Projects that last as long as building nuclear reactors in the U.S. are analogous to extreme endurance competitions in which overall progress is the sum of all stages of the race. There is no magic reset button that allows recovery of time lost early in the race, even though the specific events that resulted in…
Designers and developers of nuclear power systems that are substantially different from conventional light water reactors face a conundrum. They are required to provide sufficient information to regulators to allow them to confidently predict how the designs will behave under a comprehensive set of postulated operational and accident conditions. Proving their design is safe is…
A panel of five experts and an experienced moderator addressed the progress being made in creating effective processes to license advanced and non-LWR (light water reactors) at an ANS Winter 2022 panel session titled “Licensing the Future: How the NRC is Approaching Advanced Reactors.” Four out of five of the panelists were cautiously positive and…
NuScale, a leader in the increasingly competitive field of advanced nuclear reactor design, has announced that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reviewers issued a document that formally agrees that their design does not require any electrical power to achieve safe shutdown. It’s difficult to explain the importance of that regulatory position. People with experience…
Excessive regulation of extremely low radiation doses increases the public fears of nuclear technology, increases the costs borne by society, and can deprive society of the full benefit of that technology.” – Edward Maher, Sc.D., Harvard University Note: Borrowed from lowdoserad.org That is a truth that Atomic Insights has recognized for many years, but the…
A two-page Policy Forum opinion piece titled Nuclear safety regulation in the post-Fukushima era: Flawed analyses underlie lax U.S. regulation of spent fuel by Edwin Lyman, Michael Schoeppner and Frank von Hippel appeared in the May 26, 2017 issue of Science Magazine, an outlet that has a public reputation as a reliable source of technical…
Yesterday, the President announced his intent to fill two vacancies at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The White House press release names Annie Caputo, currently serving as senior policy advisor for Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to a seat with a term expiring June 30, 2021. As stated in…
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been seeking input on regulations that should be repealed, replaced or modified. The comment window opened on April 13 and closed on May 15. In response to the request, members of Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information (SARI) prepared a document containing scientifically supported arguments for eliminating regulations that contain…
Dominion Resources’s North Anna nuclear power station unit number 3 should be approved for construction by the end of May 2017. It’s possible that the approval – in the form of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) 10 CFR Part 52 combined license (COL) – could be issued within the next three weeks. This would be…
Yesterday, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry toured the Yucca Mountain site to get a first hand look at the current state of the facility. Following the site tour, Sec. Perry met with Gov. Brian Sandoval. Here is what the Department of Energy press release said about that conversation. “Governor Sandoval and I had a frank…
Yesterday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted NuScale’s 12,000 page design certification application (DCA). That action starts the safety determination process, which is scheduled to take 40 months. Completed on December 31, 2016 and submitted to the NRC on January 12, 2017, NuScale’s certification application has been subjected to a 60 day checklist review designed to…
Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information (SARI) recently delivered a petition to Scott Pruitt, the new Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The letter, signed by 34 members or associate members of SARI, requests that Mr. Pruitt direct his Agency to revise the basis of risk-based radiation regulations. SARI members believe that regulations should be…