SCRIBA, OSWEGO COUNTY -- The nuclear crisis in Japan has increased the amount of scrutiny on nuclear plants across the United States.
In a public meeting Wednesday night, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials discussed their annual findings for the Nine Mile Point plants and James A. Fitzpatrick plant in the town of Scriba, Oswego County.
"Both plants are operating safely based on our last assessments and continue to operate safely as of now," said Darrell Roberts of the NRC.
Officials from both sites say they take the assessments as no surprise and as good news. But NRC officials said there was a security violation at the Fitzpatrick plant in 2010. Citing national security concerns, they could not go into any further details -- but said the proper steps are being taken to fix the problem.
"As discussed this evening, we can't go into specific details related to the security related finding due to the safeguard and security sensitive nature of it," said Fitzpatrick spokeswoman Tammy Holden. "I can tell you that the finding was self identified and immediately acted upon and corrected. There has been no reoccurrence."
In the next week or so, NRC officials will be releasing their first reports on how capable US nuclear plants are in dealing with disasters like the one in Japan. They say they're looking to see if procedures taken before the disaster in Japan would be enough to withstand a similar situation.
