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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week proposed to fine Met Ed $155,000, the maximum permitted by law, for safety violations at Three Mile Island. But the NRC itself comes in for considerable censure in the Kemeny report. Kemeny and colleagues conclude that Met Ed's training program for control room operators met regulations set by the NRC—but finds those standards ''shallow'' and ''inadequate for responding to the accident.''
The NRC itself, says the Kemeny report, reacted to the Three Mile Island mishap ''in an atmosphere of uncertainty,'' and took actions that were ''ill-defined.''
The commission cites many specific failings to back up the broad charges.
Met Ed's Unit No. 1, which had been routinely shut down before the accident in adjacent Unit No. 2, had been so poorly maintained that ''boron stalactites more than a foot long hung from the valves, and stalagmites had built up from the floor.'' (The improper operation of some valves in the containment building of Unit No. 2, which is still far too contaminated with radiation to be entered, contributed heavily to the accident.) At a critical time when the NRC, which is headed by a five-man board, should have been deciding whether or not to seek evacuation of the T.M.I, area, ''the commissioners became preoccupied with the details of evacuation planning and the drafting of a press release.''
Some of the report's toughest language is aimed at the ''understaffed and conceptually weak'' training of the control room operators at T.M.I. There is an indirect accusation that such training may be even more deficient elsewhere in the industry. The T.M.I, operators, the report notes, scored higher than the national average in the NRC licensing and operating examinations. Nonetheless, in these tests, ''emphasis was not given to fundamental understanding of the reactor and little time was devoted to instruction in the biological hazards of radiation. The content was left to the instructors, who had no greater formal education qualifications than those of their students.'' In fact, there is no minimum educational requirement for control room operators.
How should these failings be corrected? Starting at the top, the Kemeny commission urges abolishing the NRC and replacing it with a single Director of Nuclear Regulation to be appointed by the President. Explained a Kemeny commission member: ''We felt that when you have a collegial body, you delay decision-making while searching for the lowest common denominator of agreement.'' A single director, on the other hand, ''can't pass the buck in an emergency.''
This new czar of nuclear regulation would be required to improve greatly the training of all nuclear power plant control room operators. The commission also wants the control rooms to be redesigned, claiming that ''problems with the control room contributed to the confusion during the accident.'' At present, NRC is continuing to license control rooms with ''outdated technology.''