Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
5/9/2014
A group of senators called on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission late last week to stop granting exemptions to security and emergency response requirements at shutdown reactor sites. The senators, made up of Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), said in a letter to NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane that they fear the 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.”
The group called on the NRC to reverse its current trend to maintain the safety posture it has taken in its recent court filings. “What the NRC failed to state in its court and other filings was that licensees of decommissioning reactors are almost always exempted from the regulatory requirements NRC based its findings on within two years of the reactors’ shut-down,” the letter said. “This is unacceptable. We urge you to announce your intent to reverse this unwise policy.” The NRC said that it will respond to the senators through its usual process.