Days before Japanese earthquake and tsunami, Congressman wrote to Commission about critical safety issues with reactor design identified by senior NRC staff member
 
WASHINGTON D.C. – Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) released the following statement after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) voted to approve the final rule for the Westinghouse AP1000 design and which also granted a rule change requested by Southern Company to allow construction to begin before the NRC staff have incorporated and published all reactor design changes adopted by the Commission today. One of NRC’s longest-serving staff warned in NRC documents that the reactor’s containment could shatter “like a glass cup” due to flaws in the design of the shield building if impacted by an earthquake or commercial aircraft. In the publicly released votes on the matter, Chairman Greg Jaczko disapproved the proposal to allow the acceleration of reactor construction, Commissioner George Apostolakis voted to approve it, and Commissioner William Magwood’s vote did not refer to it. In the final vote, Chairman Jaczko was overridden by his colleagues.
 
“Today, the NRC has presented its holiday gifts to the nuclear industry,” said Rep. Markey, top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee and a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “Instead of doing all they should to protect nuclear reactors against seismically-induced ground acceleration, these Commissioners voted to approve the acceleration of reactor construction.  While they continue to slow walk the implementation of recommendations of the NRC professional staff’s Near-Term Task Force on Fukushima, they have fast-tracked construction of a reactor whose shield building could ‘shatter like a glass cup’ if impacted by an earthquake or other natural or man-made impact.”
 
In August, Rep. Markey sent a letter urging the rejection of the proposed acceleration of construction that the NRC today approved.  Under current regulations, construction, including safety-related construction of systems and structures that need to function during an accident, can only begin upon final approval by the NRC of a reactor design. The rule change approved today allows Southern Company to begin safety-related reactor construction at Vogtle before NRC staff incorporates the changes - which could include safety-related changes - in the final rule to the reactor design that the NRC also approved today.
 
Just days before the earthquake in Japan, Rep. Markey wrote a letter to the NRC urging the Commission not to approve the Westinghouse AP1000 design until serious safety concerns were addressed. One of NRC’s longest-serving staff, Dr. John Ma, had warned in NRC documents that the reactor’s containment could shatter “like a glass cup” due to flaws in the design of the shield building if impacted by an earthquake or commercial aircraft. The shield building has the critical safety function of preventing damage to the reactor that could cause fuel meltdowns and radiation releases. In May, the NRC acknowledged outstanding safety-related issues with the AP1000 design and asked Westinghouse for resolution before the Commission moved forward with final certification.
 
On December 9, Rep. Markey released the report “Regulatory Meltdown”, which documents how NRC Commissioners William Magwood, Kristine Svinicki, William Ostendorff and George Apostolakis sought to impede the NRC response to the Fukushima meltdowns by delaying the public release of and action on the recommendations made by the NRC's Near-Term Task Force on Fukushima. These four Commissioners regrettably have a history of voting against the safety recommendations. What follows is an summary of key safety-related votes on which Chairman Jaczko was outvoted by his colleagues over the past three years:

April 15, 2009:  The Commission voted 4-1 (Chairman Jaczko disapproved, Commissioner Svinicki approved, and the other Commissioners who voted have since left the NRC) to support a proposal to enhance the security associated with cesium chloride sources rather than to phase out the most dispersible form of the material altogether as recommended by the National Academies of Science in 2008. Cesium chloride is so dangerous that after scavengers found a small amount in Brazil in 1987 and children and others spread it on their bodies, 250 people were contaminated, 20 became ill with symptoms of radiation poisoning and 4 died.

June 30, 2009:  The Commission voted 2-2 (Chairman Jaczko approved, Commissioner Svinicki disapproved, and the other Commissioners who voted have since left the NRC) to defeat a staff proposal to expand the National Source Tracking System to include Category 3 radioactive sources, which the International Atomic Energy Agency says, if not safely managed or securely protected, could cause permanent injury to a person who handled them, or were otherwise in contact with them, for some hours.

June 1, 2010:  The Commission voted 4-1 (with only Chairman Jaczko voting to disapprove) in support of a proposal to reduce the limitation on the number of work hours for employees who perform quality control and quality verification functions at nuclear power plants.

September 7, 2010: The Commission voted 4-1 (with only Chairman Jaczko voting to disapprove) to support a proposal to stop having separate votes on all requests to be exempted from the requirement that ‘near-site emergency operations facilities’ be located near to the site of where the actual nuclear reactor emergencies or accidents might occur.  Licensees have instead proposed the creation of ‘centralized emergency operations facilities’ that are hundreds of miles away from the nuclear reactors located in multiple States they are intended to serve.

December 2, 2010: The Commission voted 4-1 (with only Chairman Jaczko voting to approve) to disapprove a proposal to require specific NRC licenses for radioactive materials that could be used to make a dirty bomb whose activity level is greater than 1/10th of “Category 3,” even though a previous Commission had supported such a proposal.  Requiring a license would have alleviated some concerns related to the potential for a terrorist to aggregate these smaller sources to create a larger improvised dirty bomb.

March 15, 2011:  The Commission voted 4-1 (with only Chairman Jaczko voting to disapprove) to approve a staff proposal to ignore a recommendation by NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards to ensure that safety measures that are assumed to address the hotter reactor cores and higher pressures associated with ‘power up-rates’ (which enable nuclear reactors to produce more electricity) would work to prevent a melt-down in the event of an accident. The Advisory Committee believed that the possibility that a fire or earthquake could breach the containment of the nuclear reactor needed to be considered.

March 30, 2011:  The Commission voted 4-1 (with only Chairman Jaczko voting to approve) to disapprove a staff proposal to add requirements for personnel seeking access to nuclear reactor construction sites to ensure that appropriate security screening was conducted.  The Commission instead decided to rely on a voluntary Nuclear Energy Institute personnel security initiative.

June 10, 2011: The Commission voted 4-1 (with Chairman Jazcko disapproving) to reject a request to further extend the NRC’s enforcement discretion policy for nuclear reactors that do not comply with the NRC’s fire protection regulations.  The path chosen by the majority of the Commission allows some nuclear power plants to go longer than eight years without identifying their fire-related safety deficiencies and taking steps to mitigate them.

October 12, 2011: The Commission voted 4-1 (with Chairman Jazcko disapproving) to add further consideration of the costs or burden of NRC regulations to industry by requiring NRC staff to analyze the cumulative financial impact of all regulations on licensees.

November 8, 2011: The Commission voted 3-2 (with Chairman Jaczko and Commissioner Ostendorff voting to approve) to disapprove a staff proposal that the Commission adopt an amendment to its Reactor Oversight Process, described as “a means to collect information about licensee performance, assess the information for its safety significance, and provide for appropriate licensee and NRC response,” to add a new performance measure related to leaks of radioactive materials from nuclear reactors.

December 15, 2011: The Commission voted (with Chairman Jaczko voting to support) to reject a recommendation made by the NRC’s Near-Term Task Force on Fukushima and the NRC staff review of that Task Force’s recommendation to consider all the post-Fukushima safety upgrades to be mandatory for the “adequate protection” of nuclear power plants.  The other four Commissioners said it was “premature” to approve this recommendation. Without it, all safety upgrades would be required to go through a cost-benefit analysis in order to justify implementation, and some may never be required as a result.

December 22, 2011: In the publicly released votes on the AP 1000 nuclear reactor design license, Chairman Greg Jaczko disapproved a proposal to allow the acceleration of reactor construction, Commissioner George Apostolakis voted to approve it, and Commissioner William Magwood’s vote did not refer to it. In the final vote, Chairman Jaczko was overridden by his colleagues.


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