The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday sent a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission criticizing them for keeping documents about a private company called Nuclear Fuel Services, from the public. The committee chairman, Representative John D. Dingell, and the chairman of the oversight subcommittee, Representative Bart Stupak, have come down heavily upon the Commission for withholding such documents from the public which are not even sensitive in the first place. As the letter states the agency is reported to have
removed hundreds of otherwise innocuous documents relating to the N.F.S. plant from public view.
This secrecy is maintained due to the fact that the factory producing uranium fuel for nuclear reactors had to close down its plants following a bad spill last year.
The investigation undertaken by the Commission immediately following the accident provided a period of 20 days for the public to request a hearing on the changes that were brought about in the factory’s license. However, the document was sealed under a tag official use only and no one knew what happened further. Even the name of the factory was disclosed through the exertions of Gregory B. Jaczko, one of the five commissioners.
However, the details of the accident have come out as the Commission has now come under severe criticism for apparently withholding the public’s right to participate in the licensing process as well as their right to knowledge of potential hazards by keeping back a number of documents regarding nuclear facilities in the name of national security.
A detailed report of the Commission on the accident that occurred in 2006 is now out because of the letter.
A yellow liquid, which was actually highly enriched uranium was found trickling under a door within the premises of the factory. According to the Commission the hazard was prevented luckily by the fact that the liquid had not formed a spherical shape for it to turn into a ‘critical mass’ and trigger a chain reaction; which could have been fatal. As the report stated,
it is likely that at least one worker would have received an exposure high enough to cause acute health effects or death
Nevertheless it was a puddle, containing about nine gallons.
It had earlier been a regular practice of the commission to describe such nuclear incidents out in the public. However, the letter states that this practice was terminated when the Commission and the Office of Naval Reactors, part of the Energy Department, mutually agreed to tag all further reports regarding Nuclear Fuel Services as official use only.
The Commission has asserted that it is in the process of setting aside information that has to be strictly official from the one that has to be made public; so that it can win the confidence of the public alongwith its utmost aim of protecting national security.
This is definitely going to take some time; for now we can say that the tag official use only seems to have been stretched too far.
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