If an airline pilot failed an annual exam, and the Federal Aviation Administration simply lowered its standards to allow that pilot to continue to fly, would you board the flight? If a surgeon failed a licensing exam, and the medical board simply lowered its standards and allowed the surgeon to continue to practice, would you look for another doctor?
Davis-Besse, a nuclear power plant just 30 miles from downtown Toledo, does not provide the same margin of safety that it did when it was built 34 years ago. Will we allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to simply lower its standards?
A year ago, The Associated Press conducted an in-depth analysis of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's treatment of age-related deterioration at nuclear power plants. The AP concluded that the NRC "work(ed) closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them."
The AP examined "tens of thousands of pages of government and industry studies... along with test results, inspection reports and regulatory policy statements...over four decades." Those records "show a recurring pattern: Reactor parts or systems fall out of compliance with the rules. Studies are conducted by the industry and government, and all agree that existing standards are 'unnecessarily conservative.' Regulations are loosened, and the reactors are back in compliance."
Several nuclear engineers and former regulators "call the approach 'sharpening the pencil' or 'pencil engineering' -- the fudging of calculations and assumptions to yield answers that enable plants with deteriorating conditions to remain in compliance."
Pencil engineering is exactly what is happening at Davis-Besse. Cracking has been discovered in the concrete wall of the shield building. The cracking is so extensive that the NRC concluded that the entire "vertical outer rebar mat" no longer provides any structural strength to the wall.
The cracking is so extensive that the wall is now "non-conforming to the current design and licensing bases... " In layman's terms, this means that, given the condition of the shield building wall, FirstEnergy would not be issued a license to operate Davis-Besse today under the criteria that were used in 1977.
FirstEnergy's response was to recalculate the strength of the wall under a new methodology. The NRC has officially accepted that recalculation and allowed Davis-Besse to operate, even though the margin of safety in the strength of the shield building wall has clearly been reduced.
In their four-part series last year, the AP reporters wrote about this precise situation:
"The fact is, a containment building could fail in a severe accident. Yet the NRC has allowed operators to make safety calculations that assume containment buildings will hold.
"In a 2009 letter, Mario V. Bonaca, then-chairman of the NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, warned that this approach represents 'a decrease in the safety margin.' "
A "decrease in the margin of safety" at Davis-Besse invites undue risk. Since Davis-Besse was originally licensed in 1977, FirstEnergy's management has caused many near-disasters, including two incidents that Harold Denton, the former director of the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, referred to as the nuclear "industry's second and third-lowest points after Three Mile Island."
In 1977, a feedwater valve stuck and engineers were barely able to prevent a partial meltdown after more than 20 minutes of "complete confusion." In 1985, the reactor core lost its cooling for 12 minutes. In 2002, the only thing that stood in the way of a burst reactor head and a release of radiation was 3/16 of an inch of a bulging steel liner.
Would you accept living next to a nuclear power plant with any decreased safety margin?
Would you board a plane whose pilot had been approved to fly with a decreased proficiency? Would you go under the knife with a surgeon whose competency requirements were reduced by a state medical board?
. Its operating license expires in 2017. FirstEnergy and its shareholders will have reaped the profits they expected from the reactor. Any extension of the Davis-Besse license, for which FirstEnergy has already applied, would give FirstEnergy windfall profits. FirstEnergy always has put profit ahead of safety. Should it now be rewarded for that conduct?
It is time now to say "Enough is enough." After Fukushima, "pencil engineering" Davis Besse into "compliance" is not acceptable. FirstEnergy must either massively repair Davis-Besse or close it.
Dennis Kucinich, D-Cleveland, is representative of the 10th District in the U.S. House.
This article originally appeared in the Elyria Chronicle Telegram.
Follow Rep. Dennis Kucinich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RepKucinich
Harvey Wasserman: Nuclear Power's Green Mountain Grassroots Demise
The worst 10% of our nukes should be shut down immediately.
The rest should be run at lower power levels to decrease the chances of meltdowns, and the backup generators should be tested every day. a full fuel truck should be parked in every nuke parking lot, as many as it needs to arrange a cold shutdown with no outside fuel or electricity.
Perhaps they should install solar and wind to help them, they have 1000's a acres per nuke.
All 500M$ in breaks per reactor per year, must be removed from nuclear power ASAP.
Plow all that into the much better and cheaper and faster to install alternatives: rooftop solar, offshore wind and waste bio fuels and energy to back it up using existing infrastructure.
I like that you first start your piece with a comparison of nuclear to air travel and surgery, both high risk, high training required ventures.
We can agree to disagree on the merits of nuclear power, however you will also find that the safety record of the US commercial nuclear enterprise far exceeds that of both the airline and medical professions. Despite the level of fatalities from human error in those professions, these enterprises do continue to thrive. Why? Its because we cant live without air travel these days or surgery. People have accepted higher risk. But on the same token we cant live without electricity, and surely can not live with an ever increasing global climate concern and pollution caused by burning fossil fuels.
In your own state, the Zimmer nuclear plant was converted to a coal buring plant. In its operating life, it probably contributed to more pollution, more global warming, and more fatalities and sickness than any operating nuclear plant.
We need to be clear about all risks. The risk of a nuclear accident in this country is far less than any other industrial risk.
Risk = likelihood * consequence.
Many people focus on risk as just consequence alone. I know you are an intelligent person, but you fell in that trap as well.
Oh and I lived 3 miles from a nuclear plant, and now 3 from a coal plant. I'd take nuclear anyday.
6 million cancers.
A trillion dollar million cancer disaster every 25 years.
and you want to increases that 10 times?
Not to mention the fuel would be gone in 30 years or less.
Plus it's more expensive the rooftop solar, twice wind and waste.
Thats the fact.
As always you offered a reasonable assessment of Ohio’s Fukushima, no Tsunami to worry us, only the sharpened pencils of engineers, no matter how many of your constituents die.
Never fear, Wonder Dog is more than a cartoon and organic sulfur can protect and repair the damage of radiation exposure, Pub Med. Dennis it also addresses stupidity.
Stupidity which has those near the Nuke complacent until their children start to bleeding from every orifice.
Dennis sulfur can address the stupidity on both sides of the isle in both the House and the Senate. Divide and conquer, oh Cesar when will they ever learn? When sulfur is returned to the diet of man oxygen can reach the right brain where integrity, compassion, and dare I say it, love resides, greed and selfishness are no longer job one.
Who knows once reason returns to the second house of government we can get the boys and girls of the Supreme Court on sulfur and have them reverse the no penalty to pHarma for vaccine damage, autism and Alzheimer’s are both vaccine damage and sulfur has been reversing both these last 13 years.
Organic sulfur at sisna dot come is the Cellular Matrix Study, be sure to tell your constituents about the radiation it sounds like they will need it as do the rest of the inhabitants of the Third Rock from the Sun.
Dennis the key point is sulfur addresses stupidity, we await you reply.
.
Please, don't believe everything you read, especially if a commercial enterprise is behind it. NO sulfur supplement can improve the antioxidant status of your body by more than a miniscule and insignificant amount. Your body's own antioxidant enzymes, such as superoxide dismutase, are thousands of times more effective than supplements. Ingesting sulfur containing "precursors" will not significantly increase your natural antioxidant enzyme status either. Things like DMS (dimethyl sulfide) are snake oil.
No antioxidant will prevent or cure radiation damage. Besides, most of the cancer risk associated with radiation exposure is due to DNA damage. No supplement can repair DNA.
It is the overwhelming consensus of the mainstream medical and scientific community that vaccines do not cause autism or Alzheimer's disease. Crackpots, activists, and snake oil salesmen have perpetuated this myth for their own selfish reasons (and profit), not for you or your health.
Let's rephrase:
Stupid Sulfur Silliness!
Rep. Kucinich's extraordinary claim that the reverse is true, pushed using a series of poor analogies, rests on zero real evidence and an ignorance of the evolving and improving world of nuclear regulations and nuclear power plant operation. Safety is important, and misrepresenting safety is a serious issue in both directions.
Infrastructure that continues to operate safely - and that includes Davis Besse - should not be torn down. That way lies the collapse of the economy, as Japan may find out if it continues its massive and unnecessary fossil fuel imports to cover for their pointlessly idle reactors.
What does "nearly been" mean in terms of quantifying a likelihood?
What does "blown up" mean in terms of consequences
Risk = likelihood * consequences, two quantifyable numbers
"nearly blown up" is so nebuluous its not even worth addressing.
It is perhaps the `unluckiest' non-destroyed nuclear plant in the world. Some plant has to have that title, but it's not clear why the people nearby should be happy about it.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Category:Existing_coal_plants_in_Ohio
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Category:Existing_coal_plants_in_Ohio
Being downwind of wind is not. Having the sun shine on you (within reason) is not. Being downstream of micro hydro is not
I saw that movie - James Gandolphini gets sushied!
Micro hydro = micro energy. We need mega energy, not micro energy.
Hydro is all tapped out.
I saw the remnants of the Teton Dam. That was impressive.
If you want environmental Justice, you need to hire an environmentalist, support Rocky and Luis in November.
No.
"Would you accept living next to a nuclear power plant with any decreased safety margin?"
Yes. It would take a very large decrease in margin to make them as dangerous as natural gas, if that is even possible. Natural gas is a big moneymaker for government, however.
which
Who knew?
Remember, our US reactors have many layers of protection - even the vintage GE BWRs
A stronger hit by a solar flare emission than we received from one this past weekend can cause blackouts lasting for months.
Nuclear plants without grid power for two weeks are likely to experience a meltdown.
See www.aesopinstitute.org for more information.
Including what might be done to prevent the problem.
It includes a massive program that would also quickly end the economic slump!
People have moved closer to nuclear plants. Ask San Clemente. When I was living in South OC in the 80s it was not nearly as densly populated as it is today.
I dispute the "nuclear plants without grid power for 2 weeks are likely to experience a meltdown"
Turkey Point ran for 30 days on diesels after Hurricane Andrew. The plant was shut down safely too.
A solar flar emission that is strong enough to wipe out a nuclear plant, would be strong enough to wipe out the humans around it.
Then what? "Life After People" - History Channel had something on nuclear power plants
Turkey point was able to keep supplied with diesel fuel. Transformer meltdowns by a destructive solar storm are expected to make that difficult if not impossible.
See Dire Warnings at www.aesopinstitute.org
Strong solar emissions that melt huge transformers are not expected to kill the nearby humans. The grid acts like an antenna and currents far larger than the transformers can safely carry can melt or explode them. They presently take years to replace. There are 20,000 of them worldwide and 5,500 of these are in the USA.
More than 70 of our 104 nuclear plants are considered at hazard from a strong solar storm hit on the geomagnetic field.
The transformers can be protected with new technology. A massive program to install the preventive devices quickly can help to end the current economic slump, far faster than might be imagined.
The problem is, I don't think that any reasonable person who has a clue about the NRC feels that they are truly working as an independent agency. There's too much cronyism and cross-pollination between the agency and the industry.