Inspections may  also occur in response to a specific operational problem or event that has  occurred at a plant. According to NRC, the control of spent  fuel is of great importance because of the potential health and safety  implications. These plants were the  Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Connecticut in 2000, the Vermont  Yankee plant in Vermont in 2004, and the Humboldt Bay Power Plant in  California in 2004. In all three cases, the missing or unaccounted-for spent fuel was in  loose fuel rods or segments of fuel rods that had been removed from the  fuel assemblies. Records do not indicate what happened to these  rods. NRC Regulations and Oversight Activities Are Insufficient to Ensure Control of All Spent Fuel

Although NRC requires nuclear power plants to maintain an accurate  record of their spent fuel and its location, agency regulations do not specify  how licensees are to conduct physical inventories of this material nor how  they are to control and account for loose or separated spent fuel rods and  fragments. Physical inventories of special nuclear material  must be performed at least annually. As a result, licensees implement  the physical inventory requirement in different ways. As a result, licensees employed  various methods of storing and accounting for this material. NRC Is Studying Spent Fuel Control and Accounting Problems but Has Yet to Revise Its Regulations or Oversight Policies

In light of the missing or unaccounted-for spent fuel at Millstone and  subsequently at other locations, NRC has various activities under way to  assess the need to revise its regulations and oversight of spent fuel. This date would be over 5  years after the spent fuel rods were first found missing at Millstone in 2000. We believe that after the more recent instances of missing spent fuel at  Vermont Yankee and Humboldt Bay, the 2003 NRC Office of the Inspector  General report outlining weaknesses in NRC’s oversight of special nuclear  materials (including spent fuel), and information collected during its  ongoing efforts, NRC has considerable information that suggests the need  to address nuclear power plants’ material control and accounting  problems, including compliance with NRC regulations. These are (1) a three-phase project  under which NRC inspectors are collecting information on the status of  material control and accounting programs at individual plants; (2) a  comprehensive program review of NRC material control and accounting  programs for special nuclear materials, including spent fuel, through the  contract with DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and (3) a bulletin  issued on February 11, 2005, to nuclear power plant licensees requesting  information concerning their compliance with NRC material control and  accounting regulations. Conclusions

The effectiveness of nuclear power plants’ efforts to control and account  for their spent fuel is uneven. No.
Why GAO Did This Study

Spent nuclear fuel--the used fuel periodically removed from reactors in nuclear power plants--is too inefficient to power a nuclear reaction, but is intensely radioactive and continues to generate heat for thousands of years. Potential health and safety implications make the control of spent nuclear fuel of great importance. The discovery, in 2004, that spent fuel rods were missing at the Vermont Yankee plant in Vermont generated public concern and questions about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) regulation and oversight of this material. GAO reviewed (1) plants' performance in controlling and accounting for their spent nuclear fuel, (2) the effectiveness of NRC's regulations and oversight of the plants' performance, and (3) NRC's actions to respond to plants' problems controlling their spent fuel.

What GAO Found

Nuclear power plants' performance in controlling and accounting for their spent fuel has been uneven. Most recently, three plants--Vermont Yankee and Humboldt Bay (California) in 2004 and Millstone (Connecticut) in 2000--have reported missing spent fuel. Earlier, several other plants also had missing or unaccounted for spent fuel rods or rod fragments. NRC regulations require plants to maintain accurate records of their spent nuclear fuel and to conduct a physical inventory of the material at least once a year. The regulations, however, do not specify how physical inventories are to be done. As a result, plants differ in the regulations' implementation. For example, physical inventories at plants varied from a comprehensive verification of the spent fuel to an office review of the records and paperwork for consistency. Additionally, NRC regulations do not specify how individual fuel rods or segments are to be tracked. As a result, plants employ various methods for storing and accounting for this material. Further, NRC stopped inspecting plants' material control and accounting programs in 1988. According to NRC officials, there was no indication that inspections of these programs were needed until the event at Millstone. NRC is collecting information on plants' spent fuel programs to decide if it needs to revise its regulations and/or oversight. In addition to reviewing specific instances of missing fuel, NRC has had its inspectors collect basic information on all facilities' programs. It has also contracted with the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to review NRC's material control and accounting programs for nuclear material, including spent fuel. It further plans to request information from plant sites and visit over a dozen of them for more detailed inspection. These more detailed inspections may not be completed until late 2005, over 5 years after the instance at Millstone that initiated NRC's efforts. However, we believe NRC has already collected considerable information indicating problems or weaknesses in plants' material control and accounting programs for spent fuel.