Word: nrc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...nuclear industry absorbed the lessons of 9/11 and made sufficient adjustments to the way plants are guarded? The DOE, which controls the 11 sites that house nuclear weapons and the materials used to build them, has significantly improved its standards. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which oversees 103 reactors run by private operators at 64 sites across 31 states, says it has too. "What is in place right now is sufficient to give us confidence that these plants will be able to defend themselves," NRC chairman Nils Diaz tells TIME. But a tightly held NRC document reviewed by TIME raises...
...thyroid cancer has not changed in Poland, while it has jumped an alarming 100-fold among some Belarussian children. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now giving states the option of stocking up on potassium iodide for communities near the nation's 103 nuclear power plants. Still, the NRC emphasizes that the drug is not the next Cipro. Says NRC spokesman William Beecher: "It can protect only one part of the body against one radioactive element...
...tower isn't the only risk. Periodically the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has staged mock attacks against facilities, and the faux intruders won half the time--meaning they were in a position to cause severe damage. It's a target-rich environment: not only is the core vulnerable, but one NRC study also concluded that if terrorists blew up the cooling pool that holds the spent fuel, the radiation could kill 6% of the people living within 10 miles of the plant...
...Whatever form the next attack takes, all evidence suggests that the nation is still largely unprepared. That's beginning to change. The NRC has plans to beef up already heightened security at power plants, and public health officials are beginning to get serious about staving off biological assaults. Last year, for example, the CDC authorized a private company to cook up 40 million additional doses of smallpox vaccine to add to the U.S. stockpile--a job that will take several years. "We also need to develop new drugs and vaccines against other organisms that might be a threat," says...
...look more like cash cows. The Vermont battle, in fact, is just the latest stop on an industrywide shopping spree that is fueling a nuclear resurgence. By the end of the decade, new nuclear power plants could be sprouting up right here at home: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has already approved the next generation of supposedly cheaper, safer plant designs...