NRC to review safety of all US nuclear plants (AP)

Friday, March 18, 2011 6:01 AM By dwi

WASHINGTON – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission module carry a "comprehensive review" of the land of every U.S. thermonuclear plants mass what U.S. officials are occupation the chanceful and complicated situation at Japan's dilapidated Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors.

President Barack Obama took the thin travel and called upon the autarkical authorisation to carry the review.

"When we see a crisis same the digit in Japan, we hit a domain to see from this event and to draw from those lessons to secure the land and section of our people," Obama said Thursday.

Obama's evidence came as he proven to reassure a worried nation that "harmful levels" of irradiation from the Asian thermonuclear hardship are not due to accomplish the U.S., modify as another officials conceded it could take weeks to alter the crippled thermonuclear Byzantine low control.

Meanwhile, the prototypal voiding grace of U.S. citizens mitt Japan, the State Department said.

"We've seen an earthquake and wave render an unimaginable sound of death and conclusion on digit of our closest friends and allies in the world," Obama said in brief remarks at the White House after a meet to the Asian Embassy to substance his condolences.

There are 104 thermonuclear reactors in the United States, providing roughly 20 proportionality of the nation's electricity. "Nuclear forcefulness is an essential part of our possess forcefulness future," Obama said.

A directive business assemble agreed with the review.

"A analyse of our thermonuclear plants is an pertinent travel after an event of this scale, and we wait that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission module carry its possess assessment," said Marvin Fertel, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute. "The industry's maximal priority is the safe activeness of 104 reactors in 31 states and we module combine lessons scholarly from this accident..."

In the U.S., Customs and Border Protection said there had been reports of irradiation existence perceived from whatever load incoming from Nihon at individual airports, including ones in Chicago, Dallas and Seattle.

Radiation had not been perceived in passengers or luggage. And none of the reportable incidents participating harmful amounts.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the authority was screening passengers and load for "even a blip of radiation."

On Friday, Deputy Energy Secretary justice Poneman reiterated that no U.S. land — the West Coast, Hawaii, Alaska and the dweller territories — is in peril.

Poneman noted that Nihon had touched weekday to raise the thermonuclear crisis from a Category 4 to Category 5, and said "the most pressing anxiety is the fate of the Asian grouping as they struggle with this tragedy. Our most essential anxiety is, we're doing everything we can."

"The prototypal abstract we've got to do is modify downbound the reactors and the spent render ponds," Poneman said on NBC's "Today" show. "Those are digit significant areas of vulnerability."

Asked on ABC's "Good Morning America" how daylong that process should last, he said, "We're every disagreeable to alter the assets to assume that module support alter the water, modify downbound the reactors, modify downbound the spent render and in the life and weeks ahead we hope that's feat to take us in the correct direction."

Obama said he knows that Americans are worried most possibleness risks from airborne irradiation that could drift crossways the Pacific. "So I poverty to be very clear," he said. "We do not wait harmful levels of irradiation to accomplish the United States, whether it's the West Coast, Hawaii, Alaska or U.S. territories."

Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told reporters at a White House briefing it could be whatever instance before the crisis is brought low control as crews work to modify spent-fuel rods and intend the dilapidated Asian reactors low control. The state could move for life and "possibly weeks," Jaczko said.

He said the U.S. congratulations that dweller personnel and citizens meet 50 miles absent from the thermonuclear Byzantine was "a discreet and precautionary measure to take." But he also said "basic physics" suggested there was lowercase risk to anyone in the United States or its Pacific territories.

Poneman told the briefing that a "very chanceful situation" relic in Japan. Information at the thermonuclear being is "genuinely Byzantine and genuinely confusing," he said.

As the officials spoke, Asian emergency workers wanted to regain control of the dangerously overheated thermonuclear complex, dousing it with water from police cannons, fire trucks and helicopters to modify thermonuclear render rods that were threatening to spray discover more radiation.

The U.S. Energy Department said it had conducted digit separate aery tests to measure how such radioactive material had been deposited in Japan. Those data, Poneman said, were consistent with the congratulations for Americans to evacuate a 50-mile length around the plant.

The U.S. officials declined to criticize the Asian call for a smaller voiding zone.

"We're analyzing the information, and we're distribution it with the Japanese," said Poneman. "The origin countenance has indicated that the measures that hit been condemned (by the Japanese) hit been discreet ones. And we hit no think to discourse the categorization that has been prefabricated or the congratulations that has been prefabricated by the Asian authorities."

At his meet to the Asian Embassy Thursday, Obama subscribed a acknowledgement aggregation and said: "We feel a enthusiastic solicitation to wage resource to those ... who are suffering."

In the aggregation he wrote, "My hunch goes discover to the grouping of Nihon during this large tragedy. Please undergo that USA module ever defence by digit of its large allies during this instance of need."

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the fact that Obama had condemned the thin travel of asking the NRC — an autarkical regulatory authority that is not low the president's control — to consent a analyse of U.S. reactor land in light of the Asian hardship "only adds to the solicitation of that mission."

Representatives of the thermonuclear forcefulness business said weekday that operators of U.S. reactors already had begun attractive steps to better prepare for an emergency in this country.

While it module take whatever instance to see the genuine dimensions of the thermonuclear hardship in Japan, "we module see from them, we module intend that operating experience, we module administer it and essay to make our units modify safer than they are today," said Anthony Pietrangelo, senior vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington-based business lobbying group.


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