Report: Nuclear industry's safety measures are 'inadequate'

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4. Nuclear Plants Should Focus on Risks Posed by External Events, Study Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/25/us/nuclear-plants-should-focus-on-risks-posed-by-external-events-study-says.html?_r=0

Nuclear Plants Should Focus on Risks Posed by External Events, Study Says
By MATTHEW L. WALD, July 24, 2014

Engineers at American nuclear plants have been much better at calculating the risk of an internal problem that would lead to an accident than they have at figuring the probability and consequences of accidents caused by events outside a plant, a report released Thursday by the National Academy of Science said.

Accidents that American reactors are designed to withstand, like a major pipe break, are “stylized” and do not reflect the bigger source of risk, which is external, according to the study. That conclusion is one of the major lessons from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in Japan in 2011, which began after an earthquake at sea caused a tsunami.

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B. John Garrick, a nuclear engineering consultant and vice chairman of the two-year study, said that engineers had more experience calculating the probability of failure in a valve or a pipe than in predicting earthquakes or floods. Better predictions of such events were possible, he said.

The study, ordered by Congress after the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors, said that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the American nuclear industry should focus on the main sources of risk: accidents set off by “extreme external events,” like earthquakes or floods; multiple human or equipment failures; and “violations of operational protocols.”

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