![]( "dixon")
John Dixon
Every
year as part of its public outreach effort, the NRC holds a public
meeting in the vicinity of each nuclear power plant. The meetings are
designed to provide members of the local community with an opportunity
to hear a report from the NRC on each plant’s safe operation and meet
face-to-face with the people responsible for ensuring the safe operation
of the nation’s 104 operating reactors.
Some meetings draw hundreds of participants while others are sparsely attended. Typically, the meetings for
South Texas Project in
Bay City, Texas, draw only a handful of members of the public. In NRC’s
Region IV, we have been looking at alternatives to the traditional
public meetings held in hotel conference rooms. We’ve been setting up
information booths at community events and encouraging resident
inspectors to meet with civic groups. As part of this effort, I decided
to approach the Bay City Chamber of Commerce to see if I could speak at
one of their lunch meetings.
At
our request, the C of C agreed to open their Aug. 1 meeting to the
general public. Flyers were mailed to the local community and we were
told we drew a noticeably larger audience than usual. I provided the
group with a brief synopsis of the inspections I had conducted during
2011 and described some of the duties that I, as the NRC’s Senior
Resident Inspector, perform on a daily basis.
Despite
living so close to a nuclear plant, most of the Bay City residents who
came did not know much about the role the NRC plays in ensuring the safe
operation of South Texas Project. Many expressed surprise when I
described our role as an independent regulator of nuclear safety and
told them we had unfettered access to the plant, to people and records.
They also did not realize that we were assigned to the site, report to
the facility virtually every day, are capable of responding 24 hours a
day, seven days a week, and are limited to a maximum assignment of seven
years.
I
answered a variety of questions related to how we perform inspections,
how events from Fukushima have changed our actions, and how we assess
the safety of each plant. All in all the meeting was quite successful
and resulted in interacting with new members of the public that we had
never reached before.
John Dixon
Senior Resident, South Texas Project Nuclear Plant
No comments:
Post a Comment