Full Title: Modernizing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission REV.2
Author(s): Herschel Specter
Publisher(s): Micro Utilities
Publication Date: February 13, 2025
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been considered the world’s premier nuclear regulatory body. In order to maintain this position of leadership, significant modernization must take place. By modernizing, the public could have increased confidence in nuclear energy, which is projected to become a much larger factor in people’s lives. US nuclear designs that achieve NRC licenses could be more attractive in the international market for safe, clean, and reliable energy.
A modern NRC recognizes that nuclear energy is a very benign technology; far more so than perceived today. Not only are nuclear accidents rare, they are weak: too weak to create the very high dose rates required to cause an early fatality, too weak to create the very high doses required to cause long term cancer fatalities. In addition to installed safety systems, nuclear plant structures act like large filters, trapping much of the meltdown material on site. Chernobyl, even with an underdesigned confinement building, trapped about 40% of its radioactive iodine and about 70% of its radioactive cesium. Fukushima trapped even more. Go to the Three Mile Island plant with its strong containment building and virtually none of its meltdown material entered the atmosphere.
Nuclear accidents evolve slowly. It takes time to melt the massive metal parts in and around the reactor core. It took about 10 days for the radioactive releases to end at Chernobyl. Fukushima took about 14 days to end its releases. Such slow releases do two favorable things. First, such slow releases cause much lower downwind dose rates compared to a rapidly melting reactor. Second, the long duration of the radioactive release means that changing wind directions cause the radioactive material to be widely dispersed, but at very low concentrations. This dispersion prevents the high concentrations of radioactive material needed to cause an early or latent radiological health effect. High concentrations are needed because humans are very resistant to radiation exposure. For example, people living in Ramsar, Iran are subjected to a lifetime of natural background radiation doses about 70 times greater than what people in the USA receive, yet they do not have elevated cancer rates. Humans can also tolerate very high dose rates. Studies show that people who were within one kilometer of an atomic bomb blast only had an increased likelihood of death by cancer of less than one percent. These natural, protective measures belong to all nuclear designs, new and old. Nuclear energy is an inherently benign technology.