The chairman of the “Nuclear Regulatory Commission said there is no immediate need to conduct special inspections of U.S. nuclear plants in the wake of the breakdown of a plant in Japan following an earthquake and tsunami,” Bloomberg reports.
Gregory Jaczko said current U.S. policy is to continually review standards and to take lessons from events elsewhere in the world. The U.S. has about 23 plants with similar reactor containment designs as the Japanese plant, he said.
“We’re going to take a look at what happened, we’re going to do a systematic and methodical review of the information, and if we need to make changes to our program, we’ll make changes,” he said at a White House briefing.
Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer of California and Tom Carper of Delaware today asked the NRC to conduct a “comprehensive investigation” of all nuclear power facilities in the U.S. to assess whether they can withstand a catastrophic disaster, according to a letter to Jaczko released by Carper’s office.
Congress in Your Pocket