Dreaming About a Repository

Last week, I sat in on a House hearing about the Blue Ribbon Commission’s draft report. The hearing rapidly departed from the subject and veered to Yucca Mountain, which the commission was asked not to consider. None of the commission members were at the hearing – they want to wait until the release of the final report in January to talk about it.

But here’s the thing. The commission’s draft report suggests final disposition of used fuel in a deep geologic repository – just like it-that-will-not-be-named.

And interestingly, a kind of mirror image of the hearing occurred a few days later – again intended to be about the commission’s draft report but really about Yucca Mountain.

Many who spoke Friday urged the commission to fight for Yucca Mountain, a proposed long-term nuclear waste storage site in Nevada that is on the verge of being rejected by the federal government.

[State] Sen. John Howe said the commission – which took a neutral stance on Yucca Mountain in its report – should support the project. And Egan said he is concerned about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission studying longer-term on-site storage.

“Yucca Mountain should not be off the table,” he said.

Where is this? Minnesota.

Gathered in Minneapolis, legislators, city and tribal leaders, corporate representatives and others shared their reactions to a draft report from the president’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future outlining suggestions for nuclear waste management.

The story doesn’t say who called this meeting, but it had very broad representation among stakeholders near the Prairie Island facility (except perhaps Prairie Island’s owner Xcel, which is quoted separately in the story.) And most wanted a permanent fuel repository.

Surprisingly, very little of this (as reported) seemed to have to do with the used fuel casks at Prairie Island, but the issue of what was promised and not delivered.

On-site storage was supposed to be a temporary measure, but dry-cask storage has been in place at Prairie Island since the 1990s, he said. Johnson urged the commission to push for results this time.

“We are tired of hearing more promises that will just be broken,” he said.

The House members I listened to did not take this angle quite so directly, but it is a different matter when it comes to the states. Now, keeping used fuel on-site for an extended period of time is not dangerous – but it is also not what was promised – and it seems quite reasonable to discuss the implications of not keeping that promise.

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And what about Yucca Mountain?

Well, there’s this:

Three Republican presidential candidates pleased the hometown crowd in Las Vegas earlier this month with their answer to a question about whether the federal government should open the long-planned nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry agreed it was a states’ rights issue and argued Nevada shouldn’t be compelled to accept nuclear waste from other states.

Which would seem to argue for on-site storage as an ongoing solution, which would require changing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and abrogating the directives of the blue ribbon commission (as we understand them from the draft report).

Here’s  Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.):

“I’d remind all the presidential candidates of the federal government’s promise to construct a long-term storage facility for the legacy weapons materials temporarily being stored in South Carolina,” Duncan said. “I suspect many South Carolina voters, including myself, will expect to hear the presidential candidates solution to this problem during their next visit to the Palmetto State.”

Duncan is referring to the Savannah River Site and he makes a salient point. If the candidates consider domestic nuclear fuel to be a state issue, what do they consider military used fuel? Yucca Mountain was meant to house both.

In other words, it’s a complex issue. Plenty of people will be happy to remind you of that if you underestimate it.

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From the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal-Star:

The bodies of the final three victims were recovered Monday morning from a grain elevator that exploded Saturday, killing six people and injuring two others.

What happened?

The explosion was a harrowing reminder of the dangers inside elevators brimming with highly combustible grain dust at the end of harvest season. The blast fired an orange fireball into the night sky, shot off a chunk of the grain distribution building directly above the elevator and blew a large hole in the side of a concrete silo.

I would not dare compare this to Fukushima, though the picture at the link brings back memories. What struck me about this is how much risk is involved even in activities that one wouldn’t necessarily call industrial or consider particularly risky (well, from the outside – the silo workers were certainly aware of it.)

I’m sure risk assessment and mitigation are important topics among silo operators – but still, a fireball flew into the Kansas sky – and five workers (all in their early 20s) and a Kansas state grain inspector (father of three young children) are dead. It will be interesting to see how silo operators tighten their safety standards and perhaps install equipment to tamp down the dust.

It’s a blue ribbon, as in commission.

Of Valves and Venting

The New York Times starts the story of the valves this way:

After the venting failed at the Fukushima plant, the hydrogen gas fueled explosions that spewed radioactive materials into the atmosphere, reaching levels about 10 percent of estimated emissions at Chernobyl, according to Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency.

It’s a very interesting story and at least feels like the start of the narrative of what happened at Fukushima Daiichi. But the discussion of valves and venting careens off in very odd ways.

American officials had said early on that reactors in the United States would be safe from such disasters because they were equipped with new, stronger venting systems. But Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the plant, now says that Fukushima Daiichi had installed the same vents years ago.

Gulp! Did anyone ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or perhaps a utility here in the states about this? Nope.

Tokyo Electric has said the valves did not work at Fukushima Daiichi after the power failed.

That would suggest that operators of similar plants in the United States and Japan could protect reactors by moving generators to higher floors if the equipment is currently in places that could be affected by tsunamis or flooding from rivers.

But a redesign of the venting system itself might also be necessary.

Matt Wald, who wrote this story, seems to have had second thoughts, particularly about the similarity of Japanese and American plants when it comes to the implementation of valves.

Yet since 1989, when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told American plant operators that it liked the venting idea, the thinking has changed further on the operation of boiling water reactors. For one thing, most American reactors have been allowed to bolster their steam output so they can make more electricity. To get permission to do this, a reactor owner must arrive at a calculation that the emergency core cooling system could still work in case of excess heat.

Some plants now anticipate high pressure, and, in fact, require it for safe operation.

So there was divergence, at the least. Here’s a little more, specific to valves:

If the vent is operated with an electrically driven valve, as in the current design, operators can control how much steam they let out and how much pressure they keep in. The alternative is probably a rupture disk, a thin piece of steel that breaks at a pre-designed level, just below the pressure that is likely to rupture the containment.

Wald goes on to express some doubts, but the point is that he learned more about valves and venting and shared that with his readers. What started out fairly damning became considerably less so with some further research.

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Some of the concern with valves comes from an engineer named Anthony Sarrack:

Anthony Sarrack, working with another Monticello engineer, wrote a white paper in 2005 raising concerns about a venting system designed to rid boiling water reactor containment vessels of excessive pressure during accidents by releasing it outside.

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But Sarrack says he left the industry in 2006 after spending a frustrating 19 months trying to persuade the regulators and industry officials to consider his proposed solution.

"As an industry, they don't want to make changes," he said.

Monticello is in Minnesota, which is why reporter David Shaffer tells this story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has caused some mischief with Sarrack’s findings, but as usual, there’s more to the story. There’s this:

The Monticello plant has a backup system powered by compressed nitrogen that officials said would power the vents if the plant lost all power. The venting system has never needed to be used, the utility said.

So one of the big concerns – that the vents would lose power if a plant does - is not really so.

Then, this:

Doug True, president of Erin Engineering and Research, a Walnut Creek, Calif., nuclear consulting firm, said Sarrack's proposal "never got any traction" in the industry because many people disagreed with its merits.

"There was lot of consideration on how to use these vents, and on balance people generally felt the way they were installed was the preferred way," he said.

So Sarrack may have been frustrated that his ideas didn’t get much pickup – fair enough - but suggesting that they weren’t given consideration isn’t really true. (Sarrack also says his bosses at Monticello never tried to silence him and that he later left of his own accord – so conspiricists do not have much of a stick to use here.)

The subject is a little esoteric, I know, but because the New York Times made a pitch of it, it picked up more interest than it probably warranted. But the interesting thing is that reporters – including the original reporter - kept digging into it and finding it, at best, rather problematic. On the other hand:

An NRC spokeswoman said the vents will be reviewed as the agency studies the lessons from the Fukushima disaster.

Well, why not? Where’s the harm? It’s even as it should be.

Monticello. The valves are – okay.

The Hidden Cost of Yucca, The States of Nuclear

In the Congressional hearing report a few posts down, several House members turned the heat up on four NRC commissioners (including Chairman Gregory Jaczko) over the commission’s decision – or action, as it hasn’t technically made a decision yet - to not review the license for the Yucca Mountain used fuel repository.

So a report from the Government Accounting Office acts only to pour both salt and lemon on the wound:

The U.S. government could face fines of $75,000 a day if it fails to find a way to store or handle stockpiles of defense-related nuclear waste by 2035, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Because Yucca Mountain was meant to harbor this material, too. 

In government terms, $75,000 may sound paltry. It adds up:

If the Energy Department does not find a way to remove the waste by then, it could face "significant penalties," GAO says: $60,000 a day for the remains in Idaho and $15,000 a day for remains in Colorado - or $27.4 million annually.

That’s not so paltry.

The decision to halt work on the repository does seem to have required more thought than it received, but who knows? Maybe the Blue Ribbon Commission will come up with some better ideas.

See the story for more on all this – the account from Dow Jones is quite interesting. You can find the whole GAO report here.

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We can’t say that two swallows make a spring – but neither do they bring on winter.

Here’s one:

Missouri House members have endorsed a proposal to let utilities charge electric customers for some costs of developing a nuclear power plant before it's built.

The House voted 121-21 Thursday to add the nuclear plant issue to a separate bill, which wasn't put to a final vote. The legislative session ends May 13.

Not bad – let’s see how this works out.

And two:

The top Senate Republican says the Minnesota Legislature likely won't vote this year on a bill to lift a ban on new nuclear power plants.

Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch told reporters Thursday that the bill is "on pause" after passing both chambers in February.

The tell:

The nuclear crisis in Japan also didn't help its prospects.

Says the reporter. This bit wasn’t sourced. In any event, passing this bill wouldn’t have guaranteed a new plant, just allowed the state to consider nuclear among its energy options. Whether or not Fukushima weighed in, seems silly to exclude nuclear from the mix.

Motto: Can’t win ‘em all. Though you can keep trying – I wager this bill will be back in the next session of Minnesota’s legislature.

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Iowa voted a couple of weeks ago to allow MidAmerican to charge ratepayers the cost of studying a new reactor in that state. The value of doing this is that it saves the utility from borrowing money – with the (considerable) finance charges paid by ratepayers. This way, none of that.

At least, that’s what I thought the charges were for. Instead, MidAmerican apparently wants to move right ahead with two small reactors:

If approved, it would clear the way for MidAmerican Energy, the state's largest utility, to begin billing customers in advance for the estimated $1 billion cost of developing one or more small modular nuclear reactors that could be on line as early as 2020.

This is a bit of a puzzle, as no design for a small reactor has been licensed by the NRC yet. It might happen in time to get the Iowa reactors up and running by 2020, but it seems a big “might.” I wonder if Forbes has this right. We’ll check into this and report back.

We sometimes show a picture of an African or Asian city at night to show why the country that houses it is considering nuclear energy. Doesn’t seem fair to ignore the North American continent. So - here’s Minneapolis – not enjoying the possibility of a new nuclear plant.