Jaczko Calls for Phaseout in US, Says Plants Aren't Safe

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Nuclear Safety: Jaczko Calls for Phaseout in US, Says Plants Aren't Safe

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Stephanie Cooke, Nuclear Intelligence Weekly, Mar. 29, 2013

http://tinyurl.com/bqpatnr

Washington. Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chairman Gregory Jaczko says that the current fleet of operating plants in the US should be phased out because regulators can't guarantee against an accident causing widespread land contamination.

In two key NRC decisions last week Jaczko said the agency 'damaged significantly' its international reputation for upholding safety and he accused the five commissioners of 'just rolling the dice' in dealing with severe accidents.

Jaczko is not alone among former NRC commissioners and officials critical of the agency, which appears out of step not only with other countries' regulators but with the recommendations of a post-Fukushima task force of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

The commissioners voted last week to delay by at least four years a decision on whether to require filtered vents on older boiling water reactors (BWRs). In a second vote they ruled out any options that would take full account of the cost of lengthy evacuations in weighing measures to prevent a major radiological release (NIW Mar.22.13). And they have repeatedly stressed that their duty to provide 'adequate protection' to the public is not the same as 'zero risk,' although this is not something with which either Jaczko or the ASME take issue (NIW Mar.15.13).

"The next accident is going to be something that no one predicted. At a certain point you have to review the fundamental problem," Jaczko told NIW in an interview this past week. "That evaluation tells you you can't rule out a severe accident." That should mean being able to rule out the possibility of radioactive contamination beyond the plant, and under the current regulatory structure that's not possible, he argued. "It's mind boggling that people would say that's OK, and it's not OK."

"The tradeoff," he said, "is low probability, high consequences. That's not really a fair trade. You can't say "well your home is really not contaminated because it was supposed to be a one-in-a-million event." Jaczko said that while he didn't think the country's fleet of 103 operating reactors could be shut down immediately, they should not operate past their 40-year lifetimes. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, 73 reactors already have 20-year extensions, some of which came through during Jaczko's tenure as chairman.

Echoing complaints of previous commissioners who have alleged that the NRC is essentially an industry captive, Jaczko said "the industry has gotten so bold that [before last week's vote] they were able to say this was a done deal. This damaged significantly the credibility of the NRC. Internationally the NRC had been looked at as the gold standard." Jaczko resigned as NRC chairman last year amid allegations of mishandling the job, although he says he was a victim of an industry-backed effort to remove him from the agency (NIW Jun.29.12).

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