Word: nuclear
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...should these failings be corrected? Starting at the top, the Kemeny commission urges abolishing the NRC and replacing it with a single Director of Nuclear Regulation to be appointed by the President. Explained a Kemeny commission member: ''We felt that when you have a collegial body, you delay decision-making while searching for the lowest common denominator of agreement.'' A single director, on the other hand, ''can't pass the buck in an emergency...
This new czar of nuclear regulation would be required to improve greatly the training of all nuclear power plant control room operators. The commission also wants the control rooms to be redesigned, claiming that ''problems with the control room contributed to the confusion during the accident.'' At present, NRC is continuing to license control rooms with ''outdated technology...
...commission urges that the federal licenses for utilities to operate nuclear plants be periodically reviewed-and suspended if public hearings show that the plants have been running unsafely. Currently, they are licensed for their expected lifetime, generally 40 years, with no review at all. Explains Arizona Governor Bruce E. Babbitt, a commission member who supports nuclear power...
Also, the commission recommends that no new plants be placed near large population centers. NRC has stopped approving sites near metropolitan areas, though it has not specified any rigid distance requirements. Of the 100 U.S. sites where nuclear plants are operating or under construction, only ten are within ten miles of 100,000 or more residents...
These recommendations, even if adopted, will not by themselves assure a future for nuclear power. Long before the T.M.I, accident, that future was being gravely threatened by so many problems that construction of new reactors has come to a near standstill...