On Frontline, Nuclear Aftershocks and Renewing the Operating License at Indian Point

Just picked up this clip from The Daily Courtland. In it, Frontline's Miles O'Brien repeats a common misconception about nuclear power plants:

“The reality is, Indian Point’s technology is not cutting edge, it’s old,” correspondent Miles O’Brien says in the documentary. The documentary shows scenes of the Village of Buchanan, Mayor Sean Murray and inside Indian Point Nuclear Power Plants, discussing the relicensing of the 40-year-old plants.

Again, I refer back to the transcript of the December 1, 2011 interview that O'Brien conducted with Joe Pollock, then Vice President of Operations with Indian Point Energy Center:

MR. O’BRIEN: 60 years seems like a long time to run a plant. And I’ve even heard some people say, hey, maybe we can go 80 years with some of these plants. First of all, did you take a position on that yet? Or are you still –

MR. POLLOCK: No, we have already – we’re working on 20 years. And when the plants were designed, they built for the 40 year life cycle. It was believed that the reactor vessel was the limiting addition. So at that time, when we built them, we put specimens in the vessel that we could take out every 10 years and measure the impacts and the influence from the neutrons from reactivity. And what we’ve found out, it was far less than what we had done in our calculations. So that’s how it came about, that we looked at and said: We could extend the life of these plants, at least from a reactor standpoint, and then be able to do the maintenance and the life extension on the other equipment that was part of it.

[...]

MR. O’BRIEN: So how can you assure – people are concerned when they think about a plant running as long as that. I guess what you’re saying is it really isn’t 60 years old. Is that – the way I look at it?

MR. POLLOCK: Well, it’s not 40 years old, you know. And you know, a lot of the equipment in here is not 10 years old. As you go through, we do total teardowns and rebuilds on emergency diesel generators, I believe, you got to see on your tour. We do complete teardowns and inspections over there of every refueling outage. We test them once a month. They have to start within 10 seconds, you know, without failure and be able to load up and be available. But the realities are they don’t run. So it’s like starting your car you have in your garage once a month to make sure it starts. And then, what we do is, after two years, we’ll go in there and tear apart and inspect it to make sure everything’s OK, and then we’ll go do an endurance run on it, you know. So then we’ll go take that long drive to make sure it’s going to work.

This is an issue that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has also addressed:

A 40-year license term was selected on the basis of economic and antitrust considerations, not technical limitations.

And, as NEI mentioned in one of its fact sheets ...

The 40‐year term of a nuclear power plant license has nothing to do with aging plant components or a belief that safety needs to be reviewed on a 40‐year cycle. Instead, the period was chosen to parallel the financing amortization period for a plant. Exceeding federal safety standards is an ongoing activity for companies that operate nuclear power plants.

For more, I'll refer you back to this post from Victoria Barq, one where she made the case that the idea that Japan should shut down reactors once they reached the 40-year mark was wrongheaded for all sorts of reasons -- especially when there's absolutely no evidence that the incident at Fukushima Daiichi occurred because of the age of the plant.

As I've said previously, more updates as warranted.

Some Notes On Frontline, Indian Point and Emergency Preparedness

Tonight, PBS will be airing a new episode of Frontline entitled, "Nuclear Aftershocks," a look at the world's reaction to the incident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility. Here on the East Coast, the program will begin at 10:00 p.m. EST.

As we noted at NEI Nuclear Notes last week, the nuclear industry cooperated extensively with Frontline on the broadcast, and over the past few days, we've been getting a better idea on the direction of the program.

A good portion of the program deals with Indian Point Energy Center (IPEC) and the question of whether or not the sort of incident that occurred in Japan could happen there.

Chief among the questions posed by reporter Miles O'Brien is whether or not the area around IPEC could be evacuated in time in case of an accident. As it turns out, that's a question that's been recently addressed by NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko. As Bloomberg reported in Decmember:

The New York City area may be safely evacuated in the event of a Fukushima-like disaster at the Indian Point nuclear plant because a crisis would unfold slowly, the top U.S. nuclear regulator said.

“Nuclear accidents do develop slowly, they do develop over time, and we saw that at Fukushima,” U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko, 41, said in an interview today at Bloomberg's headquarters in New York. It's unlikely a nuclear accident would require prompt action beyond “more than a few miles,” where the highest radiation levels would be, he said.

That's a point that O'Brien ought to include in tonight's broadcast, because after all, he's already been told just that. Back on December 1, 2011, O'Brien interviewed Joe Pollock, then Vice President of Operations at IPEC. A representative of Entergy recorded that interview and we made a transcript:

MR. O’BRIEN: But because of all those people, it – the problem of evacuation, if something goes wrong, is a bigger challenge, isn’t it?

MR. POLLOCK: The evacuation is handled through the state and the counties, but the – at Indian Point we do a traffic study – emergency traffic study – every year. It’s required once every 10 years, but here we do that analysis, and we provide that to the state as well as the counties to implement evacuation. It considers ongoing weather; it considers a football game at West Point; so how would you handle the crowds on that day. So we continue to update that.

The key thing to remember – and it actually showed in Japan – these are not fast-moving events, you know, where you have to evacuate in two hours. In fact, there are days – a long time before they would be to a level that, should something happen, you would have to have that evacuation.

MR. O’BRIEN: So there’s – the notion of an instant event that would require everybody in a 50-mile radius to get out is hard to imagine?

MR. POLLOCK: It’s hard to imagine. Matter of fact, if you look at all the studies, all the analysis done by both the NRC, independent labs and the manufacturers, that there is not a scenario that’s an instant scenario.

We'll be posting that transcript on our Web site later today.

Here are some other points to keep in mind when considering IPEC and a potential evacuation:

• Indian Point Energy Center —like other nuclear facilities—is designed with wide margins to withstand the toughest natural phenomena predicted for its area.
• It has a very robust safety record, including during severe events. In 2011 alone, American nuclear facilities were able to withstand hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and even an earthquake. Click here to view the interactive graphic that recounts those events.
• The EPZ standard for evacuation—created and approved by the NRC—is 10-miles. Indian Point is 24 miles from NYC.
• The 2nd EPZ of 50 miles is for monitoring of radiation levels—not evacuation.

We have a number of resources available on this topic for readers who would like to know more:

NEI Web site: Emergency Preparedness;

NEI Fact Sheet: Emergency Preparedness and Nuclear Energy Facilities

NEI Fact Sheet: Nuclear Power Plant Emergency Preparedness: Protecting Our Neighbors in the Event of an Emergency

We'll have other updates throughout the day. Please stay tuned.

On "Frontline" and "Nuclear Aftershocks"

My colleague, John Keeley, asked that I share the following note with our readers:

On January 17, PBS’ "Frontline" program will air "Nuclear Aftershocks," a documentary which purports to examine “the hazards and benefits of nuclear power.” Former CNN science reporter Miles O’Brien, with 30 years of journalism experience covering space, science and technology, leads the investigation and analysis for the program. O’Brien is a solid journo with a reputation for resisting the melodramatic and sensational in favor of substantive and balanced pieces. Would that we’d seen more of that among O’Brien’s broadcast peers covering Fukushima last spring.

Still, there are focus points to the piece we already know about that cause concern. O’Brien – who has been tweeting about the production for a few weeks – and his documentary team visited Indian Point Energy Center ostensibly on the premise that what happened at Fukushima Diachii could potentially happen at the New York plant located on the Hudson River. Indian Point is very much a political piñata in New York, but few of its critics, I think, posit any likelihood of the plant being visited by a 48-foot tsunami. And in the U.S., we don’t locate our nuclear plants on subduction zones.

Know this: industry offered PBS inordinate assistance with this project. Both Exelon and Indian Point’s operator, Entergy, afforded "Frontline" generous access to their respective plant sites, and made executives available for reflection about industry in a post-Fukushima world. Exelon spent a full day with Frontline last August at its LaSalle site. The Frontline team was afforded a tour of the fuel pool/building, the B5b equipment stage areas, the cask loading area, dry cask storage, a working hydrogen recombiner, and a number of underground spaces where backup equipment, emergency fuel supplies, and submarine doors were visible.

Industry had hoped to preview this program in advance of its airing, but the representative of one of our member companies has yet to hear back from the producers of the program. We will be paying close attention to "Nuclear Aftershocks" to see if the show attempts to achieve some context for decisions made in both Germany and Japan to shutter nuclear plants, such as acknowledging that globally today more than 60 new nuclear plants are under construction. We do know that "Frontline" met with individuals outside of industry concerned by recent decisions by some countries to abandon nuclear power.

“We have not yet found a base-load electric power without carbon emissions, other than nuclear power,” NASA’s James Hansen informed O’Brien in an interview.

The program airs on PBS around the country beginning on January 17. Click here to check when it will air on your local PBS member station.

Rowe; TVA; Debating; Dark and Stormy Nights

Exelon chief John Rowe isn’t very worried about new regulations on the company’s nuclear energy facilities:

"We're not in any panic at all," John Rowe, chairman and CEO of Chicago-based Exelon Corp. told investors on an earnings call.

Well, why not?

Rowe said the company's "worst fears" -- changes to the nuclear licensing process; mandates that would increase security personnel; or standards that would lower the amount of time spent nuclear fuel can be stored in cooling pools -- (all potential big ticket items for Exelon) so far haven't surfaced.

"We don't at the moment see anything that has a major impact on the economics of these plants," he said.

He’s referring to the findings and recommendations of the NRC’s 90-day review report of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. It’s still early in the process of learning all the lessons that the accident will teach, and Rowe doesn’t mention that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack motivated a strong push for increased physical security at the facilities, but he’s right enough right now.

"With the challenges ahead for the country's oldest and dirtiest coal plants, I would rather have the challenges of Exelon's nuclear fleet any day," Rowe said.

Rowe is notably blunt – it’s a very appealing quality.

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In a letter to TVA last week several environmental groups — Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, Bellefonte Efficiency and Sustainability Team, Mothers Against Tennessee River Radiation and Center for Health, Environment and Justice — asked that the utility remove consideration of the project [the Bellefonte facility] from its agenda.

The letter noted that the NRC is still evaluating the Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi, called the Bellefonte reactor design and the future of nuclear energy questionable, indicated it believes the decision is cost prohibitive, and claimed that the site is located in an earthquake zone with numerous sinkholes. It also reminded TVA that litigation attempting to block the plan is still in the early stages.

Doesn’t give you much to hang onto, does it? I’m sure TVA is just shutting everything down.

TVA is moving forward with strengthening its nuclear power plants against threat of natural disaster, and improving safety and emergency preparedness as it maintains its commitment to operate and expand its fleet of reactors in the Tennessee Valley.

Well, so much for the questionable future of nuclear energy. TVA is finishing construction of a reactor at Watts Bar in Tennessee. But what about Bellefonte?

Despite opposition, [TVA] has a plan to complete one of two unfinished reactors at the Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant near Scottsboro.

"Yes, it will be," McCollum said when asked if the TVA Board of Directors will consider a recommendation on Bellefonte. "It will be on the August board agenda."

There you go. We’ll check in next month and see if the board decides to go ahead.

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Here’s something we could use more of:

Three Green Luminaries squared off at Berkeley’s David Brower Center on July 21 during a contentious debate over the future of nuclear energy. The so-called “Fix It or Nix It” debate pitted Native American activist (and two-time Green Party vice-presidential candidate) Winona LaDuke against Stewart Brand, legendary founder of the Whole Earth Catalogue and, more recently, a vocal advocate for nuclear energy.

Debates are always good. You may not have any luck converting hard core advocates on either side of an issue, but there is a broad middle that has not given much thought to or made a decision about nuclear energy – as about many other things, when you come down to it.

Brand proceeded to describe new technology as a value-neutral process that was innocent of intent — simply a process of discovering “cool new ways to do things.” So “don’t over-interpret” technology, Brand warned.

That’s part of the argument. Here’s the other part:

Brand dismissed anti-nuclear concerns as “techno-paranoia.” As an example, Brand quoted David Brower himself who once proclaimed: “All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.”

Based on the coverage at the Berkeley Daily Planet, which heavily favored LaDuke, it does seem as though Brand and LaDuke took up radically different approaches that seemed unlikely to find a middle point:

Winona LaDuke countered with a calm insistence on “intergenerational justice,” as informed by the Native American concept that today’s decisions must be guided by a concern for the impacts our choices will have on the next Seven Generations. (This may have been the earliest formulation of the “Precautionary Principle.”) Winona expressed dismay at a world in which “science is the new God” and offered her own spin on Brand’s line: “We are not as Gods,” she said, “We are as children.”

Love that calm insistence! But we might have to conclude that LaDuke and Brand are debating, if anything, the value of science and perhaps the nature of progress.

Brand was asked by the moderator whether the accident at Fukushima Daiichi has changed his mind about nuclear energy:

Not at all. Brand responded by running down the statistics. Sure, there were three multiple reactor meltdowns and a spent fuel pool blown to smithereens in an explosion [whoops! Nothing like this happened] but, while 20,000 were killed by the tsunami [true], “no one died as a result of nuclear power.” [also true]Brand then recalled the e. coli outbreak that killed scores and sickened thousands in Europe. “But you didn’t hear anyone demanding that organic farms should be shut down!”

“I don’t believe all these things are equal,” Winona replied. She mentioned the dark history of Monsanto, Dow, and Agent Orange. “I don’t have amnesia,” she said, adding that “some people are living in an Oil Bubble.”

I don’t have amnesia, either, but I’m hard pressed to find a parallel between Agent Orange and nuclear energy.

Well, you can read the rest yourself. Most college environments would probably find Brand’s arguments more appealing – science and all - but Berkeley? Regardless, good for Brand and LaDuke for doing this.

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The winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest rather amusingly tried an atrocious energy-related metaphor:

Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.

Quite dreadful.

The winner of the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is Sue Fondrie, an associate professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh who works groan-inducing wordplay into her teaching and administrative duties whenever possible. Out of school, she introduces two members of the next generation to the mysteries of Star Trek, Star Wars, and--of course--the art of the bad pun.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a nineteenth century writer and politician who contributed a fair number of phrases that still have currency to the English language: “the great unwashed" and "the pen is mightier than the sword" are two.

But the award, started in 1982 at California’s San Jose State University, depends on the first line of Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Paul Clifford:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

The - shall we say - rich prose is violently over-yoked, but of course, it is the first seven words that became famous – via Peanuts’ Snoopy – and inspired the contest. You can read the rest of the novel here.

You can read more about Bulwer-Lytton – he had a very busy life – here. As for the libel against wind energy – I’m sure nuclear energy could inspire some pretty ghastly prose, too. (And yes, I know I’m asking for it.)

Anne Stuart’s A Dark and Stormy Night. I have no idea what “More than Men” means.

NEI Top Industry Practice Awards for 2011

Every year, nuclear utilities and vendors submit to NEI new and innovative practices they’ve developed to achieve better operations. NEI and a few industry folks analyze the submissions and hand out awards for the best new practices. The awards recognize industry employees in 14 categories—four vendor awards, nine process awards for innovation to improve safety, efficiency and nuclear plant performance, and one award for vision and leadership. This year there are a number of excellent innovations highlighted below. The full list of awards and descriptions can be found here. 

Real-Time Method to Prevent Fuel Rod Defects

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) employees at the Browns Ferry nuclear energy facility in Alabama have been honored with the B. Ralph Sylvia “Best of the Best” Award for developing a state-of-the-art method to prevent reactor fuel rod defects. Using real-time stress monitoring of the sealed tubes that hold the uranium fuel pellets, a new methodology called XEDOR has proven highly effective.

Five years ago, the industry established a goal to eliminate by the end of 2010 fuel rod defects that could release radionuclides from fuel pellets. Some damage is caused by the interaction between fuel pellets and the metal tube material called cladding. The phenomenon can result in additional costs to utilities, affect plant operation and subject personnel performing repairs to additional radiation exposure.

Working with AREVA, the winning TVA team implemented a new methodology that performs real-time, on-line stress calculations for every six-inch fuel rod segment in all parts of the reactor core. It is the first method that can calculate how close fuel rods are to cladding damage, thus ensuring fuel integrity performance. The user-friendly methodology is incorporated into the core monitoring system, and provides the plant operating staff with fuel condition information that can be easily understood and applied. This method has reduced fuel leaks, increased reactor productivity, and avoided millions of dollars in additional costs.

Tungsten Radiation Shielding

Entergy employees at Arkansas Nuclear One won the Materials and Services Process Award for creating tungsten radiation shielding that effectively protects both equipment and personnel. The innovation has been used in Japan in response to the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power station.

The new material shields piping and surfaces effectively and economically, and also has been fabricated into a radiation-shielding vest that workers wear—a breakthrough application. Made primarily from tungsten with iron metal powder immersed in a silicone polymer, the material is flexible, heat-resistant, nontoxic and nonhazardous.

The tungsten vest is a major advancement. Traditionally, the industry has only thought to “shield the source” of radiation. Now “shielding the person” can be done in a lightweight and effective way to reduce exposure on an individual level and provide industrial safety value. Tungsten shielding is twice as effective at lowering exposure rates as lead and saves more than $300,000 per maintenance outage.

Medical Isotopes

Employees at Exelon Nuclear’s Clinton power station in Illinois are recipients of the Vision & Leadership Award for their pioneering development of the Isotope Test Assembly project. By simultaneously generating power and creating a widely used medical isotope—cobalt-60—the Exelon Nuclear team is addressing an urgent international medical need.

Cobalt-60 is used in noninvasive cancer therapy, with more than 15 million treatments each year in 80 countries. Cobalt-60 also is used in medical instrument sterilization, food preservation, package decontamination and pharmaceutical purification. The United States imports 95 percent of the cobalt isotopes that it uses for such purposes. To maintain a steady supply of isotopes to satisfy demand for necessary nuclear medicine procedures, the Exelon Nuclear’s team is working to create cobalt-60 in a commercial reactor during normal power generation.

To produce the isotope, cobalt-59 “targets” are added to some fuel assemblies in the reactor. During reactor operations, cobalt-59 atoms absorb neutrons and are transformed into cobalt-60 isotopes. The isotope rods are removed and shipped to a processing facility after several operating cycles. Cobalt-60 then is available for medical and other health and safety applications. The first commercial supply of cobalt-60 from Clinton will be available in 2014. Be sure to check out the rest of the awards.

Update, 5/13:

A short video explaining the radiation shielding is below. As well, below is another short video explaining Exelon's medical isotopes project.

Exelon Nuclear Update

This morning, Exelon gave a presentation showing how their nuclear plants are prepared to respond to earthquakes, floods and tsunamis. Seven of Exelon’s 19 nuclear units are of the same design as the Fukushima-Daiichi units (GE BWR Mark 1). Below are several quotes and slides from the presentation:

The NRC requires all nuclear plants in the US to be able to withstand the most severe natural phenomena historically reported for each plant’s surrounding area, with a significant margin of error - slide 5

Be sure to check out the rest of the slide deck, there is more info on Exelon’s emergency procedures, spent fuel pools and dry cask storage.