The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is directing virtually every commercial U.S. nuclear powerplant to meet new safety requirements, which the commission says it is putting in place as a result of lessons learned from Japan's March 2011 Fukushima disaster.
The NRC, in a March 9 announcement, said it has instructed its staff to issue three orders to operators of U.S. commercial nuclear reactors. The directives apply to all reactors currently operating or under construction, as well as to those planned and recently licensed at the Southern Nuclear Operating Co.'s Vogtle site in Georgia.