The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's nationwide safety review of U.S. nuclear reactors is limited in scope and hidden under a veil of secrecy, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said today.

The House Natural Resources Committee's ranking Democrat said in a letter to NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko that he has received reports showing the agency is curbing the time and scope of its review and refusing to publicly release some of the results.

NRC launched the review last month in response to the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, raising questions about how U.S. power plants would cope with such an event.

The agency's two-tiered review is slated to start with a short-term 90-day "snapshot" of NRC requirements, programs and processes, on which a task force would report to the full commission in May, June and July. NRC said it also will launch a longer-term review when more information is known about the situation in Japan.

But Markey said he received reports -- without specifying where they came from -- that show the investigations are "secret" and that their "scope and depth may be severely constrained" and could fail to provide sufficient information to assess or remedy any outstanding safety issues in the country's nuclear fleet.

Specifically, Markey said he learned that inspections for the 90-day review must be completed by April 29 and that a number of constraints have been placed upon the inspections.

NRC is only allowing its inspectors 40 hours to perform each inspection for the plants that contain one nuclear reactor, and 50 to 60 hours for plants with more than one unit, Markey said.

Inspectors were also told to limit inspections to the adequacy of safety measures needed to respond to "design basis events," meaning they would only analyze events the agency already contemplated in its regulatory requirements, he said.

Several inspectors complained that it made no sense to limit inspections to "design basis events" and that NRC guidance was changed to allow inspectors to broaden their inspection scope. But Markey said those individuals were told not to record their observations or findings past the "design basis events" and that those findings would be "entered into a private NRC database and kept secret."

Markey posed a series of questions regarding what the commission should review and asked for a response by April 29.

Click here to read the letter.