The nuclear regulatory bureaucracy

Abstract

i t was nearly 4:00 in the morning, March 28, 1979. For most of the Pennsylvania citizens living along the Susquehanna River, it was a moment that sleep let slip by unnoticed. For William Zewe, shift supervisor at Three Mile Island (TMI) and his colleagues manning the controls, it was the beginning of a nightmarish scenario that they were neither trained nor prepared for: a nuclear power plant out of control. It has been called the worst commercial nuclear accident in this nation's history. It began with a loud clatter of alarms when feedwater pumps malfunctioned; it ended only after local residents had been terrorized and confused by reports of pending evacuations, dangerous radiation releases, and a possible nuclear explosion. The repercussions of the accident have yet to be fully understood. One of them, however, a proposal to revamp the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), should be carefully evaluated. Two weeks after the accident occurred, with the shock turning to outward calm and the TMI plant beginning to stabilize, President Jimmy Carter established a 12-member Presidential Commission " to conduct a comprehensive study and investigation" of the accident. The presidential panel, chaired by John Kemeny, President of Dartmouth College, interpreted its mandate narrowly, focusing on the single accident, not the issue of nuclear power in general. In one area, however, the Kemeny Commission interpreted its mandate expansively: it launched a broad-based investigation of the NRC and focused a significant portion of its final report on this agency. Of all of the recommendations offered by the Kemeny Commission, those relating to the NRC are perhaps the most comprehensive and certainly the most controversial. It recommended that the NRC, an independent regulatory agency headed by a five-member commission, be restructured as a new agency in the executive branch headed by a single administrator. To mitigate the charge that the new administrator would be too powerful, and to ensure that the public health and safety would be adequately protected, a public oversight committee was also proposed. Within months after the Kemeny Commission's proposal to reorganize the NRC was announced, its conclusions were endorsed by a surprising source--an independent Special Inquiry Group sponsored by the NRC itself, directed by Washington lawyer Mitchell Rogovin. The Rogovin Report recommends that a "radical reorganization of the [NRC] Commission's structure and management is called for, now." It proposes that a single chief executive responsible directly to the president should head the agency. It also suggests that an Independent Nuclear Safety Board of 5 members be appointed as an oversight and advisory body. These proposals to revamp the agency have not met with enthusiasm. President Carter, after reviewing the response of the NRC to the Kemeny report, said he would submit his own reorganization plan to Congress, one which differed appreciably from those suggested by both the Kemeny Commission and the Rogovin Report. His plan retained the commission structure, but attempted to solve the managerial deficiencies by expanding the chairman's authority. These various reorganization plans are efforts to remedy the perceived managerial problems at the NRC. Before examining these problems in greater detail and suggesting why a single administrator might be the best solution, it is necessary to sketch briefly the history of the NRC. The NRC did not exist before 1974. Its regulatory responsibilities were held by the Atomic Energy Commission [AEC], created by the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 to control and promote nuclear technology. Atthough peaceful applications of the technology were certainly envisioned at the time, the primary concern was with weaponry. Thus, the creation of the AEC placed military development under civilian control. The federal monopoly on all nuclear facilities, material, and expertise was continued by the Act, merely transferred from the military to the AEC. The Act also assured that the AEC would be able to conduct its business with relative ease--free of competing congressional committess--and with secrecy if necessary, by creation of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. The new agency was headed by a five-member commission. There was little concern