Safety Question on Fukushima Anniversary: Should Plants of the Same Design Have Filtered Vents?
Of the 104 reactors in the U.S., 31 are very like those in Fukushima. Here is a map of those 31 U.S. sites.
After Fukushima, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) studied what happened. Should it require new safety measures here, even though a crisis is very unlikely?
“It’s not zero,” says Charles Casto, director of NRC Region III, which oversees plants in the Midwest. “The probability’s not zero; it’s something.”
Region III has about two dozen reactors. We spoke at Casto’s office. Nuclear regulation, he said, is about possibility more than probability.
“You take your best – based on history…you know, what has history shown you that the probability would be?” Casto said. “But that doesn’t mean zero.”
The Fukushima reactors, and
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