August 3, 2005

By WILLIAM BROYLES Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/opinion/03broyles.html

Wilson, Wyo.

WHEN Al Reinert and I wrote the line, "Failure is not an option," for
the movie "Apollo 13," we intended it to represent the essence of
America's can-do spirit. That spirit put men on the moon, perhaps the
most extraordinary collective accomplishment in human history. Then came the Challenger disaster, a reminder that not every problem can be solved; that it's not what you expect to fail that most often causes
disasters, but what you expect not to fail.

The foam insulation on the Discovery space shuttle last week wasn't
expected to fail. It was what safety specialists called an "allowable,"
a risk judged unlikely and therefore acceptable. But now that the foam
has blown off the shuttle, that risk turns out to be unacceptable.
Subsequent shuttle flights have been canceled and a whole new design for
future flights proposed. In the constant battle between safety and the twin pressures of meeting budgets and sticking to launching schedules,
safety had lost again.

Now comes the Energy Department, proposing to produce plutonium 238
outside Idaho Falls, Idaho, for unspecified national security purposes and possibly to power future deep-space missions. Plutonium 238 is one of the more lethal substances known to man (one speck can cause cancer), and its use to power space vehicles, with their demonstrated tendency to fail (Apollo 1, Apollo 13, Challenger, Columbia), is a highly debatable proposition. But the immediate issue is, has the Energy Department learned anything from NASA's experience with safety?

Consider: the department wants to produce plutonium 238 in a nearly
40-year-old test reactor containing more than 30 times the amount of
radioactive material estimated to have been released from Chernobyl.
Unlike commercial reactors, the test reactor has no containment dome and
is near the greater Yellowstone area, one of the most active earthquake
sites in the world. Yet the Energy Department seems quite confident that
these risks are all "allowables."

When energy officials came out West last month to discuss the
environmental impact of this project at public meetings, they had the
can-do spirit from the first days of the space program.

A 40-year-old reactor? No problem, the reactor's internal core parts are
replaced every 8 to 10 years by highly competent engineers and
contractors. No containment dome over the reactor? Not to worry, there
won't be any releases of plutonium since the reactor meets all
department regulations, which anticipate every eventuality. Earthquakes? Come, come, the reactor doesn't sit precisely on a fault. Perhaps an independent safety oversight board would be wise? Not at all, the department has its own safety oversight and besides, its engineers are on the safety lookout 24/7.

At the Idaho Falls public meeting, a former nuclear safety specialist
who had spent 16 years doing risk assessments and safety analysis on the test reactor before her disputed departure this spring said that it had been out of compliance with safety and earthquake regulations for years, and that the department's environmental impact report "had serious omissions that significantly understate the risk to workers and the public." She had routinely seen the department "sweep safety issues
under the rug so they could start up the reactor on schedule." Sound
familiar?

In NASA's case, the risk of failure is borne by a handful of brave
astronauts who signed on knowing that no matter how well a mission was
planned, something unexpected could go wrong, because no matter how
brilliantly engineers plan for failures, they happen anyway.

The risks of failure of the proposed plutonium reactor, however, will be
borne by hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of downwind and
downstream Americans who have no choice in the matter.

The Challenger shuttle blew up and killed its astronauts because sensors
weren't installed on the solid fuel boosters. Why? Because NASA
engineers didn't believe the solid fuel boosters were susceptible to
failure. But the Energy Department, perhaps with those twins of budget
and schedule whispering in its collective ear, believes that although commercial reactors have containment domes to protect against accidental release of radioactive materials, it doesn't need to install one on the test reactor. It doesn't need to consider state of the art safety features like contamination exhaust filters. It doesn't need to build a new reactor that's not near an earthquake zone. It's all unnecessary. The test reactor, like the Challenger's solid fuel boosters, could not possibly fail.

At the public meeting where I live, less than a hundred miles from the
test reactor, the department's representatives went so far as to compare a reactor producing plutonium 238 to a "domestic hot water heater."
That's the classic language of over-confidence. As NASA has shown us, the forces that invariably cause bureaucracies to under-estimate danger are more powerful than the danger itself, at least until it happens.

The 2003 accident review board for the Columbia shuttle tragedy said
bluntly that the failure was rooted in NASA's "broken safety culture."
Later that same year the Energy Department concluded that the
maintenance of a "culture of safety" was a "significant management
challenge" for the managers of the test reactor in Idaho Falls. And that
was before they decided to produce plutonium 238 there.

Western politicians constantly argue that Washington bureaucrats with
the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Environmental
Protection Agency are out of touch with the people of the West.

But when the Energy Department is involved, these same governors and
senators seem to believe that Washington bureaucrats miraculously become all knowing, perfectly competent and completely to be trusted with the health and safety of their constituents.

Perhaps they might think again about that one. As we've learned all too
many times, failure is indeed an option.

William Broyles Jr. is a former editor in chief of Newsweek and Texas
Monthly.