Last week, a government panel and an independent organization each produced a punch list for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to ensure the safety of U.S. nuclear plants in light of the accident that occurred earlier this year in Japan. One to-do list came from an internal NRC task force; the other came from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a longtime NRC watchdog.
How did the lists compare? The NRC task force's recommendations don't go far enough to protect the public.
The six-member task force did agree with UCS's top recommendation that the NRC extend the scope of its regulations to include "severe," or extreme, low-probability accidents. Those are accidents -- triggered by a natural disaster, a fire, malfunctioning equipment, or even human error -- that melt reactor fuel and release radiation. The agency's current regulations focus only on so-called "design-basis" accidents -- ones that U.S. reactors are designed to withstand -- disregarding the fact that severe accidents can happen.
In addition, the task force recommended that the NRC require plant owners to reevaluate and, if necessary, upgrade their earthquake and flood readiness, as well as better prepare for extended power loss to ensure emergency cooling for reactors and spent (used) fuel. That's all good.
But the task force did not call for expanding emergency planning zones around plants or requiring plant owners to better safeguard spent fuel by removing it from overcrowded pools. Instead, it came down squarely in support of business as usual. That means that the tens of millions of Americans who live within 50 miles of a reactor -- including the residents of New York City -- will remain in jeopardy in the event of an accident.
It was widely reported that the NRC advised Americans within 50 miles of the Fukushima Daiichi facility to evacuate, but here in the United States, evacuation planning only covers a 10-mile-radius zone around plants. The agency's advice to ex-pats in Japan turned out to be prudent: Towns well beyond 10 miles from the Fukushima facility were contaminated by radiation. Regardless, the task force did not recommend widening the agency's one-size-fits-all 10-mile zone.
"There needs to be a science-based approach to designing emergency planning requirements for each site, depending on population density, local weather patterns, and other site-specific factors," said Edwin Lyman, a physicist at UCS. "Those analyses would force the NRC to create larger and more appropriately shaped emergency planning zones than the 10-mile concentric circles it arbitrarily drew around U.S. nuclear plants."
The task force also addressed some concerns about spent fuel pools. But it was silent on another one of UCS's top recommendations: require plant owners to move spent fuel from densely packed pools to dry casks, which are significantly safer, as soon as it is cool enough to do so. The more spent fuel in a pool, the more heat it emits, and the less time workers have to restore cooling to prevent an accident. And in the event of an accident, the more spent fuel in a pool, the more radioactivity it will emit.
The status of the spent fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi facility was less of a problem than it is at U.S. plants -- and it still was a problem. Fukushima had from 200 to 550 fuel assemblies in each of its spent fuel pools, while the average U.S. plant currently has about 3,000 per pool. The pools, which are located outside primary reactor containment structures, "are often housed in buildings with sheet metal siding like a Sears storage shed," according to David Lochbaum, director of UCS's Nuclear Safety Project.
The NRC task force's recommendations were limited to issues related to the Fukushima accident. UCS, on the other hand, took a broader perspective. Some of UCS's recommendations address Fukushima-related concerns, but others focus on problems that have been festering for decades. One dates back to 1980, when the NRC established fire protection regulations, which it amended in 2004. More than 40 plants are still not in compliance. Likewise, nearly 10 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, plant owners have not completed all NRC-mandated security upgrades.
The task force report, released last Tuesday, is the first of the NRC's two-step response to the Japanese nuclear accident. NRC commissioners are scheduled to meet with the task force this week to go over its findings, and a more in-depth analysis is planned for the next six months. That, and the fact that many of the task force recommendations would require public input and federal rulemaking, means it is unlikely that the agency will take any action soon.
Pushback from the nuclear industry also will slow things down. The industry has criticized a number of task force recommendations -- including its main one calling for plants to reduce their vulnerability to severe, beyond-design-basis accidents -- and sees the report as the beginning of a long process. "This needs to be vetted thoroughly...," Anthony Pietrangelo, chief nuclear officer of the industry's Nuclear Energy Institute, told Climatewire last Thursday. "The NRC has another 3,996 people there that have expertise. We've got another 100,000 people in the industry that have a lot of expertise. And there are other stakeholders that need to get engaged."
Other stakeholders surely need to be involved -- especially the public -- but that's no reason for the NRC to deliberate for months, if not years, when a number of the recommendations on both punch lists are no-brainers. "The NRC's response to safety issues has been far too sluggish in the past," Lyman said. "Unless the agency moves more quickly and decisively, tens of millions of Americans will continue to be at risk."
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"“Indian Point power is sold on the open market. While it has the potential to supply a significant percentage of the power for the metropolitan region, there is no evidence that it actually does. Power contracts are guarded as though they were state secrets. We know that New York City and Con Ed contracted for roughly 1,050 megawatts of Indian Point power in 2010. This year, that figure dropped dramatically to only 550 MW, a little more than a quarter (26.6%) of Indian Point’s total capacity, and an even less significant 4.3% of New York’s projected energy need this summer. Of the potential 2069 MW Indian Point produces, more than 1500 of those megawatts could have been sold elsewhere, like New England or upstate New York.
“Asserting that the loss of Indian Point electric supplies to New York City could lead to blackouts is as irresponsible as it is absurd. New York’s and Con Ed’s contracts already reflect a 500-MW reduction"
http://newpaltz.ulsterpublishing.com/view/full_story/14774400/article--Power-struggle-Will-the-Indian-Point-nuclear-plants-be-closed-?instance=home_top_left
If you feel that "the NRC task force's recommendations don't go far enough to protect the public", then maybe the UCS should be the regulator. On the other hand, it would be a nightmare for Lyman to really see the extent the NRC really goes to make nuclear power safe.
Lyman's statement that NRC has been sluggish on safety issue in the past is absurd given US nuclear power's record in the US, compared to fossil fuels. In addition to not contributing to global warming, US nuclear plants have never killed a member of the public and have never had any measurable impact on public health, over their entire ~50 year history. Fossil (mainly coal) plants cause ~25,000 deaths every single year in the US (according to EPA) and are a leadin cause of global warming.
But since there appears to be a vanishingly low chance of dry-out anyway - I wouldn't have it high on my list.
Of note is the fact that there are many types of facilities that actually can release toxic plumes that would kill people immediately (chemical plants and oil refineries), but those facilities do NOT have required evacuation zones/plans. I suppose it's because evacuation (in time) is known to be impossible.... And yet, large evacuation zones and detailed plans are required (or course) for nuclear plants.
Why are groups like UCS pushing so hard for enormous evacuation zones? Anti-nuclear groups have long used evacuation zones, and emergency planning in general, as a political weapon against both new and existing nuclear plants. Refusing to cooperate with emergency planning in one tool that state govts. (e.g., New York) have tried to use to close/prevent plants. Also makes for a great scare story. You can count on them arguing that evacuating New York is impractical, so Indian Point must be shut down. Never mind that it would never be necessary, under any circumstances.
As far as Jaczko's decision about the 50-mile zone in Japan, (we) nuclear engineers are still scratching our head trying to figure out what the rationale could possibly have been. I suppose that since, hey, it's not his country (and his decisions have no real impact), he can just get away with posturing like that. But, we're already seeing the politcal ramifications of this unjustified decision (this article being just one example).
Fukishima showed (again) that even the most severe reactor meltdown will have no impact on people living more than 20 miles away. The Fukishima experience certainly (again) calls into question the notion of having to evacuate people over a very short time period.
Even with the infrastructure (roads, emergency reponse, etc...) in the region almost completely wiped out, everyone around Fukishima was evacuated in plenty of time, with no members of the public receiving a significant radiation dose, and no deaths occurring due to radiation exposure. Also, public collective exposures are so small that few if any sicknesses or deaths are projected (with any health effects being too small to measure).
Fukishima shows that there is no credible scenario under which an event at Indian Point could have any significant impact on New York city; certainly nothing that would require evacuation. The real truth is that sheltering in place (possibly along with iodine pills) is all that one would ever really need for a nuclear accident, even for shorter distances.
I hope this assessment of erequired evacuation precautions is made, and is made public.
This "50 mile" immediate evacuation zone is just not workable.
They also believe all impact is a "significant impact".
Sheltering in place is a viable thing however outside a disciplined and controlled nuclear facilities, where workers obey or are fired, people will disobey and take matters in their own hands.
Whatever conversations we might wish to have about this subject, the fact that so many self-styled experts in nuclear power talk down to everybody else at every opportunity make such conversations a bit hard to take part in, as per intention. Of course, none of the experts offer up their own employment as motivation for their writing in, and it just may be that these folks are just regular citizens with an overweening, monomaniacal interest in educating a benighted public.
But look at the comments here. Nearly everybody writing in is a proponent of nuclear power. And so now, the conversation goes on amongst themselves.
When the odds of something happening are 100 to 1, it pays to remember that when the 1 comes in, it's 100%.