Riverkeeper also responded on a national level to the growing problem of groundwater contamination at a number of nuclear power plants around the country, by joining the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in formally petitioning the NRC to require all owners of operating nuclear plants to disclose information on tritium leaks at their facilities. The petition was filed in January 2006 by UCS, supported by Riverkeeper and over twenty other environmental and advocacy groups. The NRC responded by forming a “Lessons Learned Task Force” in March, reputedly to assess the scope of tritium contamination at all operating plants, and to consider whether existing regulations were adequate to address the problem. As the number of plants affected continued to grow, the industry decided to enact their own “Voluntary Initiative” in May 2006. Instigated by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the lobbying arm of the nuclear industry, the initiative asked nuclear plant owners to submit information about tritium leaks and groundwater contamination to the NRC by the end of July 2006. As a purely voluntary measure, the industry plan would not require the owners to give comprehensive data on potential leak sources, as the UCS petition called for. As expected, the NRC staff issued a Draft Directors’ Decision in June, denying the UCS petition. The agency maintained that the goals of the petition were met by the establishment of the task force, and the industry’s voluntary initiative. In a strongly worded response to the Draft Decision, UCS rebuked the agency for failing to properly enforce their own regulations, thereby allowing the industry to set its own standards for dealing with this widespread, long term environmental problem. In September 2006, the Final Directors’ Decision from the NRC rejected our petition, noting that they would continue to oversee such leaks as before. We will continue to join local and national groups in challenging the NRC’s continuingly lax oversight of the nuclear industry.