Regulatory Dissent Slows New Calls for Nuclear Plant Safety

[bananas]

Source: New York Times

<snip>

The filters, which have been recommended by the staff of the regulatory commission, are supposed to prevent radioactive particles from escaping into the atmosphere. They are required in Japan and much of Europe, but the American utilities believe they are unnecessary and expensive. The industry has held private meetings with commissioners and their staffs, organized a drill like the one this month at Nine Mile Point, and helped line up a series of letters from dozens of members of Congress, many of whom received industry campaign contributions, urging the agency to reject the filtered vents.

<snip>

The debate over the filters reflects a simmering tension that has been building inside the regulatory agency since the Fukushima accident in Japan, as a tug of war has played out among commissioners and between some commissioners and the regulatory staff that has produced repeated votes rejecting staff safety recommendations.

<snip>

The appointment books for certain commission members, reviewed by The New York Times, show frequent meetings with the industry, including private, one-on-one sessions at the commission’s headquarters. Nuclear industry opponents occasionally have had their own private meetings, but not nearly as often, the records show.

E-mail correspondence obtained by The Times also demonstrates a teamlike approach the industry and regulators have taken to dealing with safety questions, as they worked behind the scenes with the Nuclear Energy Institute, the leading trade association, to try to prevent a reaction against nuclear power in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/business/energy-environment/a-divisive-debate-on-need-for-more-nuclear-safeguards.html?pagewanted=all

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This is disgusting - ignoring the recommendations of their own staff because of industry lobbying.

That kind of behaviour is what led to the Challenger and Bhopal disasters - ignoring the warnings of your own highly trained staff.

The NRC is a prime example of regulatory capture, and this is a recipe for disaster.

[Journeyman]

1. I thought we went beyond the tipping point forty years ago. And here we are, almost perpendicular. .

[AndyTiedye]

2. Shut Them Down

before they shut themselves down in a very nasty way.

[RobertEarl]

3. There is no 'safe' exposure to radiation

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/51585989-82/nuclear-radiation-scientists-bullets.html.csp


Bioaccumulation is one reason why it is dishonest to equate the danger to humans living 5,000 miles away from Japan with the minute concentrations measured in our air. If we tried, we would now likely be able to measure radioactive iodine, cesium, and strontium bioaccumulating in human embryos in this country. Pregnant women, are you OK with that?

Hermann Mueller, another Nobel Prize winner, is one of many scientists who would not have been OK with that. In a 1964 study, "Radiation and Heredity", Mueller spelled out the genetic damage of ionizing radiation on humans. He predicted the gradual reduction of the survival of the human species as exposure to radioactivity steadily increased. Indeed, sperm counts, sperm viability and fertility rates worldwide have been dropping for decades.

These scientists and their warnings have never been disproven, but they are currently widely ignored. Their message is very clear: Virtually every human on Earth carries the nuclear legacy, a genetic footprint contaminated by the Cold War, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the 400-plus nuclear power plants that have not melted down and now Fukushima.

Albert Einstein said, "The splitting of the atom changed everything, save man's mode of thinking; thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe."

[elleng]

4. Damn!