NRC already issuing directives, but...

The NRC has initiated what is sure to be a flood of directives, but I can tell you the boiled down content of the first. It essentially says that here in the United States at all license holding locations (reactors operating, shut down and not defueled permanently, etc) there have been extremely serious safety considerations taken since September 11, 2001 and that these include the orders that operators be prepared for large, crippling events.. not just attacks, but maximum scale natural events. The plans are to include preparation for loss of all AC at a plant, submersion of equipment, and so on. In other words, very serious overall plant conditions and equipment loss not planned in most old original reactor safety analyses. This latest document release yesterday isn't an order; it's a statement relating our idea of safety response to the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

This is naturally on top of the older, existing safety improvements both in equipment and training that followed the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.

Essentially what I'm saying here is that while the media in the US is going haywire over "lack of preparation" at our nuclear power plants the people who are REALLY unprepared are the news reporters who haven't done their homework on safety directives and have no idea what a design basis accident is.

But now YOU have an idea what's going on, at least with regulations.

7:40 PM Eastern Saturday 3/19
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW