Salman Haq

Reactor Engineer

Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research

We recently issued the draft report summarizing detailed research and analyses into what might happen during an accident at a nuclear power plant. Tomorrow, we’ll head to the third plant we analyzed, Sequoyah Nuclear Plant, to discuss the results with the surrounding communities. The plant is located in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn.

The project, called the State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses, or SOARCA, looked at potential situations that could disable a reactor’s normal safety systems. The project used powerful computer programs to predict the plants’ behavior based on decades of real-world experiments into issues such as how reactor fuel responds during the extreme temperatures expected during these accidents.

SOARCA then plugged up-to-date information about the plants into the programs and examined how a potential accident might unfold.

We found that safety equipment the NRC required after the 9/11 attacks, or additional equipment that industry voluntarily added following the Fukushima event, if used according to plan, would help prevent or mitigate a reactor accident. Even for the most severe accidents the research came to three basic conclusions:

Accidents occur more slowly than we originally thought;

Accidents release less radioactive material than we originally thought; and

The emergency plans every U.S. reactor has in place can help keep people safe.

The project came to some more specific conclusions about accident effects around the three plants, Surry (southeast of Richmond, Va.), Peach Bottom (southeast of Lancaster, Pa.), and Sequoyah. For example, the slowly developing nature of the accidents and the existing emergency plans would help keep people safe, even during uncontrolled accidents.

Some of the NRC staff involved in SOARCA discussed the Sequoyah project on April 20, at the TVA Sequoyah Nuclear Training Building.

If you have comments on the draft report, you have until May 12, 2016 to send them in. The best way to comment is through regulations.gov, using Docket ID NRC-2016-0074. You can also mail comments (referencing the Docket ID) to Cindy Bladey, Office of Administration, Mail Stop: OWFN-12-H08, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001.

If you submit comments in writing or in electronic form, they will be posted on the NRC website and on regulations.gov. The NRC will not edit or remove any identifying or contact information; please don’t include any information you wish to keep private.

We’ve also developed a public communications brochure to help explain the SOARCA project to a wider audience of stakeholders using plain language and more illustrations.

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