After intense scrutiny following the accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant last year, the nuclear industry tomorrow will present regulators with a package of voluntary safety improvements that it says could be put into effect quickly.

Representatives of the Nuclear Energy Institute will meet with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to propose improvements in the industry's "flexible mitigation capability" for a variety of dangers like earthquakes or flooding. They would build on ones put in place following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the industry added portable generators, water pumps and batteries that could help keep water from inundating a reactor or spent fuel pool during an emergency.

The measures are in part responding to problems that regulators found when inspecting the equipment after the Fukushima disaster. For instance, at some plants gear was being stored in places where it would be safe from an air attack but vulnerable to a flood.

Among the new measures proposed by industry are that plants keep twin sets of emergency equipment on opposite sides of the plant and that formal regional support centers housing additional equipment be created.

Adrian Heymer, executive director of strategic programs at NEI, said the group's approach is to take general precautions, rather than depend on the commission's normal approach for determining probability of a particular accident before deciding what steps are needed. All of the equipment, he said, would be for accidents that go beyond what plants were designed for.

It would be under a regular maintenance schedule, he said, but it would not require the same kinds of certification that is needed for equipment designed for the plant itself -- a detail that is likely to be controversial (Matthew Wald, New York Times, Jan. 12). -- AS