Internal NRC Documents Reveal Doubts About Measures to Ensure US Plants Survive Fukushima-Type Event

[Wilms]

Internal NRC Documents Reveal Doubts About Measures to Ensure U.S. Plants Survive Fukushima-Type Events

WASHINGTON (April 6, 2011)

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However, according to internal NRC documents (links provided below) released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), there is no consensus within the NRC that U.S. plants are sufficiently protected. The documents indicate that technical staff members doubt the effectiveness of key safety measures adopted after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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“While the NRC and the nuclear industry have been reassuring Americans that there is nothing to worry about -- that we can do a better job dealing with a nuclear disaster like the one that just happened in Japan -- it turns out that privately NRC senior analysts are not so sure,” said Edwin Lyman, a physicist with the UCS Global Security Program and an expert in nuclear plant design.

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In February 2011, UCS filed a FOIA request for all information associated with a secretive NRC program known as the “State of the Art Reactor Consequence Analyses.” SOARCA, according to the NRC, is “a research effort to realistically estimate the outcomes of postulated severe accident scenarios that might cause a nuclear power plant to release radioactive material into the environment. The SOARCA project applies many years of national and international nuclear safety research, and incorporates the improvements in plant design, operation and accident management to achieve a more realistic evaluation of the consequences associated with such accidents.” The NRC also stated that SOARCA takes into account enhancements required by NRC after 9/11 -- the B.5.b measures.

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Another (undated) document reinforces this concern: “The application of 10 CFR 50.54(hh) <2009 regulations> mitigation measures still concerns a number of staff in . The concern involves the manner in which credit is given to these measures such that success is assumed…. 10 CFR 50.54(hh) mitigation measures are just equipment on-site that can be useful in an emergency when used by knowledgeable operators if post-event conditions allow. If little is known about these post-event conditions, then assuming success is speculative.”

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http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/internal-nrc-documents-reveal-doubts.html

[flamingdem]

1. A small silver lining resulting from the Fukushima disaster

... attention paid to U.S. plant safety

[enough]

2. Very important material here from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Worth a close read.

I hope this is just the beginning of a more detailed and serious look at the reactor safety situation in the US. This issue has been so far on the back burner for the past couple of decades that you couldn't get anyone to focus on it. Maybe people will start to get more interested when they look around and see how many of these plants there are, and where they are located, and begin to see them in the very relevant context of Fukushima.

Thanks for posting this, Wilms.