Word: nrc
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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During the moratorium, the NRC will establish more stringent safety regulations for the 72 nuclear plants that now generate 11.5% of the nation's electricity as well as for the 92 plants still under construction. The new rules will include two of the most urgent recommendations of the presidential commission, which was headed by Dartmouth President John Kemeny. One was for stiffer training of plant operators. The other was for emergency evacuation plans for people living within a ten-mile radius of nuclear plants...
...addition, NRC Chairman Joseph Hendrie told the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power that some existing nukes may be unable to meet the new safety rules and therefore may have to reduce their generating output. He also disclosed that the NRC is considering ordering a shutdown of some plants now operating in heavily populated areas. Said Hendrie: "In some of the older sites, the population density is such that evacuation might not be entirely successful in the worst kinds of accidents." He refused to specify which plants he had in mind, but two possibilities are the ones at Indian Point...
...week's end the NRC staff took another strong stand on safety by recommending that the commission fine the Consumers Power Co. of Jackson, Mich., $450,000 for having left valves open in its reactor containment building from April 1978 until last September. If there had been an accident during those 18 months, radioactive materials could have spewed out of the building. The fine would be the largest penalty ever imposed on a U.S. nuclear power company, nearly three times more than the fine levied against the operators of the Three Mile Island plant...
...lessen the danger of future accidents, the commission recommended that plant operators be held to stricter training standards and that future plants be built far away from major population centers.* The commission also urged that the NRC be replaced by a nuclear czar appointed by the President. This recommendation set off a sharp debate. NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford contended that a single administrator would do nothing to improve the Government's regulation of nukes. Said he: "This is not a meat-inspection program." Replied Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt, a Kemeny commission member: "The NRC is a headless agency that...
...history of the federal government's attempts to solve the waste disposal problem is a textbook case in agency buck-passing. In late 1977, the NRC urged the DOE to prepare a contingency plan in case the country's three commercial disposal sites had to be shut down. The NRC identified a "Clear potential for disruption," and suggested--as Illinois Gov. James Thompson recommended last week--opening the government's 14 existing sites to commercial waste generators. Nothing was done...