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The Safety Regulation of U.S. Nuclear Power Plants: Violations, Inspections, and Abnormal Occurrences

Jonathan S. Feinstein

Journal of Political Economy 1989

Data from more than 1,000 inspections to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission form the basis for an investigation into the nature of safety regulation at U.S.commercial nuclear reactors. Poisson (and binary choice) models of the rate of occurrence of violations during each inspection period are specified and are extended to control for nondetection and for the possibility that violations persist from one inspection to the next. These models are used to study the factors associated with noncompliance, relative rankings of plants according to propensity to violate, the variation in detection rates among NRC inspectors, and the relationship between undetected violations and abnormal occurrences.

DOI
10.1086/261595
Volume
97 (1)
Pages
115-154
Language
en
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