Toshiba to meet with nuclear regulators on starting permit process for 4s reactor  
10-19-07
Tim Bodony (KIYU)

transcript of story that aired in October 19 newscast

A public meeting near Washington DC next week should answer some questions about how long it might take, and how much it might cost, to put a small nuclear power plant in Galena.   

The Japanese industrial giant Toshiba announced last month that it is ready to move forward with the process of getting its “4-s” nuclear reactor approved for use in the United States.   

Toshiba requested a meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to introduce the project to regulators, and the NRC granted such a meeting for next Tuesday (October 23). 

Unlike many nuclear power proposals around the country, Toshiba’s 4-s reactor has a design that American regulators have never reviewed before.   

It is uncertain how long the NRC will take to review Toshiba’s design work, and how much testing the NRC will require Toshiba to do, in order to prove that its design is safe.   

The City of Galena consultant on the nuclear project, Marvin Yoder, thinks that Tuesday’s meeting could shed some light on those issues.    

Yoder: Much of it is going to be the NRC explaining to the Toshiba what they are going to have to do to get the permit process started.  So I don't think everybody is going to say 'here's all the answers'. It's more of a preliminary meeting, so [the NRC] can lay out the ground rules on how the process is going to proceed from this point forward.

Because the formal review process has not yet begun, Yoder does not expect the Tuesday meeting to go into much detail about Toshiba’s research and testing. 

Yoder: I don't think they are going to be grilled about any particulars of the project.  i think what they are going to be told is a little bit about how much it's gonna cost, how much staff time that the NRC may need

Toshiba officials have arranged a separate meeting on Monday, involving representatives from Argonne National Lab, Westinghouse, and the City of Galena’s consulting partners on the nuclear project.   Yoder suspects that the point of this meeting might be to introduce Westinghouse as the new point of contact for the project.  Toshiba purchased the Pittsburgh-based company last year. 

A new nuclear power plant would require both a site permit, and a license for its design.   

Toshiba is financially responsible for getting its design approved for use in the U.S., but the City of Galena and its partners would have to pay all the costs of securing a site permit.   

No funding for that is currently in place.  Yoder says that there’s no way he could get more money, until a meeting like the one of Tuesday provides more information. 

Yoder: It was a conscious thing.  We felt like, until it was laid out clearly, what Toshiba had to do to move this process forward, most of the grant agencies were saying 'we want to know what the timeframes are.'  And we don't have any idea what the timeframes are until after this meeting.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expecting a flood of applications for new reactors to come in over the next few years, and the NRC is trying to expand its workforce to prepare the work ahead.   

Tuesday’s meeting will occur at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission headquarters in Rockville, Maryland.