Without regard to economic and social costs

On March 13, 1979, the NRC shut down five East Coast nuclear plants, taking 4.025 gigawatts of power offline. Engineers at the Beaver Valley plant had discovered a bug in the NRC approved software used to design the plant's primary coolant pipe supports. The result was the design basis earthquake loads were one-third to one-sixth what they should be. This meant the pipe supports might fail if the plants experienced the largest earthquake in the historical record for the region. That failure might result in a Loss of Coolant Accident, which might result in a meltdown.

The Beaver Valley people reported the bug to the NRC. The NRC action was swift and sure. They ordered the five plants which had used the faulty code in their design to shut down.

Harold Denton, director of the NRC Office of Nuclear Regulation said it would be ``some months" before the five units could evaluate the extent to which they are affected by the design error and then order and install the necessary replacement pipe supports so that they could reopen.

This was in the middle of the Iranian Oil Crisis. The Iranian Revolution had taken 5 million barrels oil per day off the market. Oil prices were skyrocketing. Early in 1979, the price of oil was about $13 per barrel. By the end of the year, it was $30. Gas lines were everywhere.

The NRC action increased the US demand for oil by 180,000 BPD. If we assume an average price of $20/barrel and interpret Denton's ``some months" as 3, then the cost to the US consumer was about 350,000,000 1979 dollars, and still longer gas lines.

The NRC almost gloated over its action. Look how safe we are. We do not hesitate to inflict great harm on the American public to avoid a tiny chance of a pipe support failure. Chairman Joseph Hendrie told a Senate hearing, the ``shutdown will cost consumers an arm and a leg". ``We didn't even need a phone to hear the shrieks from the Energy Department over this thing", Hendrie joked. Under questioning Hendrie said no attempt had been made to calculate the price since the NRC's responsibility was safety without regard to economic and social costs.

So to prevent a possible pipe support failure which might occur only if the plants got hit with the largest earthquake on record, the NRC cost the American public at least $350,000,000 and untold hours in gas lines. Any sane benefit-cost analysis would keep the plants running; and, if necessary, beef up the pipe supports at the next planned outage.

But the NRC is not about balancing benefits and costs. It is about preventing releases without regard to economic and social costs. 15 days after the shutdown, Three Mile Island 2 melted down.