When asked Thursday whether he thinks the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is over-regulating, and thus effectively driving nuclear power plants out of business, commission Chairman Stephen Burns said he likes where the regulator stands in comparison to the international community’s response to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
The NRC is set this year to complete the bulk of the work associated with its Japan Lessons Learned initiative, which included the deployment of flexible, portable cooling equipment at American power plants and construction of two national response centers in Memphis, Tenn., and Phoenix, Ariz. The agency has spent about $50 million on the effort. According to Platts, the U.S. nuclear power industry has spent more than $3 billion on implementing measures to manage an event like the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Japanese nuclear power plant in March 2011.
Burns, speaking Thursday at the United States Energy Association’s annual membership meeting at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., said, “I like where we are in some places when I compare ourselves to the international community because I think we achieve a high level of safety with a consciousness about not adding things for the sake of adding things.”
Burns mentioned the Japanese measures taken since Fukushima Daiichi, saying he understands their caution, as it was their country that suffered the consequences of the disaster. Japan ordered all nuclear plants to be shut down for about two years as new safety requirements were introduced.
“I think what the regulator and the industry have done (in Japan) is really an assurance beyond the assurance that I think we might think is sufficient to assure the safety of our plants,” Burns said. “It doesn’t mean it’s wrong, that they shouldn’t do it. But I think they’ve achieved, they have sought to do extra assurances given the situation that they’re in.”
This year marks the five-year anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi incident. During his prepared remarks, Burns noted the bulk of the NRC response to Fukushima is expected to be complete by the end of 2016, most notably implementation of the “flex” cooling equipment.
“The NRC has made great strides in enhancing U.S. nuclear power plants’ already robust safety measures,” he said. “The agency took swift action after the accident, ordering a variety of safety upgrades. I believe a key lesson from the accident was that plants must be prepared to withstand reasonably foreseeable external events not contemplated when they were designed and constructed.”
Burns said the next step is to inspect plants and ensure they “maintain their progress.” The NRC is adapting inspections and other processes to cover these enhancements, he said, while also updating the assessment process to cover potential inspection findings related to post-Fukushima upgrades.
“The important point is that U.S. plants are better prepared for extreme events than they were in 2011,” he said.
