Word: nrc
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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WASHINGTON--The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) yesterday ordered the immediate shutdown of an atomic fuel fabrication plant in Tennessee after the plant reported the apparent loss of at least 20 pounds of weapons-grade uranium...
...NRC spokesman Frank Ingram said yesterday Commission investigators have not yet determined whether the uranium is actually missing from the plant or has been lost somewhere in the plant's processing system...
However, an NRC spokesman said in this case the Commission intervened before the deadline expired and closed the plant immediately...
Some two inches thick and based on many hours of hearings, the NRC report will be some comfort to those who design and build reactors used to generate electricity. It states categorically that although the Pennsylvania plant was not "fail-safe," its equipment and emergency procedures "were adequate to have prevented the serious consequences of the accident, if they had been permitted to function or be carried out as planned." Trouble is, neither the equipment nor the preprogrammed safety procedures built into the Babcock & Wilcox reactor really got a chance...
Critical as the investigators may have been of the utility, the NRC itself got a wrist slap from Congress. In a report approved by a 29-to-2 vote, the House Government Operations Committee severely chided the commission for failing "to demonstrate strong constructive leadership" in developing evacuation plans and related emergency procedures for areas surrounding nuclear plants. Of 25 states that have these facilities, the study said, 16 do not have such NRC-approved plans. As one committee staffer summed up: the NRC just "pretended that accidents could not happen...