USA – Regulator Delays Nuclear-Plant Rule on filter vents

….In a written statement made public Tuesday, NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane appeared to disagree with her colleagues’ decision to delay, saying the filters would be “a valid and important safety improvement.”…..

…Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has been a longtime critic of the nuclear regulator, said that the agency “chose to grant the nuclear power industry’s requests for more studies and more delays, and even after the study is completed there is still no guarantee that the NRC will ever make this common-sense requirement mandatory.”….

….NRC Commissioner William Ostendorff said that the agency’s post-Fukushima review didn’t initially recommend installing the filters. “This is an important, but not urgent, matter,” he wrote…..

March 19, 2013, 5:07 p.m. ET

By RYAN TRACY

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323415304578370793871922534.html

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday delayed action on a proposed regulation that might have imposed hundreds of millions of dollars of costs on some of the country’s older nuclear power plants.

In a victory for the nuclear industry, a majority of the commission’s five-member governing body voted for more analysis of the costs and benefits of installing filters on reactor venting systems. The measure has been under consideration as one of the U.S. responses to Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in March 2011, during which significant amounts of radiation were released into the air.

The body has been debating the proposal for weeks, and the key question for the NRC commissioners was whether to make the filter requirement mandatory. The NRC’s expert staff had recommended moving forward with a mandate to install the vents, but the nuclear industry had been pushing the agency to do more research into the matter.

The commission said Tuesday that it was directing its staff to explore several options for the rule rather than issue the requirement immediately. It said that the agency would finalize a rule regarding filters by March 2017.

In a written statement made public Tuesday, NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane appeared to disagree with her colleagues’ decision to delay, saying the filters would be “a valid and important safety improvement.”

NRC Commissioner William Ostendorff said that the agency’s post-Fukushima review didn’t initially recommend installing the filters. “This is an important, but not urgent, matter,” he wrote.

The proposed requirement to put filters on venting systems at the 31 reactors with designs similar to Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant would have been the most expensive imposed by U.S. nuclear regulators since the accident, at a cost of $16 million or more per reactor, according to the NRC staff’s estimate.

Industry officials say the cost of adding the filters could be more, depending on the layout of each plant.

In an emergency, pressure could build up inside a nuclear plant’s radiation-containment building, potentially forcing the operator to open vents and allow gases—and some radiation—to escape. The new filters could help reduce the amount of radiation that is released into the atmosphere if the vents are opened.

Anthony Pietrangelo, chief nuclear officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s main trade group, said more study “increases public involvement and transparency.”

He said the industry “remains committed to pursuing the most reliable solutions that have proven safety results, based on science and the facts.”

Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has been a longtime critic of the nuclear regulator, said that the agency “chose to grant the nuclear power industry’s requests for more studies and more delays, and even after the study is completed there is still no guarantee that the NRC will ever make this common-sense requirement mandatory.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323415304578370793871922534.html