Feds Will Re-analyze Risk Of Pipeline Near Indian Point

“For a task force to be credible, I think it’s important that it be independent,” said Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Jeff Baran.

By Lanning Taliaferro, Patch Staff 
CORTLANDT, NY — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will create a task force to redo its faulty risk analysis of the Algonquin gas pipeline that was expanded near the Indian Point nuclear Plant.NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki made the announcement Wednesday during an appearance before the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee.
She had been closely questioned by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who is a member of the committee.
“Those of us who raised concerns at the time were told that the NRC’s analysis was conservative and there was no need for any additional review,” Gillibrand said at the committee hearing.
“The NRC now has a real credibility problem with the community around Indian Point and this is an abject failure of your agency’s responsibility to ensure that proper analysis was done to evaluate the potential risk posed by the pipeline, regardless of whether there was a direct or immediate impact to plant safety or not.”
For months in 2014 and 2015, Paul Blanch, an engineer who has been a consultant and a critic of the nuclear industry for many years, argued that the risk assessment used as the basis for approval of the AIM project must be negated because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission knowingly used erroneous information, not based on sound science, to improperlyevaluate the plant’s ability to achieve failsafe shutdown in the event of a pipeline rupture.
The nuclear commission’s safety review and energy commission conclusions were deeply flawed, with flawed engineering analysis based on incorrect data and a clear and consistent violation of the process for responding to challenges of the analysis and the data, according to the report. The nuclear commission then conducted a flawed check of its findings and lied to those who had challenged them, the report found.
Svinicki told Gillibrand and the committee that she had taken immediate action after receiving the Inspector General’s report.
“On behalf of the commission, I directed the agency’s Senior career civil servant, the executive director of operations to do two things immediately. The first was to assess whether or not the issues identified in the inspectors report should result in immediate regulatory reaction at Indian Point. That needed to be done very very promptly,” she said. “The second item directed at that time was that no longer than 45 days, the executive director of operations needed to task and have a team that looked at exactly the question you posed. What contributed to these gaps and deficiencies and agencies processes? What is the extent even beyond Indian Point? If the processes were flawed, are there other impacted safety issues that we need to re-look at? ”
The first assessment concluded there was no safety issue warranting immediate regulatory action. The executive director for operations’s goal is to get the second assessment done in 20 days, Svinicki said.
“I think I can confidently state today that the NRC expert team acknowledges that there will be reanalysis that will be required and they will also not be doing this — the folks involved in looking at this now did not participate in the agency work prior,” Svinicki said. “Their independence within the agency is very very important to the credibility question you asked and also they have been directed that they will reach outside for expertise, academic or otherwise, perhaps other government agencies that might know about the code and the modelling and its appropriate use.”
NRC Commissioner Jeff Baran was also at the hearing. He agreed with Gillibrand that many people have lost confidence after the NRC’s flawed analysis.
“For a task force to be credible, I think it’s important that it be independent, and that means having several task force members from outside the agency – from academia, from other federal agencies,” Baran said. “In my view, those outside experts should make up a majority of that task force. And I think we should consult with the state of New York and ask them who would they recommend for us to have on this panel?
“Because right now, we have a lot of stakeholders and we don’t have a lot of credibility on this. I think bringing in folks from outside the agency is really going to help with that. ”