On March 12, Nathan Myhrvold, idea man for Bill Gates and a principal in Gates’s Terra Power breeder reactor project, spoke to an audience of thousands at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s annual regulatory information conference. Basing his talk on a November Scientific American article, Myhrvold pushed for a new generation of advanced, innovative nuclear reactors to fight global warming.
In his NRC talk, Myhrvold said innovative reactors will require innovations in regulation, with more outright cooperation and collaboration between industry and the government regulators. He was, of course, preaching to the choir, as the U.S. nuclear industry is making a big push before the Trump administration and the NRC for a new regulatory regime, a topic the commission may take up formally in June. The Associated Press reported on March 15 that NRC Commissioner Annie Caputo told an industry meeting that she was “open to self-assessments” by nuclear operators.
Myhrvold offered a model for a better approach to safety regulation, one that relies on industry for assessing risks and probabilities, with government as a backstop. His ideal regulatory model: The Federal Aviation Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation (much as nuclear regulation was once part of the old Atomic Energy Commission).
Sometimes, irony strikes unbidden. On March 10, a Boeing 737 Max 8 flown by Ethiopia Airlines crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa, en route to Nairobi, Kenya. All 157 aboard died in the crash. The AP reported, “The accident was strikingly similar to last year’s crash of a Lion Air jet that plunged into the Java Sea, killing 189 people. Both crashes involve the Boeing 737 Max 8, and both happened minutes after the jets became airborne.”
When the two crashes began to appear related, aviation regulators in most of the world shut down 737 Max flights. Except the U.S., where Boeing officials said the planes were safe and President Trump believed them. Soon, however, it became clear that the 737 Max had a fatal flaw in an automated software system design to prevent stalls, but was unreliable and pilots were unable to turn it off.
As scrutiny increased on Boeing and the FAA, it became clear that the regulatory process behind U.S. air safety has deep flaws. Boeing was pushing its workforce hard to get the new model of the venerable 737 flying as it was facing serious competition from Europe’s Airbus. Boeing’s workers, responsible for assessing the myriad new systems on the MAX models, were under pressure in a tight commercial race. FAA inspectors were vastly overburdened and understaffed, relying almost entirely on Boeing’s judgments.
It may not be just a problem with the 737. According to detailed reporting by the New York Times in April, there may be systemic issues. The newspaper reported on production problems and errors on the company’s flagship 787 Dreamliner. “Facing long manufacturing delays, Boeing pushed its workforce to quickly turn out Dreamliners, at times ignoring issues raised by employees,” the Times reported.
[Disclaimer: My wife and I flew on Ethiopia Airlines 787s from D.C. to Addis Ababa and back in October, and on Ethiopia 737s, probably not Max planes, from Addis to Madagascar and back. It’s a really fine airline company and the airplanes were, well, just airplanes.]
Today, 737 Max planes are grounded worldwide and Boeing says it isn’t clear when the problems with the anti-stall devices will be solved. The company’s stock has taken a big hit, although the giant company remains profitable. Airlines with 737 Max aircraft have had to make major schedule adjustments. The affair has, correctly in my judgment, tainted the idea of industry self-regulation, as the Trump administration has been proposing to loosen safety regulations in the meat industry, oil industry, and nuclear power industry.
The New York Times Editorial Board wrote in April, “The administration says it is reducing the cost of regulation without compromising public safety. But an administration that has acquired a reputation for indifference to scientific evidence needs to prove its changes are for the better.”
As the administration pushes its self-regulation agenda, oversight must come from Congress and the courts. The federal courts are likely to be the most potent oversight force, as the Trump administration seems to believe the Administrative Procedures Act is a dead letter and “arbitrary and capricious” are meaningless bureaucratic terms.
— Kennedy Maize