Nuclear Agency Tests Pennsylvania Plant
WASHINGTON—An analysis of hypothetical U.S. nuclear accidents shows that a reactor in Pennsylvania comes close to suffering core damage when all power is lost at the plant, but regulators told a House panel Wednesday the exercise represented a "very unrealistic event."
The study, known as State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses and conducted by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, analyzed the effects of severe accidents at two nuclear reactors: Pennsylvania's Peach Bottom plant, which has a design similar to the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, and the Surry reactor in Virginia, lawmakers said.
Under one scenario, in which a severe station blackout takes out all power, the simulation analysis showed that the Peach Bottom reactor "came within one hour of core damage," according to a memo House Democrats released Wednesday.
"A simulated meltdown was narrowly averted through the manual turning of steam valves" to activate cooling systems, the memo said.
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