Employee Meeting - NRC

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the feedback we were given earlier in this very meeting about
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perception being so important.
And so, I want to honor and
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acknowledge the kernel of the question, which is that if this Commission
or this Agency is developing the perception that we're yielding to
political pressure, that in itself is enough to be concerned about, even if
it is not true. So, I want to acknowledge the feedback we got earlier,
that perception is also something we need to be thinking about.
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COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD:
important to say a couple of things about this.
I think that it is
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First, you know, what happened at Fukushima-Daiichi
is something that had tremendous importance to anyone involved in the
operation of nuclear power plants. I think that it is an incident that
taught us some lessons that we needed to learn. And I think it would
have been very easy for us in the United States to criticize the
Japanese regulators, the Japanese operators, and say, "We wouldn't
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have made those mistakes.
anything."
So, therefore, we don't have to do
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The Near-Term Task Force looked beyond that. They
looked at where there could be weaknesses in our own system. And
they made a series of recommendations that the Commission has
spent a great deal of time, a tremendous amount of time, analyzing
very carefully.
And the decisions we have made thus far, I am very,
very comfortable are based on sound principles, are based on the need
to assure adequate protection for the public. And I don't think we have
gone nearly as far as some people would like us to go. I think that we