Sunday, September 11, 2011

NRC learns little

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has actually done quite little to bolster nuclear plant defenses since 9/11, mainly because the industry fought against the agency's proposal to do so years ago.One marginal improvement: the NRC ordered a modest increase in the level of ground attack that plant owners must prepare for, but the level remains weak.
It remains very unfortunate that the NRC still has not ordered U.S. nuclear plants to store their spent fuel more safely, and thus to heed the 2005 warning by the National Academy of Sciences about, 1) the vulnerability to various feasible attacks on the densely packed cooling pools at each plant, and 2) the huge volumes of radioactive material in those pools.

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