Word: nrc
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Unfortunately for the beleaguered utility, its film may now need some editing. For the past four months, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), among others, has been looking into the causes and effects of the nation's worst commercial reactor accident. Last week, in a report that is sure to have wide repercussions, NRC staff investigators said that the most serious aspects of the mishap were almost certainly due to human error. And though they acknowledged that the radiation level was low, they said that one burst was greater than any previously revealed...
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...
...operators. Now they are undergoing advanced training to become shift supervisors. All reactor operators must be high school graduates. Senior operators, who direct whole reactor crews, must be college graduates with degrees in engineering; many are also veterans of the Navy's nuclear training programs. All must pass NRC examinations before they can be licensed...
...Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Writing for the majority in Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power v. Natural Resources Defence Council (1978), Justice Rehnquist held that community and environmental representatives had no right to question either private industry spokesmen or agency officials about the quality and meaning of their data and findings at NRC licensing hearings. Rehnquist rode roughshod over the public, turning the administrative hearing procedure into an empty exercise where the hallmark of due process, the right to question adverse parties, was insensitively and rashly dispensed with...
...NRC officials also said that radiation levels inside the containment building are now at least as high as 30,000 rems, enough to kill anyone who enters almost instantly, and possibly as high as 50,000. The latter reading may be erroneous-possibly due to a "hot" particle on one device. By the NRC's reckoning, almost all the core's fuel elements are damaged, and even more radioactive material is exposed. New target date for entering the building: at least a year from...