"Living on Borrowed Time" & "U.S. Nuclear Power Safety One Year After Fukushima": UCS shines spotlight on 15 near-misses at U.S. reactors in 2011, examines Japan "lessons learned," or not, at NRC
March 7, 2012 David Lochbaum, Director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), recently published NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2011: Living on Borrowed Time, describing 15 near-misses at U.S. atomic reactors in 2011 alone. Note that 4 near-misses took place at reactors belonging to one nuclear utility, Entergy: 2 near misses at Palisades in Michigan, and 2 at Pilgrim in Massachusetts. (Yet another near-miss occurred at Cooper in Nebraska, owned by Nebraska Public Power District, but with support services provided, yet again, by Entergy.)
Pilgrim and Cooper are also GE BWR Mark Is, identical in design to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1-4. Another Mark I on Lochbaum's near-miss list is Brunswick Unit 2. The 31 Mark Is and IIs across the U.S. are listed in Beyond Nuclear's "Freeze Our Fukushimas" pamphlet.
The Thom Hartmann Show interviewed Dave Lochbaum about his report.
On March 7th, Lochbaum and Edwin Lyman, senior scientist at UCS's Global Security Program, released a report entitled U.S. Nuclear Power Safety One Year After Fukushima. Lochbaum and Lyman summarized their findings in a special published by CNN.