Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate Committee on
the Environment and Public Works, told the five members of the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) again Sept. 12 that Southern
California Edison’s (SCE) San Onofre nuclear plant should not be
allowed to restart until NRC is satisfied that it is safe.
“The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is located near San
Clemente, and 8.7 million people live within 50 miles of the site,”
Boxer said at the opening of a hearing on improving reactor safety
in the 21st century.
“This nuclear plant, which is currently offline, has experienced
unexpected deterioration with the tubes that carry radioactive water
in the plant’s new steam generators,” Boxer said. “Let me be clear –
it is the NRC’s duty to ensure that the appropriate actions are
taken to address safety concerns related to the compromised tubes
before San Onofre’s reactors are permitted to go back online,” Boxer
went on to say.
The committee chair said she wanted to ensure the Edison
International (NYSE: EIX) subsidiary was in full compliance with the
regulations regarding the redesigned steam generators.
The Senate Environment hearing was the seventh oversight meeting
that the panel has held regarding the Fukushima meltdown accident in
Japan in March 2011. The committee and NRC continue to look at
lessons learned from Fukushima for the 104 commercial reactors in
the United States.
The Sept. 12 Environment Committee hearing was also the first
oversight hearing since Allison Macfarlane replaced Greg Jaczko as
NRC chairman this summer.
Regarding Fukushima, NRC “continues to believe that there is no
imminent risk from continued operation of existing U.S. nuclear
power plants,” Macfarlane said. “At the same time, the NRC’s
assessment of insights from the events at Fukushima Dai-ichi led us
to conclude that additional requirements should be imposed on
licensees to increase the capability of nuclear power plants to
mitigate the effects of beyond-design-basis extreme natural
phenomena.”
Macfarlane also stressed that NRC is closing examining the lingering
unscheduled outages at San Onofre as well as the Duke Energy (NYSE:
DUK) Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida and the Omaha Public
Power District’s (OPPD) Fort Calhoun nuclear plant in Nebraska.
NRC will hold an open public meeting in California on San Onofre
Oct. 9. Macfarlane also said it would be months before NRC could
approve restart of San Onofre Unit 2.
Senate panel tackles waste legislation
The Senate Environment panel was not the only congressional panel
reviewing nuclear power issues Sept. 12.
The Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources, chaired by Sen.,
Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., heard testimony on S. 3469, the Nuclear Waste
Administration Act of 2012.
Constellation Energy Nuclear Group President and CEO Henry Barron
called the bill “positive start to overhauling the federal program”
but needs to incorporate additional elements and principles to be
successful.” The Exelon (NYSE: EXC) official testified on behalf of
the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Bingaman’s proposal would establish a separate board of federal
officials within the executive branch to oversee a nuclear waste
program administrator, but it stops short of creating the
semi-autonomous government corporation recommended earlier this year
by the administration’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear
Future (BRC), Barron testified.
In an NEI statement, Barron said the operating characteristics of
the new management entity must more closely resemble those of a
corporation rather than a federal agency.
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