Member of White House oil spill commission urges nuclear safety panel

An environmental advocate who served on the White House-created panel that probed the BP oil spill is urging President Obama to establish an independent commission to study U.S. nuclear plant safety in light of the Japanese reactor crisis.

Natural Resources Defense Council President (NRDC) Frances Beinecke, in a letter Friday to Obama, is seeking a probe that would supplement the Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety review that Obama ordered this month.

“The administration should appoint a truly independent commission, similar to the Kemeny Commission that investigated the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, that can help to engender public confidence by thoroughly examining nuclear safety issues, including assessing the conclusions and proposed corrective actions arrived at by both the nuclear industry and the NRC in its '90-day safety review,'" Beinecke writes.

Beinecke writes that reviewing reactor safety shouldn’t be left up to the NRC alone.

She writes:

“Review of the implications of this disaster should not be limited to the NRC assessing the adequacy of its own previous rules and decisions. This would be problematic for any entity, but is particularly the case for the NRC, which has long been seen as a weak regulator with insufficient independence from the industry it oversees.”

Beinecke served on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, which in January issued a report that called for a host of federal and industry safety reforms. The commission ceased operations earlier this month and Beinecke sent the nuclear safety letter, which doesn't mention the spill commission, in her capacity as NRDC’s leader.

Her letter adds to other calls for an independent probe of U.S. nuclear safety.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), in a March 18 letter to Obama, said the NRC safety review that the president ordered is insufficient and called for a Presidential Commission on Nuclear Safety that would include independent scientists and experts.

Beinecke's letter recommends that the NRC “should suspend the granting of nuclear power plant license renewals in high seismic hazard areas until the findings of the NRC’s 90-day review are finalized and vetted by the independent commission.”

The letter also says the NRC should “consider on a case-by-case basis the rescission of license renewals already granted for nuclear power plants located in high seismic hazard areas that were built to standards that no longer conform to our modern understanding of the full extent of the earthquake threat to the facility.”