'An Insanely Bad Move': Experts Sound Alarm as Trump's Nuclear Safety Agency Weighs Rollback of Plant Inspections
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said one member of Congress, "needs to do more—not less—to ensure nuclear reactor safety."
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As reported in the CommonDreams article above:
Before the recommendations were released Tuesday, Democrats from the House Appropriations as well as Energy and Commerce committees expressed concerns about potential rollbacks of safety standards in a letter (pdf) to NRC Chairwoman Kristine Svinicki Monday.
The lawmakers wrote:
To ensure nuclear power provides safe, reliable, emissions-free energy, it is imperative for the NRC to uphold strong regulatory standards. That is why we are disturbed by the consideration of these far-reaching changes to the NRC's regulatory regime without first actively conducting robust public outreach and engagement. It would be a mistake to attempt to make nuclear power more cost competitive by weakening NRC's vital safety oversight. Cutting corners on such critical safety measures may eventually lead to a disaster that could be detrimental to the future of the domestic nuclear industry.
[Beyond Nuclear response: We appreciate House Democratic committee leaders of jurisdiction not allowing Trump's NRC from selling the shop on safety, and doing something about this latest outrageous move by the agency mandated to protect public health, safety, and the environment, but often doing the exact opposite. But we must take exception with some of their stated claims. Nuclear power is inherently unsafe, unreliable, and is not emissions-free, to begin with!
Need examples?
Safe? Fukushima Daiichi shows U.S. reactor designs are not safe. The U.S. still has a large number of operating, age-degraded Fukushima twin designs -- General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors.
Reliable? As the climate crisis worsens, reactors will have to be shutdown, because they are too unsafe to operate under extreme conditions. Already, safety-related shutdowns have led to years-long zero power levels at atomic reactors. After the Hole in the Head Fiasco at Davis-Besse, Ohio, for example, the reactor was idled for two long years, for needed lid replacement.
Emissions-free? What do you call forever deadly high-level radioactive waste, if not an emission?! Each year of reactor operation generates around 20 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel, for which we have no safe, sound solution. Re: carbon emissions, the nuclear fuel/uranium chain certainly has those. What about high-level radioactive waste management forevermore? In that sense, nuclear power has ongoing, countless carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, as high-level radioactive waste management -- the need to isolate the highly hazardous wastes from the environment forevermore -- will continue perpetually into the future.
To provide genuinely safe, reliable, and emissions-free electricity, we should turn to renewables like wind and solar power, not dirty, dangerous, and expensive nuclear power! And efficiency's savings on energy wastage, foregoes the need to generate the wasted, inefficiently-generated and inefficiently-utilized electricity in the first place!]