be a valuable learning
experience
> for them.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Just an analog guy in a digital world.
> Paul Prichard
> Millstone Station
> Paul_Prichard@dom.com
> (860) 437-2806
>
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