Markey Asks NRC for Answers on Pilgrim Nuclear Event
Tuesday Incident Raises Further Questions on Environmental and Safety Analysis of U.S. Nuclear Plants, Markey Writes NRC
WASHINGTON (May 13, 2011) - On Tuesday this week, the Pilgrim nuclear power plant located 38 miles from Boston, Mass. experienced an apparent accidental incident while trying to restart the nuclear reactor core. A team of investigators will be sent to the plant to review the event on May 16.
Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) today asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for answers on this incident, and on whether the full suite of safety and environmental analysis following the Fukushima disaster is being applied to new nuclear power plant licenses or licenses to extend existing plants.
In a process known as "scramming," the Pilgrim power plant went into emergency shutdown mode after the chain reaction in the nuclear core registered higher than expected power and neutron activity levels indicating that the nuclear chain reaction had started to spin out of control.
"Thankfully, the Pilgrim plant incident was immediately and successfully addressed, but it is yet another reminder that the price of safety is eternal vigilance,"said Rep. Markey. "I am concerned that our nuclear regulators are not taking into account all of the new knowledge gained following the Fukushima meltdown to analyze licenses to build or extend the life of nuclear power plants."
Rep. Markey asks NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko to explain whether his agency is considering "new and significant" information about the potential hazards and safety of nuclear power plants following the Japanese meltdown, as the law requires when analyzing the potential environmental impacts of a catastrophic accident at or terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant. The NRC has approved four licenses to extend the life of nuclear power plants since the meltdown in Fukushima, and is currently reviewing an extension for the Pilgrim plant, but has yet to require any new environmental analysis to be performed that takes into account the circumstances, nature and duration of the radiation that has been released in Japan.
As Rep. Markey notes in his letter, the NRC has not fully subsumed or analyzed lessons from the ongoing incident at Fukushima before granting the license extensions. It additionally has relied upon software that assumes that the plume of radiation released from a nuclear power plant accident or attack would only last 1-4 days, a scenario that "borders on the absurd in light of the duration of ongoing releases from the Fukushima Daiichi reactors and spent fuel pools," writes Rep. Markey to the NRC.
Rep. Markey therefore asks the NRC to "immediately suspend action on all pending licensing decisions until the full range of safety lessons and environmental consequences associated with the Fukushima meltdown are fully understood and properly applied to U.S. nuclear power plants, and that [the law's] requirements for the inclusion of any new and significant information are fully complied with."
The full letter from Rep. Markey to the NRC is available HERE.
Rep. Markey also released a report yesterday detailing several concerns about NRC safety regulations following the Fukushima event. That report is available HERE.
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