The Safety of Nuclear Energy

The Union of Concerned Scientists offered thoughtful and factual articles regarding the safety of the US Nuclear Industry that worth reviewing. Links below --

Two Years After Fukushima: Status of NRC Safety Reforms

Ed Lyman, senior scientist

March 8, 2013

Following the March 11, 2011, nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) set up a task force to identify the lessons the U.S. nuclear industry should learn from the accident to avoid something similar here. Two years later, where does that effort stand to make U.S. reactors safer?



Today we released our third in an annual series on the performance of U.S. nuclear plants and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2012: Tolerating the Intolerable.

The report analyzes 14 NRC special inspections at a dozen plants in 2012, conducted in response to safety equipment problems and security shortcomings. None of the events harmed plant employees or the public, but their frequency—more than one a month—is high for a mature industry. And many of them happened because plant owners—and often the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)—either tolerated known problems or failed to address them adequately.

The report and the executive summary are available online.

Holes in the Nuclear Safety Net

Our third annual report on the NRC and nuclear power safety shows that the agency still hasn’t gotten serious about protecting the public.



Read the Report


Japan's Fukushima aftermath --

Protesters in Tokyo Demand End to Nuclear Power 09 Mar 2013 Thousands of people rallied in a Tokyo park Saturday, demanding an end to atomic power and vowing never to give up the fight, despite two years of little change after the nuclear disaster in northeastern Japan. Gathering two days ahead of the second anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that sent the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant into multiple meltdowns, demonstrators said they would never forget the world's worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl, and expressed alarm over the government's eagerness to restart reactors. Two years after the disaster, 160,000 people have left their homes around the plant, entire sections of nearby communities are still ghost towns, and fears grow about cancer and other sicknesses the spewing radiation might bring.

60% in Fukushima say more than 2 decades needed to return to pre-disaster lifestyles 05 Mar 2013 Sixty percent of Fukushima Prefecture residents said it will take more than 20 years to recoup the lifestyles they lost when the prefecture was hit by the triple Fukushima disaster of 2011, a survey showed. Nineteen percent said pre-disaster lifestyles can return in "20 years or so," 14 percent said around 10 years and just 3 percent picked "five years or so" among the four options. By age, 80 percent of those in their 30s and 73 percent of those in their 40s and 50s chose the answer "more than 20 years."