Report Looks At 2011 Nuclear Problems

Scott Detrow

Recent Stories

Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

February 29, 2012 | 2:11 PM

Jeff Fusco / Getty Images

Dauphin County's Three Mile Island

The New York Times’ Green blog takes a look at a new report examining nuclear power plant safety in 2011:

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission spotted a few problems at American reactors last year and directed plant owners to fix them before they could cause accidents, but it also let a lot of problems slide and failed to follow up when there were indications of deeper troubles. That’s the conclusion of a review of nuclear plant safety in 2011 by David Lochbaum, an expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that is generally critical of the industry.
Mr. Lochbaum also wrote that some plants do not meet the commission’s standards for fires and earthquakes. The agency has granted some plants exemptions from some fire requirements, giving them alternate ways of complying although it recently ordered all plants to re-evaluate their earthquake preparedness.

Pennsylvania has five nuclear power plants: Three Mile Island, Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station, Susquehanna Steam Electric Station, Limerick Generating Station, and Beaver Valley Power Station.