nuclear-news

Dissension in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over regulatory changes

The vote signaled that the five-member commission has yet to agree on how to proceed with recommendations from a staff task force that was charged with evaluating safety at U.S. nuclear reactors. The task force was formed in response to the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, which suffered a partial meltdown after a March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Earlier this month, the task force called for potentially costly changes to the way U.S. plants prepare for extreme events like natural disasters. Mr. Jaczko has proposed that the commission decide whether it would endorse each recommendation within 90 days.

But three other commissioners have now proposed alternative timelines that would allow for more input from other parts of the nuclear agency and would not include a deadline for the commission itself to decide. Though the three proposals differ, they demonstrate that a majority does not agree with Mr. Jaczko’s plan.

Commissioner William Ostendorff Thursday became the third to outline a path forward, calling for the nuclear agency’s top staff to decide which recommendations needed immediate attention within 30 days. About two weeks later, the staff would have to present a plan for prioritizing the recommendations…….

Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), a longtime critic of the NRC, said more staff input would “actively aid and abet the nuclear industry’s dilatory efforts to ignore, perhaps indefinitely, the recommendations of the commission’s expert and dedicated staff.”……..

July 29, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA