Thursday, May 15, 2003 | 11:29 a.m.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of Inspector General is investigating allegations that NRC staff inappropriately influenced an NRC-commissioned study of the Baltimore rail tunnel fire.
The fire in July 2001 raised questions about whether metal rail shipping containers loaded with nuclear waste would have survived such a blaze. So an NRC team contracted with the National Institute of Standards and Technology to analyze the fire, with a focus on how the waste containers would have performed.
NIST officials used sophisticated modeling and salvaged samples of materials from the blaze. They determined that the container would not have failed in the fire.
They said that while the blaze burned for three days, with initial peak temperatures of up to 1,800 degrees, the fire burned below an average temperature of 1,475. That temperature is important because nuclear waste shipping containers are required by the NRC to withstand a 1,475-degree fire for 30 minutes.
Nevada officials have questioned the study's results. The state's experts said a waste container would have failed after 12 hours.
Much is at stake for the NRC, which is responsible for regulating the waste-shipping containers. NRC officials have defended their waste-container safety standards.
But questions about whether NRC staff influenced the study were raised in an article in "Inside NRC," a twice-monthly publication that tracks news inside the agency. The article prompted the IG investigation, George Mulley, spokesman for the agency's IG office, told the Sun. The investigation has been under way for about two weeks, he said.
Mulley said there was little to report from the investigation so far.
Robert Halstead, a senior consultant on nuclear transportation to Nevada, was quoted in the NRC article and NRC investigators plan to speak with him Friday, he said.
Halstead was quoted as saying that the NIST staff "felt they were being leaned on by the NRC to focus on an analysis of the fire that would support NRC's regulatory standard, not being tasked to do a totally unfettered study of the fire."
Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said NIST's final conclusions were somewhat surprising.
"It seems to me the scientists agreed with the state (Nevada) when they talked to these guys originally, then it changed," Loux said.
Nevada officials plan to use tunnel fire data in comments they plan to submit on the NRC's upcoming package performance study, Halstead said. The NRC has announced plans to conduct full-scale cask tests, one involving a full-sized truck shipping container, the other for a full-sized rail shipping container. The NRC is proposing to subject the containers to drop and fire tests.
archive
