Nuke regulators bless reactor design amid Capitol Hill cheers, jeers

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday approved the amended design for the Westinghouse AP1000, a reactor that several power companies intend to use for building the first new U.S. nuclear plants in decades.

“The design provides enhanced safety margins through use of simplified, inherent, passive, or other innovative safety and security functions, and also has been assessed to ensure it could withstand damage from an aircraft impact without significant release of radioactive materials,” NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said in a statement.

Utility giant Southern Co. is using the AP1000 for its project to build two new reactors at its Vogtle site in Georgia. “This is another key milestone for the Vogtle project and the nation's nuclear renaissance,” said Southern Co. CEO Thomas A. Fanning.

The Southern Co. project that has won a conditional $8.3 billion Energy Department loan guarantee but still awaits a final NRC license.

A number of other power companies plan to use the Westinghouse design at proposed new nuclear plants as well, although the extent of the industry's hoped-for "renaissance" depends on multiple factors, including the ability to win financing for expensive reactor projects amid competition from plentiful natural gas.

Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey, a senior Democrat of the Energy and Commerce Committee and longtime nuclear power critic, blasted the NRC decision and alleged that the regulators are allowing Southern Co. to proceed with work on its project prematurely.

Markey contrasted the NRC decisions with what he alleges is slow action to implement safety reforms recommended by an NRC task-force convened following the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant.

“While they continue to slow walk the implementation of recommendations of the NRC professional staff’s Near-Term Task Force on Fukushima, they have fast-tracked construction of a reactor whose shield building could ‘shatter like a glass cup’ if impacted by an earthquake or other natural or man-made impact,” Markey said in a statement.

But Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a nuclear power advocate, praised the NRC.

“The United States invented nuclear power but we have fallen behind other countries in embracing new reactor technology and haven’t built a new reactor in 30 years,” Alexander said in a statement. “This new design will make it easier to produce the huge amount of clean energy our economy needs to create good private-sector jobs.”