Word: nrc
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...this beleaguered outpost finds itself caught up in an escalating battle over the future of atomic power in the U.S. Last month the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a license for a $3.1 billion project that would make the Skull Valley reservation the nation's biggest nuclear-waste holding site, a temporary parking lot for 44,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel now being stored at nuclear power plants nationwide. For utilities, it could solve what has been a vexing problem. For tribal officials, the advantages are tangible: as much as $100 million in fees to be paid over...
...plan has sparked widespread resistance, with opponents ranging from a few tribal holdouts to the Governor of Utah. The state has filed suit in federal court to void the NRC license on the grounds that the spent fuel would sit dangerously close to an Air Force training path. F-16 fighter jets roar overhead on 7,000 sorties a year. Should one crash into the steel-and-concrete casks, state attorneys argue, cancer-causing radiation could waft over Salt Lake City. Moreover, the state says, used fuel rods, parked aboveground, would be a target for car bombers or airplane hijackers...
...been scary enough. Then there was this past weekend's false alarm at another of Exelon's plants, which, while not related, set off the nation's first "site-area emergency" at a U.S. nuclear facility in 15 years. The fact that upon further review, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced that the incidents were much ado about nothing with "no release of radioactivity... no danger to the public" did little to assuage many people's worst fears...
...were only recently disclosed highlighted what critics view as glaring weaknesses in the federal government's oversight of nuclear energy. So it was that earlier this week, just hours after the emergency at the LaSalle County nuclear plant and loud complaints from Republican Congressman Jerry Weller of Illinois, the NRC decided to launch a wide probe of all nuclear power operations in Illinois, which has the highest number of plants (6) and reactors (11) of any state in the U.S. As it happens, they are all owned by Exelon, a Chicago-based giant with some 5 million customers...
...Lockbaum acknowledges that the NRC, for its part, has been hit with budget cuts, more nuclear demands and more worries since Sept. 11, and is only now getting the necessary funds to add about 300 positions - a roughly 10 percent increase. He's not the only one concerned. At a Senate committee hearing last May, an official with the Government Accountability Office expressed misgivings about the industry's level of self-policing, saying that the NRC "in effect, relies on [plant operators] and trusts them to a large extent to make sure that their plants are operated safely." Residents...