Monday, October 15, 2007

New nuclear plants already getting stuck in the tarball

The new US nuclear plants are playing fast and loose with the NRC 'voluntary' requirements, in an effort to jump on the Congress gravy train.

For example, the companies haven't done site work for 30 years at their plants. They've always had the attitude of 'We're here -- tough!'. The poor NRC always thought that after 30 years, they should re-evaluate things such as seismicity, regional radiation, water requirements, environmental impact, etc. Now the companies are saying 'Get lost!', and we're jamming new nuclear plants on our old sites. The intelligent thing would be to evaluate the capacity of the existing site, for new reactors. I know they aren't doing that in Ontario, but they should.

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