SENATE LAWMAKERS CALL FOR END TO SHUTDOWN REACTOR SAFETY EXEMEPTIONS

A group of Senate lawmakers are calling on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stop granting exemptions to security and emergency response requirements to shutdown reactor sites, according to a letter sent to NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane late last week.  The Senators, made up of Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), fear that these exemptions do not protect public safety and contradict the Commission’s current Waste Confidence rulemaking. Their letter cites the Emergency Protection Zones, which encompass a distance of 10-50 miles around a nuclear power plant, as one of the largest exemptions granted to these sites that still need to be in place for natural disaster and security protection. “We write to request that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) cease exempting licensees of decommissioning nuclear reactors from its emergency response and security regulations,” the letter said. “NRC repeatedly cites these regulations to demonstrate the long-term safety and security of spent nuclear fuel. Yet it has granted each and every one of the ten requests for exemptions from emergency response requirements that it has received from reactors that have permanently shut down, generally within 2 years of the reactors’ closure and without regard to how much spent fuel is still stored in spent fuel pools.”