Safety conscious industry steps up vigilance.

• Position: POWERING SAFETY - Nuclear power plants safety

One word comes up again and again when nuclear power experts talk about safety: Fukushi ma. The already safety-obsessed industry turned up its vigilance after a devastating earthquake and tsunami crippled the Japanese plant. Its failure was a "once in a million-year event," says Vic Fregonese, vice president of safety, quality and performance improvement for ARE VA Inc., a French nuclear engineering and services company that has its North America headquarters in Charlotte. N.C.

There have been three significant incidents--Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Chernobyl in Russia and Fukushima--in more than 14.500 cumulative reactor years of commercial operations in 32 countries, according to the London-based World Nuclear Association (WANO), whose members represent every facet of the industry. U.S. nuclear power plants don't face the same kind of risk as Fukushima because they are sited and designed to withstand natural disasters. "But industry did agree on some things that would make a safe industry even safer." Fregonese says.

AREVA has been involved in several projects to increase safety, including developing technology to help plant operators monitor spent fuel that's in wet or dry storage. Twelve-foot-long spent fuel rods must remain submerged in water for several years to avoid overheating, a condition that when water is introduced produces steam and hydrogen, leading to Fukushima-size explosions. AREVA is testing a spent fuel pool monitoring system that uses radar that can peer through smoke, steam and debris to measure water levels from up to 200 feet away.

Another lesson learned from Fukushima is that emergency backup equipment should not be stored near the plant, where it could be damaged by the same calamity that takes down the plant. AREVA and Birmingham. Ala.-based Pooled Equipment Inventory Co. were selected by the Washington, D.C., Nuclear Energy Institute's Nuclear Strategic Issue Advisory Committee to store equipment for utility customers at off-site regional response centers.

The Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, S.C., is working with nuclear power generators to develop commercial nuclear fuel that is more-tolerant of an event like a Fukushima," says lab director Terry Michalske. Some of the research involves applying temperature resistant coatings--or cladding--to prevent fuel-water reactions from producing hydrogen if the fuel becomes overheated. As the lab's commercial partner on the project, AREVA would be...