Room for improvement at U.S. nuclear plants: task force

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. task force examining the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant expects to find ways to improve safety at the country's 104 U.S. nuclear plants but has not found any major problems in its first 30 days of work.

"To date, the task force has not identified any issues that undermine our confidence in the continued safety and emergency planning of U.S. plants," said Charles Miller, head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission task force, in materials prepared for a briefing on Thursday.

In the wake of the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, the task force is looking at how U.S. plants are equipped and prepared to handle disasters, such as the risks of earthquakes and floods they were designed to withstand -- as well as extreme disasters that go beyond plants' "design basis," Miller said.

The group will closely examine the back-up systems for plants to survive an extended loss of power. That was one of the most difficult problems for the Fukushima plant, where reactors and spent fuel pools overheated after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami overwhelmed the plants' emergency systems.

The plant is still not stable, and officials said on Thursday they had discovered a hole in a container housing one of its reactor cores, which is leaking water.

LAWMAKER QUESTIONS BACK-UP PLANS

Inspections of U.S. plants following Japan's disaster uncovered some issues at how well prepared they are to handle attacks, and the NRC is requiring plants to certify they have equipment in place to handle extreme events and staff trained to carry out plans.

Public and political concern about the safety of U.S. plants has increased since Fukushima. On Thursday, Edward Markey, a vocal Democratic critic of the industry in the House, released his own report about U.S. nuclear safety.

Markey decried what he called "widespread malfunctions and inoperability of emergency diesel generators" and lack of back-up power at some spent fuel pools.

"It is apparent that many of the failures of the reactor cooling systems and measures to prevent explosions that led to the meltdowns in Japan could also occur in the United States," Markey said, calling for the NRC to halt its work renewing licenses for existing plants.

(Editing by John Picinich and Sofina Mirza-Reid)

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