The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently uncovered potentially significant flooding vulnerabilities at two Tennessee nuclear power plants and aggressively sanctioned the operator for several safety violations, according to findings made public earlier this month. An internal document released this week suggests that some NRC employees believe the agency is violating its own regulatory mission by allowing at least one reactor to stay online, given the potential for flooding that would likely hobble core cooling equipment and possibly trigger a meltdown. "Only the probable maximum precipitation event, without a concurrent earthquake or tsunami or any other accident, is needed at WBN Unit 1 to produce a loss of all decay heat removal systems," warned Carl F. Lyon and Patrick D. Milano, members of the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
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