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In fact, Millstone is merely the latest in a long string of cases in which the NRC bungled its mandate and overlooked serious safety problems until whistle blowers came forward (see box). The NRC's relationship with the industry has been suspect since 1974, when the agency rose from the ashes of the old Atomic Energy Commission, whose mandate was to promote nuclear power. The industry vetoes commission nominees it deems too hostile (two of five NRC seats are vacant), and agency officials enjoy a revolving door to good jobs at nuclear companies such as Northeast. "The fox is guarding the henhouse," says Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, who is pushing legislation to create an independent nuclear safety board outside the NRC. The Democrat, who is also calling for a federal investigation of NRC effectiveness, believes the agency "has failed the public."
It all comes back to money. "When a safety issue is too expensive for the industry, the NRC pencils it away," says Stephen Comley, executive director of a whistle-blower support group called We the People, which has brought many agency failures to light. "If the NRC enforced all its rules, some of the plants we've studied couldn't compete economically."
In a rare point of agreement with activists, the nuclear industry also says regulations threaten to drive some plants out of business, but it argues that many NRC rules boost costs without enhancing safety. "The regulatory system hasn't kept pace with advances in technology," says Steve Unglesbee, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's p.r. unit. "Industrywide, our safety record is improving. But NRC creates so many layers of regulation that every plant is virtually assured of being in noncompliance with something."
The NRC suggested as much in a 1985 agency directive on "enforcement discretion," which allowed the agency to set aside hundreds of its own safety regulations. Since 1990, Millstone has received 15 such waivers--more than any other nuclear station. In November, Jackson scaled back the policy, but she says this never endangered public safety. Others disagree.
"Discretionary enforcement was out of hand," says NRC acting Inspector General Leo Norton, who investigates agency wrongdoing but has no power to punish. "We shouldn't have regulations on the books and then ignore or wink at them."
Yet the tensions between cost and safety can only increase as deregulation of the nation's utilities ushers in a new era of rate-slashing competition. In some states, consumers will soon choose their electric company the way they now choose a long-distance telephone carrier. Companies with nuclear plants are at a disadvantage because nuclear-generated electricity can cost twice as much as fossil-generated power. No new plants have been ordered in 18 years, and a dozen have been mothballed in the past decade.