By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article Federal regulators have launched a special probe to determine if officials at the Oyster Creek nuclear power violated rules and waited too long to declare an emergency alert as rising waters threatened critical reactors systems. Three inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began a “special inspection” Tuesday into the alert called by plant officials as waters driven by the storm rose to 7.4 feet in the plant’s inta

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article The roaring winds, at times approaching 100 miles per hour, were relentless as Hurricane Sandy pushed the Atlantic Ocean towards the eastern seaboard. The sheer breadth of the Superstorm, with hurricane-force winds radiating some 250 miles from Sandy’s eye, meant 34 nuclear power plants from North Carolina to Vermont would experience extreme weather. While the winds themselves posed little danger to the primary physical struc

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article Eleven nuclear power plants in the direct path of Hurricane Sandy – including all four in New Jersey – are on special alert status with additional federal monitors and plans to shut down if the winds or waves exceed safe storm limits. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission dispatched extra monitors this past week end to augment the two full-time resident inspectors at each plant to ensure that proper procedures are followed as the

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article Robert Aleksick was emphatic. “FAC is like roaches,” he said, spreading his arms wide in a gesture of exasperation. “Where you see one, there are bound to be more hidden away.” Aleksick should know about these hidden pests. As president of CSI Technologies, Inc., he is one of the nation’s foremost experts on FACs, or Flow Assisted Corrosion, a condition of degradation on the inside of pipes carrying superheated, radioactive w

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article The Nuclear Regulatory Commission faces a Thursday deadline to challenge a landmark, unanimous decision by a three-judge Appellate Court panel in June which ordered the agency to develop site specific assessments of the environmental impact of meltdowns in the bulging spent fuel pools before extending the licenses of some 30 nuclear power plants. Immediately after receiving the June 8 decision the NRC asked the court for the

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article In an unprecedented move, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has bowed to a court order  and imposed a temporary halt in relicensing nuclear power plants until it thoroughly examines the impact of runaway meltdowns at the plants’ spent fuel pools. That action affects the relicensing evaluations of some 33 facilities at 19 sites, including Indian Point 2 and 3 on the Hudson River opposite Bear Mountain.  And it leaves in limbo

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article The White House, wasting no time lamenting the pending departure of embattled Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko, has nominated Allison M. Macfarlane, a geologist with 20 years’ experience in public policy and nuclear waste issues to replace him. Dr. Macfarlane, who earned her doctorate in geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and works currently as associate professor of Environmental Scienc

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article Gregory Jaczko resigned as head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Monday, ending months of open warfare with the staff and the other four commissioners over safety issues and a personal style often perceived as imperious. Jaczko’s departure stills the agency’s lone major voice pushing for increased safety measures at the nation’s 104 nuclear power plants despite the its long-standing aversion to imposing costly fixes on th

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article Operators of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant have been granted a year’s delay in their required emergency drill inSouth Jerseybecause their state emergency counterparts are still occupied with the aftermath of a summer hurricane and an early fall snowstorm. Michael Pacilio, president of Exelon Nuclear, which operates the plant, was notified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the exercise originally scheduled for S

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article “…EPA’s insupportable assumption that screening technologies are available at nuclear facilities, threaten the viability of existing plants and their daily contribution to cost-effective electricity….” Brief, Entergy Corp v US EPA 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals July 5, 2005 For much of the last decade Entergy Nuclear, the owners of the twin Indian Point reactors in New York, have battled environmental regulators from the state