A Republican senator from Illinois yesterday said Congress should step in to ensure the country's 104 nuclear reactors are operating safely if federal regulators drag their feet on implementing new safety recommendations.

Sen. Mark Kirk called on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to quickly implement a dozen safety recommendations from an internal task force that was assembled after Japan's nuclear crisis (E&E Daily, July 21). Japan was rocked by a magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, triggering explosions, radioactive leaks and evacuations at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

"The bottom line is that we cannot let the lessons learned from Fukushima become a forgotten story by dragging our feet on some of these critical short and long-term improvements that can be made now," Kirk said at a public meeting NRC held to discuss the task force report.

The senator endorsed six of the task force recommendations, including beefed up flooding protections at nuclear plants, enhanced venting capabilities, remote monitoring of spent fuel pools, more on-site batteries and generators to deal with extended periods of power loss, and expanding evacuation and emergency zones around reactors.

Kirk said that he and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), the majority whip, agree that nuclear waste must immediately be removed from the shores of the Great Lakes.

Illinois has more nuclear power plants than any other state -- 11 out of the 104 operating facilities -- and they generate half of the state's electricity, Kirk said.

The state and its nuclear plants are adjacent to the Great Lakes, which store 90 percent of the surface freshwater in North America, he said.

Kirk pointed to Chicago-based Exelon Corp.'s shuttered Zion nuclear power plant that houses about 1,100 tons of nuclear waste in pools 200 yards from the Great Lakes. Nuclear waste at the plant was supposed to be shipped to the proposed waste dump under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but the Obama administration pulled its support for the repository last year and nuclear waste is now stored on-site at reactors across the country.

Exelon is considering storing the spent fuel in dry casks if a national policy is not crafted, but critics of the plan say such a site would be a target for terrorists (Greenwire, March 21).

Kirk said a centralized storage facility -- like Yucca -- would be much safer than scattered short-term facilities around the country.

"Any proposal to stop the permanent disposal of spent fuel at Yucca Mountain poses a clear and present danger to the environmental future of the Great Lakes by continuing to allow radioactive waste next to our nation's largest source," he said.

Members of NRC are currently debating how much weight to give the task force recommendations and how quickly to implement the proposals. Some members of the commission have raised concerns that the task force didn't consider how American and Japanese regulatory structures differ, and have warned against moving forward too quickly (E&E Daily, July 21).

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko has called for fast-tracking the task force proposals, but some of his colleagues have said more information is needed to understand the disaster at the Fukushima plant.

Republican Commissioner William Ostendorff released his vote yesterday, which fell in line with Republican Commissioner Kristine Svinicki and Democratic Commissioner William Magwood's call for a more measured approach and more vetting from NRC staff on how the agency should move forward.

A senior NRC official said the votes are a "starting" point of discussion and that commissioners will now work to find agreement on how to address the recommendations.

Christopher Guith, vice president for policy at the Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy, said NRC should proceed "deliberately" to implement the panel's complex safety recommendations and consult with stakeholders, the public and staff before proceeding.

"I am confident that this review process can benefit both the nuclear industry and the nation as a whole, but the commission should not proceed hastily, especially when it has very little data or analysis from Japan yet," Guith said.