The Nuclear Industry and Venting, Round 2

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/nuclear-industry-and-venting-r...

"The precise reasons for the failure of the vents at Fukushima are still under discussion and remain a factor in deciding what hardware improvements American reactors should make.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has required that certain boiling water reactors in the United States that lack vents should install them by the end of 2016. This delay was granted because much of the work must be done while the reactors are shut down for an extended period, something that generally happens once a year or even less often.

This has raised another question: should the vents be filtered? American plants that currently have vents do not have filters. The thinking is that the initial puff of gas does not contain much radioactive material in the first place.

But the commission recently instructed its staff to study the question of filters, which would probably take the form of beds of sand through which the gas would be bubbled."
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/nuclear-industry-and-venting-r...