90% of Nuclear Regulators Sent Home Due To Shutdown

An anonymous reader writes "More than 90% of nuclear regulators are being sent home due to the Federal Government shutdown, as the agency announced today that it was out of funds. Without Congressional appropriations, the nuclear watchdog closes its doors for what appears to be the first time in U.S. history. CNN reports that while a skeleton crew remains to monitor the nation's 100 nuclear reactors, regulatory efforts to prevent a Fukushima-like incident in the United States have ceased."

Comments

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[icebike]

Having a bunch of bureaucrats sitting around doing nothing but shuffling papers provides no additional safety.
Sending them home provides no less safety.

The article and the summary would suggest everyone walked away from the control room, or at the very least, that the plant operators will now start drilling through the containment walls to roast hot dogs, or sell all the fuel to Iranians on the black market. More Scare tactics.

Everyone in the lapdog press is running around crying Oh No'es but NOTHING bad is happening.
The country is once again reminded how useless most layers of government really are.

10% staffed...

[malakai]

Another way to look at this, is that the NRC determined it only needs 10% of it's work force for 'essential' operations. Makes me wonder why we pay for the other 90%.

Also, it's amazing to go through the list of government services and see which shutdown and which remain open. Often the ones remaining open work off of 'user' fees. For example, certain meat packing plants pay for food and safety inspectors being on site. Passport fees will keep most passport operations flowing.

One wonders why that power plan companies don't simply pay the NRC directly, like food inspectors.

This fee system seems like an elegant way to run a business....

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Very little as apparently the article thinks the NRC is responsible for foiling terrorist plots to go after nuclear reactors.

Personally, I'm more worried about increased negligence from operators without somebody breathing down their necks than I am about terrorists.

(The most recent example, luckily nonnuclear, being the juxtaposition between the marathon bombers and the West Fertilizer company. Kill three people with a backpack full of explosives and all of greater Boston goes full tactical on you. Blow up 500,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, killing 15 and leveling a good portion of the nearby town? Eh, we try to avoid burdensome regulations here in Texas...)

Re:October 17th Conspiracy Theorists Welcome!

[malakai]

Sadly, we'll pay all the back-pay, so it's really just a free vacation for more federal workers.

The ones who have to stay on their jobs with no pay really get the short end of the stick. Should given them a 33% bonus, and if they do a good job, should fire the workers they made up for.

Re:October 17th Conspiracy Theorists Welcome!

[intermodal]

Technically, the Federal Government takes in more than enough to pay the interest and principal payments on the debt every month. I love how everyone pretends that's the first thing to get screwed, when the reality is that there are a lot of other agencies, programmes, and other entities and expenditures that disappear before we "default". All this talk about "default" and "full faith and credit" has been nothing but dishonest propaganda.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Dzimas]

Unusual events are more common than you think. I remember being on call and receiving a weekend call, because a nuclear facility's environmental monitoring system was "acting up" and monitoring reports were including impossible errors. That sort of stuff can usually be traced back to a data entry or automated import error -- accidentally flagging the data as gigabecquerels instead of terabecquerels, and so on. It's usually a simple issue that can be identified in a couple of minutes, and there's some good natured banter with the tech on the other end while we figure out what's going on.

This time around, there appeared to be no mistakes - - there were inexplicably high radiation levels in an improbable location. Things get pretty serious at that point, and there's a very specific timeline for notifying regulators and taking remedial action. In this case, they verified the readings and determined what had gone wrong within hours. You can't simply fix the fault and continue on as normal, though. There was contamination outside the facility that needed to be addressed according to steps that the federal regulators deemed sufficient, and on an acceptable timeline. In the current shutdown, I'm not sure how well that process would work -- you need a fairly experienced team to work out the most effective remediation solution that balances cost, environmental impact and public safety. There's also the issue that if a regulatory specialist is conducting a site inspection, they aren't available for other work.