Word: nrc
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...week's end, after several days of public agonizing and behind-the-scenes bickering with the utility companies, the NRC reached a Solomonic decision that was face-saving for everyone. It issued a shutdown agreement, but only after the utilities "voluntarily" offered to suspend operations at the nine B & W plants, including Three Mile Island's disabled reactor. One objective was political: the beleaguered NRC wants to convince critics that it is indeed a vigilant watchdog...
More important, under their pact with the NRC, the utilities consented...
Earlier in the week, NRC Chairman Joseph M. Hendrie had gloomily warned that the shutdowns would have a "profound importance for our power supply." For one thing, the utilities that own the B & W reactors would be forced to buy electricity elsewhere for their customers. That would be costly. William Lee, chief executive of North Carolina's Duke Power Co., estimated that the cost of such a shutdown would run more than $100 million a month. But, under the compromise, these forecasts seemed somewhat alarmist...
Three of the plants-in Arkansas, Florida and Ohio-are already shut down for routine maintenance or refueling. So too are Metropolitan Edison's two reactors at Three Mile Island: one because of the March 28 accident, its twin for refueling and maintenance. Thus the NRC's order means an additional loss of only four nuclear plants-California's Rancho Seco and Duke Power's three Oconee reactors in South Carolina-out of 72 nuclear plants licensed to operate across the U.S., including five on the East Coast temporarily shut for earthquake safety studies. All together...
Clearly pleased by NRC's compromise decision, Lee did something of an about-face. At week's end, he predicted that the "outages"-jargon for when a generator is out of the power grid-would be of "very short duration." Certainly, he said, they would not last into the peak summer season. But Harold Denton, the NRC's reactor regulations chief, was more skeptical. Something of a hero in the nuclear field for his cool troubleshooting at Three Mile Island in the wake of March's accident, he insisted that all B & W pressurized water reactors...