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Thursday, March 24, 2011

Good questions for the nuclear industry and their overseers

Great questions I'd like to see asked of our nuclear industry, here in the US and sooner rather than later:
  • Why haven’t operators of nuclear plants been required to rearrange the fuel in reactors and provide sprayers, as the National Academy of Sciences  recommended?
  • Why was the Fukushima site required to have only eight hours of battery supply in case it lost power? Why are some U.S. reactors allowed to have only four?
  • Why were the backup diesel generators down low at Fukushima, where they might be swamped by a tsunami, rather than up high?
  • Are there any sites here in the states with their backup generators in a low position and so, possibly capable of being flooded and incapacitated?
  • Why aren’t reactors and sites with potential nuclear bomb material in all countries required to be protected against the kinds of attacks and theft attempts that terrorists and criminals have shown they have the capability to carry out?
  • Shouldn’t all such facilities be required to have on-site armed guards, capable of holding off an attack until off-site forces arrive?
From Matthew Bunn, an associate professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and a former adviser in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, is the author of “Securing the Bomb 2010: Securing All Nuclear Materials in Four Years.”

Inquiring minds really do want to know.


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