A senior Nuclear Regulatory Commission official discussed Wednesday the caution the agency takes to avoid colluding with the nuclear industry and to instead collaborate on regulatory issues.
This has been a topic of conversation since the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. A year after a 9.0 earthquake triggered a 15-meter tsunami and triple meltdown at Fukushima, a Japanese parliamentary panel found that the disaster was profoundly man-made and a result of “regulatory capture,” a theory in which industry controls regulatory guidance.
NRC Spent Fuel Management Division Director Mark Lombard addressed the regulator’s approach during its annual forum on regulatory and technical issues involving spent fuel storage, decommissioning, and transportation of radioactive material.
Lombard was asked about the NRC’s recent approval of two requests from power company Entergy for more time to comply with post-Fukushima safety equipment updates at the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in New York. The NRC implemented a series of design improvements for American nuclear reactors following the 2011 disaster, and now is considering a handful of schedule extensions for those measures at various plants. The regulator is also weighing post-Fukushima extensions at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts and the now-closed Fort Calhoun Station in Nebraska.
While Lombard said he couldn’t comment specifically on FitzPatrick, because it was outside the scope of Wednesday’s spent fuel discussion, he did speak generally on the issue.
“We are very careful here to collaborate and not collude,” he said. “We’ve talked about it several times. We’re taking advantage of these discussions that we have, very open discussions, in the public domain to discuss issues and potential resolutions. But in the end, as I said here today, the NRC owns the regulatory framework for compliance with regulations, and we’re going to do our job as an independent regulator.”
Also appearing on the panel was Brian Gutherman, president of nuclear industry consultant Gutherman Technical Services.
“The regulations are there for all of us to comply with and for the NRC to make sure we do,” Gutherman said. “We have discussions all the time because there’s various interpretations, but the industry quite frankly understands that the bottom line is that the NRC makes the final determination (on regulatory issues).”
Lombard noted after the discussion that it is an issue for which the regulator is constantly fielding questions. The agency has firmly denied any suggestion that the American nuclear industry wrongfully influences regulatory decisions, but said it instead offers useful perspective for regulatory proceedings.
