The owner does have the right to request a warrant before OSHA carries out the inspection, which could possibly delay the process by a few days.
Although he is supposed to have a neutral, civil servant role, providing objective facts, he tried to secure more time for his inspection teams and delay the onset of conflict, in direct opposition to the US-British rush towards war.
But in the case of Davis Besse, the reactor with the acid problem, the commission allowed the owner to delay an inspection on the theory that clogging would not be a problem, Mr. Lochbaum said.
Two recent articles, by Professor Muhammad Sahimi and Mr. Jeffrey Lewis, have done a pretty decent job of pointing out Senator Schumer's misunderstandings, e.g., re the "24-day delay" in the inspection process.
Despite serious safety concerns, the N.R.C. allowed the plant owner to delay an inspection until the reactor was scheduled to be shut down anyway, for refuelling; this arrangement saved the plant owner a lot of money.
Critics have alleged that those gifts may also be related to the Agriculture Department's decision to delay tougher inspection procedures for the poultry industry.
Mr. Thacher investigated mismanaged and fraudulent asbestos inspections that delayed the opening of schools in 1993.
The report found that, despite compelling safety concerns, the N.R.C. had allowed the owner of the Davis-Besse plant, outside Toledo, Ohio, to delay an inspection for more than six weeks.
NSB wanted to use an expert from Deutsche Bahn to perform the necessary tests, but limited availability of the expert resulted in the Norwegian National Rail Administration granting a half-year delay of the inspections.
It did not help matters, Mr. Gunter added, that Con Edison, which last inspected Indian Point's steam generators in 1997, persuaded regulators to delay an inspection scheduled for June 1999 until this June because the plant had already been out of commission for 10 months.
