Washington (Platts)--12Mar2009

Severe reactor accidents can be mitigated, and are unlikely to release
much -- if any --radioactivity even if they are not, NRC staffers said March
11. The NRC's state-of-the-art reactor consequences analysis, or Soarca,
attempts to quantify the probability and likely offsite health consequences of
severe reactor accidents, beginning with Exelon Nuclear's Peach Bottom and
Dominion's Surry plants. Analysis for those stations has been completed and a
report will be completed by May, NRC's Charles Tinkler said in his
presentation at the agency's annual Regulatory Information Conference in
Rockville, Maryland. Jason Schaperow of NRC said the staff's "preliminary
conclusions" are that all accident scenarios analyzed for Peach Bottom and
Surry "can reasonably be mitigated." Sensitivity analyses concluded that, even
if no mitigation measures were taken, there would be no large early releases
of radioactivity, due to the relatively slow progression of the accidents and
the small probability of containment failure, Schaperow said. Likely
radioactive releases from the accidents analyzed so far in Soarca "are
dramatically smaller" than those predicted in a 1982 NRC analysis conducted
for use in siting new units, Schaperow said. The late Commissioner Edward
McGaffigan and some industry officials were highly critical of that report,
which they said was unrealistically conservative in its assumptions.