UCS Channels Goldilocks In Response to Fukushima

NEI's Senior Vice President of Communications, Scott Peterson, passed along the following note concerning last week's report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, "U.S. Nuclear Power Safety One Year After Fukushima."

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has weighed in on the U.S. response to Fukushima and their conclusion is clear: We’re moving too slowly….No, wait, we’re moving too fast!...Check that, too slow!

Taking a page from Goldilocks, who couldn’t seem to find the right size chair, UCS can’t seem to find the right speed for applying lessons learned in the aftermath of the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan a year ago.

After first praising the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for reacting quickly to the events in Japan, a new UCS report prods the agency to move faster. Then report declares that “speed is not always a virtue.” In the most remarkable twist of logic, UCS criticizes the nuclear energy industry for “acting too hastily by launching a voluntary program” to improve safety.

Really? Moving too quickly to improve safety?

At least the UCS report got something right. The industry is not waiting for orders from the NRC to act. Our FLEX strategy protects against the two main safety issues at Fukushima¬—the loss of electrical power and the loss of cooling capability—by stationing emergency backup equipment in multiple locations, including regional centers.

Every U.S. nuclear operator has committed to order additional equipment by the end of the month, and more than 300 pieces of backup emergency equipment has already been delivered or ordered. Rather than applauding these proactive safety measures, UCS complains that the industry is “jumping the gun” by getting ahead of the NRC.

The industry and the NRC are in general agreement on the issues that need to be addressed, but the regulatory process takes time. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the NRC fast-tracked the industry’s safety response by issuing a series of orders, with a deadline of October 2004.

After the industry met that deadline, the NRC began a rulemaking process to codify the orders and essentially get its procedural/bureaucratic house in order. Along the way, it added a few more requirements that weren’t finalized until close to the end of the decade. In that case, UCS distorts the facts to complain that the industry’s response was too slow.

Now that we are moving even more quickly to respond to Fukushima, UCS says we are going too fast. Does UCS seriously believe we should just sit and wait while the NRC process unfolds? We see ways to strengthen our defenses against extreme events now, and we are acting. To do otherwise would be an abrogation of our responsibility.

The NRC will oversee our safety enhancements, and will not hesitate tell us to do something more or something different—backed by the agency’s full enforcement authority—as the regulatory process plays out.

That approach might not satisfy Goldilocks or UCS, but we think it is juuuuust right to ensure that lessons learned from Japan are applied as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Scott also contributes on occasion to the Huffington Post.

One Year Later

Yesterday was the anniversary of an earthquake of unimaginable intensity rapidly followed by an inexorable tsunami – in Japan – near a nuclear facility. That’s the context of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi.

Two people died in industrial accidents at Fukushima Daiichi during or directly after the catastrophe. Japan’s National Police Agency currently counts 15,848 people dead and 3,305 people missing as a result of the twin disasters. That’s 19,153, a number that has risen and fallen during the last year.

We’ve talked about the accident at Fukushima Daiichi and its consequences often at this site and will continue to talk about it. But not today.

On the occasion of this anniversary, we should memorialize what the Japanese people will not forget. Nothing can replace loved ones, but surely the country will insist on a continuity of purpose and resolve. The Japanese people will reconstruct what was wrecked materially and we may hope that it will help salve what was damaged spiritually.

The News Observer has a roundup of pictures and captions that show the Japanese marking the anniversary and Talking Points Memo shows truly remarkable before-and-after photos of various locations directly after the earthquake and tsunami and today (including a shot of Fukushima Daiichi).

A boy lights a candle at a memorial service in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture. See here for more.

94th Carnival of Nuclear Energy – Old Battles, New Technologies and One Scandal

Last week was another busy week in social media. Today we’re hosting the 94th carnival and highlighting 21 posts from 14 blogs.

To start, Gail Marcus at Nuke Power Talk discusses her concerns about the zeroing of funds for nuclear engineering education programs in the 2013 budget request. It’s been an annual battle to maintain the nuclear education programs at the NRC and DOE and this year was no different. From Gail:

It seems to me that in general, it is penny-wise and pound-foolish for a nation to skimp on education. I know the budget is tight and I know there are many other important programs, but we really can't stop looking ahead.

The case for nuclear engineering education is particularly important. The current workforce of nuclear engineers is rapidly retiring. … One hopes that some of the supporters of nuclear energy on the Hill will notice this cut and restore the funding. I would encourage those who share my concern to contact your members of Congress and ask for their help in restoring funding for educational programs.

Hear, hear!

…

Meredith Angwin at Yes Vermont Yankee wrote a guest post at the ANS Nuclear Cafe describing the controversies around VY. She notes that “putting Vermont Yankee issues in context is like facing a huge mountain range. There is always another set of hills beyond this one.”

Also at her own blog, she announced the March 17 community rally in support of the plant.

…

Steve Aplin at Canadian Energy Issues commented on the different risk perceptions between nuclear materials and chemicals. Fear of the 'Dirty Bomb' recently led to a campaign to phase out the use of cesium-137 in hospital irradiators. Those machines sterilize blood prior to transfusion and prevent transfusion-associated diseases. Steve pointed out that there have not been similar campaigns to phase out other useful chemicals, like chlorine, ammonium nitrate and gasoline, which are much easier to obtain and put to evil purposes than cesium. Many people fear nuclear materials but forget that chemicals, fuel and fertilizers can cause much greater damage.

…

Atomic Power Review has a two-part contribution this week concerning the Palisades nuclear station and reactor pressure vessel embrittlement. In the two posts, Will Davis addressed media claims of vessel embrittlement. Part 1 was a background on Palisades with a link to a past APR article on the topic and part 2 provided great detail on embrittlement from a number of print sources and A. David Rossin (former President of ANS).

…

Filling in for Charles Barton at Nuclear Green, NNadir shares his thoughts on the first nuclear reactors in the world that naturally fissioned a few billion years ago. Although there is a lot of squabbling about burying nuclear waste, nature proves it can be contained. From NNadir:

Over two billion years, most of the fission products in porous sandstone at Oklo didn't even migrate as far as Tom Brady can throw an errant football in a "Hail Mary" pass at the end of a Superbowl as a last ditch attempt to avoid a losing effort.

His post is humorous and dense but definitely worth the read on Oklo.

…

Steve Skutnik from the Neutron Economy describes how small modular reactors can help displace Iowa's coal-heavy energy portfolio. SMRs can provide an economical, "right-sized" solution for smaller, rural electrical grids like Iowa’s. Of course, not everyone is convinced of the benefits. Skutnik also blasted some of the specious arguments against the technology.

…

Over at Energy From Thorium, Kirk Sorensen is working hard to push for thorium all around the world. Kirk was in London last year to help launch the Weinberg Foundation which promotes thorium. On Thursday, Kirk highlighted the Foundation’s press release on the formation of an “All-Party Parliamentary Group” in London with members of both the House of Commons and House of Lords to consider the potential of thorium as an energy source. Well done.

…

Rod Adams at Atomic Insights discusses how and why we should combine domestic coal with nuclear energy to make oil.

My pitch to the coal industry would be to use cheap, clean nuclear heat to convert H2O and their carbon rich fuel into a refined hydrocarbon that could compete with petroleum products.

No, it’s not a new concept. Technologies exist to achieve this, check out Rod’s post on how.

…

How close did Japan really get to a widespread nuclear disaster? At Brave New Climate, Barry Brook highlights a post at Slate.com by two authors at the Breakthrough Institute who put Fukushima into a proper context. Barry adds:

Much of the post-accident speculation was constrained only by people’s imagination (which can be pretty wide ranging), and utterly failed to resolve the fact that RISK is probability X impact. Instead, anti-nuclear types typically choose a huge, speculative impact, and then try to attach a large probability (often near certainty) to it. For truly catastrophic outcomes, both numbers are very small, and multiplied, vanishingly so.

Can’t add to that.

…

We have two posts to mention from the ANS Nuclear Café. Wesley Deason launched his series on the uses of nuclear fission to enable human space exploration beyond earth’s orbit:

Nuclear reactors, due to their ability to produce large amounts of energy at any location, will be the required energy source for future human space travel outside of earth’s orbit.

Make sure to follow the Café for more of his series.

Also at the Café, Dan Yurman reveals a dispute over the start of two new nuclear plants in India. To the right, months of protests have delayed the Kudankulam nuclear project in southern India. Some people (including India’s sitting prime minister) allege that American NGOs are funding the protests. If true, it sounds like a scandalous story.

…

Dan Yurman at his own blog, Idaho Samizdat, also reported several positive news items for the week including the good news that North Korea is suspending its nuclear weapons program and opening more dialogue with the U.S. Of course, some aren’t holding their breath.

Dan also reported that Iran is having a tough time with its uranium enrichment program, how the U.K. is consuming its surplus plutonium, and how South Africa is taking another shot at bids for new reactors in the country.

…

Brian Wang at Nextbigfuture looked at detailed levelized cost comparisons of nuclear, solar and coal. Brian notes that two-thirds of the cost of coal energy is determined by future commodity prices while nuclear and solar costs are dominated by construction costs and financing.

Brian also highlights a World Nuclear News story on GE’s laser uranium enrichment plant. The NRC just issued its final technical Safety Evaluation Report (SER) and Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed enrichment plant.

The GLE plant would use a laser-based process to enrich uranium up to 8% uranium-235 by weight (although nuclear power reactors normally require 3%-5% enriched uranium), with an initial planned maximum target production of six million separative work units (SWU) per year. … Laser enrichment could be 2 to 20 times more efficient than other enrichment processes.

Sweet.

…

And here at NEI Nuclear Notes, various contributors generated a lot of action – covering PBS’ documentary of Fukushima, Senator Bingaman’s proposed Clean Energy Standard, tornadoes in the South, and NEI’s next social media call on the industry’s FLEX strategy.

Be sure to stop by everyone’s pages for these great articles and new reporting. Stay tuned for other carnivals at Yes Vermont Yankee, ANS Café, Next Big Future and Atomic Power Review!

NEI to Host Blogger Conference Call on FLEX

The Nuclear Energy Institute will be hosting a conference call for bloggers with NEI's Adrian Heymer on FLEX, the U.S. industry's strategy to enhance safety at its nuclear energy facilities. The call will be conducted from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Friday, March 9 and will be hosted by Dan Yurman of Idaho Samizdat.

All participants must pre-register in order to dial in to the call. Please RSVP to my NEI email address at epm-at-nei.org by COB Thursday, March 8 in order to reserve your space.

Please submit your questions prior to the call, as they'll be asked by Mr. Yurman in much the same manner as the call he hosted with NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko. If the program runs long don't fret, as we'll post answers to any question we don't get to here on the NEI Nuclear Notes blog.

For those of you who might not be familiar with Mr. Heymer, here's a short bio. Here in the U.S., there simply isn't anyone with a better read on how the incident at Fukushima is impacting the way our industry does business than Mr. Heymer.

Adrian Heymer is the Executive Director, Strategic Programs, at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). In this position he serves as the industry's point person in organizing an integrated response to the events at Fukushima Daiichi. Other responsibilities at NEI have encompassed new nuclear plant deployment, electricity deregulation, plant performance improvement, risk-informed regulation and industry quality programs. Prior to joining NEI he worked in support of Nebraska Public Power District’s Cooper Nuclear Station, Nebraska; at Lloyds Register on technical certifications and inspections; and served in the Royal Navy.

We're all looking forward to your questions. See you on March 9 at 11 a.m.

New NEI White Paper: Making Safe Nuclear Energy Safer

With the anniversary of the incident at Fukushima Daiichi almost upon us, it's only natural for the public and other stakeholders to be asking questions about the safety of America's nuclear energy facilities. To answer those questions, NEI has published a white paper entitled, "Making Safe Nuclear Energy Safer."

The following passage is from the document's Executive Summary:

The nuclear energy industry’s primary and constant goal is to make safe nuclear energy facilities even safer. A decades-long commitment to safety and continuous learning is reflected in the operational focus and safety culture at our facilities. Companies that operate 104 U.S. reactors review safety procedures continually and update their facilities and training programs with lessons learned from those reviews.

The industry has a commitment to safety because nuclear energy is a vital part of America’s electricity portfolio. It helps achieve greater energy independence for America and produces affordable, reliable electricity for one of every five Americans. Safety is the foundation of a thriving nuclear energy industry in America and globally—with more than 430 reactors producing electricity and 65 plants under construction.

After the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the U.S. nuclear power industry is looking even more closely at ways to ensure safety is maintained in the face of extreme natural events. The U.S. industry and our global partners took immediate actions after the events in Japan, both to support the recovery of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors and to review critical safety systems at U.S. reactors. While we continue to monitor the situation closely and to learn from it, the nuclear energy industry in the United States is already implementing numerous measures to maintain and upgrade the already-high level of safety at nuclear energy facilities.

The paper clocks in at nine pages in length, and is easily digestible for readers who, while they might be aware of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, might not be completely up to speed on what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and U.S. industry have been doing in the interim to apply lessons learned from our colleagues in Japan. Click here to download it right now.

PBS to Air Second Fukushima Documentary Tonight

Tonight at 10:00 p.m. EST, PBS will be airing another FRONTLINE documentary about the incident at Fukushima Daiichi entitled, "Inside Japan's Nuclear Meltdown." Unlike the "Nuclear Aftershocks" report that aired in January, tonight's program will focus exclusively on brave TEPCO employees and first responders who worked to contain the damage at the stricken reactor.

During the program, PBS will be offering live commentary from the FRONTLINE Twitter feed (@frontlinepbs). We'll be watching the program in real time as well, tweeting from our own feed, @N_E_I. To participate in the conversation, please be sure to use the #frontline and #fukushima hash tags so others can follow along.

Faulty Thermometer Likely Cause of Fukushima Temperature Rise

Last week, we alerted our readers to reports out of Japan that the temperatures inside Unit #2 at Fukushima Daiichi were rising. At the time, we noted that some of the reports of the news were, "rather breathless." That judgment has been borne out, as we received the following welcome news from Japan overnight:

A faulty thermometer is likely to blame for rising temperatures inside a stricken nuclear reactor at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant, authorities said Monday, as Japan prepares to mark one year since a devastating earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear meltdown.

[...]

A nuclear expert agreed that a faulty temperature gauge inside the Unit 2 reactor is the most likely cause for the higher heat reading.

Tokyo mega-quake prediction Inside the Japan nuclear exclusion zone Japan considers restarting two reactors Japan exclusion zone's lone resident
Michael Friedlander, a former senior operator at U.S. nuclear power plants, told CNN that the prospect of another catastrophic explosion at the Fukushima-Daiichi is "virtually zero."

"If the reactor was going to become critical it would have become critical in March of last year, not now," he said.

We'd be remiss if we didn't not that the first person who raised the possibility of the faulty thermometer was none other than Will Davis at Atomic Power Review.

On the Temperature Increase at Fukushima Daiichi Unit #2

Over the past 24 hours we've seen a number of account concerning rising temperatures inside reactor #2 at Fukushima Daiichi. While we noted this item over at SafetyFirst.nei.org yesterday morning, some accounts of the news have been rather breathless.

If you'd like a sober account of what's actually happening there right now, I'd suggest reading the following account from World Nuclear News. Here's the relevant passage:

This stability of unit 2 was disturbed for a few days, however, when Tepco tried to improve cooling further by tuning the rates of water injection.

[...]

After making this change, Tepco noted a tendency for increasing temperature at the bottom of the reactor vessel. Within a matter of hours the company decided to reverse the change and restore the previous injection rates, but the temperature continued to slowly rise.

Two of the three temperature sensors at the bottom of the reactor vessel edged up by about 2 degrees C. The third, however, rose by around 20 degrees C to hit 72.2 degrees at 5.00am today. Tepco acted to stem this increase by injecting an extra cubic metre of water per hour through the feedwater line, and this stabilised the sensor at about 70 degrees C. It has since decreased to 68.5 degrees C, while the other two sensors were at a new low of around 41 degrees C.

Tepco was able to discount recriticality as a potential cause of the temperature rise after conducting an analysis of charcoal filters in the containment gas control system. These showed very low traces of fission products that were below the threshold that would indicate criticality. Nevertheless Tepco this morning injected boric acid into the reactor vessel as a precaution and increased the core spray injection rate by three cubic metres per hour.

The bottom line here: at no time did the temperature of the bottom of the reactor vessel exceed, or even approach, 100 degrees C, which was one of the important conditions TEPCO has to maintain for cold shutdown conditions.

We're keeping an eye on this and will report back if events warrant.

Aftermath of Frontline's “Nuclear Aftershocks”

Yesterday afternoon Miles O’Brien, correspondent for Tuesday night’s FRONTLINE piece “Nuclear Aftershocks,” and producer Jon Palfreman held a live chat with the public on reactions to the documentary and overall opinions as to what the future holds for nuclear energy in the United States. What did the public decide? Well, according to an unscientific poll taken from the audience during the chat—keep building more nuclear plants!


Their opinions closely mirrored our October 2011 public opinion poll which found that 62 percent of respondents said they favor the use of nuclear energy as one of the ways to provide electricity in the United States.

The chat’s audience also said that their opinions about nuclear power were not influenced by Tuesday night’s documentary:


This survey result really only proves one thing—that people are generally distrustful of media reports, but interested enough in the subject matter to take part in an online chat at 1 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon!

During the chat, people posed questions on a variety of topics, including: building advanced reactors, how other countries (namely Japan and Germany) plan to meet their electricity demands and carbon reduction goals while reducing the number of nuclear plants, and how nuclear energy facilities prepare for emergencies. I took part in the one-and-a-half hour chat and provided several comments to help build on the discussion and add facts to the debate, but none of my comments were accepted or posted by the chat’s moderator. Although I am not surprised that my comments were not accepted (since I had “NEI” next to my name), I am hopeful that they will at least provide the reporters with more context to the bigger picture.

Below are a few areas where I think the discussion should have warranted a little more explanation/clarification.

1) The “Moribund” Nuclear Industry & Aging Nukes


There are two problems with this statement. First, I think it is unfair to call the industry “moribund” when there are currently 12 combined license applications that are under active review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build 20 nuclear plants and new designs have either been approved (Westinghouse Electric Co.’s AP1000) or are still in the design stages in this country. Companies spend several years either designing new reactors or working to build reactors at a given site, so to equate the industry with “dying” or “inactivity” is simply untrue.

Second, and this is a point that we keep coming back to on the blog and on our website, it is important to understand that 40-year licenses for nuclear plants were never meant to be an indicator of a plant’s safe operation. The 40-year time period was simply chosen to parallel the financing amortization period for a plant. The NRC’s website explains:

The Atomic Energy Act and NRC regulations limit commercial power reactor licenses to an initial 40 years but also permit such licenses to be renewed. This original 40-year term for reactor licenses was based on economic and antitrust considerations -- not on limitations of nuclear technology.

Nuclear plants are continually undergoing maintenance and upgrades so that they are equipped—no matter their age—to meet all of the NRC’s safety regulations. So, whether it’s day one or day 14,600, rest assured that each of the nation’s nuclear plants are meeting the NRC’s stringent safety requirements or else they will be subject to federal disciplinary actions, including up to the shutdown of a reactor until safety improvements are made.

2) Germany’s Nuclear Energy Situation


The nation’s nuclear power plants are among the safest and most secure industrial facilities in the United States. See for yourself. But, if you do not agree with that statement, I still think it’s important to look at the facts before making a rash decision.

Just yesterday, Siemens, which built all of Germany’s 17 nuclear plants, estimated that an exit from nuclear energy could cost the European country’s energy consumers or taxpayers as much as 1.7 trillion euros ($2.15 trillion) by 2030. Much of that estimate assumes a strong expansion of renewables, with feed-in tariffs being the biggest chunk of costs, a Reuters article reports.

Besides the high costs, cutting nuclear energy from the country’s energy portfolio will mean more carbon emissions. One of our recent blog posts quotes Laszlo Varro, the head of the gas, coal, and power markets division at the International Energy Agency, who estimates that a nuclear-free Germany could cause a 25-million-ton annual increase in CO2 emissions, mainly because of the large shift to coal power that would be needed to cover the shortfall. We also referenced a Breakthrough Institute report on our blog that predicts that Germany’s carbon emissions could rise by as much as 14 percent of the country’s 2008 total carbon emissions. These estimates do not bode well for a country that aims to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. (They also do not bode well for O’Brien’s argument because later in the chat he says that “anything is better than coal.”)

3) Small Reactors


According to some government officials and vendors I’ve talked to recently, small reactors are—the next “big” thing. Peter Lyons, the U.S. Department of Energy’s assistant secretary of nuclear energy, just yesterday said that research will be moving forward this year toward further development and design certification of small nuclear reactors. The Tri-City Herald reports:

If there is enough demand for the small plants, large numbers could be built in a factory and then one or more would be transported to sites for use, he said. More modules could be added as needed for electricity production.

The factory model has potential to be more economical, and quality could be more readily controlled in a factory, Lyons said.

If that’s not enough, Congress has certainly indicated with a restoration of $67 million in its 2012 budget that they are still interested in the development and licensing of small reactors. At NEI, we continue to see more interest in small reactors.

4) Energy Conservation


Although I don’t have any immediate statistics at my disposal, I can assure you that conservation efforts will never be enough to meet growing electricity demand. The U.S. Energy Information Administration currently forecasts that electricity demand is growing at a rate of about 1 percent per year and that the United States will need 24 percent more electricity by 2035. To meet that demand, the electric utility industry must invest between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion in new power plants, environmental controls, and transmission and distribution lines.

I do not think that unplugging our electronic devices, kitchen appliances, etc., will be enough to make up the difference in electricity supply. (I also personally don’t think the image of people wearing sandals and tee-shirts and using fans instead of A/C—like O’Brien describes that they are currently doing in Japan without the added electricity from their nuclear plants—will ever be a possibility in American culture.) However, I do think that we are on the cusp of a revolution where utilities are developing smarter ways for people to use electricity to reduce cost and alleviate daily demand through smart meters. Some are doing it very well (see a recent report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for examples).

5) Relationship Between NRC & Nuclear Industry


I think this comment distorts the important work that the NRC performs each day. It is an independent agency that strives for transparency. Its five commissioners are appointed by the president of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. They even have a page on their website that discusses their commitment to openness and transparency in their regulatory activities.

That being said, the nuclear industry’s high levels of performance, reliability and safety are all due to the strict regulatory oversight and function that the NRC serves. The NRC helps the industry to focus on safety, training, regulatory compliance and continuous improvement. The U.S. commercial nuclear industry is arguably one of the most strictly and thoroughly regulated industries in the nation, and the NRC is a model to other countries that are developing their nuclear energy programs.

---

Altogether, I appreciated the fact that O’Brien and Palfreman held the chat to further discuss nuclear energy issues, but I felt that several of the assertions warranted further clarification (as previously explained). I really like the concept of holding these chat-type forums because I think they add context to some of the larger policy debates that are country currently faces.

Read the full transcript of the chat here. See our other blog posts on the FRONTLINE report here.

Frontline to Host Online Chat on "Nuclear Aftershocks" at 1:00 p.m. EST

The team at Frontline is hosting a live online chat today about last night's airing of "Nuclear Aftershocks" at 1:00 p.m. today. Some details:

What’s the future of nuclear after Fukushima? Can the world’s faith in nuclear energy be restored? Or could another Fukishima-like disaster bring the nuclear age to an end? Is a nuclear plant near you at risk?

Veteran science reporter Miles O’Brien and producer Jon Palfreman have been digging into these issues for the past year. We asked them to join us for a live chat to discuss these questions and take yours.

Spencer Reiss, a contributing editor at WIRED who specializes in energy issues, will be our guest questioner.

Click here to join the chat.

Former Frontline Science Advisor Blasts "Nuclear Aftershocks"

I've been perusing some of the comment strings over at Frontline since "Nuclear Aftershocks" aired last night, and I came across this comment from Neil Todreas, a professor at M.I.T who says he worked as a science advisor on last night's program. Todreas also served as co-chair of the Indian Point Independent Safety Evaluation Panel.

To say that his comment is illuminating would be a serious understatement. Please note I've inserted some line breaks in the copy in order to enhance readability:

The portion of the Frontline story which starts with the Fukushima accident is a worthwhile public service. However, as an initial scientific advisor to the team producing this show, I found the lack of accuracy and balance in the second half of the story covering the Indian Point reactor disturbing. The statement that that reactor lies "right on the faults" is not accurate, and the portrayal of the potential activity of the seismic faults by Professor Sykes is not balanced.

In 1972, the first fault was significantly studied when the Indian Point reactors were licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Earthquakes in the region were characterized as of minor magnitude and relatively trivial by the noted seismologist Charles Richter of Cal Tech, the originator of the Richter scale for characterizing earthquakes. The significance of the recently proclaimed second fault also has been disputed, most notably by Prof. Alan Kafka of Boston College. I made the producers aware of this information, but they chose not to disclose these counter opinions and only presented Professor Sykes’ views on the seismic issues.

Additionally, the story dialogue speaks of "the" evacuation route for residents near Indian Point, when in fact there are multiple routes in various directions from the plant. The producers could have balanced the correspondent's incredulous statements about the evacuation route by opinions of the surrounding county emergency response officials who have overseen the evacuation planning effort for the plant and have responsibility for its implementation should a need arise. This is a source of information I also pointed out to them.

Finally, the producers speak of the future of nuclear energy in America only in terms of the relicensing and eventual end of service of existing reactors. Balanced communication to the public would have been achieved by explaining that a new generation of reactors has been designed, certified as safe by the NRC (Westinghouse’s AP1000) and is being built in Georgia and South Carolina. Again, this was information I provided them in response to their request that I review the film prior to its airing.

Neil E. Todreas
KEPCO Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering and
Professor of Mechanical Engineering (Emeritus)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Click here for a screen capture of the comment. I wonder what the producers of the program think about this?

On Frontline, Indian Point and the Ramopo Fault

On tonight's program, we're hearing a lot about the Ramopo fault, but we're not hearing a lot from experts who disagree with Columbia University seismologist Lynn Sykes and his conclusions about earthquake risk around Indian Point Energy Center.

But back in March 2011, the Journal News did ask those questions:

But the U.S. Geological Survey — one of the nation's foremost research labs — said geologic evidence about the Ramapo Fault is "insufficient to demonstrate the existence of tectonic faulting or ... slip or deformation."

It didn't even include the fault in calculations of earthquake hazards in 2008.

Geology professor Alec Gates put it more succinctly: "The Ramapo Fault is dead," said Gates, chairman of Earth and environmental sciences at Rutgers University. "It was a big fault in the old days, but not anymore."...

What differentiates this region from more earthquake-prone areas, experts say, is that it lies in the middle of the North American Plate, a tectonic slab that encompasses North America to the Pacific Ocean, including Greenland, Cuba, the Bahamas, and parts of Siberia and Iceland.

"It's not a plate boundary; that's the primary reason you don't have activity and that it's hard to predict activity," said Paul Olsen, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. "The formation of the Ramapo Fault was at least 300 million years ago. Most of the earthquakes around here have nothing to do with it."

Viewers should question why these experts weren't mentioned at all in tonight's Frontline report.

Follow Us on Twitter During Frontline's Nuclear Aftershocks

We're just sitting down to watch Frontline and its "Nuclear Aftershocks" report. We'll be following the conversation on Twitter in real time on our main NEI feed (@N_E_I) beginning at 10:00 p.m. EST. You can follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag, #Frontline. Please join in.

UPDATE: We've just finished watching the report, and you can take a look at what we tweeted by peeking at our timeline. Overall, Miles O'Brien and the Frontline team got some things right, especially when it came to the environmental and economic consequences of getting rid of nuclear energy on a global scale.

On the other hand, there were portions of the report where significant omissions were made in terms of emergency preparedness, license renewal and the proven slow-moving character of nuclear incidents.

As for next steps, I'm going home to watch the program one more time on my DVR to take some notes and then head to bed. Thanks to all our friends online who joined in the conversation tonight to defend the industry's record. Good night.

Transcript of Interview Between Entergy's Joe Pollock and Miles O'Brien of Frontline

For those of you who are watching the Frontline report, "Nuclear Aftershocks," we wanted to share with you a transcript of an interview that Frontline's Miles O'Brien conducted with Joe Pollock on December 1, 2011 (click here to download).

At the time, Joe, who is now working here at NEI as a loaned employee, was working as Vice President of Operations for Indian Point Energy Center. The audio file the transcript was derived from comes in at just over one hour, so we clearly anticipate that not nearly everything that Joe said to O'Brien will be included in tonight's program.

Still, we thought it could serve as a handy guide to some of the sausage making behind news reporting. Feel free to peruse it at your leisure.

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.

Industry Presents New Strategy to Increase Safety, Address NRC’s Post-Fukushima Recommendations

The industry will present a strategy to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today on how it plans to enhance safety at the nation’s 67 plant sites to better equip them for unexpected events. The strategy—known as the “diverse and flexible mitigation capability,” or FLEX—addresses many of the recommendations set forth by the NRC’s Fukushima task force and takes into account some of the early lessons from the Fukushima accident on the need to maintain key safety functions amid conditions where electricity may be lost, back-up equipment could be damaged, and several reactors may be involved.

NEI’s Adrian Heymer, executive director for Fukushima regulatory response, held a media briefing Wednesday to explain the FLEX approach:

FLEX is a set of portable equipment that is located in diverse locations around the plant. We think there needs to be more than one set of equipment at diverse locations that can be quickly deployed and connected to provide injection and power supplies for instrumentation. What you want to do is inject water so that you keep the reactor [and spent fuel pools] cool. At the same time you want to know what is going on in the reactor—so it’s instrumentation for monitoring, for which you need power supplies.

FLEX will include equipment such as additional pumps, generators, batteries and chargers that will be located in diverse locations—for instance, on the east and west sides of the plant site. The equipment will be commercial-grade, but with program controls—which are still being defined—so that the equipment will be tested with results being subject to NRC oversight.


The strategy is “flexible” in that it does not dictate that permanent equipment be installed, but rather that the plant sites prepare portable equipment that could be used for any catastrophic event. The New York Times’ Matthew Wald explains:

A clear problem at Fukushima, he [Heymer] said, was that the tsunami was bigger than what the plant was designed for. If the operators had taken an approach based on specific hazards, he said, “instead of having a meter high barrier, they might have had a 10-meter high barrier,” although the actual tsunami was 14 to 15 meters high. The institute’s approach would be to take some general precautions rather than depend on the commission’s regular approach of determining probability before deciding what steps are needed.

Thus, the FLEX approach allows the industry to more quickly address high-priority safety concerns ahead of NRC regulations, which Heymer said could take time to implement due to the administrative analyses and technical reviews that would be involved:

Eventually there would be, we think, a rulemaking that would go in parallel. But this is a way of installing and achieving additional mitigation contingency in a shorter period of time. So, you get the same benefit, but rather than going through the normal process we try to expedite it by just getting on and installing the equipment and having a rulemaking to go in parallel.

In a blog post yesterday, the NRC acknowledged the industry’s FLEX plan as a step in the right direction:

The NRC staff believes this approach is a reasonable starting point, although more work is needed on defining these strategies. We also must ensure the NRC can inspect how plants put the strategies in place and that we can hold plants accountable for keeping those strategies ready and available.

The bottom line is that we believe these combined developments may enhance the agency’s approach to implementing the recommendations.

The FLEX approach is just one part of a larger industry response to the events at Fukushima. Heymer said that the FLEX strategy would allow for at least three days of keeping the nuclear fuel cool, and that regional response centers are also being pursued as yet another line of defense against a catastrophic event. As the various levels of safety enhancements are added, the industry plans to train and test its plant workers regularly so that they are well-equipped for emergency situations.

The FLEX concept is based on how the industry responded to the events of 9/11, in which additional security precautions—such as portable generators, water pumps, hoses and batteries—were put in place to mitigate against “beyond design-basis events,” or unlikely events that are considered outside the scope of what a plant should be designed or regulated to withstand.

Please note, this story was also cross-posted at NEI's Safety First microsite.

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.

Dr. Robert Emery Disputes Joe Mangano's Findings on Radiation and Fukushima

Just a few minutes ago, I received the following statement from Dr. Robert Emery, Vice President for Safety, Health, Environment & Risk Management at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston concerning Dr. Joseph Mangano's recent study on fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility reaching the U.S.

“We aggressively monitored for the presence of environmental radioactivity in Houston following the Fukushima event and worked closely with local public health authorities in the event we detected any threat to public health. We never detected any elevated radiation levels. I don’t see any evidence to supports the assertion made by this report that the additional 484 deaths in Houston in 2011 could in any way be related to radioactivity from Fukushima - we never detected any.”

"Moreover the study bases its conclusion on the comparison of data from deaths in the U.S. in 2010 and 2011. Using this method you really can’t determine the specific cause of any increase in deaths over the two years. Perhaps the most important question is: what did the 148,395 U.S. citizens die of in 2010, the year before the Japanese earthquake? Most likely the overwhelming causes were heart disease, cancer, and stroke. I believe this is likely the case in 2011 as well. I also believe our finite public health resources are better spent on the issues we know are causing people to die rather than being diverted to explore hypothetical projections"

It ought to be clear by now that Mangano's claims are being broadly discredited by the wider scientific community. Click here, here and here for our recent posts on how independent 3rd party voices are warning the public to disregard Mangano's research.

Joe Mangano's Credibility Takes Another Body Blow

This time, the sledgehammer is delivered courtesy of Barbara Feder Ostrov's Health Journalism Blog. Like plenty of other folks, she was shocked at Joe Mangano's claims -- ones that he backed off from when under questioning from MedPage Today -- so she talked to some long-time medical journalists.

Here's what Ivan Oransky of Reuters Health had to say about Mangano's research:

I do use impact factor to judge journals, while accepting that it's an imperfect measure that is used in all sorts of inappropriate ways (and, for the sake of full disclosure, is a Thomson Scientific product, as in Thomson Reuters). I find it helpful to rank journals within a particular specialty.

[...]

I looked up the journal in question, and it's actually ranked 45th out of 58 in the Health Policy and Services category (in the social sciences rankings) and 59th out of 72 in the Health Care Sciences & Services category (in the science rankings).

Here's Gary Schwitzer of Health News Review:

Journalists who live on a steady diet of journal articles almost by definition promote a rose-colored view of progress in research if they don't grasp and convey the publication bias in many journals for positive findings. Negative or null findings may not be viewed as sexy enough. Or they may be squelched prior to submission. While perhaps not a factor in this one case, it nonetheless drives home the point to journalists about the need to critically evaluate studies.

I'm afraid I have more bad news for Mangano. Who's going to tell Christie Brinkley?