Nuclear Industry Will Conduct Post-Fukushima U.S. Safety Review
Three U.S. power-industry groups will set up a panel to run their own nuclear-safety review as federal regulators probe Japan’s reactor crisis.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, the Electric Power Research Institute and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations unveiled their plan today. The Fukushima Response Steering Committee will “learn the lessons” from Japan and “apply them at our plants,” Tony Pietrangelo, the energy institute’s senior vice president and chief nuclear officer, said at a news conference in Washington.
“We must continually evolve and improve standards of practice and adapt to events and new information,” he said.
U.S. reactors are getting closer scrutiny from regulators after a magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami on March 11 knocked out power lines and backup generators at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, about 135 miles (217 kilometers) north of Tokyo.
Without electricity to run cooling systems, some of the fuel rods overheated and melted, causing fires, explosions and radiation leaks in the worst nuclear incident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. A Nuclear Regulatory Commission task force conducting a 90-day review of U.S. reactor safety after the Japan earthquake is scheduled to release a report next month.
The U.S. nuclear industry believes its plants are safe and the panel will “triple check” existing U.S. standards, Pietrangelo said. The industry’s post-Fukushima review will aid the NRC’s work, he said.
‘Strong, Credible Regulator’
“We have a very strong, credible regulator,” Pietrangelo said. “We want to work with our regulator.”
The Fukushima committee will examine issues such as the ability of U.S. operators to cope with a “station blackout,” when power lines are cut and backup generators fail, said Chip Pardee, the panel’s chairman and chief operating officer of Exelon Corp. (EXC)’s power-generation subsidiary.
Storage pools filled with spent radioactive fuel rods will also be checked to make sure they won’t overheat during an accident, Pardee, whose company is the largest U.S. nuclear- plant operator, said at the news conference.
The industry panel will assess how companies with nuclear reactors can standardize some disaster response plans, so they can “help one another” during a crisis, Pardee said. Some improvements may include the use of standard-sized fire hoses at nuclear plants and common radio frequencies, he said.
Multi-Unit Event
The panel also will examine whether emergency-response plans must be changed to deal with a “multi-unit event,” Pardee said. Fukushima has six reactors and three units suffered meltdowns, the operator of the Japanese plant said.
The industry panel will work until at least the end of this year, according to a statement from the groups. The task may take longer because many details of the Fukushima disaster won’t be known for months, Pardee said.
“This will be a fairly protracted effort,” he said.
The NRC has inspected how U.S. plants are prepared to keep radioactive fuel rods from overheating and melting after “extreme events,” such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks. The NRC also studied the nuclear industry’s “severe accident” plans for bringing reactors under control if a meltdown can’t be prevented.
Agency inspectors have so far concluded U.S. nuclear plants are meeting safety regulations, with a few flaws in disaster- response preparations.
Almost one in five nuclear plants needed to improve plans for preventing meltdowns after large fires, explosions, electricity blackouts or extreme floods, the NRC said. While all nuclear plants have severe-accident guidelines, almost two in five don’t carry out drills on bringing a meltdown under control, according to the NRC.
To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Lomax in Washington at slomax@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at lliebert@bloomberg.net
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