The U.S. Senate passed legislation Tuesday which adjusts the NRC's role in the advancement of nuclear power in the United States by streamlining the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's licensing process for reactor construction.
To make reactor construction more achievable, the bill reduces the fees the Nuclear Regulatory Commission charges to developers while accelerating the licensing process for new reactors and staffing.
"Just as lax regulation by the FAA-an agency already burdened by conflicts of interests-can lead to a catastrophic failure of an aircraft, a compromised NRC could lead to a catastrophic reactor meltdown impacting an entire region for a generation," said Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Nuclear meltdowns have in years past led to annihilation of entire cities, as in the Chernobyl disaster.
"Even the worst possible accident at a nuclear power plant - the complete meltdown and burnup of its radioactive fuel - was yet far less destructive than other major industrial accidents across the past century," wrote Richard Rhodes, an energy scholar and Pulitzer Prize winner.
Other critics of the bill worry that it's not enough to address the US' lagging nuclear industry, which has been overtaken as the global leader by China, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
"The United States needs to develop a coherent national strategy and whole-of-government approach to reanimating the deployment of modern nuclear reactor technology," the ITIF said in a report.
https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_c5301f16-2e51-11ef-ad61-a73ecb4dd60e.html
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