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.

Japanese Government: No Plans to Re-Start Fukushima Daini

Earlier this week, a Japanese government official said that there were no plans to restart any of the reactors at the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant.

Fukushima Daini was a textbook example of how things can go right at a nuclear power plant in the face of an extreme event, something we noted at our SafetyFirst microsite in December:

When the earthquake struck, the Fukushima Daini facility automatically shut down safely as designed. However, it went into a state of emergency following the tsunami when water damage disrupted heat removal systems in three of the four reactors.

TEPCO reactor operators were able to quickly bring reactor 3, which had retained its heat removal function, into stable condition in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, other employees worked feverishly around-the-clock to reestablish heat removal capability in the other three reactors and finished stabilizing them by March 15.

A key distinction between the post-disaster conditions at Fukushima Daini and Fukushima Daiichi was that off-site power was available at the Daini facility, whereas the Daiichi plant suffered a complete loss of electricity, including backup generators and, eventually, emergency batteries needed to power reactor cooling systems. Fukushima Daini workers were able to tap into electricity from a 500-kilovolt-transmission line – a key lifeline – to power a water injection system that helped cool the reactors as they shut down.

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.

In Idaho, Japan and Finland

A little story appearing in the Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman-Review:

Gov. Butch Otter today signed an executive order creating the “Idaho Leadership in Nuclear Energy Commission,” or LINE Commission, to identify “opportunities and challenges associated with hosting the Idaho National Laboratory,” the nuclear facility in eastern Idaho. “Idaho clearly has been a recognized leader in nuclear energy research, development and demonstration for over 60 years,” Otter said. “We’ve also borne environmental burdens, but significant progress has been made in cleanup that enables us to focus more attention on the long-term viability and mission relevance of the INL.”

I wasn’t sure what this meant, exactly – the name of the commission suggests that the goal is to promote INL as a notable state entity, but the text is a little more nuanced. Maybe that’s just how Gov. Otter goes about things:

Otter's executive order on Wednesday reinforces his support of the industry's presence in eastern Idaho - even amid concern that a French company, Areva, could abandon plans to build a $3 billion uranium enrichment facility west of Idaho Falls.

So there is a plus as well as a minus value – I have no special knowledge of AREVA’s plans – but if Otter aims to promote the viability of Idaho for nuclear energy-related projects due to INL’s presence, well, he’s in the right state to do that.

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Japan’s efforts to gain a consensus that will allow it to turn its nuclear facilities back on appears to be showing results:

Japanese governor Tokihiro Nakamura believes nuclear power is vital for the resource-poor land, but even he says the central government must put safety pledges in writing before he'll agree to restart off-line reactors -- a sign of the tough battle ahead to repair tattered public trust after the Fukushima crisis.

I guess you could call that the opening bid. Nakamura wants more, too:

"It is the central government that must take ultimate responsibility, so at the very least, the trade and industry minister should come to the prefecture and discuss this with me openly," Nakamura, whose Ehime prefecture in western Japan hosts Shikoku Electric Power Co.'s Ikata nuclear power plant.

None of that sounds unreasonable, though some ministers will be doing a lot of travelling as more of the governors decide what will help them decide about the facilities in their localities.It’s worth doing, even if there’s a fair amount of it to do.

At least Nakamura is disinclined to be a dope about this:

Nakamura, a 52-year-old former member of parliament, said electricity supply in the summer, when annual demand usually peaks, was likely to be tight in his region if no reactors came back on line.

"In this situation, I think they will have to be restarted at some point," he said.

Hopefully, after Nakamura receives his visitors and gets the signed safety documents, Ikata can start up again.

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I’m not an expert on financial stuff, so I generally have to take news like this at face value:

The restoration of some nuclear plants helped Finnish utility Fortum's power generation business turn more profitable in the fourth-quarter, the company said on Wednesday.

The power generation unit's comparable operating profit, which excludes hedging, rose 4.5 percent from a year earlier to 351 million euros ($459 million), beating forecasts.

Good for Fortum.

"Utilization rate at Fortum's nuclear power plants in Sweden was good," said Nordea analyst Pasi Vaisanen.

Even better. This part I get, as one tends to forget that nuclear power plants, while expensive to build, are quite inexpensive to run. That’s good for the bottom line. The story has more on the financial situation if that interests you.

Idaho National Labs. Looks lonely out there.

IAEA Gives Japan Passing Grades, But Not an A

Not so very long ago, we mentioned that Japan invited in the International Atomic Energy Agency to review its stress tests at its nuclear energy facilities. Now, there’s news of how that went:

The team began its work on 23 January and delivered a Preliminary Summary Report to Japanese officials today and plans to finish the final report by the end of February.

So what’d it say? Here’s the good news:

• Based on NISA instructions and commitments of the utilities, emergency safety measures were promptly addressed in Japanese NPPs following the accident on 11 March 2011;
• NISA's practice of conducting an independent walkdown of emergency measures implemented at nuclear power plants enhances confidence that plants and operators can respond effectively during an emergency; and
• By observing European stress tests, NISA is demonstrating its commitment to improving Japanese nuclear safety by gaining experience from other countries.

NISA is Japan’s NRC. NISA has been severely criticized for its coziness with the industry and the Japanese have decided they will replace (or supplement) it with a more independent NRC-like organization.

And here are the areas where there could be improvement:

• Although NISA has demonstrated a notable level of transparency and interested party consultation related to the Comprehensive Safety Assessment and its review process, NISA should conduct additional meetings with interested parties near nuclear facilities that are subject to Comprehensive Safety Assessment;
• NISA should use the experience it gains from the first few reviews to clarify its guidance for how nuclear power plants should conduct their Comprehensive Safety Assessments and for how NISA should review those assessments;
• In the Secondary Assessment, there are areas that NISA could address more thoroughly, such as seismic safety margins and severe accident management; and
• NISA should ensure that the Secondary Assessments are completed, evaluated and confirmed by regulatory review within an appropriate timeframe.

That’s not bad, though it sounds as though it’s the IAEA that really wants a secondary assessment and perhaps Japan’s version of it is not fully implemented. But no: these assessments belong to NISA’s procedures, so IAEA is commenting on the gap between NISA’s definition of a secondary assessment and its implementation.

In its report, the IAEA defines these assessments thusly:

The Primary Assessment will inform the decision whether to restart operations at suspended NPPs [nuclear power plants] and the Secondary Assessment will inform whether to continue or halt operations at operating NPPs. The Secondary Assessment is explained as being based on the stress tests in Europe and the deliberations of the Investigation and Verification Committee on the Accidents at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Station (TEPCO).

So they are something the Japanese are adopting from the Europeans.It sounds like NISA did an okay but not great job of it. Hopefully, this means that the secondary assessments will be done again and in much more detail.

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As mentioned in the last post on this subject, the idea behind all this is to reassure the public that the facilities can reopen safely. Let’s leave aside whether or how the public relations goal dovetails into the safety issues. To put it another way, plants not impacted by the earthquake are being shuttered by fear, not safety concerns, so really, public relations is all they need – the specific plant the IAEA visited, Oi, was not affect by the earthquake.

No word on whether the Japanese believe they accomplished this goal to their satisfaction, but Reuters seems to think so:

U.N. nuclear experts on Tuesday gave their backing to stress tests aimed at showing Japan's nuclear plants can withstand the sort of disasters that devastated the Fukushima plant last year, potentially bolstering a government campaign to restart idled reactors and avoid a summer power crunch.

But still, there’s this:

Local governments hosting nuclear plants, however, have said the stress tests were not sufficient to allow them to give their approval, with some requesting that findings from the Fukushima disaster be considered in drafting new safety standards as well.

The story goes on to explain that the government could switch on all the plants without local approval, but that custom dictates it not do so until the local officials sign off.

This story could be going on for awhile, but I notice that talk of Japan exiting the nuclear energy field seem to have tamped down. It really needs the electricity to get through the sweltering summer months.

BRC Releases Final Report; Japan Invites in IAEA

I’d give you a link to the final report of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future at its site at brc.gov, but that has been flooded and is not responsive. But NEI has you covered. Go here to get a copy of the report.

The BRC says the report hews pretty closely to the draft report released last summer – our coverage of that is here with some useful links. We’ll have lots more to say about the final report, I’m sure, but for now, reading glasses on.

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The Japanese government has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to stop by and double check the stress tests it has been conduction on its fleet. Specifically, the Japanese want the IAEA to visit Oi, its third largest nuclear facility. Why have the IAEA do this?

Seeking to assuage public misgivings about nuclear-plant safety, government and nuclear industry officials have sought to use "stress tests" that gauge resilience to natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. The invitation to the IAEA is part of Japan's campaign to validate those tests.

And there’s this, too:

Oi's four reactors have become a focal point in Japan's debate over nuclear energy as the hot and humid summer, with its seasonal peak in electricity demand, draws nearer. Kansai Electric, which supplies power to Kyoto and Osaka in western Japan, relies on its three nuclear plants for more than 40% of the electricity it generates. Oi alone provides about 20%.

Those are actually two different things – getting the plants running to stave off blackouts and regaining public trust. How the government will know that it done the latter is not mentioned in the story, but I guess polling and the opinions of the elected leaders in the towns around Oi and other facilities will act as the gauges.

“The stress tests as currently designed don't seem to factor in the type of worst-case scenario we saw in Fukushima," Mr. [Ryozo] Tatami, the mayor of Maizuru said. "We need evidence Oi's reactors will be safe even if a [Fukushima-scale] tsunami strikes because vague assurances just raise too many doubts in our minds."

Maizuru is about 18 miles from Oi.

One can have an opinion about this approach – it sounds like one the Japanese put stock into, which is good – and about whether Japan should or shouldn’t reopen its facilities – simply, yes – but whether it does or not, whatever the consequences, is up to its people. There’s nothing for us to do but wait and see – and respect the outcome.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the Japanese decision making approach and its impact on reopening its nuclear facilities here. Long story short: the Japanese really like a broad consensus. Worth a read for insight into how another culture deals with big issues.

The Oi nuclear facility. If you say it enough times, you sound like an annoyed Brit.

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.

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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.

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.

The President of Thorium

Power from thorium:

This is [Bob] Greene's first time running [for President], and he's not sure if it's his last, but he certainly wants the world to know his position on thorium — a natural radioactive chemical element he hopes can change the nation's dependence on foreign oil.

Why thorium?

This energy source is used to create nuclear energy, much like uranium. However, he said it is safer to use and produces a waste product with a shorter radioactive life span. Like nuclear power, thorium would not create a huge carbon footprint, such as burning coal or oil, he said.

The writer gets a little muddled about nuclear energy here, but Greene has his arguments for thorium down pat. But why a single issue candidacy revolving around thorium?

He said he doesn't think President Barack Obama is taking advantage of the possibilities of thorium.

"I see this as an issue of national security," he said. "We can stop oil wars if we do this. We can change our import economy to an export economy."

Not sure why this isn’t equally true of uranium, but who are we to quibble? As the first thorium-boosting Presidential candidate we know of, we can only salute him at this crossing.

Right now, he’s only on the Democratic primary ballot in New Hampshire – against President Obama – but if things go well, who knows?

His campaign web site is here.

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When the Soviet Union ended, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney was asked what would become of the country’s nuclear arsenal:

"If the Soviets do an excellent job at retaining control over their stockpile of nuclear weapons and they are 99% successful, that would mean you could still have as many as 250 that they were not able to control."

The story by Huffington Post’s Graham Allison shows what actually happened to those 250 vulnerable missiles – and all the other missiles, too: nothing bad. This was due to two U.S.-Russia programs, one to help Russia gather all nuclear materials from the former soviet republics and a second, called Megatons to Megawatts, that downblended the gathered nuclear materials in those missiles to be used by domestic nuclear energy facilities. The missiles were not only rendered harmless, but their payloads were used for constructive purposes.

Nice to be reminded of programs that worked exactly as they should have.

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Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) may face nationalization:

Yesterday, shares in Tepco plunged to the lowest in at least 37 years after Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano said the company needs to consider being nationalized. Edano, who served as chief cabinet secretary and government spokesman in the months following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, now runs the ministry overseeing the nuclear power industry.

That makes it sound voluntary. The story also suggests that how TEPCO moves forward will depend on an energy plan being worked on by the government.

The same day he spoke of a government takeover, Edano’s ministry said in a statement it was studying changing rules governing Japan’s electricity industry to make distribution networks independent of power generators to spur competition. Those studies will form part of a new national energy policy to be drawn up by summer.

The story doesn’t say that there would be any attempt to limit compensation to those affected by the accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi facility.

Bottom line: there’s no evidence that nationalizing TEPCO would have any impact on the clean-up or on the work being done at Fukushima.

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Happy New Year from your friends at NEI Nuclear Notes. 2011 proved to be two years in 365 days. The most impressive event – leaving the accident at Fukushima Daiichi in a category of its own – to me was the extremely thorough and diligent response to the accident by the industry, the NRC, the U.S. government.

No one – at least who didn’t speak deutsch - looked at the accident and said “That’s it. Pull the plug.” But no one said, “This can’t happen here” either, even if the specifics of the Japan accident were unique.

But everything stayed at a level – the value of nuclear energy was almost universally acknowledged, but the need to take every lesson that could be learned from Fukushima and apply them to the American industry took center stage. Even attempts by anti-nuclear energy advocates to seize the moment fell flat – if anything, they became more shrill not less.

So – a tough year with a fair measure of heartening moments.

Welcome, 2012.

Bob Greene

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?

Mike Moyer of Scientific American Debunks Joe Mangano Again

Mike Moyer, the writer at Scientific American who so expertly debunked Joe Mangano's "research" in June, had a chance to read the latest Mangano study that claimed 14,000 deaths in the U.S. were linked to fallout from Fukushima.

The verdict: it's just another flawed study.

No attempt is made at providing systematic error estimates, or error estimates of any kind. No attempt is made to catalog any biases that may have crept into the analysis, though a cursory look finds biases a-plenty (the authors are anti-nuclear activists unaffiliated with any research institution). The analysis assumes that the plume arrived on U.S. shores, spread everywhere, instantly, and started killing people immediately. It assumes that the “excess” deaths after March 20 are a real signal, not just a statistical aberration, and that every one of them is due to Fukushima radiation.

Of course, as we pointed out yesterday, Mangano was forced to back off that last claim when pressed by a reporter from MedPage Today.

Back to Moyer ...

The publication of such sloppy, agenda-driven work is a shame. Certainly radiation from Fukushima is dangerous, and could very well lead to negative health effects—even across the Pacific. The world needs to have a serious discussion about what role nuclear power should play in a power-hungry post-Fukushima world. But serious, informed, fact-based debate is a difficult enough goal to achieve without having to shout above noise like this.

Amen, brother.