ATLANTA - Westinghouse Electric Co. should resolve problems with its new design of nuclear reactor before regulators to decide whether the system can be used for the next generation of nuclear power plants, the President of a Federal Commission, said Friday.
The decision has cast uncertainty in the timeline to approve the design of the reactor multicomputer of Westinghouse, a decision which had been scheduled this summer. Nuclear industry has been reeling since deadly earthquakes triggered a nuclear crisis on the Japan.
"The NRC will always place its commitment to the safety of the public and a transparent process, before any other consideration" U.S. nuclear-Chairman Gregory Jaczko Regulatory Commission said Friday.
Federal employees may not authorize any new nuclear power plants that use the design of the reactor until they decide that the problems have been corrected. Westinghouse has contracts for the construction of reactors multicomputer in Georgia, Florida and South Carolina. Utility companies in Alabama and North Carolina presented earlier applications to NRC seeking to use the same technology. Four multicomputer reactors are under construction in China.
Westinghouse said it remains confident in its design and will work with the NRC to solve problems, which no society regarded as a security problem not important.
"The multicomputer is a safe, robust design and is worthy to receive the certification of design," Westinghouse said in a statement.
NRC officials have challenged the shield construction, concrete and steel structure designed to protect sensitive parts reactor damage caused by a hurricane, Tornado or even the impact of a plane diverted.
In recent reports, said NRC staff that Westinghouse do take into account not properly combined tensions of an earthquake coupled with forces caused when material changes of temperature.
"We are not saying that is a huge problem, but it is something that he has analyzed,"spokesman NRC Scott Burnell, said Friday."
Regulators also said Westinghouse calculated incorrectly constraints possible on the parts of the plant, including a tank used to hold the emergency cooling water and equipment to protect against radioactive releases in case of fail main cooling systems. The NRC said that it will review the quality assurance program of Westinghouse an inspection of next week.
Supporters say the design of Westinghouse will be a major improvement in security, because it relies on gravity, not electricity, to perform the backup of the cooling systems. During a crisis, a large reservoir at the top of the building of the free water shield. The water would fall on and let it cool a steel containing the Interior equipment of the reactor, including one that contains the radioactive fuel housing.
The crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi to the Japan plant began after 11 March earthquake and the tsunami have eliminated the backup generators needed to power its cooling systems.
Federal regulators had previously questioned the solidity of the building of the shield. Although earlier this year, Jaczko said that these issues had been convinced, a prominent engineer in the dissenting Agency.
Rep. American Ed Markey, D-mass.., welcomed the decision of the NRC to look more closely at the design of the reactor. Criticism of nuclear energy has called for a moratorium on the issuance of permits until regulators can fully investigate the accident at the Japan.
"We must ensure that nuclear power plants in this country can withstand a catastrophic impact and respects the absolute highest standards for safety and security," Markey said in a statement.
During this time, the NRC said late Friday that recent inspections of 104 U.S. commercial nuclear reactors show that all are able to cope with power loss or damage to large areas of a reactor site after extreme events such as natural disaster or a terrorist attack.
The report summarizes the inspections carried out in response to the nuclear crisis to the Japan. The NRC concluded that all nuclear power plants can efficiently cool the reactor core and he spent the pools of fuel following events such as an earthquake, fire or flood.
65 Years of operation of nuclear plants, 12 had questions during inspections with one or more of the conditions of security after the terrorist attacks of September 11, the NRC said. Many of the differences involved the training of the employees of the plant. Three of the 12 plants have solved problems and other sites are actively working to resolve the problems identified during the inspection, the NRC said.
"Our resident inspectors did a good job of identifying the problems thus help plants to identify areas for improvement," said Jaczko.
Problems included emergency pumps which had disappeared or have not worked, and the equipment that has been stored in areas that could be vulnerable to earthquakes or floods, said Eliot Brenner, a spokesman for the NRC.
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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this story. Ray Henry is available at http://www.twitter.com/rhenryAP.
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