Rich Correia
Director, Division of Risk Analysis
Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research
The
NRC’s review of new reactor licenses, renewal of existing licenses or
major changes to our safety regulations involves an analysis of the
impacts of potential accidents. Long before the 2011 accident at
Fukushima, these analyses included the possibility of radioactive
contamination causing economic harm, such as by making land unusable.
Now, the Commission -- after considering recommendations from the
agency’s technical and legal staff -- has
directed
the NRC staff to update our guidance on considering economic consequences.
Property
damage, business losses and other accident effects were a regular part
of our public conversations last year as the NRC began implementing the
lessons learned from the Fukushima accident. Subsequently, we decided to
review the agency’s current economic consequence analysis and consider
options for possibly changing the process.
In
following this Commission-directed update, the agency will examine the
information used in comparing the costs and benefits of a potential
safety rule change or nuclear power plant modification. For example,
we’ll revise the costs of replacing a damaged reactor’s electricity
output, since generation and transmission markets have been deregulated
in some cases. We’ll also consider how changes in Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission rules have affected transmission costs. We’ll
revise our guidance for economic consequences costs based on up-to-date
data and what we’ve learned from recent and ongoing accident analysis
(such as last year’s State-of-the-art Reactor Consequences Analyses).
Following
the Commission’s direction, we’re going to develop a follow-on paper
that describes and assesses for Commission consideration potential
changes to our cost-benefit analysis guidance. We’ll be holding a public
meeting in the near future as part of this process, so members of the
public and other interested parties can hear the staff's plans, ask
questions and provide comments to the staff.
The Commissioners’ individual
votes
on this decision are available on the NRC website.
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