NRC Members Reject Quick Overhaul for Nuclear Plants

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190363560457647655343040779...
WASHINGTON—A majority of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected Chairman Gregory Jaczko's timeline for deciding whether to endorse regulatory changes in light of Japan's nuclear crisis.

The vote signaled that the five-member commission has yet to agree on how to proceed with recommendations from a staff task force that was charged with evaluating safety at U.S. nuclear reactors. The task force was formed in response to the accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant, which suffered a partial meltdown after a March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Earlier this month, the task force called for potentially costly changes to the way U.S. plants prepare for extreme events like natural disasters. Mr. Jaczko has proposed that the commission decide whether it would endorse each recommendation within 90 days.

But three other commissioners have now proposed alternative timelines that would allow for more input from other parts of the nuclear agency and would not include a deadline for the commission itself to decide. Though the three proposals differ, they demonstrate that a majority does not agree with Mr. Jaczko's plan.

Commissioner William Ostendorff Thursday became the third to outline a path forward, calling for the nuclear agency's top staff to decide which recommendations needed immediate attention within 30 days. About two weeks later, the staff would have to present a plan for prioritizing the recommendations.

Mr. Jaczko didn't immediately respond to the news. A senior NRC official said the chairman "remains very much interested in having a public and transparent decision made on the merits of the task force proposals in the near future."

Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), a longtime critic of the NRC, said more staff input would "actively aid and abet the nuclear industry's dilatory efforts to ignore, perhaps indefinitely, the recommendations of the commission's expert and dedicated staff."

Earlier this week, the head of the nuclear industry's main trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute, urged the commission to make a decision by Friday.

A key question for the commission will be how to move forward with the task force's central recommendation: that the agency establish a single regulatory framework for dealing with extreme events, replacing a "patchwork" of rules. That change could prove costly to industry if the agency redefines what it considers "adequate protection" of public health, as the task force said it should.

Mr. Ostendorff wrote on Friday that he supported establishing a new framework, "but not at this time."

"Such an effort should be undertaken as a separate, distinct effort from the rest of the Fukushima Task Force recommendations," he wrote. The Nuclear Energy Institute has also endorsed that approach.""

Has Fukushima taught regulatory body's nothing? This news has slipped under the radar. Btw according to this article Fukushima suffered a partial meltdown great journalism.