WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Steven Chu suggested Sunday that Japan’s nuclear crisis might make it less likely that new nuclear reactors are built near large American cities, one of many safety changes that could be forthcoming as U.S. officials review reactor safety.
“Certainly where you site reactors and where we site reactors going forward will be different than where we might have sited them in the past,” Chu said in response to questions about the Indian Point nuclear plant near New York City. “Any time there is a serious accident, we have to learn from those accidents and go forward.”
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said his agency will again review how U.S. nuclear plants store spent fuel. The state of the spent-fuel pools at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has been a concern as Japanese officials try to stem the release of radiation and bring the reactors under control.
“Five days ago, everybody was worried about earthquakes and tsunamis and the reactors cooling,” NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko told The Associated Press. “Today, everybody is worried about the spent-fuel pools. Until this is resolved, we are not going to ultimately know what the most important factors are in terms of what needs to be addressed.”
In an appearance Sunday on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers,” Jaczko emphasized that the 104 nuclear reactors in the United States are required to have redundant systems — “a backup to the backup” — to ensure that a loss of power will not cripple their ability to cool the spent- fuel pools. In Japan, the backup generators were inoperable.
Lessons from the safety studies could affect the NRC’s review of pending applications for new nuclear plants, Jaczko said.
Chu spoke on “Fox News Sunday” and CNN’s “State of the Union.”
