Federal regulators are considering an accelerated push to upgrade safety measures at U.S. nuclear plants ahead of the one-year anniversary of Japan's Fukushima disaster.

Staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said last Friday they will ask the five-member commission to approve a faster timeline for implementing safety upgrades at plants ahead of the March 11 Japan anniversary.

Orders and letters could be sent to plant operators as early as March 9 to ensure U.S. reactors can withstand fires, explosions, earthquakes and floods, staff said.

Martin Virgilio, NRC executive director for reactor and preparedness programs, said Congress included language in an omnibus spending bill that orders the commission to meet or accelerate the safety changes outlined by NRC staff in an Oct. 3 paper.

"We believe as a staff that we need to adjust the path that we were on on Oct. 3," Virgilio said, "adjust some of those issues and accelerate our schedule."

A six-member NRC task force proposed safety recommendations last year based on lessons from the tsunami and earthquake that crippled Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The disaster triggered core meltdowns in three reactors, hydrogen explosions, radioactive leaks and multiple evacuations.

NRC is on track to complete orders and rulemakings by 2016, which falls in line with a five-year timeline NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko called for last summer (E&ENews PM, July 18, 2011).

But it's still unclear how a spat between Jaczko and his colleagues will affect the safety changes. Four commissioners -- two Republicans and two Democrats -- told the White House last October they had "grave concerns" about Jaczko's management style. The chairman berates female workers, bullies staff and withholds crucial information, they said.

The commissioners also said Jaczko and his office withheld staff recommendations that prioritized the post-Fukushima safety proposals (Greenwire, Jan. 9). Democrats have since defended Jaczko as a safety advocate and accused the commissioners of backing industry efforts to delay the costly new safety measures. Industry representatives, on the other hand, have warned the NRC against moving too quickly and distracting plant workers from current training and operation of reactors.

Virgilio said the commissioners have assured him they will approve the letters and orders at the Feb. 17 meeting by issuing a "staff requirements memorandum" if they approve of the staff's work.

"We have engaged the commissioners individually and they believe that if we give them a quality product on Feb. 17, they can give us [a memo] on March 2," Virgilio said.

'All hazards solution'

The NRC is considering a larger number of hypothetical disasters at nuclear plants in response to congressional direction, Virgilio said.

"Congress has asked us to broaden our thinking about the hazards," he said. "While we were focused on seismic and flooding, they asked us to look more broadly at other external hazards so that's become part of our thinking [on safeguards against earthquakes and floods]."

David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Massachusetts-based watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists, applauded the agency's decision and said the lack of broad thinking played into the disaster in Japan.

"When you put all your eggs in one basket, you are sunk if the basket is destroyed," Lochbaum said.

Anthony Pietrangelo, the Nuclear Energy Institute's chief nuclear officer, pushed back on one of the NRC staff's orders that would require plants to reevaluate site-specific seismic risks using present-day NRC methodology and guidance within three years. Pietrangelo said the proposal's timeline is too short and specialists in the field are limited.

"Time and resources is the question here," he said.

NRC staff also want to initiate an "advanced notice of proposed rulemaking" to ensure plant operators can continue cooling reactors, even if power is lost. The "station blackout rule" would update the amount of backup power that plant operators have on hand in case the electric grid goes down or on-site power sources fail. Staff said the five-member commission wants the rule complete within 30 months.

Industry officials said a package of voluntary safety improvements that NEI introduced last month would provide enough backup power to protect plants from any disaster (Greenwire, Jan. 12).

Under NEI's "flexible mitigation capability" plan, operators would install portable batteries, hoses and pumps in staging areas. Pietrangelo said it could take to years to implement, but didn't provide a cost estimate.

Virgilio said NEI's plan is workable but the agency needs to be able to inspect and enforce any changes made. "[The plan has] a number of features that we believe will in fact mitigate any event that can possibly occur, it's got an acceptable methodology for developing enhancements," Virgilio said.

James Wiggins, director of the Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response at the NRC, said the federal government should get involved to ensure emergency equipment can be delivered to various sites during emergencies when roads are inaccessible. "There's a logistical capability that exists with the government as a whole; the trick is how to leverage it," he said. "It's not NRC; we don't have the logistical resources just to move things, but other agencies do."

Lochbaum complemented NEI's plan for taking a broad approach. For example, the plan provides different connection points for getting external sources of water to elevated spent fuel pools and discusses different ways for providing backup generators from off-site locations, including by helicopter and truck.

But Lochbaum also said the plan is limited and may not work if a reactor's core is damaged and reactor buildings become uninhabitable from high radiation levels.

"It would be far better to have FLEX's fixes be workable with and without core damage," Lochbaum said.