SOARCA and the Decreasing Risk of Death

How likely is it that a major accident at a nuclear energy facility would kill you? Japan just had such a major accident and no one died due to radiological exposure – there were industrial accidents at Fukushima that led to worker death but those were specific to occurring at a physical plant. The general public, while suffering displacement and its attendants stresses – not to mention those caused by the earthquake and tsunami that precipitated the accident – has been fatality free.

The NRC has been investigating the risk of death from a nuclear facility accident and has an answer: your risk is vanishingly small.

The study found there was "essentially zero risk" to the public of early fatalities due to radiation exposure following a severe accident. The long-term risk of dying from cancer due to radiation exposure after an accident was less than one in a billion and less than the U.S. average risk of dying from other causes of cancer, which is about two in one thousand.

Another conclusion: severe accidents at nuclear energy facilities would unfold more slowly and potential releases of radioactive material would be much smaller than earlier studies indicated.

The NRC looked at Surry and Peach Bottom for the study because they are different kinds of reactors.

If core cooling is not restored [following an accident], the NRC said containment failure and radiological release could begin at about 8 hours for Peach Bottom and at 25 hours for Surry.

That’s the worst case scenario, of course, with safety systems intended to prevent its occurrence at multiple points. (Remember, though, that this report assumes that all these systems fail and radiation is released – that eventuality is what it wants to model)

The story doesn’t go into evacuation, but the report does:

For the purposes of evaluating accident consequences in the SOARCA project, the most evident part of a plant's emergency response plan is the evacuation of the public in the 10-mile (16-km) plume exposure pathway Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ). Actions in this EPZ could be expanded if the plume projections suggest that the population in a wider area need to take protective actions. Thus, the project team assessed additional aspects of emergency response, including relocation from areas of relatively high potential for exposure, as well as variations of evacuation and sheltering of population groups outside the 10-mile EPZ to a distance of 20 miles from the plant.

The plume is what many think of as a cloud of radiation.

The report also says that existing safety measures—including those put in place after 9/11—would be highly effective in protecting the public. Moreover, even if mitigating measures fail or are not used, “the analyzed accidents would cause essentially zero immediate deaths and only a very, very small increase in the long-term cancer deaths.”

Any industry – from chemical and gas plants to paper mills to refineries – has to know the worst possible event that can happen and figure out how to keep people alive though it and get them out of the way should it occur. These are the risks of an industrialized society and not specific to the nuclear energy industry.

But it does suggest the responsibility industry and government regulators have to know the risks and how to mitigate them. This report, State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses (or SOARCA, in Washington-acronym speak), provides a careful analysis and concludes that the risk is present, and must be acknowledged, but it is very, very small.

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.

NRC’s Post-Fukushima Recommendations Will Be Mandatory for U.S. Nuclear Energy Facilities

Over the past few months, anti-nuclear groups have regularly attacked our industry for allegedly resisting implementing changes at our facilities in the wake of the incident at Fukushima Daiichi. While that’s simply not the case, it’s a perception that often gets reinforced in the press—and this morning’s mailbag contained yet another example.

Politico Pro posted an article this morning, “NRC Won’t Make Post-Fukushima Safety Recommendations Mandatory,” that is misleading and egregiously inaccurate. At issue is how the term “mandatory” is used to show how the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will both implement and mandate its post-Fukushima recommendations.

The lede states:

The NRC on Thursday cemented a to-do list of post-Fukushima safety recommendations for U.S. nuclear plants but won't make them mandatory.

That caught the attention of Jason Zorn, NEI’s assistant general counsel, who made it clear to me in no uncertain terms that this is incorrect. I spoke with him this afternoon to explain why in further detail:

The story focuses on the commission’s decision that it was premature to conclude that the Fukushima-related lessons learned are “necessary for adequate protection.” However, a new requirement does not have to be based on "adequate protection" to be mandatory. As long as the NRC acts through a legally binding vehicle, such as an order or a rulemaking, the result will be legally binding. The commission's decision on "adequate protection" in the staff requirements memorandum (SRM) goes only to whether these recommendations will be subjected to a full regulatory analysis or not, and has nothing to do with them being "mandatory."

Zorn points to SECY 11-0137—the SRM that prioritizes how the NRC will respond to the Fukushima lessons learned—and said that the second paragraph cannot be taken out of context from the first.

The first paragraph clearly shows that the commission has approved the NRC staff’s post-Fukushima recommendations to impose many of the lessons learned through orders or rulemaking. Both orders and rulemaking impose legally binding and enforceable requirements. In other words, they all will become mandatory at some point; it’s just a matter of how you are going to get there that’s the difference.

He explains that the SRM’s second paragraph shows that the NRC has yet to decide what level of protection (either “adequate protection” or “‘extra’ adequate protection”) each recommendation will fall under before each is mandated. The paragraph states:

In the absence of a fully developed justification for a proposed new requirement, the Commission finds it premature to initiate actions on the Near Term Task Force recommendations under the premise of assuring or redefining the level of protection of public health and safety that should be required as adequate in accordance with the backfit rule. The Commission will evaluate the staff’s basis for imposing new requirements when documented in notation vote papers for any new requirements promulgated by orders or rulemaking.

The commission will need further evidence to support each recommendation being categorized as either “adequate protection” or “‘extra’ adequate protection” before being required. Zorn states:

The commission simply said that they want the staff to look at the underlying basis and do a full analysis of impacts and benefits where appropriate. In contrast, requirements imposed under an adequate protection basis can be imposed with essentially no meaningful regulatory analysis. The staff’s original recommendation to impose many of the recommendations through orders or rulemaking was left completely intact by the commission.

So what’s next? Zorn replies:

The details are far from final. The task force will come back to the commission in a few months with their analysis of each recommendation and the commission will vote whether each should fall under the “adequate” or “extra adequate” categories. The NRC has these processes in place to ensure that new requirements are adequately understood and justified before they are imposed.

I think Zorn “adequately” (pardon the pun) explained why the Politico Pro piece is misleading. Hopefully his explanation will make it to Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) who issued a press release yesterday with the same misinterpretation:

While I welcome the step the commission took today, I am disappointed that a majority of the Commissioners voted to reject the recommendation of the NRC Near-Term Task Force on Fukushima that the safety upgrades be made mandatory and not leave their implementation subject to a future cost-benefit analysis.

Inside Look at “Adequate Protection”

Since I had Zorn’s attention for a few minutes, I also asked him if he could explain the background on “adequate protection.” His explanation was fairly easy to understand.

The Atomic Energy Act authorizes the NRC to impose requirements (i.e. make them “mandatory”) by regulation or order. Once a regulation, order or license is issued, it is legally binding and enforceable, meaning the NRC can issue a penalty or take other enforcement action if a licensee violates the terms.

Separately is the fact that the Atomic Energy Act also basically allows the NRC to impose new requirements under one of two options: “necessary for adequate protection” or “‘extra’ adequate protection.” In a nutshell, it is within the NRC’s discretion to decide into which category a particular new requirement (i.e. the aforementioned regulations, orders or plant licenses) will fall.

The “necessary for adequate protection” category gives the NRC the authority to impose requirements that it believes are necessary for the adequate protection of public health and safety or common defense and security. It is important to note that this does NOT mean that the NRC’s requirements must achieve “absolute protection” (i.e. zero risk), which would be impossible to achieve. It also is important to note that the NRC cannot generally consider costs when deciding whether or not something is necessary for adequate protection.

If the NRC chooses to impose a new requirement as “‘extra’ adequate protection,” it must show that the requirement would have a substantial increase in the overall safety of the plant and the costs to implement are justified. This analysis is known as a “backfit analysis,” which is outlined in the NRC’s regulations at 10 C.F.R. § 50.109. This category requires substantial NRC research and cost-benefit analyses before being implemented. Examples of requirements that have been imposed in the past as “extra adequate protection” are the station blackout rule, aircraft impact assessment rule, and 1994 vehicle bomb rule.

But the bottom line is, once a new requirement is imposed by order or rulemaking—either under the “adequate” or “extra adequate” protection category—it is considered mandatory by the NRC and is both legally binding and enforceable.

NRC’s Post-Fukushima Review Adds Top Priority

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week released a staff paper that prioritizes the recommendations from the near-term post-Fukushima task force report into three tiers—or categories—of importance based on the potential to enhance safety at U.S. nuclear plants. As part of its Tier 1 recommendation, or actions that “should be started without unnecessary delay,” the NRC elevated the importance of implementing spent fuel pool instrumentation, or monitoring equipment, at U.S. nuclear energy facilities.

Why did the NRC elevate this issue? A Bloomberg article explains:

Improved cooling-pool equipment wasn’t listed as a concern warranting immediate NRC action in a Sept. 9 staff memo. Agency staff made it a priority after determining that resources exist to improve monitoring instruments, which aren’t often designed “to remain functional under accident conditions,” according to the report released today.

Moving the recommendation to the first tier does NOT indicate that current spent fuel pools are unsafe. In fact, the NRC has said that current operating nuclear plants “do not pose an imminent risk to public health and safety.” The re-prioritization of the issue likely comes from early lessons the NRC and industry have learned post-Fukushima on the need for remote monitoring of the pools.

In a September 26 letter to the NRC, which provides the industry’s position on the commission’s post-Fukushima recommendations, the industry shows how important it is for the NRC to act based on the facts from the accident.

The Fukushima spent fuel pools are an example of where facts have invalidated earlier conclusions. Shortly following the initial events, many believed that water levels in the pools—the Unit 4 pool, in particular—had fallen to the point that the spent fuel had overheated, failed and contributed to the accident. Now, with the benefit of visual inspections and samples from the four affected fuel pools, it is evident that the spent fuel rods did not experience major and significant failure.

The industry continues by saying that not having a clear understanding of the situation in a used fuel pool “could result in the diversion of needed resources away from more safety-significant activities.”

In learning this important lesson from Fukushima, the industry believes that:

Remote monitoring would enable operators to know when actions are needed to provide additional water to the pools. This recommendation is consistent with the action already taken by the industry on knowing the time until the pool will reach 200°F.

The industry fully supports the NRC’s decision to add the issue as a tier 1 priority in its near-term actions.

See NEI’s video to learn more about how spent fuel pools are designed and constructed to safely store used nuclear fuel.

NRC Discusses Preliminary Results from North Anna Inspections

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a public meeting yesterday to discuss its team’s preliminary inspection results on how the North Anna nuclear plant withstood the August 23 earthquake that rippled throughout the East Coast and the adequacy of the plant’s response.

What did they find?

David Heacock, Dominion’s president and chief nuclear officer, explains in a short video clip at the meeting:

The plant operated as designed with a few minor equipment problems and the people did a fantastic job operating the plant and safely shutting it down.

Each nuclear plant in the United States is built to safely withstand an earthquake—North Anna is no exception. But Heacock explains how having an additional safety margin helped the plant when the unexpected quake struck.

These plants were designed for a seismic event about the size of this seismic event, but for a much longer duration. Duration is very important. As duration gets longer, more and more energy gets imparted upon the plant. This event lasted about three seconds for the strong shaking, but we’re designed for a minimum of 15 seconds of strong shaking. So this is really about 20 percent of the energy the plant is designed to take.

Next steps: Starting tomorrow for about a 10-day period, the NRC will have a five-member crew conducting a thorough inspection at the site to ensure that all equipment is available and that there isn’t damage to safety equipment before the plant restarts. Last Friday the NRC outlined its post-earthquake requirements, which Dominion must meet before the plant is allowed to restart.

For more information, check out the NRC’s website where you can find current actions at the plant, a chronology of events, and frequently asked questions.

Sitting Down with the Bloggers

The sittee would be Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who held a webcast with a number of nuclear-oriented bloggers. It was moderated by blog roll favorite Dan Yurman from Idaho Samizdat and ran for about 90 minutes. Questions were submitted in advance and at the meeting and although Jaczko sidestepped some uncomfortable ones, at least somewhat, he largely aimed to be direct in his answers.

For example, Jaczko was asked to explain the 50-mile evacuation zone he recommended for Americans in Japan after Fukushima when American evacuation plans only call for a 10-mile evacuation zone. Jaczko said (this is a bit paraphrased):

We had a lot of internal discussions about what we were seeing [in Japan] – based on that, we did some analysis, took some best judgments and ran some simple codes to show that there was a potential for [radiological] release up to 50 miles. If this had happened in the United States, we would have recommended enhanced evacuations.

Some of the q-and-a needed more than the format allowed. Jaczko said this in March about Fukushima Daiichi:

"We believe at this point that unit 4 may have lost a significant inventory, if not lost all, of its water," Jaczko told a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. 

Jaczko was careful to say this assertion was based on available information, but it was picked up by most news services. Another tidbit from the ABC story, which called this “a potentially catastrophic situation.”

Japan's nuclear safety agency and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the complex, deny water is gone from the pool. Utility spokesman Hajime Motojuku told the Associated Press the "condition is stable" at unit 4.

Who had this right? The Japanese. Here’s what Jaczko said about this today:

This was a small piece of what we were looking at. The issue that we were more concerned with was the fact that you had such high radiation at the site, radiation would have been difficult. The lesson we took from this is that we need adequate instrumentation to monitor the pools. It something [such as the March assertion] proves to be inaccurate over time, that’s to be expected.

Fair enough, yet all that saw that widely reported ABC story (and many other stories on the same hearing) carried away the idea that the fuel pool had emptied. This is important as many people, including members of Congress, still believe the used fuel pools were a major issue at Fukushima. In fact, they proved to be not an issue at all. (Not that Jaczko is wrong about better instrumentation.)

---

Jaczko made a point that is sometimes forgotten: not everything about nuclear energy is under the purview of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Ideally, the commission only deals with issues of safety – it’s a big issue, with many moving parts, but it is singular.

So, for example, when he was asked about the recommendations on used fuel offered by the Blue Ribbon Commission, Jaczko pointed out that most of them will not concern the NRC until and unless Congress selects a new repository site. Then the NRC would have a role in regulation and licensing.

Jaczko also pointed out that just because the NRC issues a 40-year license or 20-year license extension does not mean that a plant will utilize the full term of the license. He pointed to New Jersey’s Oyster Creek, which will close early, and Vermont Yankee, which might close almost directly after getting a license extension due to a conflict with the state of Vermont. All the license does is certify that the projected plant will be safe for operation (or continues to be safe in the case of an extension), not that it ever has to be built and/or operated.

He also said, for fans of them, that the NRC is ready to review license applications for small reactors – as long as they are light water reactors, which the commission readily understands. Newer designs will take more time.

---

Jaczko’s desire to be responsive but not create new news was evident throughout the session, helped by a lack of follow-up questions that might have zeroed in on the issues a bit more. For example, asked about Yucca Mountain, he said, in short, “We [the NRC] have terminated our work. We no longer have a [used fuel] program. We will see if Congress will come up with another used fuel repository.”

All of which is true, but a follow-up series of questions might have explored how the situation developed after the Atomic Safely Licensing Board said that DOE could not withdraw its license application and the commission later affirmed that decision. Stopping the licensing process wouldn’t seem to be a choice for the NRC, but that’s what it did. It would have been interesting to know how the NRC sidestepped the licensing process. There might well be a good answer.

---

I know this account sounds overly critical, but really, the session was highly rewarding, and Jaczko was game for a wide range of questions that pushed him considerably outside the kind of grilling he sometimes experiences on Capitol Hill – no one at this meeting was a novice on nuclear issues and no one had an ideological ax to grind. I hope Jaczko or one of the four commissioners will continue to engage bloggers.

And Dan Yurman did a great job first time out – a whole plume of feathers for his cap, I say.

Gregory Jaczko, waiting for the blogging goons to jump him.

Readers Weigh In On CJR's Look at AP Series on Nuclear Energy

A few days back, I pointed to a piece by the Columbia Journalism Review that took a look at NEI's dispute with the Associated Press over their series on the safety of nuclear power plants. Since that piece was published on Wednesday, a number of readers have weighed in with some interesting comments. We've included a few below:

I see you think the plants were designed for 40 years of use. I think rather that the plants were licensed for 40 years of use. When you get a drivers license lasting for four years, do you expect to quit driving after four years?

When a steam generator is replaced in a plant is the new steam generator less reliable that the same steam generator placed in a new plant?

The point here is safety is not determined by plant age. Safety is determined by measuring how safe something is. Is the plant safe when it is new? Is the plant safe 10 years later? Is the plant safe 40 years later? Is the plant safe 60 years later? Safety is not based on the age of the plant! This is especially true when large parts of the plant are replaced over time.

[...]

Jeff Donn did what many reporters do in similar situations. He presented material without context and relied on “experts” friendly to his point of view to make the material seem far more devastating than it actually is. The nuclear industry was right to go for the throat in this instance. They learned the hard way during the 70’s that if they don’t hit back at reporting like this it will over time do irreparable damage to the industry.

[...]

Understanding how carefully nuclear power plants are maintained requires more than a cursory look at some of the countless pages of documents that the industry produces every year. It is not news to any engineer that pipes made of steel occasionally rust or develop thinning walls, that electrical cable insulation becomes brittle in certain situations, or that valves develop leaking seals. We have inspection routines and planned maintenance systems that are designed to identify these situations and correct them before they cause major risks.

I'm sure there are more to come. Please feel free to join the fray. Click here to leave your own.

CJR Critiques AP Series on Nuclear Plant Safety

Over the Summer that the Associated Press (AP) ran a four-part series on safety at America's nuclear power plants by reporter Jeff Donn. Needless to say, everyone here at NEI believed the stories had some significant holes, ones that we detailed in a formal rebuttal back in June.

Earlier today, the Columbia Journalism Review published a the latest edition of its Audit Arbiter series about our dispute with the AP. Please give it a read right now.

POSTSCRIPT: Click here for the formal response from NEI's media team. Click here for additional material we published here on NEI Nuclear Notes, including links to other third party sources that found the AP's work less than convincing. NEI's Chief Nuclear Officer, Tony Pietrangelo, outlined his objections to the reporting in a video report that can be found here.

UCS and The Politics of Naïveté

Sometimes, when you see an attack on the nuclear energy industry, it may have some grain of truth in that a facility did not implement something perfectly or a license application is missing some data.

But when you don’t like something – as in the case of anti-nuclear campaigners – then any perceived flaw proves the industry negligent.

So that’s one thing.

But some arguments just seem willfully naïve – about how the industry works, how NEI works, the NRC, in the hopes that information that is fairly benign is instead shocking evidence of malicious intent.

That brings us to the Union of Concerned Scientists. The group says it’s nominally in favor of nuclear energy – as long as the industry passes a long litmus test devised by UCS to prove its worth. This allows UCS to nibble at the edges in the hopes that enough holes will cause the edifice of the nuclear energy industry to crumble into dust.

The blatancy of the approach is actually rather amusing. Take for example a blog post from the UCS All Things Nuclear blog earlier this week:

The [NRC] document, entitled The Evolution of Mitigating Measures for Large Fire and Explosions: A Chronological History From September 11, 2001 Through October 7, 2009 (Part 1, Part 2), provides an extensive, detailed account of the delaying tactics used by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) to prevent the NRC from enforcing requirements that it imposed on the nuclear industry soon after the 9/11 attacks.

Really? That’s what it shows? Let’s see:

The bottom line revealed in this document is that the NRC issued orders on February 25, 2002 to all nuclear plant licensees to immediately upgrade security in a number of areas by August 31, 2002. Among those areas was Section B.5.b of the order, which required “licensees to adopt mitigation strategies using readily available resources to maintain or restore core cooling, containment and spent fuel pool cooling capabilities to cope with the loss of large areas of the facility due to large fires and explosions from any cause, including beyond design-basis aircraft attacks.”

That’s true. What this is about is section B.5.b. of the NRC’s order, which deals with plant security and the context was the implementation of that requirement in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Naturally, right after the attacks, industrial facilities erected barriers, secured the perimeters of the plants, beefed up security – essentially what was done across many realms of American life after the attacks. The B.5.b. requirements were part of a comprehensive approach by the industry and NRC to enhance security further. So what went wrong in UCS’s view?

However, the lack of specificity in this requirement, including the meaning of “readily available,” led to differing positions between the industry and the NRC as to what, if anything, was actually required by B.5.b. As a result of extensive arguments on these points and others, it took nearly five years before the NRC and NEI came to agreement on what actually was required and how those requirements could be met.

This is partly true, partly not. It didn’t really lead to a disagreement in the sense of the NRC and the industry taking entrenched, mutually exclusive positions. But it’s a good enough word – even the NRC calls it a disagreement. The salient point, though, is that NRC can assert its will even while it works with licensees to ensure it isn’t forcing unrealistic requirements. Here’s what the report itself says:

Industry representatives interpreted the definition [of the B.5.b. rule] more narrowly than did the [NRC] staff, which resulted in a smaller number of required strategies. This continuing disagreement resulted in the NRC’s position that additional actions by licensees were necessary to meet the requirements of the ICM Order, after August 31, 2002, which was the original implementation date for the ICM Order.

In other words, the NRC recognized itself that the phrase “readily available” was open to interpretation. But you’ll note that NRC did not bend to industry’s “narrow” interpretation (remember, NRC is writing this report) but imposed its own, more expansive interpretation. If NEI and the industry were attempting to delay this, they failed rather spectacularly. 

Moreover, all companies that operate nuclear energy facilities implemented the original ICM order on or before August 31, 2002, as required. NRC began inspections in October 2002 and completed them in a year. This became the first phase of an expanded three-phase implementation of B.5.b. Again, there was no alleged attempt to stonewall the commission; it’s hard, based on the report’s narrative, to even posit such an attempt. Phases 2 and 3 of the implementation took more time, but that’s to be expected. Plants are not less safe as a result, and as the initial panic over further terrorist attacks receded, cooler heads prevailed and the plan to implement B.5.b. became more refined.

NEI issued a press release in 2004 that covered the completion of the original phases:

All of the 103 commercial nuclear power plants operating at 64 sites in 31 states have met the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Oct. 29 deadline for implementing more stringent security measures. The NRC in April 2003 issued three security orders that included a requirement that the industry take measures to meet the agency’s new description of the size and attributes of an attacking force against which the industry must be able to defend its facilities.

And gave a list of what the facilities did to fulfill them:

• increased the size of their paramilitary security forces by 60 percent to a total of 8,000 officers;
• made substantial physical improvements to provide additional protection against vehicle bombs and other potential terrorist assaults;
• increased training for security officers;
• established a rigorous “force on force” mock adversary exercise regime;
• increased security patrols;
• added more security posts;
• increased vehicle standoff distances;
• tightened access controls; and
• enhanced coordination with state and local law enforcement.

So even if one didn’t agree with the NRC and NEI and thought that the original order was not as open to interpretation as they did, the orders certainly became more specific as the NRC and the industry came to an agreement over what measures to implement. The industry effort cost more than $1 billion to implement, so it wouldn’t seem that NEI’s “stonewalling” prevented quite a lot of activity on the security front.

---

Implementing rules and regulations is a process and, in most instances, the industry’s views, UCS’s views, Congress’ views and the views of you and me, if we have any as private citizens, are solicited before rules are finalized. (B.5.b. was admittedly different because it concerned national security and much of the implementation rightfully was safeguarded.)

Here’s how UCS puts it:

Although there is a legitimate interest in protecting information that could be useful to terrorists planning attacks, in our view the NRC cast an overly broad net over information related to nuclear power plant security after 9/11.

Well, so they say. It didn’t really matter what UCS or NEI thought about it. The American government in late 2001 and into 2002 was figuring out how to keep America’s critical infrastructure safe. That infrastructure, including nuclear facilities, had to be kept safe. How much overreach occurred and how much secrecy was too much are arguments for another day.

Still, it was a process and what the NRC document lays out is how that process unfolded.

---

The UCS post covers some odd items. For example:

The NRC apparently made mitigation of risks to spent fuel pools more of a priority than mitigation of risks to reactors and containment buildings, and reordered the development of B.5.b measures to address spent fuel pools first. The document cites this change as a “response to heightened public and congressional interest in the potential vulnerability of the SFPs. This heightened interest stemmed from the January 31, 2003, paper by Robert Alvarez, Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States, of which I [Edward Lyman] was a co-author.

You can read the whole Alvarez paper here. But what doesn’t get mentioned here is that the NRC staff reviewed this paper and offered a critique that might be called blistering.

In the first paragraph of the staff paper:

The NRC staff has reviewed the paper, "Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power- Reactor Fuel in the United States," April 21, 2003, Robert Alvarez, et al., (published in Science and Global Security, spring 2003) and concludes that it fails to make the case for its central recommendation.

It gets worse for Mr. Alvarez:

Our review of the paper indicates that it is a deficient study of the hazards associated with the storage of spent fuel. Many of the 114 cited references are NRC studies or NRC contracted studies conducted for a variety of purposes, and most are not applicable to terrorist attacks.

You can read the rest at the link, but NRC staff is nothing if not thorough. Here’s a bit from the summary:

The use of these previous studies, most of them NRC or NRC contractor studies, provides overly conservative and misleading results when assessing potential spent fuel pool vulnerabilities to terrorist events.

Yet UCS has this paper, it has the experience of Fukushima Daiichi – in which the vulnerability of the fuel pools proved to be much less than was originally assumed – and it recognizes that the public hasn’t caught up with how well the used fuel pools actually weathered the earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Japanese facility. So here they are, via an essentially discredited paper.

But you’ve got to use what you’ve got, even if what you’ve got is not very much.

The UCS logo. Rather pretty.

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site:

NRC Votes Are All In on Task Force Report

Plant Status

• Tokyo Electric Power Co. has begun erecting the steel support for an airtight cover for reactor building 1 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility. The 17-story polyester fiber fabric cover is designed to shield the environment from the release of radioactive particles. TEPCO is planning similar covers for reactors 3 and 4.

• TEPCO has established a means of sampling the liquids and gases in the primary containments at Fukushima Daiichi. Samples have been taken from the containments for reactors 1 and 2.

Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues

• NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko this morning submitted his voting document on the recommendations of the agency’s post-Fukushima task force. All five commissioners have now cast their votes. The voting papers are on the NRC’s website.

• Residents and business owners evacuated from near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility may be permitted to check on their homes and businesses during brief visits next month. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry also said some people from evacuated areas soon may be able to return home permanently. Easing the restrictions would not affect the exclusion zone within 12 miles of the plant, where about 80,000 people were evacuated.

• Japan has agreed to share the lessons learned from Fukushima Daiichi in a summit-level United Nations meeting Sept. 22 in New York. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited Japan this week, including a stop in Fukushima Prefecture.

Media Highlights

• In the early days of the Fukushima Daiichi accident, Japanese government officials withheld information about radiation dispersal that could have assisted evacuees, The New York Times reports.

• Britons see a “major role” for nuclear facilities as part of the country’s energy portfolio, a survey by the Nuclear Industry Association has found. World Nuclear News reports that 68 percent of respondents support nuclear energy.

What the Commissioner Said

A couple of days ago, I said I’d bring you a longer account of NRC Commissioner George Apostolakis’ presentation – a notably frank and forthright presentation - at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Well, as politicians like to say, Promise kept. This is original reporting:

NRC Commissioner George Apostolakis criticized Japan’s preparedness at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility in his presentation at a recent forum on responses to the accident.

Speaking at a seminar on lessons learned at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., Apostolakis said, “It turns out [the event in Japan] was not unthinkable, and it was not unforeseen either. This is the kind of secret that everybody thinks but nobody wants to say in public.”

Apostolakis said that there were 10 earthquakes around the world in the last 10 years accompanied by tsunamis that Japanese regulators did not consider. “If anyone did calculations about tsunami in the United States and ignored this,” he said, “the NRC would complain bitterly.”

Discussing the report of the NRC’s post-Fukushima task force, Apostolakis said additional recommendations may be forthcoming from NRC staff.

“… The most important thing is that the staff may come up with additional recommendations. They’re very experienced people,” he said. 

Apostolakis also responded to media reports that criticized the NRC for loosening some regulations, allowing older plants to continue to operate past their initial license terms.

“We have issued some regulations over the years as a result of risk assessment and we have also relaxed some regulations over the years as a result of further insights on risk assessment, deciding that they constitute an unnecessary burden on the licensees,” he said. “We imposed a lot of burden 20 years ago in the area of risk assessment.”

He also said he did not think it necessarily worthwhile to use current rules and regulations to oversee the licensing and operation of “exotic” new reactor designs that might emerge. He noted he is chairing an NRC task force to explore merging defense-in-depth, which dictates multiple layers of protection against possible threats, and risk assessment, which calculates the likelihood of an event, into a unified vision for future regulation.

---

Honesty is always the best policy, but it does seem that the drive to insert entertainment into the pursuit of truth has sometimes left honesty taking care of itself. Consider, for example, the BBC car show Top Gear:

Last Sunday, an episode of Top Gear showed Jeremy Clarkson and James May setting off for Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, 60 miles away. The car unexpectedly ran out of charge when they got to Lincoln, and had to be pushed. They concluded that "electric cars are not the future".

Well, too bad for the Nissan Leaf, one of the cars in the show (The Peugeot iOn was the other). If the Leaf couldn’t hold its charge and didn’t warn the drivers it was in trouble, that should be exposed.

Except:

But it wasn't unexpected: Nissan has a monitoring device in the car which transmits information on the state of the battery. This shows that, while the company delivered the car to Top Gear fully charged, the program-makers ran the battery down before Clarkson and May set off, until only 40% of the charge was left.

Ulp:

Moreover, they must have known this, as the electronic display tells the driver how many miles' worth of electricity they have, and the sat-nav tells them if they don't have enough charge to reach their destination. In this case it told them – before they set out on their 60-mile journey – that they had 30 miles' worth of electricity.

Which is exactly as far as the Leaf got. It gets better:

“…[I]n order to stage a breakdown in Lincoln, "it appeared that the Leaf was driven in loops for more than 10 miles in Lincoln until the battery was flat."

Obviously, this does a disservice to viewers. The show offered an explanation, via Executive Producer Andy Wilman, which is genuinely, well::

We never, at any point in the film, said that we were testing the range claims of the vehicles, nor did we say that the vehicles wouldn’t achieve their claimed range. We also never said at any time that we were hoping to get to our destination on one charge.

What he misses is that the show never indicated what it did to the car that put it at a disadvantage. If this were made clear, then the audience would have some sense of the ground rules and judge accordingly.

We were fully aware that Nissan could monitor the state of the battery charge and distance travelled via onboard software. The reporter from The Times seems to suggest this device caught us out, but we knew about it all the time, as Nissan will confirm.

They and Nissan may have known about it – the audience did not. It goes on like that – you can read the rest at the link – and concludes:

In conclusion, we absolutely refute that we were misleading viewers over the charge/range, and we stand by the consumer points raised in the film.

Not even fans of the show buy that. At Autoblog Green, Eric Loveday wrote:

Wilman had more to say … but need we really remind anyone that Top Gear is pure entertainment with just a dash of factuality.

That means to raise “consumer points.”

Electric cars are at a tipping point and genuine attempts to help consumers understand their strong and weak points are more than welcome. But, even in pursuit of entertainment, devising “funny” ways to have the cars fail in their basic function without telling the audience what the game is has a certain – ordure - about it.

---

Electric cars run by nuclear energy – and its renewable cousins – has always seemed a win-win proposition by ensuring energy security and reducing carbon emissions. But of course, electric and hybrid autos will charge as they will – electricity doesn’t really care where or from what source it comes from. So a little conspiracy mongering with a soupcon of political intrigue to fit it all together:

Recently I asked the question, Are plug-in hybrids code for nuclear power? With numerous folks on the right supporting plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, I cannot help but think that some are using the move to electric autos as a ploy for more nuclear power.

I can’t say that I agree with this in any great measure – politicians right or left who want to link the two wouldn’t be shy about doing so - but if it is a ploy, then ploy away.

NRC Commissioner George Apostolakis on the job.

Spinning a Report, Ramping Up in South Africa

An early release of a draft of an NRC report contains good news that clearly isn’t what some folks, however perversely, might have hoped:

The conclusion, to be published in April after six years of work, is based largely on a radical revision of projections of how much and how quickly cesium 137, a radioactive material that is created when uranium is split, could escape from a nuclear plant after a core meltdown.

And that conclusion?

[A] meltdown at a typical American reactor would lead to far fewer deaths than previously assumed.

By far fewer, it means close to zero. Now, I’d rather wait until the final version is released next April to discuss it in detail, but what is interesting now is that it was the Union of Concerned Science that requested this version of the report via the Freedom of Information Act. 

I cannot imagine the report’s conclusions are what the group expected, and having gotten it, they just deny it.

Edwin Lyman, a nuclear physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, contends that the nuclear commission has consistently painted an overly rosy picture and that its latest study does as well. He noted that the study assumed a successful evacuation of 99.5 percent of the people within 10 miles, for example. The report also assumes “average” weather conditions, he noted.

You can read the article if you want to see Lyman spin like a top – some of which writer Matt Wald counteracts with contrary but truthful information – but it would be churlish not to point out that UCS requested the report and gave it to the New York Times. Since the report doesn’t really fit the UCS narrative, it might have just buried it. But it didn’t, so good for UCS.

Our good friend Rod Adams has a more thorough response to some of Lyman’s comments – it really is like watching a dream evaporate.

---

On the road to nuclear energy:

However, SA was firmly on the road to nuclear generation - which at present only accounted for around 6% of electricity generated in the country.
The country has only one nuclear power station in the Western Cape constructed during the eighties.

SA is South Africa. It already has one nuclear facility, but it provides only 8 per cent of South Africa’s electricity – coal has most of the marketplace - and that’s a problem because 3.7 million people lack any electricity at all. So this is an instance where electricity generation will have to grow with infrastructure, which provides South Africa an opportunity to change course.

Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba supports the use of nuclear and renewable sources, and of course, he is more than aware of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi.

"While there is a risk that there might be delays in introducing nuclear capacity, rather have these delays than a disaster of life threatening proportions."

Amen. But he knows that the lessons learned – and the fact that any new nuclear build will be of the current generation – can mitigate concern. South Africa is ready to move forward.

The minister added that it could take up to twenty years for SA to fully supply electricity to these 3.7 million people. "But we don't think we can wait that long ... and if we do, then new challenges would have emerged."

Can’t help but like Minister Gigaba. He knows what his country needs and he makes the argument to move forward.

(A number of stories have noted that the South African nuclear market will be state-owned – I’m not sure why this is interesting, as it is true of virtually all its electricity generation now.)

---

In Japan:

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency was siding with the industry rather than acting as a regulator. He said that underscored a cozy relationship and the deep-rooted problem that must be corrected following the March 11 tsunami and the nuclear crisis.

What is NISA alleged to have done?

Japan’s prime minister criticized the country’s nuclear safety agency yesterday for allegedly trying to plant questions aimed at supporting atomic energy at public forums.

That would certainly cause a major scandal if done by the NRC here, but it is perhaps a little worse for Japan because NISA does not have the independent profile of the NRC. Instead, it is a department under the government’s Trade and Industry Ministry, which promotes Japan’s nuclear technology in the manner of our Commerce Department. It’s easy to see why NISA might see its role as promotional in part, but Kan is right: it leads to ethical deadlocks.

But it also means a NISA scandal is a government scandal and that’s what Kan has to knock back. (The IAEA has recommended that Japan separate the two – that would certainly moderate industry/regulatory coziness.) But still: alleged. Let’s see how this works out.

In Japan, 35 of 54 reactors are idle, causing electricity shortages in sweltering heat.

Most of those facilities could be running, but so it goes. We cannot criticize Japan for anything it chooses to do at this junction. But if the Japanese summer is anything like the American summer, oof!

Milusi Gigaba

Bad Directions: Energy Blog Post Directs Readers to Shoddy AP Series

Around the time of the July 4 holiday, we responded to a four-part series published by The Associated Press that was larded with inaccuracies about the nuclear energy industry. It’s one thing for a single newspaper to get something wrong in a single print file; quite another when a global news wire service devotes more than a year and notable resources to an “investigative” series characterized by shoddy reporting throughout. What could have been a notable public service by the AP instead turned out to be a grievously misguided series that lacked vital context. NEI’s Chief Nuclear Officer Tony Pietrangelo pulled no punches in assessing the merits of the AP series in a video posted to our YouTube channel.

Most recently, this Boingboing.net post – AP: US nuclear power plant safety isn’t being tightly regulated – directs readers to the AP articles. While the Boingboing.net post contains some perspective that highlights how nuclear energy can be beneficial in the economic and environmental arenas, the AP series most certainly does not. And we weren’t the only ones troubled by the AP reporting – our regulator, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, took the unusual step of responding formally and directly and critically to the news organization’s series.

It is wrong to conclude that nuclear plant operators are systemically working with regulators to endanger the lives of employees, their families and their neighbors by implementing subpar standards and regulations. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses the professionals who operate a facility’s reactor, in addition to continuously assessing a plant’s performance and safety. The independent NRC inspectors who work at each nuclear energy facility have unfettered access to workers and information at that site and have the authority to shut down facilities they believe are unsafe. They can also order changes in operations. Bottom line: the NRC can shut America’s nuclear plants down if they aren’t operating safely.

And if there is ever a doubt in nuclear power safety, remember this fact: there have been zero “abnormal occurrences” [the NRC’s term] throughout the U.S. nuclear energy industry over the past eight years (2003-10). Optimized technology, expertise and innovation from industry employees (your neighbors), continuous sharing of plant operating experience and precise monitoring capabilities are among the reasons U.S. citizens near nuclear energy facilities are safe.

The author of the BoingBoing post references protection of the Ft. Calhoun reactor in Nebraska in the wake of record Missouri River flooding. The facility was safe because it met all NRC requirements for flood protection (it was designed and built on a higher elevation as step one) and because Omaha Public Power District took additional measures to hold flood waters back. Among these extra measures was installing a 2,000 foot long water-filled berm to protect electrical equipment—yet another example of the nuclear energy industry exceeding federal safety standards.

Every industry has its supporters and detractors, and the flow of information will be abundant. This is why we urge everyone to effectively weigh the information included and omitted in the AP series by reading “Setting the Record Straight: NEI Responds to AP Series on Nuclear Energy.”

Safe, reliable nuclear energy is a vital part of America’s energy portfolio today. The industry is building new reactors in Georgia and South Carolina and designing the next generation of plants to maintain the most significant of low-carbon electricity we have to secure our energy future.

By NEI’s Media Relations Manager, John Keeley (you can see him in the YouTube video)

NRC’s 90 Day Report from the Fukushima Task Force

Today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission published its Fukushima task force’s Recommendations for Enhancing Reactor Safety in the 21st Century (pdf). This is a significant report because it sets the stage for what’s to come over the next few years to enhance nuclear safety. Here are a few nuggets from our press release on the report:

The task force report confirms the safety of U.S. nuclear energy facilities and recommends actions to enhance U.S. nuclear plant readiness to safely manage severe events.

…

The task force report does not cite significant data from the Fukushima accident to support many of its recommendations. Given the mammoth challenge it faced in gathering and evaluating the still-incomplete information from Japan, the agency should seek broader engagement with stakeholders on the task force report to ensure that its decisions are informed by the best information possible.

…

The industry reiterates our commitment to make nuclear plant safety our top priority. Even as the NRC and industry separately have taken steps to identify additional layers of protection to enhance nuclear plant safety, the NRC and many of our nation’s leaders have recognized that U.S. reactors are safe.

Besides what NEI has to say, here are a few nuggets from the NRC report to mention:

The current regulatory approach, and more importantly, the resultant plant capabilities allow the Task Force to conclude that a sequence of events like the Fukushima accident is unlikely to occur in the United States and some appropriate mitigation measures have been implemented, reducing the likelihood of core damage and radiological releases. Therefore, continued operation and continued licensing activities do not pose an imminent risk to public health and safety. p. vii

…

The primary responsibility for safety rests with the licensees, and the NRC holds licensees accountable for meeting regulatory requirements. p. 19

…

This [proposed] framework, by itself, would not create requirements nor eliminate any current requirements. It would provide a more coherent structure within the regulations to facilitate Commission decisions relating to what issues should be subject to NRC requirements and what those requirements ought to be. p. 21

…

As discussed earlier, the Task Force believes the voluntary industry initiatives could play a useful and valuable role in the suggested framework. p. 21

…

In a new regulatory framework, risk assessment and defense-in-depth would be combined more formally. p. 21

And here’s a valuable nugget on new plant designs:

By nature of their passive designs and inherent 72-hour coping capability for core, containment, and spent fuel pool cooling with no operator action required, the ESBWR and AP1000 designs have many of the design features and attributes necessary to address the Task Force recommendations. The Task Force supports completing those design certification rulemaking activities without delay. p. 71

Good to hear. For more on the industry’s perspective, see our Chief Nuclear Officer, Tony Pietrangelo, in an interview with Reuters Insider.

The AP Trawls for Nuclear Wickedness

It’s reasonable for journalists to beaver around the nuclear energy industry to find evidence that the industry is a nest of vipers plotting disaster and misery. That’s what journalists do. And I guess one can always find something that can be ratcheted into a breathless story. But the nuclear energy industry in context is not very, um, viperous and thus such stories tend to point at wicked seeming details that are pretty benign – in context.

The Al-Jazeera story below doesn’t really qualify here because the story has a suspicion of American motivation underlying it that makes it vulnerable to conspiracy theories and bluntly unproveable – one might even say false - assertions.

But the Associated Press, in a long story published yesterday, tries a different approach, trawling through Nuclear Regulatory Commission records to try to show a coziness between the industry and its regulators that make the party animals at the Mine Safety and Health Administration look like shrinking violets. Well, no parties in this case, but thinly veiled collusion.

For example:

CRACKED TUBING: The industry has long known of cracking in steel alloy tubing originally used in the steam generators of pressurized water reactors. Ruptures were rampant in these tubes containing radioactive coolant; in 1993 alone, there were seven. Even today, as many as 18 reactors are still running on old generators.

This is a simple point. but let’s add in two additional data points:

1. Of the 69 nuclear facilities that have steam generators (not all do), 55 have replaced their generators, with two more in the process of doing so.What the AP ignores here and throughout the article is that older equipment can be, and is, replaced.

2. The number of plants reporting (to the NRC, mind you – the AP didn’t find this out by itself) degraded steam generator tubes has fallen considerably as the tubes are replaced. Fifteen plants reported degraded tubes in the 1980s, seven plants in the 1990s, and five plants reported degraded tubes between 2000 and 2004; And since 2004? No plant has reported degraded tubing. None at all.

That’s context and it puts a decidedly different cast on the reporting. There are also errors large and small in the article:

Yet despite the many problems linked to aging, not a single official body in government or industry has studied the overall frequency and potential impact on safety of such breakdowns in recent years, even as the NRC has extended the licenses of dozens of reactors.

This one is small, meant to bolster the notion of collusion. But that single “government or industry body” would be INPO, The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. It maintains a database of operational issues and it tracks them over time. Every utility that operates a nuclear power plant has access to this information for review and corrective action as needed.

But beyond lapses in providing context and simple errors, the story raises issues that are noted and solved over time. The success of such efforts is a credit to the industry, but the AP turns it into a debit:

Two years later, cracking was allowed to grow so bad in nozzles on the reactor vessel at the Davis-Besse plant near Toledo, Ohio, that it came within two months of a possible breach, the NRC acknowledged in a report. A hole in the vessel could release radiation into the environment, yet inspections failed to catch the same problem on the replacement vessel head until more nozzles were found to be cracked last year.

But the article fails to note – or the authors didn’t know – that the industry had in place a program to monitor boric acid corrosion, which is a well-known phenomenon. And immediately after Davis-Besse happened, the industry implemented a materials management initiative to strengthen the focus of research efforts and predictive maintenance in the area of materials degradation. As the story acknowledges, the cracks were detected two months before any (potential) harm could occur. In other words, the industry fixed the problem.

Obviously, the AP wants to imply that we missed disaster by that much, but if disaster is always missed by that much, then it’s logical to assume that the industry and its regulators are actually keeping a good eye on things.

Could the industry and its regulators do a better job? Sure, but a safety culture in any field is a process, not a recipe. You don’t get a soufflé at the end. You get an industry always working through issues and learning how to further enhance safety.

This has paid off: The industry’s average capacity factor—a measure of efficiency—has been within a percentage point or two of 90 percent every year for the past decade. To do this does not suggest short cuts and sloppiness; just the opposite: it demonstrates that the facilities are being well managed and maintained.

Oh, and PS: The AP built this story out of public data – you could write the same story (though a better, fairer one, I hope) if you wanted. How much more transparent could an industry be? Hard to hide in the shadows with thousand watt bulbs pointed at you.

Update 6/22, 7 am:

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a response to the AP articles here (pdf).

Here's NEI's formal response as well.

Update 6/23, 9:30 am:

Rod Adams continues to batter AP's nuclear hit job. As well, here's Dan Yurman and Dr. John Bickel's critique of AP's first rubbish.

Hearing Report on the “Role of the NRC in America's Energy Future”

Below is a summary of yesterday’s House hearing by NEI’s Senior Director of Political Affairs, Hannah Simone.

This morning the Subcommittee on Energy and Power and the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy conducted a joint hearing entitled, “The Role of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in America’s Energy Future.” Witnesses were four of the five NRC commissioners: The Hon. Gregory B. Jaczko, Chairman; The Hon. Kristine L. Svinicki, Commissioner ; The Hon. William D. Magwood, Commissioner; The Hon. William C. Ostendorff, Commissioner.

Chairman Ed Whitfield and Chairman John Shimkus co-chaired the hearing.

During the three-hour, somewhat contentious hearing, a number of Members – both Republicans and Democrats – questioned the Chairman’s and Commissioners’ actions taken regarding the Yucca Mountain repository. Chairman Upton indicated that he was concerned that the decision-making process at the NRC might be breaking down and while he appreciated the expertise and independence of the Commission, the issue of long-term waste storage of spent fuel had to be addressed.

During Q and A, Chairman Shimkus asked each of the Commissioners if they had filed their votes to withdraw the Yucca Mountain license application – and if they indeed considered it a “vote” rather than “prepared remarks”. Commissioners Svinicki, Magwood and Ostendorff all indicated they cast their vote on the issue. Chairman Jaczko said that this was not a vote and that the Commission had to work to achieve a majority position and then execute it through a Commission order.

A number of other Members questioned the Commissioners repeatedly as to whether or not they believed a vote had been held and why there was not more transparency in the Commission’s actions. Chairman Emeritus Barton stated that he believed Chairman Jaczko was “playing some sort of foot-dragging game.” Congressman Terry said “the level of non-information is frustrating - I'm very disturbed." Congressman Dingell indicated he remained “troubled about Yucca Mountain” and Congressman Inslee said he believed that the NRC “reversed course” on Yucca without the statutory authority from Congress.

One issue that was discussed in depth was a letter sent to Chairman Darrell Issa on behalf of the Commission by Chairman Jaczko in March; the Commissioners all testified that they had approved a different draft than what was sent by the Chairman. Once they learned an “unapproved” draft had been sent, the Commissioners sent their own letter. This was clearly a contentious issue amongst the Commissioners.

Ranking Member Waxman talked about some emails from a NRC staffer that had been leaked and directly asked Chairman Jaczko if he had delayed action on the Yucca Mountain license application for political reasons (he responded no) or if he had directed staff to stop review of Yucca Mountain through illegal channels (he answered no).

Chairman Upton told the Commissioners that this was NOT ending today; he asked if the Commissioners believed that the staff at the NRC was sharing information equally with each of them; all of the Commissioners indicated that it was difficult to ascertain what they didn’t know” but – while at times there was some pushback – staff did share information equally most of the time.

Subcommittee Chairman Whitfield asked Chairman Jaczko about his decision to invoke the 50-mile evacuation zone around the Fukushima plants; he said that he did so at the recommendation of staff. There was then a discussion about invocation of emergency power by the Chairman during the Fukushima situation; the Commissioners each indicated that they had never been notified by the Chairman that he had invoked these powers. The Commissioners were also asked if they were told not to visit the NRC Emergency Operations Center monitoring the situation in Japan; all three Commissioners testified that it was requested they not visit the ERC as they might distract staff.

Other issues mentioned by Members were relicensing of Diablo Canyon (Representative Capps); relicensing of Indian Point (Representative Engell) small reactor license applications (Chairman Upton) and questions about security procedures (Congressman Green)

This is an abbreviated overview of a very long and complex hearing.

Hearing Background Memo

Opening Statement for Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Whitfield

Opening Statement for Environment and Economy Subcommittee Chairman Shimkus

Opening Statement for Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Upton

Testimony for NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko

They Write Letters (or Emails)

The Syracuse (N.Y.) Post-Standard introduces us to the NRC inspectors who oversee the two plants in that part of the world – Nine Mile and James A. FitzPatrick:

“Every day, we do a control room walk-down,” [Inspector Edward] Knutson said. “We look at what’s going on, we indicate what we expect them (operators) to do.”

“We talk to the control-room supervisor and get from them what has occurred in the previous shift,” [Inspector Scott] Rutenkroger said. “We see what’s in service and what’s out of service. We find out what they see as the condition of the plant.”

And they keep their eyes perpetually open:

Rutenkroger once noticed that the door between an emergency diesel-generator room and turbine building had a support missing. It could have hampered proper operation of the door and that could have led to trouble: Steam lines are located on the other side of the door. If the door hadn’t shut properly and one or more of the steam lines ruptured, steam could have seeped into the generator room and knocked out the generators — the backup power source for the plant.

Nice story – writer Debra Groom sticks close to home and doesn’t expand the story to make a point about American plants (well, except that they have regulatory inspectors on-site). Worth a read.

---

Interestingly, when news readers are asked to weigh in on nuclear energy, the results are surprisingly favorable given some of the coverage. For example, the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times posted a series of letters (or emails, I guess, these days). Some excerpts:

Yes, we need new nuclear plants. Forget about the fact they will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and that they will help to meet our future needs for electricity. Instead, realize that as we build nuclear power plants, we will reduce our dependence on our own coal-fired plants.

---

Let's be rational. Nuclear energy is our best prospect for future economic stability and energy independence. Our nation deserves it.

---

Keep in mind that people of my generation survived atmospheric detonations of hydrogen bombs for many years in the 1950s and '60s. This irrational fear of radiation is causing us to make poor decisions based on junk science and environmentalism run amok. Life goes on, even in Chernobyl.

---

Given the amount of damage done, the radiation levels, so far, have been more than survivable. Bear in mind those plants are over 30 years old and technology has improved since then.

And so on. There are a few negative comments, too:

I am constantly amazed at how short American's memories are. After the Three Mile Island disaster, everyone said "never again."After Chernobyl, there was zilch interest in new nuclear power development. Hopefully, what has happened in Japan will wake the U.S. public up to the dangers of nuclear power plants, but I'm afraid after a few months, no one will recall what has just happened, or if they do, they will say "it couldn't happen here."

---

A nuclear energy accident can ruin your whole day, year, century and beyond -- thousands of years. The downside is great and the upside ethereal.

Don’t look at me. I’m not going to dispute any of this – the discussion is what’s important. Even if, in this round up, the pro-nuclear contingent enjoys a 6-2 margin, the is a good moment to hash out attitudes. In you have the means to put them online, go ahead and do it.

Lovely Contra Costa. It is inland from San Francisco, with Mt. Diablo State Park providing a lot of its scenery.

The Evening Update

From NEI’s Japan Earthquake launch page:

UPDATE AS OF 7:00 PM EDT, MARCH 23:

Commissioners at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday voted to launch a two-pronged review of U.S. nuclear power plant safety in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and the resulting events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The commission supported the establishment of an agency task force that will conduct both short- and long-term analysis of the lessons that can be learned from the situation in Japan. The results of their work will be made public.

“The longer-term review will inform any permanent NRC regulation changes” that are needed, the NRC said. The commission said it expects that the task force can begin the long-term evaluation in no later than 90 days, and added that the task force should provide a report with recommended actions within six months of the beginning of that effort.

NRC inspectors at U.S. nuclear power plants will also support the task force’s short-term effort, supplemented as necessary by experts from the agency’s regional and headquarters offices, the NRC said.

“Examining all the available information from Japan is essential to understanding the event’s implications for the United States. We will perform a systematic and methodical review to see if there are changes that should be made to our programs and regulations to ensure protection of public health and safety,” NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said.

Fukushima Daiichi

Smoke seen coming from the reactor building at reactor 3 on at 4:20 p.m. on Wednesday (Japan time) “decreased significantly,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said.  On Wednesday, smoke from reactor 3 caused the temporary evacuation of workers from reactors 3 and 4.

Efforts are continuing to restore offsite electricity at reactors 1, 2, 3, and 4.

As reported earlier here, seawater injection continues to cool reactors 1, 2 and 3. Seawater is being sprayed into the reactor 3 spent fuel pool. Crews continued to use a truck to deliver high volumes of water into the spent fuel pool at reactor 4, IAEA said.