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.

Posted in: Nuclear Power Safety Tags: NRC, nuclear power, nuclear power safety

About the author: Mr. Lochbaum received a BS in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Tennessee in 1979 and worked as a nuclear engineer in nuclear power plants for 17 years. In 1992, he and a colleague identified a safety problem in a plant where they were working. When their concerns were ignored by the plant manager, the utility, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), they took the issue to Congress. The problem was eventually corrected at the original plant and at plants across the country. Lochbaum joined UCS in 1996 to work on nuclear power safety. He spent a year in 2009-10 working at the NRC Training Center in Tennessee. Areas of expertise: Nuclear power safety, nuclear technology and plant design, regulatory oversight, plant license renewal and decommissioning

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