The proposed bill would require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to conduct an Independent Safety Assessment (ISA) of vital systems at Indian Point and would require the NRC and FEMA to provide an explanation detailing the facts they relied upon in approving Indian Point’s emergency plans for the past four years, despite the findings of the 2003 Witt Report in which James Lee Witt – the nation’s foremost authority on emergency planning – concluded that the plans are inadequate to protect the people from an “unacceptable dose of radiation.”

Specifically, the legislation would require that the NRC conduct an Independent Safety Assessment (ISA) that replicates the model conducted at the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant, following years of poor performance and unplanned outages. The ISA included about 17,000 hours of preparations, inspections, and reviews by a 25-member team comprised of top NRC engineers, independent (outside) contractors, and state employees. As a result of this vertical and horizontal slice review, the plant owners were required to either fix the gross number of problems or close the plant. (The plant is in its final year of decommissioning.) In contrast to this comprehensive inspection, the NRC has embarked on a new, pared-down engineering inspection: it has far less hours – on average approximately 800 per review – and there are no outside contractors or state employees.

The public and elected officials must proactively work toward getting the bills reintroduced and passed in both Houses. As we’ve seen time and time again, the NRC is slow to act and rarely makes decisions in the best interest of the public. Indian Point, with its myriad safety problems and unworkable evacuation plans, is a unique plant – the wrong plant in the wrong place at the wrong time. Twenty million residents deserve a truly independent safety assessment as outlined in the legislation. If the NRC fails to conduct a Maine Yankee-style ISA on its own, then federal legislation must direct its hand in doing the right thing (that is afterall, how Indian Point’s sirens got replaced!).

Why the ISA is Independent vs the NRC's Current Process