May 12, 2011—NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko expressed the continued confidence of his agency in the safety of U.S. nuclear energy facilities in remarks at NEI’s Nuclear Energy Assembly this week.
“The commission remains confident in the programs of the NRC and in the safety of the nation’s nuclear power plants,” he said, noting that in 2010 “there were no statistically significant adverse trends in industry performance.”
Still, Jaczko warned the gathered nuclear energy executives against complacency. He noted an increase in the number of automatic reactor shutdowns and significant reactor events in 2010 compared to 2009.
Jaczko used the conference to announce that—as part of the NRC’s follow up to the accident at Fukushima—a
bulletin issued this week would request information on compliance with rules that cover the loss of major parts of a nuclear energy plant due to an extreme event.
Nuclear energy facilities have until June 10 to respond to the bulletin and confirm that their B.5.b mitigative strategy equipment is in place and available and that current staff can respond to an emergency. Plant operators have another month to provide information about how essential resources are maintained and tested.
B.5.b is the section of the compensatory measures order the NRC issued to all reactor licensees in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The NRC codified the measures into its regulations in 2009, but they are not publicly available because of security concerns.
Tony Pietrangelo, NEI’s chief nuclear officer and senior vice president, said in a
press release that site reviews just completed at every nuclear facility to verify their ability to respond to severe events mean that the industry “already is well on its way to providing the information being requested by the NRC.” He added that the industry would “demonstrate that our facilities are fully prepared to maintain safety even in cases where we have made protective enhancements that go beyond the NRC’s regulatory requirements.”
Jaczko acknowledged that many of these actions have been taken by the plants following the accident in Japan. He said the NRC intends to use the industry responses to inform a long-term review that will examine in-depth lessons learned from the accident.
A short-term, 90-day examination already is under way and is expected to deliver initial results this week. The longer study will engage stakeholders more thoroughly than allowed with the shorter review, which Jaczko said was initiated with “a sense of urgency” following the events in Japan.
The NRC chairman expanded his message to include an international perspective. “This is no longer a domestic industry, [but] very much a global industry. So it would be very important—and make sense—for regulators to communicate, to come to some kind of agreement or at least a common understanding of our approaches so we have consistency in how we deal with problems,” Jaczko said, responding to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s call for standardized international nuclear rulemaking.
However, he added, “It ultimately will be up to each country to approach those issues in a way that is most consistent with their own domestic regulatory responsibilities.”
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Nuclear Energy Overview