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Neil Sheehan Public Affairs Officer, Region I   It may not be as daunting as searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack, but the process of trying to track down the source of tritium contamination at the Pilgrim nuclear power plant has been long and painstaking. Since mid-2010, efforts have been...

Viktoria Mitlying Senior Public Affairs Officer Region III   A refueling outage is a time when the number of workers at the plant soars from 700 to about 2,000 — with most working in highly radioactive areas of the plant not accessible during normal plant operation. The NRC has sent four additional...

Victor Dricks Senior Public Affairs Officer, Region IV   As the eyes and ears of the NRC, resident inspectors never know when they might have to respond to an emergency at the plants they monitor. Fred Sanchez, Arkansas Nuclear One Senior Resident Inspector, was preparing to attend Easter services with...

Matthew Mitchell Chief, Projects Management Branch Japan Lessons-Learned Directorate   When you talk about something over and over again, you sometimes end up with a verbal shorthand to keep conversations moving. The NRC has certainly done that in discussing “Tiers,” “Mitigating Strategies” and some...

Rich Correia Director, Division of Risk Analysis Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research   The NRC’s review of new reactor licenses, renewal of existing licenses or major changes to our safety regulations involves an analysis of the impacts of potential accidents. Long before the 2011 accident at Fukushima...

Scott Burnell Public Affairs Officer   The NRC has already ordered numerous upgrades to nuclear power plant safety based on what we’ve learned about the Fukushima nuclear incident in 2011. Now, the NRC’s Commission is doing more. They have just approved a two-track approach for additional improvements...

Lara Uselding Public Affairs Officer, Region IV   The NRC will hold a public meeting March 27 to discuss the status of the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant, located 19 miles north of Omaha. As many know, the plant has been shut down since April 9, 2011, for a refueling outage. The outage was extended due ...

David Skeen Director, Japan Lessons-Learned Directorate   Today is the second anniversary of the terrible earthquake, related tsunami and the resulting nuclear accident in Japan. Two years ago, the world watched in horror as the tragedy unfolded. Almost from those very first days, the NRC began to focus...

Victor Dricks Senior Public Affairs Officer   The NRC made public today redacted versions of two reports prepared by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries concerning the steam generator replacement at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). The Steam Generator Root Cause Analysis Report and a Supplemental...

Dave McIntyre Public Affairs Officer   Duke Energy’s decision to shut down the Crystal River 3 reactor in Florida rather than pay for expensive repairs to its containment dome has focused attention once more on the lengthy process for decommissioning nuclear power plants. Since Dominion Nuclear’s announcement...

Scott Krepel Reactor System Engineer   One of the most important safety questions in a nuclear power plant is: Can you cool the very hot nuclear fuel in an accident when normal cooling is disrupted? The scientific field best equipped to answer this question is called “thermal hydraulics.” The first part...

Prema Chandrathil Region III Public Affairs Officer   On Friday, the Palisades plant in Covert, Mich., shut down so plant personnel could find and repair a leak somewhere in the reactor’s cooling water system. Soon after, the NRC dispatched an additional inspector from the Regional III office, located...

Lauren Gibson Licensing Project Manager   A licensing project manager for an operating reactor has a lot of responsibilities. We coordinate technical reviews, interface with the licensee, support the regional staff and the resident inspectors, respond during any incidents, and serve as the headquarters...

Neil Sheehan Public Affairs Officer Region I   True to forecasts, New England states bore the brunt of the winter storm dubbed Nemo. With respect to nuclear power plants in the region, only one – Pilgrim, in Massachusetts – had its operations interrupted by the powerful Nor’easter. At 9:17 p.m. Friday...

Neil Sheehan Public Affairs Officer Region I   New England states and other parts of the Northeast are battening down the hatches in anticipation of a winter storm dubbed “Nemo” by the Weather Channel. Unlike “Finding Nemo,” the 2003 hit movie from Disney featuring a clown fish dad roaming the seas...

Lara Uselding Public Affairs Officer Region IV   As we turn the page on a new year, the NRC is watching closely as the operators of the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant, located in Omaha, Neb., are working around the clock in hopes of returning the plant to service. It remains to be seen if the [...]

Viktoria Mitlyng Senior Public Affairs Officer Region III   We gathered at the NRC’s Region III office near Chicago on a recent Saturday morning to continue our dialogue with the public about the Palisades nuclear plant. We decided to host our second webinar on this plant on a Saturday in response to...

Victor Dricks Senior Public Affairs Officer Region IV The NRC has established a special panel to coordinate the agency’s evaluation of Southern California Edison Co.’s proposed plan for restarting its Unit 2 reactor and ensuring that the root causes of problems with the plant’s steam generators are identified...

Victor Dricks Senior Public Affairs Officer Region IV   At 4:40 p.m. Central Time Tuesday, officials at the South Texas Project nuclear power plant near Bay City, Texas, notified the NRC’s Operations Center that a fire had broken out in the main transformer of Unit 2, causing an automatic shutdown. Unit...

The Salem nuclear power plant’s Unit 1 “tripped” on Dec. 21st. Brown’s Ferry Unit 2 tripped the following day. In both cases, something happened that caused the reactor to automatically shut down to ensure safety. In other words, a trip means a plant is doing what it’s supposed to do. Let’s look at the...

This past weekend I had the honor of leading a delegation of U.S. officials to an international conference in Japan designed to keep up the global momentum of enhancing nuclear safety after the Fukushima accident. We met in Koriyama City, some 30 miles west of the scenic Japanese coast, where recovery...

To implement what we’ve learned from 2011’s Fukushima Dai-ichi accident, the NRC in November 2011 created a group of more than 20 full-time employees focused exclusively on these activities. This Japan Lessons Learned Project Directorate is now a year old, and everything it’s accomplished to date highlights...

NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane stood before plant workers at the Fukushima Dai-ichi and Dai-ni sites Thursday, praised their efforts after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and said the global nuclear community must learn the lessons unfolding from the tragedy. Macfarlane, who is leading a delegation...

Given the interest in the NRC’s San Onofre-related meeting in Maryland next week, it’s a good time to step back and see where things stand in reviewing the plant’s restart request. Of course, the San Onofre nuclear power plant has been safely shut down for almost a year now, after the plant discovered...

Just over five weeks after Sandy battered the Northeast, all three of the reactors that experienced a shutdown as a result of the storm are now back at full power. Two of the affected reactors, Salem Unit 1 and Indian Point 3, returned to service not long after Sandy struck on Oct. 29. Indian Point ...