Editor’s Note: The following report on a watchdogs groups’ concerns about possible maintenance and safety issues at FPL’s St. Lucie nuclear plant was written by Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers columnist, Eve Samples, and was posted today on TCPalm.com and appeared in this morning’s Press Journal.
The story surfaced last month, when the Tampa Bay Times reported more than 3,700 cooling tubes at the St. Lucie nuclear plant are showing signs of wear. March 5, Scripps columnist, Anthony Westbury, wrote a piece dismissing the safety and maintenance issues raised in the Times’ report as nothing more than “over-dramatic concerns from afar.”
Samples’ willingness to inform Scripps readers of The Southern Alliance for Energy’s request to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to keep St. Lucie Unit Two shut down until FPL can prove continued operation of the reactor is safe suggests at least someone member of the Scripps news team thinks for themselves and is careful not to drink FPL Koo-Aid with every meal.
EVE SAMPLES/SCRIPPS TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS
One of two reactors at the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant on Hutchinson Island shut down this week for maintenance.
It happens every 18 months.
Typically, the refueling outage is nothing out of the ordinary.
This time, though, a watchdog group is asking federal regulators to keep Unit 2 powered down until Florida Power & Light Co. can publicly prove the reactor is safe — even though more of its cooling tubes show wear than any other reactor in the country. MORE…
Indian River Guardian 
As a retiree of the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a couple of statements in the Eve Samples article jumped off the page for me. There are three factors that warrant caution on the part of John Q. Public:
1. There is ZERO “institutional bias” on the part of the NRC. The staff takes great pride in the fact that they are an INDEPENDENT agency.
2.All rate payers should indeed be concerned with “nuclear cost recovery” and its real life impact. It is for this reason that the solvency of any utility is a factor in the decision whether or not to grant an operating license.
3. The statement that “if FPL and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cooperated, the safety hearing could move quickly.” It is not within the charter of the NRC to cooperate with any utility.
The NRC exists to provide public health and safety. Any impact on a specific utility is never a factor in any oversight. This is because no government agency can serve two masters.
The lessons learned with the Three Mile Island accident, the Chernobyl disaster and the Fukishima tragedy have resulted in the NRC being even more cautious than they had been in the past. The new regulations are the very reason that there has been no application to build a new nuclear power plant in decades. (The safety of nuclear waste disposal has also been a major factor.)
The NRC historically has taken into consideration the claims made by any watchdog group, state government concerns and the input of John Q. Public. This is precisely why the NRC has public hearings. These public hearings are all conducted within the Government in the Sunshine regulations.
John Q, Public need not wait for FP&L to share the results the inspection results. Any member of the public can get the information from the NRC by filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The FP&L willingness to release inspection results to the public would not be a factor in reponding to any FOIA request.