Nuclear industry group works behind the scenes

ATLANTA --- Construction of two reactors at Plant Vogtle in Burke County will be overseen not only by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission but also by a little-known organization that has become a powerful influence in the nuclear power industry.

The Atlanta-based Institute of Nuclear Power Operations was created by industry executives in response to the accident 30 years ago at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. The executives wanted to head off efforts in Congress for more regulation and establishment of a government-run school for plant technicians.

What has evolved is an institution at the center of the industry's 104 commercial reactors. As plans develop to begin construction of new reactors for the first time in three decades, the institute figures to be integral.

It already has drafted construction manuals, training methods and procedures for accreditation of the new power plants.

Its inspection teams will evaluate Plant Vogtle's operations, but the conclusions of those evaluations will never be public.

"We're not a public organization at all," said Ronn Smith, the institute's director of communications.

The 390-person organization has a large impact. In two years its National Academy for Nuclear Training provided a half-million courses to 85,000 nuclear workers. Its evaluations every two years of operating plants are more stringent than those of the NRC.

Industry observers say the institute's clearinghouse for sharing information among plants on how to streamline refueling and maintenance has improved efficiency and vastly increased the profitability and safety of each plant.

The organization's reviews also determine what premiums insurance companies will charge, according to Edwin Lyman, a nuclear physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

To the extent that the institute's best-practices standards are higher than the minimum legal requirements enforced by the NRC, Dr. Lyman endorses the organization. The problem, he said, is that it is allowed to keep its evaluations secret.

"From the point of view of the public, it's a black box," he said. "The public can't tell if the process is being abused or gamed."

If teams find problems, they don't share information with the NRC. Instead, they send plant managers a confidential report.

Even the NRC office in Atlanta has little interaction or familiarity with the institute, said Roger Hannah, the NRC's senior public affairs officer in the capital city.

"Obviously, there is a lot of overlap, but we try to make sure we are as separate as possible," he said.

Southern Nuclear, the Georgia Power Co. sister company that operates Plant Vogtle for the utilities that own it, pays an undisclosed sum every year in institute dues. The company regularly assigns three or four of its employees to spend 18 to 24 months working directly for the institute. It also participates in technician training and management seminars for executives.

The institute's main focus is on the human side of plant operations, said K.L. Peddicord, the director of the Nuclear Power Institute at Texas A&M.

"The primary reason for the things that happened at Three Mile Island was the weak preparation and training of the operators," he said. "They didn't recognize what was happening, and they really made things worse."

Since the institute's creation, the United States has seen no repeat of Three Mile Island, and the number of unplanned automatic shutdowns has fallen to just 0.5 for every 7,000 hours of plant operations, compared with 100 per year before.