Trump govt allowing nuclear power stations to Regulate Their Own Safety

It’s Not Just Pork: Trump Is Also Letting Nuclear Plants Regulate Their Own Safety
The administration’s deregulation obsession is endangering Americans’ health and safety. New Republic, By EMILY ATKIN, April 5, 2019 “………

Trump’s desire to let industries regulate their own safety doesn’t begin and end with the pork industry. Salmonella and E. coli are one thing. Nuclear explosions, plane crashes, and offshore oil spills are another entirely.

…….in many cases, Republicans don’t see why the government itself has to be the regulator. Why should taxpayers pay for federal inspectors to badger businesses when the businesses themselves have an economic incentive not to threaten public health and safety?

But the record is clear: Industry self-regulation often fails, and a lot of people wind up getting hurt.

………..The day before the Post’s story on pork inspections broke, the Senate Environment and Public Works committee held an oversight hearing for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The hearing was called, in part, to discuss a new safety regulation designed to protect American nuclear reactors from earthquake and flooding events, like the one that caused the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan. Though the health impact of that disaster so far appears to be minimal, the plant is still not secured—large swaths of land and water remain contaminated, and surrounding villages are still uninhabited.

The draft version of the rule, released by the NRC in 2016, required all nuclear plant owners to do two things: reassess all flood and earthquake risks, then implement new safety measures taking the reassessment into account. But in January 2019, with Trump appointees making up a majority of the commission, it approved a final version of the rule making the safety measures voluntary. Nuclear power plants, in other words, will still have to do new risk assessments—but now they can choose whether they want to prepare for those risks or not.

The nuclear industry is also pushing the NRC to cut down on safety inspections and rely instead on plants to police themselves. The NRC “is listening” to this advice, the Associated Press reported last month. “Annie Caputo, a former nuclear-energy lobbyist now serving as one of four board members appointed or reappointed by President Donald Trump, told an industry meeting this week that she was ‘open to self-assessments’ by nuclear plant operators, who are proposing that self-reporting by operators take the place of some NRC inspections.”……….

But time and again, industries have proven that they will skimp on safety and cheat the rules if the government has made clear that it’s not watching. Sometimes that causes millions of Americans to lose their jobs and homes. Sometimes it causes thousands of people to get sick. And sometimes it causes hundreds to die. Trump is doing everything in his power to increase the chance of all of the above. https://newrepublic.com/article/153465/its-not-just-pork-trump-also-letting-nuclear-plants-regulate-safety

April 6, 2019 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA

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