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the lessons of Davis-Besse
Overview
In March 2002, workers at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio discovered a football-sized hole in the nuclear reactor vessel head. The damage occurred over a period of nearly six years and had been overlooked during inspections in 1998 and 2000. According to a study performed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the NRC, it’s unlikely that Davis-Besse could have survived one more overlook without the hole opening up to cause a loss-of-coolant accident worse than that experienced at Three Mile Island. The NRC critiqued its own processes that had failed to identify worsening safety levels at Davis-Besse and identified 49 steps that needed to be taken to prevent the next Davis-Besse. UCS will closely monitor as the NRC implements these 49 improvements. A serious challenge to be faced by the NRC in making these improvements is avoiding the temptation of shoring up today’s seams by pulling resources from other areas, inadvertently creating tomorrow’s seams. |
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© Union of Concerned Scientists
Page Last Revised: 08/25/05 |
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