A Nuclear Regulatory Commission report calling for the United States to revise its assumptions about nuclear safety has touched a nerve on Capitol Hill, where top lawmakers question its wide-ranging recommendations.

Prepared by an NRC task force over four months, the report is based on inspections of the country's 104 reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March, triggering hydrogen explosions, radioactive leaks and multiple evacuations.

The task force recommends that NRC clarify and strengthen a "patchwork of regulatory requirements" that initially grew out of permitting requirements for nuclear plants in the 1960s and 1970s. Those requirements, the report says, need to be applied more evenly and expanded to consider multiple crises (ClimateWire, July 13).

Plant operators, the report says, should re-evaluate and upgrade earthquake and flood risks to their facilities, secure backup power and instrumentation to monitor and cool spent fuel pools after a disaster and add equipment to ensure they can tackle lengthy losses of electric power to the plants and address damage to more than one reactor.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oka.), the Environment and Public Works Committee's ranking member, asked why such recommendations are surfacing after NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko told the environment panel in April that nuclear plants in the United States are operating safely, a statement that he later repeated in June.

"So why has the NRC suddenly recommended sweeping regulatory changes in this report apparently without an adequate technical or regulatory basis to justify these modifications?" Inhofe said in a statement.

The senator also called on NRC to compare differences between Japanese and U.S. regulations before making regulatory changes (E&E Daily, July 13).

"Changes in our system may be necessary, but sweeping revisions are premature without first taking into account the full extent of the differences between the United States' and Japan's nuclear safety regulations," Inhofe said.

Eliot Brenner, a spokesman for NRC, said it is important to remember that the authors of the report make clear American reactors are operating safely and the review provides a "quick look" at whether near-term lessons from Fukushima can improve NRC regulations.

This short-term study will be followed by a long-term review that will build on the initial work as more information comes out of Japan, Brenner said.

Tony Pietrangelo, the Nuclear Energy Institute's senior vice president, agreed that the report is a "first step" in the agency's review and that nuclear plants in the United States are operating safety. But Pietrangelo also noted that NRC needs to gather more information about the crisis in Japan and seek broader stakeholder engagement to ensure that well-informed decisions are made.

"The task force report does not cite significant data from the Fukushima accident to support many of its recommendations," Pietrangelo said in a statement.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the ranking member on the House Natural Resources Committee, applauded NRC's review but also pointed out where he believes the report falls short.

"The task force did not make specific recommendations to alter the emergency evacuation zones for nuclear power plants, distribute potassium iodide to residents living within 20 miles of a nuclear power plant in compliance with a Markey-authored law, or move spent nuclear fuel into safer dry cask storage as quickly as possible," Markey said in a statement. "We should not wait for a catastrophic accident at a nuclear reactor in this country to occur to implement this common-sense emergency preparedness measure."

Markey also said the report should recommend that NRC not approve new plant designs or licenses before lessons are learned from the Japan disaster.

Licensing can continue

The task force maintains that nuclear plant licensing can continue safely. "This regulatory approach, established and supplemented piece-by-piece over the decades, has addressed many safety concerns and issues using the best information and techniques available at the time," the panel said.

Tom Clements, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth, said the report is flawed because it assumes that operation and licensing activities do not pose an "imminent" public threat while recognizing regulatory problems with operating reactors.

"I think for political reasons the authors of the report have constrained themselves and refused to actually point out that some of the operating reactors might not be safe, given what the report identifies," Clements said.

"They really can't have it both ways," he added, "either the problems are addressed now or the reactors are shut down until the recommendations are followed."

The report does not follow Markey's call for all spent nuclear fuel to be moved into dry cask storage as soon as the fuel is sufficiently cooled in wet pools. Instead, the task force calls for operators to have backup power to cool pools containing spent fuel, uranium-bearing rods that no longer produce enough energy to sustain a nuclear reaction.

That fuel is currently stored on-site at power plants because the United States has failed to develop a national repository for nuclear waste. Those pools should also have protected instrumentation so operators can determine the status of spent fuel during an emergency, the report says.

But the panel's recommendations do match some aspects of legislation Markey introduced in March. His "Nuclear Power Plant Safety Act" would require plants to be able to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis or strong storms, and the loss of their primary power for at least 14 days. Plants would also be required to have primary backup power for at least 72 hours.

The task force is recommending that plants be able to cope with the loss of off- and on-site power for at least eight hours. Operators should also be able to keep the core and spent fuel pool cool for at least 72 hours until cooling equipment from a pre-planned, reinforced off-site location could be delivered to the plant.

Jaczko applauded the task force's review and findings, and said in a statement yesterday that he looked forward to working with his colleagues to consider the recommendations.

NRC will hear from Charles Miller, who led the NRC task force, at a public meeting in Rockville, Md., on July 19. The task force will also appear before NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards on Aug. 17.

Click here to read the report.