"U.S. Nuclear Regulators, Westinghouse Spar Over AP1000 Safety Review"

Greenwire reports on an open spat between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Toshiba-Westinghouse over safety concerns with the Advanced-Passive 1000 (AP1000) new reactor design, in line for NRC final certification yet this year. In an October 2009 media release, NRC itself outted major safety concerns with the AP1000's "shield building," a key part of the radiological containment: NRC identified vulnerabilities to earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes; NRC even questioned the structural ability of the shield building to hold aloft an emergency cooling water supply under normal circumstances. Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates in Vermont, working on behalf of a coalition of environmental groups resisting nearly two dozen AP1000s targeted at the southeastern U.S., identified a second major design flaw: the AP1000's "passive" safety feature could actually serve to pump hazardous radioactivity into the environment during an accident. Gundersen prepared a powerpoint highlighting the AP1000's design flaws. Friends of the Earth, which has retained Gundersen as a technical expert, has protested both the flaws of the AP1000 design, as well as NRC's rush to rubberstamp under industry pressure.