New legislation introduced yesterday by Massachusetts Congressmen would prevent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from granting license renewals to nuclear facilities more than ten years prior to the expiration of a current license. Reps. John Tierney (D) and Ed Markey (D) introduced the Nuclear Reactor Safety First Act (HR 6554) as a way to "provide greater certainty over the safety of the nation’s aging nuclear reactors," the lawmakers said in a statement yesterday.
Reactors are originally licensed to operate for 40 years, and licensees are allowed to apply to the NRC to request a 20-year extension of their licenses at any time. Tierney and Markey said that has dangerous implications for those living near these plants. “It seems crazy that the NRC would even consider relicensing aging nuclear plants more than a decade before its license expires," Tierney said in a statement. "As these facilities age, safety concerns inevitably arise. This bill will simply ensure that licensees, like NextEra, the operators of the Seabrook facility, are evaluated for renewal within a reasonable time frame and not 20 years before a license expires.”
The introduction of Reps. Tierney and Markey’s legislation comes after the NRC announced additional inspections for NextEra’s Seabrook Nuclear facility outside of Portsmouth, N.H. “Allowing the NRC to give a 60-year long clean bill of health to reactors that are in their nuclear adolescence, especially one with documented safety issues such as Seabrook, is like allowing a doctor to assure a twenty year-old smoker they will never get lung cancer,” Markey said in a statement. “It makes no sense. This legislation will help ensure that the effects of aging on America’s nuclear power plants are more well-known before granting any license extensions, so that nearby residents can have some confidence that the reactors’ ‘golden years’ won’t involve catastrophic aging-related safety failures.”
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