plants deal with severe accidents was poorly maintained and inoperable, a top official of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s staff told the five commissioners on Thursday.
Marty Virgilio, deputy executive director of the agency, told the commissioners that the problems had been fixed but more work was needed. Mr. Virgilio discussed the findings at a briefing on the vulnerability of American reactors to severe natural disasters like the earthquake and tsunami that hit the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan on March 11.
The N.R.C. engineers said they had found no glaring lapses so far, but many potential problems. One is that many of the preparations the industry took after 9/11 for “severe accident mitigation” were taken voluntarily, and thus are not routinely evaluated by commission inspectors.
Mr. Virgilio’s boss, Bill Borchardt, the commission’s chief staff official, said that some of the preparations for severe accidents, including training, procedures and hardware, “don’t have the same kind of regulatory pedigree” as the equipment in the original plant design. More >>>
