France: “An industrial accident, not a nuclear one”

In France today:

One person was killed and four were injured Monday afternoon in an explosion at a nuclear waste treatment site in southern France, according to the French Nuclear Safety Authority.

I saw some reports that said this was a electricity generation facility. Not so.

The site, about 20 miles from Avignon, has no nuclear reactors, the authority said.

Since the Times points to the French authority, let’s see what it has to say:

L’accident survenu ce matin dans l’installation nucléaire Centraco située près du site de Marcoule (Gard) est terminé.

L’explosion d’un four servant à fondre les déchets radioactifs métalliques a causé un incendie qui a été maitrisé à 13 h. Le bâtiment concerné n’a pas été endommagé. Aucune contamination n’a été constatée : les blessés ne sont pas contaminés et les mesures réalisées à l’extérieur du bâtiment par l’exploitant et les services publics de pompiers spécialisés n’ont révélé aucune contamination.

Phew! Here’s a translation (by me):

The accident this morning at the nuclear facility Centraco near the site of Marcoule (Gard) is over.

The explosion of a furnace used to melt metal radioactive waste caused a fire that was mastered at 13:00 (1:00 pm). The building in question was not damaged. No [radiological] contamination was found; the workers hurt in the accident were not contaminated and measurements taken ​​outside the building by the plant operator and fire fighters showed no contamination.

Despite some coverage that tried to gin this up – as I expect anything that happens at a nuclear facility (and apparently of any type) will be ginned up – this about covers it:

A spokesman for the French power utility E.D.F., which owns the site, said, “It is an industrial accident, not a nuclear one.”

And that’s serious enough. One worker died and one other was badly burned. And E.D.F. will need to figure out what happened. Nuclear facilities are first and foremost industrial plants – very, very safe ones, compared to those of most other industries, but still, industrial accidents will happen.

The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations keeps safety stats (for the U.S.). Here’s INPO’s chart for 2010.

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There wasn’t a lot of attention paid to the safety of nuclear energy facilities during this weekend’s activities commemorating the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Nor should have there been, really, except that  nuclear energy plants gained some attention after the attacks as potential targets. Reporters looking through their archives might have run into one of those stories and tried an update.

But no, not much. Charlie Matthews at the Green Bay Post-Gazette gives it a try:

Sara Cassidy, manager of nuclear communications for NextEra Point Beach, said the industry has spent $1.2 billion and many thousands of hours of training since Sept. 11, 2001, on security enhancements in response to the NRC mandates.

On things like beefed up security:

“We are talking about a paramilitary level of training and expertise to become a security officer at a nuclear power plant,” Mytling said.

She said the so-called “Force-on-Force” drills usually begin at night and continue for three consecutive nights, and plant officials are told when a specific exercise is going to commence. Another full contingent of non-drilling security officers is on scene just in case there was a real attack.

Mytling is Viktoria Mytling, senior public affairs at NRC Region III headquarters (which covers Wisconsin). Though Matthews talks about other ways in which plants are protected from terrorist attack, he focuses on the positive views of local officials:

Kewaunee County Sheriff Matt Joski said he doesn’t think area residents are at risk.

“Their level of security is second to none when it comes to training, equipment and resources,” Joski said.

And:

University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering physics professor Michael Corradini expressed confidence in the security measures adopted by America’s nuclear plants.

“As ‘design-basis’ threats they are very hard targets,” Corradini said. “They really don’t present an enormous concern to the public.”

Not bad – and true, too. Worth a look.

NEI has a section of its site devoted to security. You could consider it the heavy walk.

And the link between nuclear facilities and 9/11? Well, it’s good to know that the plants were made tougher targets. But many of us had other things to think about yesterday, stories to tell, memories. That’s as it should be.

The Marcoule plant.

For Every Action…

Duke Energy got a motley crew of protestors at its annual shareholder meeting, with environmentalist upset with coal and nuclear and the local tea party upset that Duke apparently helped bring the Democratic National Convention to Charlotte.

"We need to move away from coal," said Kim Jackson, an activist. "Yet they continue to embrace it. And nuclear isn't much better. Look what happened in Japan. Does nuclear look safe to you?"

Not to understate the seriousness of the accident in Japan, but to date the death toll from the plant is zero.

Jane Bilelle of the Asheville, N.C., Tea Party said [Duke chief executive Jim] Rogers should be ashamed of himself for giving "shareholders' money to the Democratic Party."

"That's theft of shareholder's money," she said.

If she’s a Duke shareholder, she should complain; otherwise, it’s just words on the wind.

Duke spokesman Tom Williams said the utility has long supported economic development in the Charlotte region. He also called the protest outside the company's headquarters "free speech at work."

Duke also was moving forward with plans to build a new nuclear plant in Gaffney, S.C., he said.

Good for Williams – he gets that protests add to the mix. They may or may not move Duke’s plans immediately – or ever -one way or another, but they put more ideas in play and that likely will inform Duke’s thinking into the future.

Not that a pro-nuclear rally would go amiss.

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But if some of the protesters in Charlotte wanted less coal and nuclear and would prefer what they consider a greener profile for the state, others have other priorities.

The governor and GOP lawmakers have pushed more than a dozen initiatives that would reverse the course set by Democrats when they held power.

Among the changes:

• Trying to eliminate mandatory requirements for recycling and the subsidies to local government that went with it.

• Weakening the state's commitment to wind power by making it more difficult for developers to meet siting requirements.

• Canceling a major state contract to burn homegrown biomass at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

• Delaying costly water pollution rules to control weed-producing phosphorus in waterways.

This is in Wisconsin. I’ve no brief on this, but it does demonstrate that there are different competing constituencies that experience rises and falls in their influence. I’m not sure this signals a rise in the business class – wind power business people don’t seem to be benefiting – but renewable energy advocates must be sorely disappointed.

But Clint Woods of the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization that supports free markets and limited government based in Washington, sees it differently.

He said the trend on environmental issues is driven by the weak economy, states' balance sheets and many voters' wish to rein in government.

"Wisconsin's reconsideration of past energy and environmental policies is definitely consistent with the efforts of other state legislatures," Woods said.

Well, maybe. If Wisconsin voters find these ideas not to their taste, then they’ll protest and change some votes in the legislation or, failing that, vote in a new wave of politicians to find other ways to save money. When people are involved, it’s not really true that for every action there is an equal reaction. But it can seem that way.

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Duke Energy is in the process of merging with Progress Energy. There are still a lot of steps Duke has to take to make this happen, but the St. Petersburg Times assumes it’s a inevitability and covers what it calls Progress Energy’s final annual meeting.

"If we look at the capital expenditures in front of us and if we want to be a player in new nuclear construction, which we think is important, we're just not big enough to do that efficiently," Progress Energy CEO Bill Johnson told the Associated Press.

Sound like Johnson thinks so, too.

A merged Duke-Progress Energy will lobby aggressively for such pro-nuclear aid as cheaper government loans and energy incentives.

It will seek the power to charge more consumers up front for the expense of building nuclear plants.

Progress, like Duke, is based in North Carolina, but it operates in Florida, too.This story is written by business columnist Robert Trigaux, so he’s allowed to diverge from known facts – he can’t really know, after all, what the merged entity will do unless someone told him.

But if he is a business columnist, then he should know that charging ratepayers while a project is under construction save those same ratepayers a lot of money later in finance charges – Progress won’t have to borrow as much money.

"Nuclear energy remains vital to the world's electricity needs," CEO James E. Rogers said last week at Duke's annual shareholders meeting.

Oh, and full circle to Duke. Well, that’s okay. It’s actually rather refreshing to hear Duke Energy and Progress Energy, pre-merged, state the obvious about nuclear energy.

It’s Wisconsin cheese. Yum!

“Years of Unchallenged Mythology”

Four weeks after the earthquake in Japan and this is the editorial view in Wisconsin:

Gov. Scott Walker is going to unveil sometime in the next several months a statewide energy plan. Included in the plan will be a proposal to lift the state's moratorium on building new nuclear plants. It should be.

That does not mean that someone will start building new nuclear plants tomorrow. Nor does it mean that the tragedy in Japan doesn't have lessons for Wisconsin. It just means that discussion and proposals for eventually building new plants will no longer be off the table.

Walker has become a controversial figure, but this wouldn’t be one of the things that makes him so.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel goes through several other energy sources and notes their shortcomings then proceeds:

Those alternatives should receive more encouragement and support from Walker's administration - and he said last week he is open to them - but right now they can't meet the full need.

Nuclear power can provide base load generation. And although there are some environmental issues in production of the fuel, the plants themselves generate zero carbon emissions. That continues to make nuclear a viable option if the state and country are serious about reducing carbon emissions.

We’ll stop there. It’s a long editorial and deserves a fuller reading – we await Gov. Walker’s energy plan with great interest.

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Mark Lynas is a British journalist with a focus on climate change issues – something The Los Angeles Times fails to note about him. But still, he’s contributed an interesting op-ed:

The irony of Fukushima is that in forcing us all to confront our deepest fears about the dangers of nuclear power, we find many of them to be wildly irrational — based on scare stories propagated through years of unchallenged mythology and the repeated exaggerations of self-proclaimed "experts" in the anti-nuclear movement.

Boy, do I agree with this. Lynas’ larger point is that Fukushima, instead of uniting environmentalists against nuclear energy, has further divided them on the atom.

Again, it’s a long article and worth attending to. Here’s a bit that seems to extend a theme we’ve seen from many writers:

What is needed is perspective. Nuclear energy is not entirely safe, as Fukushima clearly shows, even if the current radiation-related death toll is zero and will likely remain so. But coal and other fossil fuels are far, far worse.

To be honest, all this needs to be put into perspective – an overview of risk assessment would be a good thing – but nuclear energy, at least, is being seen whole by many and not to its disadvantage.

Mark Lynas. If you’re going to have a career as an environmental writer, this is the way to be photographed.

All Around the Country: More Editorials

An editorial from The Herald Times Reporter in Wisconsin takes a reasonably concerned stance:

Sara Cassidy of the Point Beach plant said the facility's design and maintenance are based on the worst-case seismic scenario for the plant's location.

And Mark Kanz of the Kewaunee nuclear plant said its owner, Dominion Resources, would review all of its safety systems.

They all are comforting, albeit predictable, statements.

Comforting, we hope, predictable, maybe, true, yes.

In this case, however, we put more stock in the past than in what might happen in a future impossible to predict. The Point Beach and Kewaunee facilities have, for the most part, had clean safety records since going online in the 1970s.

There have been occasional glitches, but they were thoroughly examined by the NRC and corrective measures were taken. None of the instances rose to the level of seriously compromising public safety.

We can be thankful that current and previous management of the local nuclear facilities has been, if not always stellar, at least proficient to the point of keeping the plants operating safely and efficiently.

I’ll bow to local media on how “stellar” management of the plants have been – though I suspect that’s a newspaper’s watchdog instinct at work – it’s really the conclusion that counts:

We hope that nuclear power, with ongoing and thorough oversight, will continue to be part of the nation's energy landscape for many years to come.

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The Natchez (Miss.) Democrat takes the same tone as the Wisconsin paper and for the same reason: there’s a nuclear plant in the neighborhood. But like Wisconsin, the tone here is concerned and supportive:

Thus far the track record in the U.S. has been good.

In terms of human lives lost, coal mining and oil and gas drilling have proven far more deadly to the workers involved in their production than nuclear energy production.

However, it’s the threat of being harmed by invisible radiation associated with nuclear energy that gives many people fear.

Most of us know we’ll rarely be in a coal mine or on an oil rig in the gulf, but the notion that radiation might seep into our lives and harm us is enough to worry even the most calm among us.

When the current crisis has passed, we hope our nation — and the world — considers bolstering the already stringent nuclear regulations to help avoid another crisis in the future. By all accounts, our world needs the potent energy creating aspects of nuclear power, but we need to continue our excellent record of safety.

Let’s leave to one side that American regulation didn’t play a part one way or another in Japan – the desire to see that regulation is strengthened here at home is certainly valid. The editorial board at the Democrat might want to go over here to learn more about radiation.

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The Washington Times is not known for nuance. This editorial takes up the issue of Yucca Mountain:

President Obama fulfilled a campaign promise to his radical supporters by zeroing out funding for Yucca Mountain in his fiscal 2011 budget last year. Then his energy secretary, Steven Chu, tasked nuclear energy backers with finding a different disposal solution.

This is true except for the whole “radical supporters” bit. To the Times, “radical” just means ideologically left of center and even that’s a stretch in this instance.

The O [for Obama, I guess]  Force is pursuing an unrealistic energy policy that is free of nuclear power and anything that emits carbon dioxide.

Well, we agree with the basic premise of the editorial that Yucca Mountain may warrant another look, but the haze of ideology is awfully thick here. Obama has been quite explicit – many times – about his support for nuclear energy, so the Times just seems way off base.

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The Times’ editorial, though, did lead me to wonder whether the idea of a second look at Yucca Mountain might be picking up energy. So, a bit. Here’s an op-ed from Dennis Burney in the Chicago Tribune:

Scientific studies concluded that the best burial site is under Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. Congress approved and required ComEd and other nuclear power customers to pay into the Nuclear Waste Fund to finance disposal.

But Burney really has other advice to offer:

But no more studies are needed. There's a technology, called the Integral Fast Reactor, that could produce abundant, safe, environmentally friendly and less expensive nuclear power. IFR supporters said it would provide an inexhaustible and domestic fuel supply, while solving the spent-fuel problem.

I’ll let this one alone – it’s interesting to see the discussion. Doesn’t really count as a Yucca Mountain revival piece, though.

Downtown Natchez – maybe on a Sunday.