Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Congressional Hearings Transcript

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around the world. In the immediate aftermath of the accident, the
Government established an interagency task force to assess and
monitor the accident in order to determine its potential
environmental impact on the United States. This interagency task
force effort was completed on May 14, 1986.
To support the interagency task force, the NRC established the
Chernobyl Incident Tracking Team. This team is now winding down
its efforts and completing preparation of a draft report of its
efforts.
Based on the information available to us now, we have concluded no
immediate cha-nges in our regulatory practices and policies are
necessary. Information will be forthcoming from the Soviet Union
this summer regarding details of the Chernobyl Unit 4 design as
well as the accident scenario.
There are substantial design differences between commercial
reactors in the United States and the Chernobyl reactor. These
differences include a reactor enclosure philosophy that appears
significantly different from the containment philosophy embodied
in western-style plant designs. The reactor itself is a graphite
moderated, pressure tube, boiling water design, which is considerably
different from the design of light water reactors in use
in the U. S. The significance of these fundamental design
differences is that the nature of accident initiating events, and
the way they could evolve in a plant like Chernobyl, as well as