Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff and nuclear industry representatives are set next week to brief the NRC commissioners on the progress of the Japan Lessons Learned initiative, which is the regulator’s response to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
NRC has scheduled the briefing for 9 a.m. May 17 in the Commissioners’ Conference Room at agency headquarters in Rockville, Md. Representatives from the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Electric Power Research Institute, Southern Nuclear Co., and Beyond Nuclear will provide presentations to the commission. NRC staff presentations will follow on the progress of the program’s three tiers.
NRC has spent about $50 million to implement recommendations at American nuclear power plants following the Fukushima Daiichi incident. The foundation of the program is NRC “flex” equipment, which is portable cooling gear that has been deployed at American power plants, and two national response centers in Memphis, Tenn., and Phoenix, Ariz.
Tier 1 is intended to improve mitigation for prolonged losses of power, analysis and response to flooding and seismic activity, staffing needs and communication capability, and confinement and filtering of radioactive material in the event of reactor core damage, among other improvements. Tier 2 is directed at spent fuel replacement, emergency preparedness, and external events beside flooding and seismic activity, among other areas. Tier 3 targets periodic confirmation of external hazards; fire prevention and mitigation; hydrogen control; emergency preparedness beyond tiers 1 and 2; radiation monitoring; public education; expedited transfer of spent fuel to dry cask storage; and reactor and containment designs that can withstand sever disasters.