The former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has again provoked the indignation of the industry he used to regulate by asserting that fundamental safety flaws make U.S. power reactors unfit for relicensing.
At the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference Monday, Gregory Jaczko made the case that decay heat removal during extreme accidents poses an insurmountable safety challenge to existing commercial nuclear plants in the U.S. While acknowledging that shutting down all 104 licensed reactors is impractical, he said during a panel discussion on the Fukushima Daiichi accidents that they should be phased out and replaced, possibly with small modular reactors using passive safety features.
Jaczko's remarks were first reported by Matthew Wald of the New York Times, who was also scheduled to speak at the conference during a keynote with current NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane. The former chairman's comments follow similar criticism of U.S. nuclear safety during a recent interview with a Japanese newspaper.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's U.S. trade group, was quick to rebut Jaczko's remarks, asserting that the plants remain safe, in part because of the NRC's staff of 4,000 and budget of about $1 billion.
In a statement, NEI CEO Marv Fertel said, “The greatest safety improvement to protect against extreme events, regardless of their cause, comes from the FLEX response strategy that the industry began implementing last year. The heart of this effort is adding more portable, backup safety equipment at each reactor. More than 1,500 pieces of equipment have been acquired or ordered, including portable generators, diesel-driven pumps and satellite phones. The additional portable equipment will provide power and water to maintain key safety functions in the absence of AC power and heat transfer capability from permanently installed safety systems."