CNO Summit Diary: PG&E's Ed Halpin on the Lessons From Fukushima

Ed Halpin, SVP & CNO of PG&E

Ed Halpin, Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer at PG&E, was in Japan this week with virtually all of his American colleagues as part of the U.S.-Japan CNO Summit. He shared this diary entry with us after reflecting on what he saw at Fukushima Daiichi earlier this week. Be sure to follow all the updates from Japan on Twitter using the #CNOSummit hash tag.

As nuclear operators, we have earned a special trust from the communities we serve. My time here reaffirms my belief that the U.S. nuclear industry must always maintain its strong focus on safe operations, intensive training programs, effective peer-review processes, and the continued sharing of lessons-learned across the nation and throughout the world. The U.S. industry has always relied on redundant layers of safety in operating its facilities and is making exceptional gains in implementing a program known as "FLEX" to further enhance safety in the face of extreme natural events.

"FLEX" addresses the major challenges encountered at the Fukushima Daiichi power station following the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami: the loss of power to maintain effective reactor fuel cooling. The strategy focuses on providing an uninterrupted supply of electricity and cooling water to protect critical plant safety systems at all times and ensuring that every U.S. nuclear energy facility can respond safely to extreme events, no matter what the cause.

My belief is that mandating more modifications or changing our design requirements based on the worst potential natural disasters and assuming conditions that are highly improbable will only complicate our response to such an event. Certainly we need to close out the more important issues that are currently on the table and in keeping with our industry "Path to Excellence." Even more importantly, we need to continue to emphasize a strong operational focus with rigorous, realistic training. We must be able to implement our FLEX strategies blindfolded across every operating crew and our emergency response teams and training have got to be exemplary. These actions honor the trust we have earned from our communities and customers and keep us focused on our primary goal - safety.

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CNO Summit Diary: Indelibile Impressions From a Historic Week

Editor's Note: For the past week, NEI's John Keeley has been accompanying a delegation of American chief nuclear officers on a tour of Japan. This is his last blog entry he'll make before returning home to the U.S. 

To find all of the content related to this week's trip from NEI Nuclear Notes, click here. And for all of the chatter about the trip on Twitter, check out the #CNOSummit hash tag. Thanks to John for a job well done. 

(Tokyo, September 13) I won't miss jet-lag-induced risings at 3 a.m.each and every day -- and apparently I was joined in those by each and every American chief nuclear officer and communicator -- but just about everything else on this trip created a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me. So I thought I'd share those moments that stood out most to me: 

• At every formal engagement between U.S. and Japanese nuclear officers this week our hosts started the proceedings with a formal apology "for the concern and difficulty and confusion we have caused."  

• Takeyuki Inagaki had the closest and worst seat to the history made at Fukushima Daiichi, stationed in the unit 1 control room and later in the site's Emergency Response Center during the first 100 hours of the accident. The reflections he offered our CNOs about his experience were subdued, poignant, and commendably frank. If you asked him I'm sure he'd tell you he regards his English as poor, but he held our room in rapt attention -- and empathy -- while he spoke. I also thought he was surprisingly composed. My eyes teared up each and every time he uttered this haunting refrain, which he said accompanied each and every instance he had to order one of the Fukushima 50 back into harm's way for inspections: 'Am I [going to be] a murderer?'   

• We toured the Daini and Daiichi sites in the Fukushima prefecture because, while they endured virtually identical trauma circumstances on March 11, 2011, the outcomes between the sites were dramatically different, and the way the sites responded to the conditions offered a stark contrast as well -- particularly from the vantage of leadership.  

• Daini had recovery tools at its disposal that Daiichi did not, but there was a spirit of innovation, too, that guided Daini personnel. It's fair and accurate to say that U.S. CNOs very much applied learnings from the Daini experience into their formulation for the U.S. FLEX strategy. 

• Pete Sena, CNO for FirstEnergy, to the Wall Street Journal on Thursday: "Daini's story hasn't been told. The workers at Daini are national heroes." In the Journal he was quoted thusly: “The takeaway for me personally is internalizing what I saw with my own eyes to make sure this never, ever, ever happens within the U.S.,” he said. “That’s the message I want to get across to my entire workforce, and to the folks on the outside: What we do — it’s not a business; it’s personal.”  

• Naohiro Masuda, Vice Head, TEPCO Nuclear Safety Oversight Office, and Daini station leader on 3/11, very early in his briefing remarks to the U.S. CNOs: "As children, we were always told to hide under our desks at the arrival of an earthquake, but we never did. On 3/11, for the first time in my life, I did."  

• Some 500 employees remained at the Daini station for upwards of a month, returning not once to their homes -- if they even had homes to return to -- and working as a trauma team in circumstances our industry had never even considered, let alone encountered. Many slept on floors, subsisted on rudimentary nutrition, and went weeks without changing clothing.  

• Busing through the ghost towns of Fukushima, wherein storefronts bore the identical staples they did on March 11, 2011. 

• Chief Nuclear Officers in the United States are First Safety Officers at their sites. It's a designation they hold sacred.     

• They are also a special fraternity. They are, in Randy Edington's words, "Hostages of each other." One need only be in their company a few hours to notice the special bond they've forged. They are collegial and clique-free, and quietly and discretely they adhere to a rigid honor code: one which promulgates a culture demanding that they lead in a manner that ever serves the best interests of the nuclear industry, even, if need be, at the expense of their own utility. That code is neither theory nor supposition.   

• Working in the nuclear industry is a source of immense pride for me. I'm returning home bearing a good deal more.

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The State-of-Play of Nuclear Safety After Fukushima

If anything set the table for the American nuclear industry’s response to the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, it was the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. After that event, the security of all essential infrastructure was rethought. For all kinds of power plants, an important issue was keeping them functional after a devastating attack.

What happened at Fukushima was a devastating attack, albeit one without human agency. Because of the 2001 terrorist attack, the American industry was in many ways much better prepared for such an episode than the Japanese industry; still, Fukushima presented new lessons to be learned and new ways to enhance safety. The first lesson: never let a disaster go to waste. It has a lot to teach you.

The industry and the NRC are in broad agreement on the high-priority actions that should be taken at America's reactors. The industry's Fukushima response priority has been to identify those activities that provide maximum tangible safety benefits in the shortest time and implement them first.

That’s Anthony Pietrangelo, NEI’s senior vice president and chief nuclear officer, and he gets right to plant and public safety – “provide maximum tangible safety benefits in the shortest time.” The earthquake in Japan was unpredicted, but the workers at Fukushima Daiichi were already working to bring the reactors offline when the tsunami hit. That swept away the emergency generators and other emergency equipment.

The greatest safety improvement to protect against extreme events, regardless of their cause, comes from the FLEX response strategy that the industry began implementing last year. The heart of this effort is adding more portable, backup safety equipment at each reactor. More than 1,500 pieces of equipment have been acquired or ordered, including portable generators, diesel-driven pumps and satellite phones. The additional portable equipment will provide power and water to maintain key safety functions in the absence of AC power and heat transfer capability from permanently installed safety systems. These functions are reactor core cooling, used fuel pool cooling and containment integrity.

We may say, though, that the Fukushima workers didn’t expect emergency gear to wash away. Though the FLEX equipment is stowed at the facilities in order to prevent being destroyed, what if it were anyway? How do the plant workers deal with that?

In addition to new equipment being placed at all U.S. reactors, the industry is developing regional response centers in Memphis and Phoenix that will serve as dispatch points for additional equipment and resources. The regional response centers will be capable of delivering another full set of portable safety equipment, radiation protection equipment, electrical generators, pumps and other emergency response equipment to an affected site within 24 hours after an extreme event.

Of course, the world came together to offer help to the Japanese as needed and requested. Why not formalize that effort to respond to emergencies here and internationally?

In addition, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations has upgraded its emergency response center, and the facility is operational. This center will facilitate the sharing of equipment and technical expertise whenever and wherever it is needed. Thus, between the equipment available via the regional response centers and the equipment purchased by each site, the industry will have significantly enhanced its capability to assist any site in an emergency.

INPO is the right venue for this because it already maintains a database of parts available at the various facilities.

Pietrangelo also addresses what the industry and NRC have done to deal with the most frightening aspect of a nuclear energy accident, the potential release of radiation. It is potential rather than inevitable; the goal is to keep it in the former category. The best answer is to install a filtering option well suited to the nature of each facility and the potential threats it faces, but the NRC and regulators in general tend to prefer singular solutions.

One prominent area of industry/NRC interactions of late is the NRC staff recommendation for external, filtered containment vents for boiling water reactors with Mark I and II containments. The Electric Power Research Institute concluded after intensive analysis that filtered vents aren't necessarily the most effective way to filter potential radioactive releases from fuel damage. The industry believes the optimal filtration method should be determined on a plant-specific basis. The NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards shares that view. The five-member Commission ultimately will decide the future course of action in this area.

If it were just the industry wanting this flexibility, one might conclude that it smells cynically of an industry wanting to go cheap, safety be damned. But no: the approach is probably not, in aggregate, the least expensive way to address filtering, but it acknowledges that a large country provides a range of potential disaster scenarios that are not the same from one to another region. That’s one thing – well, two things. More importantly, other regulatory bodies and watchdogs believe it is the correct approach, too. I’m not sure this quite rises to the level of a contention. We’ll see how it goes.

Pietrangelo makes a simple, strong case for nuclear energy.

Because the long-term fundamentals show a continued, if not growing, need for nuclear energy around the globe, it is paramount that existing facilities are operated safely even as advanced-design reactors are brought to market in the years ahead. Innovation, knowledge transfer, training, and strong safety cultures are among the elements that will define the future ability of nuclear energy technologies to help meet societal needs.

There are a lot of moving parts to this piece, written for Power Engineering. I’ve focused on some key safety points here, but there’s more, including a section on industrial preparedness and another on regulation. The whole thing is worth a careful read if you’re interested in the state of play of post-Fukushima safety planning.

For a little more background, here is NEI’s video on FLEX:

A detailed overview of the nuclear industry's FLEX approach to enhancing safety post Fukushima.

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Filtered Vents and Boiling Water Reactors: It’s Not About the Costs

Recently, we've seen a spate of media reports that have accused the nuclear industry of opposing the installation of filtered vents on Mark I and II boiling water reactors (BWRs) simply because of cost considerations.

Needless to say, a number of us here at NEI are troubled by that accusation given the extensive research industry has produced buttressing our position that demanding that filtered vents be installed on every Mark I and II BWR is a "one-size fits all" solution.

Instead, the industry advocates what we call a "performance-based" approach where each of the 31 BWRs in the U.S. would make an individual determination of what course constitutes the best way forward -- an approach that would neither rule out nor mandate the installation of filtered vents.

To shed some additional light on this alternate way forward, Jason Zorn, NEI's assistant general counsel and Steven Kraft, NEI's senior technical advisor, have co-authored an article called, "Filtered Vents and Boiling Water Reactors: It’s Not About the Costs." We've posted the article in full at our Safety First microsite, but here is the relevant excerpt:

Is there a better solution? Yes.

One approach marries the need to cool the uranium fuel debris by injecting water into the containment building with filtering radioactive material from the vent gases with that water.

A September 2012 report by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) evaluated several potential radiation filtering strategies and assessed their abilities to avoid radiation releases. The report emphasized the need to cool the fuel debris during a severe accident. Otherwise, the melted fuel will rupture containment and releasing radioactive materials into the environment bypassing the vent and any filter that might be installed.

Ensuring core cooling this way has the added benefit of “filtering” radioactive material inside the containment building. The water in containment would work the same way that it would in an external filter. Thus, keeping damaged fuel cool through the injection of water, with its inherent filtering capability, challenges the basis for compelling external filters at 31 reactors.

Details on filtering options. Click to enlarge.

This is not a new concept. In the late 1980s, when the NRC wanted the BWR Mark I plants to add containment vents to prevent over-pressurization during an accident, the vents were piped through the internal suppression pools (water already in containment as part of the existing design to cool and reduce the pressure of the containment atmosphere during accidents). NRC staff reviews dating back to 1993 stated that an “external filter would not significantly increase the removal of radioactive material….”

In light of the significant body of research on this issue, the industry has recommended that the NRC consider less-prescriptive filtering strategies. Consistent with the EPRI research, filtering strategies focus primarily on providing additional ways to get water to the fuel during a severe accident and to control pressure in containment. Rather than a prescriptive solution like external filters that has limited benefit and may not provide for additional water to cool the core, the industry envisions that each company would assess the issue on a site-by-site basis and develop an approach that best suits each site.

As pointed out numerous times industry testimony and letters to the NRC, filtering strategies based on the individual plant evaluations could result in the installation of a vent filter if that’s what makes sense for a given plant.

Even the NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards -- an independent body that reviews NRC staff activities and provides independent recommendations to the Commission – supports the proposal to look at performance-based solutions at each reactor.

In 2012, NEI published this infographic with details on exactly how these filtering strategies can work. Click here to read it right now.

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Some Facts About Station Blackout That David Lochbaum Didn't Tell The New York Times

Some facts UCS left out.

If you were concerned with the safety of America's nuclear energy facilities, I could understand why this blog post from Matt Wald at NY Times Green might cause you a bit of pause. In it, David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists makes the claim that industry and the NRC ignored the possibility of a Fukushima-like incident in the U.S. for decades. His proof: a document published by an NRC analyst in 2007 that posited how a flood, earthquake or other extreme event could cause a loss of AC power at a nuclear energy facility that could lead to multiple reactor meltdowns.

Sounds scary, doesn't it? Unfortunately, the folks at UCS left out a couple of facts when they talked to Wald that might have spoiled that narrative. The fact is, NRC and the industry have been working on the issue for decades. Here's NEI's Steve Kerekes, who left the following in the comment string after the post:

The article fails to cite a number of relevant facts, including these: 1) The Nuclear Regulatory Commission finalized the Station Blackout Rule to provide further assurance that a loss of emergency AC power systems would not adversely affect public health and safety in 1988. That’s a full two decades before the creation of the documents in question. 2) Over the course of the more than 3,500 years of combined reactor operations in the United States, the one and only station blackout in our facilities’ history lasted 37 minutes. That too was decades ago.

Notwithstanding those facts, the U.S. nuclear energy industry – demonstrating its commitment to safe and reliable operations – has made safety improvements on a continuing basis to provide additional layers of defense in depth. These include post-9/11 measures put in place to better equip facilities to respond to explosions and large fires, and the post-Fukushima enhancements (centered on acquisition of portable safety equipment) currently being implemented to improve facilities’ ability to respond safely and effectively to extreme events, regardless of their cause.

Click here to take a look at the station blackout rule that Kerkes refers to in the text. If you scroll down to the end of the document, you'll see the date June 21, 1988 spelled out in black and white.

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The FLEX Solution: America's Nuclear Industry Responds to Fukushima

Earlier today, the Nuclear Energy Institute released a five-minute video explaining the comprehensive and tailored response strategy that it is implementing across the industry to enhance nuclear plant safety in the face of extreme natural events.

To produce the high-definition video, NEI acquired first-of-its kind footage of the deployment of new emergency response equipment at U.S. nuclear energy facilities. The video also features animation and interviews with industry leaders and technical staff discussing nuclear plant safety.


The diverse and flexible (“FLEX”) response strategy developed by industry addresses the major challenges encountered at the Fukushima Daiichi power station following the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami: the loss of power to maintain effective reactor fuel cooling.

Additional on-site portable equipment is being acquired to help ensure that every U.S. nuclear energy facility can respond safely to extreme events, no matter what the cause. The equipment ranges from diesel-driven pumps and electric generators to ventilation fans, hoses, fittings, cables and satellite communications gear. It also includes support materials for emergency responders. For additional information concerning how the American nuclear energy is applying lessons learned from Fukushima, please visit the Fukushima response section of NEI.org.

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2012: The Year After the Year

2012 may fade away and 2013 arrive with undo chipperness, but It’s all a continuum. Last year’s narratives will continue into the new year, a few cameo players from 2012 will gain additional prominence in 2013 – I’m thinking small reactors here – and, to paraphrase the tagline of an old horror comic, always expect the unexpected.

So let’s not fill up a top ten list – that might be the expected thing to do on December 31; instead, let’s see if we can find some recent quotes that summarize (some of) the themes of the last year even if that is not exactly their purpose.
Take this, for example, from the Wall Street Journal:

But phasing out nuclear power, which helps meet nearly 75% of France's electricity needs and about 27% across the EU, could deprive the continent of a key source of energy and jobs, making it more dependent on fossil-fuel imports.
Higher fuel bills could also hurt European economies, economists warned. And closing nuclear reactors—which emit little to no greenhouse gas—could jeopardize the EU's efforts to address concerns about global warming.

We’ve written about this a lot in 2012, because the subject raises a lot of prickly questions. Countries should have a right to leave nuclear energy if they want to – no energy source is sacrosanct – but it has had and will continue to have consequences, most of them unintended. In Germany, the change is so precipitous that the transition promises to be incredibly expensive at best and truly terrible for the people at worst. And it’s an energy policy that solves no particular problem.

The Journal story is worth reading in full, though its focus on countries closing nuclear plants tells only part of the story, as we’ll see.
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There’s a flip side to leaving nuclear energy, as indicated in this story in Commodities Today, and it also provided a theme for 2012 (I guess uranium is the commodity, but the story does not directly refer to it):

The number of nuclear new build projects, despite Fukushima, is still higher now than across the last two decades – although Asia is leading in numbers, the US has approved its first new build since 1970. France, Finland, the United Kingdom and Sweden have all reaffirmed their commitment to nuclear power. In Central and Eastern Europe, Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic are also planning to push ahead with new units, following increased safety assessments.

I just saw a story about the Bulgarians holding a referendum to decide whether to build a second nuclear facility – we’ll see how that turns out. The United States has four new reactors (in Georgia and South Carolina) under construction and a fifth (in Alabama Tennessee) being revived and completed.

So nuclear energy is moving forward despite some handwringing – in the United States, in parts of Asia and Eastern Europe, perhaps even Bulgaria.

Naturally, there is a reason to celebrate this continuing development. 2012 represents the year following the year of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. It’s been a period for learning lessons from the accident and moving forward.

The industry unveiled FLEX early in 2012, its response to the accident that ensures that no nuclear plant will ever be an island in a sea of adversity. FLEX directs the facilities to stage new emergency equipment at each plant and it sets up regional centers to hold larger safety items that can be used by any facility.

Still, what about Fukushima Daiichi? Let’s be clear about the accident and its impact. The earthquake and tsunami that precipitated the accident killed almost 16,000 people. The accident killed no one (there were some industrial fatalities). About 340,000 people were put out of their homes, some by the disaster and some by the accident.

The lack of fatalities and the successful planning to keep people clear of radiation doesn’t excuse the accident at all – and cannot be used as exculpatory of it - but the truth of the matter is that the earthquake and tsunami created human devastation while the accident, unwelcome though it was, did not. That point sometimes gets overlooked or elided.

But the impact of the accident has been, as it should be, enormous. There’s still more to learn from the accident, which has already been and continues to be studied by every conceivable Japanese, American and international organization with an interest. There are still lessons to be learned, but a lot has been learned and even implemented – with IAEA help around the world and NRC and industry directives here.

This post-Fukushima work has been transparent enough that people can follow what’s going on and understand the implications for themselves and their families. In this country (and others, such as Great Britain), the result has been very positive. Nuclear energy is seen as safe by a majority of respondents and most people favor further expansion. Gallup puts public approval at about 57 percent, exactly the same as before the accident.

More about 2012 on Wednesday. Maybe we’ll know the outcome of that election in Bulgaria by then, too.

Correx: Thanks to our commenter for pointing out I meant Tennessee for the fifth reactor. You say Watts Bar, I say Bellefonte. Let's call the whole thing off (kidding - let's build both Watts Bar and Bellefonte. )

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UCS Channels Goldilocks In Response to Fukushima

NEI's Senior Vice President of Communications, Scott Peterson, passed along the following note concerning last week's report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, "U.S. Nuclear Power Safety One Year After Fukushima."

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has weighed in on the U.S. response to Fukushima and their conclusion is clear: We’re moving too slowly….No, wait, we’re moving too fast!...Check that, too slow!

Taking a page from Goldilocks, who couldn’t seem to find the right size chair, UCS can’t seem to find the right speed for applying lessons learned in the aftermath of the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan a year ago.

After first praising the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for reacting quickly to the events in Japan, a new UCS report prods the agency to move faster. Then report declares that “speed is not always a virtue.” In the most remarkable twist of logic, UCS criticizes the nuclear energy industry for “acting too hastily by launching a voluntary program” to improve safety.

Really? Moving too quickly to improve safety?

At least the UCS report got something right. The industry is not waiting for orders from the NRC to act. Our FLEX strategy protects against the two main safety issues at Fukushima¬—the loss of electrical power and the loss of cooling capability—by stationing emergency backup equipment in multiple locations, including regional centers.

Every U.S. nuclear operator has committed to order additional equipment by the end of the month, and more than 300 pieces of backup emergency equipment has already been delivered or ordered. Rather than applauding these proactive safety measures, UCS complains that the industry is “jumping the gun” by getting ahead of the NRC.

The industry and the NRC are in general agreement on the issues that need to be addressed, but the regulatory process takes time. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the NRC fast-tracked the industry’s safety response by issuing a series of orders, with a deadline of October 2004.

After the industry met that deadline, the NRC began a rulemaking process to codify the orders and essentially get its procedural/bureaucratic house in order. Along the way, it added a few more requirements that weren’t finalized until close to the end of the decade. In that case, UCS distorts the facts to complain that the industry’s response was too slow.

Now that we are moving even more quickly to respond to Fukushima, UCS says we are going too fast. Does UCS seriously believe we should just sit and wait while the NRC process unfolds? We see ways to strengthen our defenses against extreme events now, and we are acting. To do otherwise would be an abrogation of our responsibility.

The NRC will oversee our safety enhancements, and will not hesitate tell us to do something more or something different—backed by the agency’s full enforcement authority—as the regulatory process plays out.

That approach might not satisfy Goldilocks or UCS, but we think it is juuuuust right to ensure that lessons learned from Japan are applied as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Scott also contributes on occasion to the Huffington Post.

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NEI to Host Blogger Conference Call on FLEX

The Nuclear Energy Institute will be hosting a conference call for bloggers with NEI's Adrian Heymer on FLEX, the U.S. industry's strategy to enhance safety at its nuclear energy facilities. The call will be conducted from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Friday, March 9 and will be hosted by Dan Yurman of Idaho Samizdat.

All participants must pre-register in order to dial in to the call. Please RSVP to my NEI email address at epm-at-nei.org by COB Thursday, March 8 in order to reserve your space.

Please submit your questions prior to the call, as they'll be asked by Mr. Yurman in much the same manner as the call he hosted with NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko. If the program runs long don't fret, as we'll post answers to any question we don't get to here on the NEI Nuclear Notes blog.

For those of you who might not be familiar with Mr. Heymer, here's a short bio. Here in the U.S., there simply isn't anyone with a better read on how the incident at Fukushima is impacting the way our industry does business than Mr. Heymer.

Adrian Heymer is the Executive Director, Strategic Programs, at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). In this position he serves as the industry's point person in organizing an integrated response to the events at Fukushima Daiichi. Other responsibilities at NEI have encompassed new nuclear plant deployment, electricity deregulation, plant performance improvement, risk-informed regulation and industry quality programs. Prior to joining NEI he worked in support of Nebraska Public Power District’s Cooper Nuclear Station, Nebraska; at Lloyds Register on technical certifications and inspections; and served in the Royal Navy.

We're all looking forward to your questions. See you on March 9 at 11 a.m.

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New NEI White Paper: Making Safe Nuclear Energy Safer

With the anniversary of the incident at Fukushima Daiichi almost upon us, it's only natural for the public and other stakeholders to be asking questions about the safety of America's nuclear energy facilities. To answer those questions, NEI has published a white paper entitled, "Making Safe Nuclear Energy Safer."

The following passage is from the document's Executive Summary:

The nuclear energy industry’s primary and constant goal is to make safe nuclear energy facilities even safer. A decades-long commitment to safety and continuous learning is reflected in the operational focus and safety culture at our facilities. Companies that operate 104 U.S. reactors review safety procedures continually and update their facilities and training programs with lessons learned from those reviews.

The industry has a commitment to safety because nuclear energy is a vital part of America’s electricity portfolio. It helps achieve greater energy independence for America and produces affordable, reliable electricity for one of every five Americans. Safety is the foundation of a thriving nuclear energy industry in America and globally—with more than 430 reactors producing electricity and 65 plants under construction.

After the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the U.S. nuclear power industry is looking even more closely at ways to ensure safety is maintained in the face of extreme natural events. The U.S. industry and our global partners took immediate actions after the events in Japan, both to support the recovery of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors and to review critical safety systems at U.S. reactors. While we continue to monitor the situation closely and to learn from it, the nuclear energy industry in the United States is already implementing numerous measures to maintain and upgrade the already-high level of safety at nuclear energy facilities.

The paper clocks in at nine pages in length, and is easily digestible for readers who, while they might be aware of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, might not be completely up to speed on what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and U.S. industry have been doing in the interim to apply lessons learned from our colleagues in Japan. Click here to download it right now.

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