A divided Nuclear Regulatory Commission is wrestling with far-reaching recommendations for improving safety measures at U.S. reactors.

Two NRC Democrats -- Chairman Gregory Jaczko and Commissioner George Apostolakis -- said yesterday they want to swiftly implement recommendations from a commission task force reflecting "lessons learned" from Japan's nuclear crisis begun by a devastating March earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex.

"I think it's a good idea to start with an aggressive schedule and then modify it as we go," Apostolakis told reporters after an NRC meeting yesterday. "We don't need to wait for 10 years."

But other commissioners are calling for more public input and quizzed the NRC task force on what the recommendations mean and how much data is available from the Japanese disaster.

Democratic commissioner William Magwood said it would be "arrogant" of NRC not to listen to the public and industry on how to proceed on regulatory changes. And Republican Commissioner Kristine Svinicki added that the recommendations should be open to challenges from stakeholders and experts before NRC takes final action.

Commissioner William Ostendorff, a Republican, questioned the scope of the task force's recommendations. "I personally do not believe our existing regulatory system is broken," he said.

An industry self-regulatory body, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, is still seeking information from the Japanese crisis to move forward with making nuclear safety changes, he said.

The NRC task force issued 12 recommendations last week for expanding safeguards for U.S. reactors against rare, severe natural disasters (ClimateWire, July 13). The task force -- which did not find any immediate threats from the country's 104 nuclear plants -- said NRC should clarify and strengthen a "patchwork of regulatory requirements" and implement a dozen recommendations for hardening reactors to withstand earthquakes and other extreme emergencies that could lead to a radioactive releases.

Jaczko this week called on the commission to digest the short-term recommendations with 90 days and make all necessary changes within five years. The task force is also conducting a longer-term safety review.

But the chairman must first shore up support from his four fellow commissioners to hold hearings and decide which recommendations will be put to a vote. But the members yesterday did not address the chairman's suggested plan for acting on the recommendations.

The task force's most sweeping recommendation calls for NRC to revamp its regulatory framework to balance "defense in depth" philosophy with considerations of risk, Apostolakis said.

"That would apply to everything the agency does," he said. "You're talking about the heart of the regulatory system."

Svinicki questioned the call for such far-reaching changes since the task force says U.S. nuclear plants are safe.

"Even though the task force has offered these assurances ... the notion there is that fundamentally what has been encompassed by adequate protection has been not sufficient and needs to be expanded," she said. "On one hand there's that reassurance, on the other hand ... that's a real change for our regulatory framework."

Jaczko at one point downplayed the reach of the task force recommendations, saying NRC has already taken steps to protect plants if on- and off-site power is lost and how to handle vents at certain plants to release pressure during an emergency. "I don't see this as that much of a change in our overall regulatory structure," he said.

Jaczko and Apostolakis said they would support a recommendation for nuclear plants to have additional backup power to run reactors if both on- and off-site power is lost. Nuclear plants should have procedures in place to keep reactor cores and spent fuel pools cool for at least 72 hours after an emergency, the task force said, and backup power should be available for at least eight hours.

Fukushima study

The Obama administration this week took a step toward piecing together what happened at the Fukushima plant.

The Energy Department and NRC signed an agreement to initiate a yearlong project -- for which DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy will spend $1.2 million -- to reconstruct the disaster.

DOE will use publicly available information from the Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that operated the plant, as well as information from the Japanese government.

DOE and NRC will collect, verify and document data about the accident during the next year and reconstruct the accident and its progression to assess the validity of severe accident modeling. "This study would inform any future work as well as inform lessons learned type of activities that DOE or NRC may perform," according to the agreement.

Together, the agencies will characterize and model events "from the perspective of accident mitigation and response," according to the memorandum of understanding the agencies signed.

Click here to read the DOE-NRC agreement.