Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Congressional Hearings Transcript

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whatever we can and do so in a disciplined way, is the proper
course of action.
I think that probably we could have done better if we had informed
the public about the strengths and the weaknesses of the
Chernobyl reactor so that they could make their own informed
judgment on that.
Having said that, I think it is still necessary to say after a couple
of months of reviewing that plant, that what we see in terms of the
inherent characteristics of the plant are not the kind of characteristics
that we expect to see and that we in fact see, in the U.S.
plaints.
In part, I believe, this is due to the fact that in the 1960's, when
the introduction of nuclear power in this country was just getting
underway, what is now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, spent
a great deal of effort trying to develop general design criteria that
would assure that the basic configuration of powerplants in this
country was fundamentally sound and not fundamentally flawed.
I think that the measures that have been alluded to by Mr.
Denton show in good measure the efforts subsequent to developing
general design criteria, to augment the inherent safety characteristics
and overcome any weaknesses have been massive and I believe
a successful ones.
Finally, on that same point, I think that the severity of the accident
at Chernobyl, seems to have been caused by the way that the
Chernobyl plant was neutronicaily created, that is, its inherent and
engineered safety features, and not really due to any physical phenomenon
that you would expect to find in each and every powerplant
that uses nuclear technology.
That leaves me again to reiterate the third point: namely, I
think the issue is, one, primarily of restoring confidence and finding
ways to restore confidence, and finding yet more ways to show
that we have a program that emphasizes safety. I think we are all
concerned about finding ways to improve safety in a disciplined
way, where it makes sense to do so.
But I think none of these programs, to improve protection
against core meltdown accidents in this country, should be taken as
an indictment against safety. Our plants are simply not like Chernobyl.
I would put in a point of concern, raised by Senator Metzenbaum,
I think a legitimate concern. I think in order for us to
rightfully claim that the licensing process puts safety first. Federal
regulators must act, and more importantly they must be seen as
acting by the public as requiring that the industry get on with the
job of resolving safety issues. There simply, in my view, is no
excuse for tolerating delays in obtaining industry proposals on how
they would respond to safety issues and, then moving ahead, quickly,
with action and rulings on those proposals.
A comment on what we seem to be learning about Chernobyl at
this point: I think as probably was evident by my first two points,
that the answer does not lie in placing yet more emphasis on emergency
planning or on the source term. I think emergency planning
is not an answer for safety. At best, it is a coherent system for responding
to a situation where attempts to prevent accidents have
simply failed.