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May 12, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

US Reactors Operating Dangerously Using Counterfeit Parts

Clean-up workers, self-nicknamed “sponges,” worked inside the contaminated Three Mile Island reactor site in Pennsylvania, March 1979.
Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2022
By John La Forge

See full NRC Office of Inspector General report

The lead paragraph from Reuters was originally correct: “Most, if not all, U.S. nuclear power plants contain counterfeit or fraudulent parts, potentially increasing the risk of a safety failure…”

This hair-raising news is just one of the shocking findings in a set of seven reports released February 10 by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), now headed by Robert J. Feitel.

Among the findings of the first of the seven reports were: “Counterfeit, fraudulent, and suspect items (CFSI) are present in operating plants.” • “The extent of CFSI in operating plants is unknown because the NRC does not usually require licensees to track CFSI” … “if done at all, tracking is voluntary and methods and data quality vary among licensees.” • The “termination of [some] rulemaking in 2016 that addressed CFSI oversight concerns” was questionable. • “Department of Energy staff identified more than 100 incidents involving CFSI in [Fiscal Year ] 2021 alone, including five incidents involving safety-significant components.”

“Counterfeit parts are safety and security concerns that could have serious consequences in critical power plant equipment required to perform a safety function,” the OIG report says in its understated bureaucratese. And, “According to the Electric Power Research Institute, counterfeit parts have been found in valves, bearings, circuit breakers, pipe fittings, and structural steel, and can be difficult to spot.”

The antiseptic euphemism “serious consequences” resulting from the failure of critical but counterfeit “safety function” parts means, in plain-spoken terms, nuclear reactors going out-of-control, suffering loss-of-coolant meltdowns, and causing massive radioactive releases with acute and long-term damage to environmental and human health.

The finding that “most, if not all” of the country’s 94 operating reactors are more dangerous than we thought is potentially so devastating to the environmentally toxic and financially bailed-out nuclear power sector (Reuters said the OIG’s reports are “a blow to a U.S. nuclear industry”), that public relations agents and industry allies in the media must have run headlong to the phones and demanded retractions. Somehow, they were rewarded almost immediately with a so-called “correction” which misstates and weakens the OIG findings — a “correction” that was placed at the beginning of most follow-up reports.

The retraction misleadingly states that it, “Corrects lead paragraph to say many counterfeit parts are in U.S. nuclear plants instead of most, if not all, plants contain counterfeit parts.”

In fact, the report from the OIG — based on confidential testimony from several industry and NRC whistle-blowers — says that “well placed NRC sources” allege that “most, if not all” nuclear reactors operating in the United States today have counterfeit or faulty, substandard parts essential for preventing disasters.

The lead paragraph in The Energy Daily improved on the Reuters report by including the word “operating” before “nuclear plant” — a salient point considering their increased potential for radiation disasters compared to the 23 shuttered units.

The “most, if not all” bombshell follows from the fact, as OIG found, that “the Nuclear Regulatory Commission may be underestimating the number of CFSI in plants and their impact because it does not require licensees [reactor operators] to report CFSI except in extraordinary circumstances” like “the failure of equipment that performs a significant safety function.”

One such fraudulently manufactured, purchased and installed part identified after it failed was a “service water pump shaft” that was found to be counterfeit after it snapped. The loss of cooling water circulation, either inside a reactor vessel, or in the deep pool of ferociously hot waste fuel rods, has caused some of the industry’s worse radiation release disasters.

Inspector General Savages ‘Misleading’ NRC Actions, Thanks Comley

The depth of deliberate malfeasance or deception by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is justifiably savaged in the OIG report. The investigation found that NRC staff had for more than 10 years dismissed, ignored and even misfiled written communications from whistle-blowers so as to hide allegations regarding CFSI. “This investigation revealed that the alleger communicated CFSI concerns to the agency staff via letters, e-mails, phone calls, and discussions at public meetings over 10 years. Most of the alleger’s concerns involved Seabrook Station.”

“[W]e found that the NRC did not investigate or pursue any substantive actions regarding an alleger’s concerns about the presence of CFSI, nor did the NRC process any of the information provided by the alleger over the last 10 years through its Allegation Review Boards.”

Indeed, the NRC’s Office Allegation Coordinator was found to have classified the alleger’s charges as “non-allegations,” and then kept secret the details of how such a designation is applied. The OIG politely condemned the agency’s action, writing, “Such missing information regarding the NRC’s approach to reviewing allegations could be construed as misleading to the public.”

“The alleger” is a reference to Mr. Stephen J. Comley, Jr., of the national whistle-blower protection organization We the People, in Rowley, Massachusetts. In a February 10 cover letter to Comley accompanying the reports, OIG director Feitel wrote: “Thank you for taking considerable time to bring your concerns to the OIG,” and noted that “my staff has completed its investigations” into “your allegations that CFSI are present in most, if not all, U.S. nuclear power plants.…”

Feitel confirmed to Comley that “OIG investigators interviewed several individuals you identified.” They are some of the over two-dozen whistle-blowers who have spoken with We the People, and who are referred to in the OIG reports as “a well-placed NRC principle” or “an NRC source.”

As Nukewatch reported last October, Comley has for 35 years been haranguing the NRC and its inspectors, demanding that they take the whistle-blowers’ charges seriously. So the OIGs’ damning and alarming February findings (too many to report on in one or two articles) are the long-awaited validation and vindication of Comley’s steadfast work that goes back almost four decades.

Feitel’s letter to Comley speaks to his group’s repeated warnings to the NRC about the impossibility of safely evacuating the Seabrook, New Hampshire reactor site during an emergency, and to the whistle-blowers’ startling allegations that State Patrol and National Guard forces have been gag-ordered by their superiors not to discuss the lack of a feasible Seabrook evacuation plan. (Nuclear reactors are the only industrial operations required to earn the approval of an emergency evacuation plan prior to startup.)

“The OIG also investigated your allegation that Seabrook Station’s evacuation plan is inadequate,” Feitel wrote. This report is complete, but a response from the NRC is pending, and only after the response is filed with OIG can the public “request a copy of the report via the Freedom of Information Act,” Feitel advised.

For now, the NRC can continue to hide behind slick public relations that manages major news services with bald-faced lies. One NRC public affairs officer named Scott Burnell told Reuters, “Nothing in the report suggests an immediate safety concern.” Burnell has a point. The report doesn’t “suggest” anything, it directly if politely condemns the deceitful, unscrupulous, deceptive, and duplicitous chicanery of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when dealing with its own whistle-blowers, and it warns against the reckless endangerment of continuing to operate nuclear power reactors using counterfeit, substandard parts and equipment.

– WBZ4, CBS Boston, March 8, 2022 

Filed Under: Counterfeit Reactor Parts, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter

February 19, 2022 by Nukewatch 1 Comment

“Most, if not all” US Reactors Dangerously Operating Using Counterfeit Parts

By John LaForge

The lead paragraph from Reuters was originally correct: “Most, if not all, U.S. nuclear power plants contain counterfeit or fraudulent parts, potentially increasing the risk of a safety failure…”

This hair-raising news is just one of the shocking findings in a set of seven reports released February 10 by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Office of Inspector General (OIG), now headed by Robert J. Feitel.

Among the findings of the first of the seven reports were: 1. “Counterfeit, fraudulent, and suspect items (CFSI) are present in operating plants”; 2. “The extent of CFSI in operating plants is unknown because the NRC does not usually require licensees to track CFSI” … “if done at all, tracking is voluntary and methods and data quality vary among licensees”; 3. The questionable “termination of [some] rulemaking in 2016 that addressed CFSI oversight concerns”; and 4. “Department of Energy staff identified more than 100 incidents involving CFSI in FY 2021 alone, including 5 incidents involving safety-significant components.”

“Counterfeit parts are safety and security concerns that could have serious consequences in critical power plant equipment required to perform a safety function,” the OIG report says in its understated bureaucratese. And, “According to the Electric Power Research Institute, counterfeit parts have been found in valves, bearings, circuit breakers, pipe fittings, and structural steel, and can be difficult to spot.”

The antiseptic euphemism “serious consequences” resulting from the failure of critical but counterfeit “safety function” parts, means, in plain-spoken terms, nuclear reactors going out-of-control, suffering loss-of-coolant meltdowns, and causing massive radioactive releases with its acute and long-term damage to environmental and human health.

The finding that “most, if not all” of the country’s 94 operating reactors are more dangerous than we thought is potentially so devastating to the environmentally toxic and financially bailed-out nuclear power sector (Reuters said the OIG’s reports are “a blow to a US nuclear industry”), that public relations agents and industry allies in the media must have run headlong to the phones and demanded retractions. Somehow, they were rewarded almost immediately with a so-called “correction” which misstates and weakens the OIG findings — a “correction” that was placed at the beginning of most follow-up reports.

The retraction misleadingly states that it, “Corrects lead paragraph to say many counterfeit parts are in U.S. nuclear plants instead of most, if not all, plants contain counterfeit parts.”

In fact, the report from the OIG — based on confidential testimony from several industry and NRC whistle-blowers — says that “well placed NRC sources” allege that “most, if not all” nuclear reactors operating in the United States today have counterfeit or faulty, substandard parts essential for preventing disasters.

The lead paragraph in The Energy Daily improved on the Reuters report by including the word “operating” before “nuclear plant” — a salient point considering their increased potential for radiation disasters compared to the 23 shuttered units.

The “most, if not all” bombshell follows from the fact, as OIG found, that “the Nuclear Regulatory Commission may be underestimating the number of CFSI in plants and their impact because it does not require licensees [reactor operators] to report CFSI except in extraordinary circumstances” like “the failure of equipment that performs a significant safety function.”

One such fraudulently manufactured, purchased and installed part identified after it failed was a “service water pump shaft” that was found to be counterfeit after if snapped. The loss of cooling water circulation, either inside a reactor vessel, or in the deep pool of ferociously hot waste fuel rods, has caused some of the industry’s worse radiation release disasters.

Inspector General Savages ‘Misleading’ NRC Actions, Thanks Comley

The depth of deliberate malfeasance or deception by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is justifiably savaged in the OIG report. The investigation found that NRC staff had for more than 10 years dismissed, ignored and even misfiled so as to hide allegations regarding FCSI. “This investigation revealed that the alleger communicated CFSI concerns to the agency staff via letters, e-mails, phone calls, and discussions at public meetings over 10 years. Most of the alleger’s concerns involved Seabrook Station.”

“… we found that the NRC did not investigate or pursue any substantive actions regarding an alleger’s concerns about the presence of CFSI, nor did the NRC process any of the information provided by the alleger over the last 10 years through its Allegation Review Boards.”

Indeed, the NRC’s Office Allegation Coordinator was found to have classified the alleger’s charges as “non-allegations,” and then kept secret the details of how such a designation is applied. The OIG politely condemned the agency’s action, writing, “Such missing information regarding the NRC’s approach to reviewing allegations could be construed as misleading to the public.”

“The alleger” is a reference to Mr. Stephen J. Comley, Jr., of the national whistle-blower protection organization We the People, in Rowley, Mass. In a February 10 cover letter to Comley accompanying the reports, OIG head Feitel wrote appreciatively, “Thank you for taking considerable time to bring your concerns to the OIG,” and noted that “my staff has completed its investigations” into “your allegations that CFSI are present in most, if not all, U.S. nuclear power plants.…”

Feitel confirmed to Comley that “OIG investigators interviewed several individuals you identified.” They are some of the over two-dozen whistle-blowers who have spoken with We the People, and who are referred to in the OIG reports as “a well-placed NRC principle” or “an NRC source.”

As I reported last October in Steve Comley has for 35 years been haranguing the NRC and its inspectors, demanding that they take the whistle-blowers’ charges seriously. So the OIGs’ damning and alarming February findings (too many to report on in one or two articles) are the long-awaited validation and vindication of Comley’s steadfast work that goes back almost four decades.

Feitel’s letter to Comley speaks to his group’s repeated warnings to the NRC about the impossibility of safely evacuating the Seabrook, New Hampshire reactor site during an emergency, and, beyond this, to the whistle-blowers’ allegations that they as first responders — State Patrol and National Guard forces — have been gag-ordered by state authorities not to discuss the endangerment caused by the lack of a feasible evacuation plan. (Nuclear reactors are the only industrial operations required to earn the approval of an emergency evacuation plan prior to startup.)

“The OIG also investigated your allegation that Seabrook Station’s evacuation plan is inadequate,” Feitel wrote. This report is complete, but a response from the NRC is pending, and only after the response is filed with OIG can the public “request a copy of the report via the Freedom of Information Act,” Feitel advised.

For now, the NRC can continue to hide behind its PR hacks that manage major news services with bald-faced lies. An NRC Public Affairs Officer named Scott Burnell told Reuters, “Nothing in the report suggests an immediate safety concern.” And Burnell has a point. The report doesn’t “suggest” anything. While using more polite language then me, it directly condemns the deceitful, bogus, unscrupulous, immoral, deceptive, dodgy, and duplicitous chicanery of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when dealing with its own whistle-blowers, and warns against the reckless endangerment of operating counterfeit, substandard nuclear power reactors.

published at CounterPunch, Feb. 18, 2022: https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/18/us-reactors-dangerously-operating-using-counterfeit-parts/

Filed Under: Counterfeit Reactor Parts, Environment, Environmental Justice, Nuclear Power, Weekly Column

October 20, 2021 by Nukewatch 1 Comment

NRC Conducting “Open Investigation” into Allegedly Counterfeit, Substandard US Reactor Parts, & Impossibility of Evacuating Seabrook

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2021
By John LaForge
Nukewatch Exclusive 

Federal investigators have confirmed that they are probing allegations that counterfeit, substandard parts are currently being used in scores of nuclear reactors across the United States, and, further, that emergency responders in New Hampshire’s National Guard and the Massachusetts State Police have been gagged by orders not to reveal that it is impossible to conduct a safe evacuation of the Seabrook reactor during an emergency.

In a January 15, 2021 email to We the People — a whistle-blower protection group in Rowley, Mass. — Malion Bartley, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Investigations, wrote that his office “has an open investigation and is reviewing the concerns you provided and your supporting documents.” Bartley’s email, made public only recently, follows a December 14, 2020 letter in which Bartley confirmed, “The Office of the Inspector General, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), is reviewing your allegation regarding counterfeit and substitute parts in nuclear plants around the United States.”

For over 35 years, We the People has demanded an investigation into the whistle-blower declarations that reactor manufacturers have installed counterfeit, substandard parts in reactors across the country. The allegations are based on tape recorded conversations with several nuclear industry and NRC whistle-blowers. Mr. Bartley’s December 14 letter insists that We the People provide the OIG with personal contact information for the whistle-blowers who are being protected by We the People. The industry insiders have divulged to the group’s director, Stephen Comley, the sorts and locations of the fake parts that he says currently endanger the operations of the entire fleet of nuclear reactors in the United States.

Comley replied to the Inspector General’s office that because protection of the nuclear whistle-blowers is paramount, he needs guarantees from the NRC and OIG that no retaliation will be taken against them. We the People has refused to reveal any whistleblower’s identity to the OIG unless the courageous informants give their permission.

The OIG’s Senior Special Agent William Johnson then wrote an email to We the People on December 17, 2020, complaining that his office was “disappointed that you are choosing not to provide said requested information unless certain conditions you insist upon are met by our office.”

The Christian Science Monitor reported in 1994 that the NRC had regularly retaliated against agency whistle-blowers who warned of unsafe operations. (“Whistle-Blowers on Safety Risks Betrayed by Nuclear Agency,” July 29, 1994) “NRC officials were turning over whistle-blowers’ identities to one of the nation’s largest utilities, the Tennessee Valley Authority” in violation of federal policy, the Monitor reported. The article noted that whistle-blowers “are a major source of vital information about safety risks at nuclear power stations” and that “the NRC is frequently charged by safety advocates with being too cozy with the multibillion-dollar nuclear industry.”

On August 26, 2021, special agent Johnson again wrote in an email to Comley that OIG’s “Report will be completed by the end of September 2021.” On Sept. 13, 2021, Johnson emailed, “Please forward to the OIG the contact information for these additional state troopers that you say you spoke with. … They are in law enforcement, and the NRC OIG is a law enforcement agency. We can be trusted.” After sharing his agency contact information, Johnson wrote, “I look forward to talking to these other state troopers who will confirm your allegation that no safe evacuation of Seabrook Station would be possible in an emergency.” The use of bogus equipment inside operating reactors, and a failed evacuation during a reactor accident, raise both the chances and the consequences of a disaster at reactors across the country and particularly at Seabrook, located on the New Hampshire seacoast 40 miles north of Boston.

We the People is waiting to hear whether its precautionary guarantees — ensuring the anonymity and personal security of its whistle-blowers — will be granted by the OIG. ###

Filed Under: Counterfeit Reactor Parts, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter

October 13, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

NRC Conducting “Open Investigation” into Allegedly Counterfeit, Substandard US Reactor Parts, & Impossibility of Evacuating Seabrook

By John LaForge

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Office of Inspector General (OIG) has confirmed that it is investigating allegations that counterfeit, substandard parts are currently being used in scores of nuclear reactors across the United States, and further that emergency responders in New Hampshire’s National Guard and the Massachusetts State Police have been gagged by orders not to reveal that it is impossible to conduct a safe evacuation of the Seabrook reactor during an emergency. The use of bogus equipment inside operating reactors, and a failed evacuation during a reactor accident raise both the chances and the consequences of a major reactor disaster across the country and particularly at Seabrook, located on the New Hampshire seacoast 40 miles north of Boston.

In a January 15, 2021 email to We the People — a whistle-blower protection group in Rowley, Mass. — the OIG’s Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Investigations Malion Bartley wrote that his office “has an open investigation and is reviewing the concerns you provided and your supporting documents.” Bartley’s email, made public only recently, follows a December 14, 2020 letter in which Bartley confirmed, “The Office of the Inspector General, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is reviewing your allegation regarding counterfeit and substitute parts in nuclear plants around the United States.”

For over 35 years We the People has demanded an investigation into whistle-blower declarations that reactor manufacturers have installed counterfeit, substandard parts in reactors across the United States. The allegations are based on tape recorded conversations with several nuclear industry and NRC whistle-blowers.

Municipalities near Seabrook are also demanding answers. Mayor Kassandra Gove of Amesbury, Mass., ten miles from the Seabrook reactor, wrote this past August 27 to the NRC’s Inspector General Robert Feitel reminding him, “the City has previously asked for a public hearing by the NRC on the public safety and evacuation plan for Seabrook Station,” and further that “The NRC should seek to ensure both the safety of … the parts being used within the facility itself, as well as the evacuation plans in the case of a catastrophic event.”

Mr. Bartley’s December 14, 2020 letter insists that We the People provide the OIG with personal contact information for the whistle-blowers who are being protected by the nonprofit group. The inside informers have divulged to the group’s director, Stephen Comley, Sr., the sorts and locations of the fake parts that he alleges currently endanger the operations of the entire fleet of nuclear reactors in the United States.

Comley has replied to the Inspector General’s office that because protection of the nuclear whistle-blowers is paramount, he needs guarantees from the NRC and OIG that no retaliation will be taken against them. We the People has refused to reveal any whistleblower’s identity to the OIG unless the courageous informants give their permission.

The OIG’s Senior Special Agent William Johnson wrote an email to We the People on December 17, 2020, complaining that his office was “disappointed that you are choosing not to provide said requested information unless certain conditions you insist upon are met by our office.”

The Christian Science Monitor reported in July 1994 that the NRC regularly retaliated against agency whistle-blowers who warned of unsafe operations.  “NRC officials were turning over whistle-blowers’ identities to one of the nation’s largest utilities, the Tennessee Valley Authority” in violation of federal policy, the Monitor reported. The article, written as a result of a tip from We the People, noted that whistle-blowers “are a major source of vital information about safety risks at nuclear power stations” and that “the NRC is frequently charged by safety advocates with being too cozy with the multibillion-dollar nuclear industry.”

On Sept. 13, 2021 Special Agent Johnson again wrote in an email to Comley, “Please forward to the OIG the contact information for these additional state troopers that you say you spoke with. … They are in law enforcement, and the NRC OIG is a law enforcement agency. We can be trusted.” After sharing his agency contact information, Johnson wrote, “I look forward to talking to these other state troopers who will confirm your allegation that no safe evacuation of Seabrook Station would be possible in an emergency.”

Nuclear watchdogs and We the People are waiting to hear whether the whistle-blowers’ precautionary guarantees — insuring their anonymity and personal security — will be granted by the OIG. ###

 

 

Filed Under: Counterfeit Reactor Parts, Nuclear Power, Weekly Column

October 7, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Special Agent Wm Johnson Email to WtP 17 December 2020

Filed Under: Counterfeit Reactor Parts, Nuclear Power

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