Video: Nuclear industry experts Arnie and Maggie Gundersen discuss the status of the ongoing nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan and the U.S. nuclear “renaissance.”
An oft-repeated jibe against renewable energy sources like wind and solar power by (usually) smug nuclear power proponents is, “What are you going to do when the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow?”
Thirty-seven clean energy groups today submitted a formal petition for rulemaking to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission seeking adoption of new regulations to expand emergency evacuation zones and improve emergency response planning around U.S. nuclear reactors.
These are rocky days at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which finds itself under attack from the outside for decisions ranging from new reactor designs to safety issues that have languished for years, including the agency’s failure to get serious about fire hazards.
“Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.
Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation’s aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.
It’s too early to know the impact of Japan’s emergency on public health and the industry. But new projects worldwide likely will be delayed as the events at Fukushima are analyzed, and changes are debated in plant design, regulation and emergency planning.
Progress Energy sends out safety information manuals annually to everyone living within ten miles of the Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant, but critics say if something goes wrong at the plant, not nearly enough thought has gone into keeping people safe.
