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Thursday, March 17th, 2016

Fukushima Should Have Served as Wake-Up Call for US Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Author:     Elliott Negin
Source:     EcoWatch/Reader Supported News
Publication Date:     14 March 16
 Link: Fukushima Should Have Served as Wake-Up Call for US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Stephan:   I have never forgotten listening to Admiral Rickover, father of the nuclear navy, testifying one last time, telling Congress that civilian nuclear power was a really bad idea. I sat in the room and realized the truth of what he had just said.  As a result for about a decade SR has been following the growing crisis in the nuclear industry. Aging power plants and storage facilities will cost hundreds of billions to deal with (see SR archive); and, at the same time the probability of facility collapse  rises with their age. Here is a good assessment of what is going on, and how the industry is dealing with this.
Credit: EcoWatch

Credit: EcoWatch

In March 11, 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and 50-foot tsunami triggered meltdowns at three of six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan. It was the one of the worst accidents in the nuclear industry’s 60-year history, contaminating thousands of square miles, displacing more than 150,000 people and costing Japanese taxpayers nearly $100 billion.

The disaster was a wake-up call for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). After all, nearly a third of the 104 U.S. reactors operating at the time were General Electric Mark I or Mark II reactors, the same as those in Fukushima. The accident raised an obvious question: How vulnerable are those reactors—and the rest of the U.S. fleet for that matter—to comparable natural disasters?

The NRC set up a task force to analyze what happened at Fukushima and assess how to make U.S. reactors safer. In July 2011, the task force offered a dozen recommendations to help safeguard U.S. nuclear plants in the event of a Fukushima-scale accident.

Unfortunately, the NRC has since […]

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