This video contains a chronological account of the Fukushima disaster. youtube.com

Anti-nuclear activists are angry at nuclear revival plans. youtube.com

Workers thought that the Fukushima blast was a missile from North Korea, because nuclear plants don’t explode. enenews.com

Iran’s vice president says the Bushehr nuclear power plant has been disconnected from the country’s electricity grid because of a mechanical problem. businessweek.com

             The Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant is located on the Tennessee River on the north shore of Wheeler Lake in northern Alabama near Decatur and Athens. The plant has three General Electric boiling water reactors that can each generate about one thousand one hundred megawatts. Unit One began operating in 1973, Unit Two in 1974 and Unit Three in 1976. The plant was built and is owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). It went into operation in 1974. In 2006, the NRC licensed all three reactors for another twenty years.

       The population in the NRC plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of ten miles around the plant contains about forty thousand people. The NRC ingestion pathway zone with a radius of fifty miles around the plant contains about one million people. The NRC estimates that there is an extremely low risk of an earthquake that could damage the plant. The plant is vulnerable to tornados and has had to be shut down because a tornado cut off external power to the site.

        Unit One was damaged by a fire in 1975 and had to be shut down for a year for repairs. Temporary flammable sealing in the cable spreading room was set afire by a worker using a candle to check for air leaks and the fire spread through the control cabling for Unit One and Unit Two. This fire prompted review of and changes to the NRC fire codes for nuclear reactors. In 1985, all three reactors at the plant were shut down due to operational and management problems. In 2002, the TVA began work on restoring Unit 1 to operation and spent one billion eight hundred million to fix the reactor’s problems. Unit 1 finally began operating again in 2007.

        Unit 2 was shut down in 1985 along with the other units. The necessary repairs and changes were made and Unit 2 was brought back into operation in 1991. In 2007, Unit Two had to be shut down for a day because the temperature of the water in the Tennessee River was too high for cooling water to be drawn from the river.

        Unit Three was shut down in 1983 to inspect the recirculation system and remain out of service until 1984 when repairs were finished. In 1984, the water level in the reactor dropped below the safe level but the automatic safety equipment did not function. In 1985, the reactor was shut down to investigate problems with the instrumentation and other equipment. Unit Three was finally restarted in 1995 with at a cost of one billion four hundred thousand dollars.

        Following the shutdown of all three Units in 1985, problems with equipment design and maintenance as well as poor training of the staff were identified. Senior managers brought in in 1986 to oversee repairs were found to have violated ethical standards. In 1987, almost thirty percent of the staff was found to be unqualified for their positions. In 1988 and 1989, the plant was found to be non-compliant with new fire protection regulations that had been prompted by the fire in Unit One in 1975. Many of these problems had been seen in the years before 1985 but the plant was allowed to continue to operate. It was reported by a watchdog group that the plant management allowed quality and nuclear safety to deteriorate in favor of keeping up the production of electricity. The entire licensing and regulatory process of the NRC was called into question by the problems at Browns Ferry.

       At Browns Ferry we have poor design, poor maintenance, poor training, lack of ethics, sacrificing safety to profits, poor oversight, advanced knowledge of serious problems, climate change related temperature increases interfering with cooling water supply and tornado damage. One reactor was shut down for over ten years. I question whether this plant should have been relicensed in 2006. It sounds like a major nuclear accident just waiting to happen.

          The James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant is located near Oswego, New York on the southeast shore of Lake Ontario. The plant contains one eight hundred and thirty eight megawatt General Electric boiling water reactor. The reactor was built by the Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation and put into operation in 1975 with a forty year license to 2014. Ownership passed to the Power Authority of the State of New York and eventually to Entergy. An extended license was issued in 2008 to operate until 2034.

          The population in the NRC plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of ten miles around the plant contains about thirty five thousand people. The NRC ingestion pathway zone with a radius of fifty miles around the plant contains about nine hundred thousand people. The NRC estimates that there is a very low risk of an earthquake that could damage the plant.

         In late 1991, the NRC sent a Diagnostic Inspection Team (DET) to the plant. On November 27^th of 1991, the reactor was voluntarily shut down. The report of the inspection team was issued on December 3^rd of 1991. The report detailed deficiencies in the plants programs for operation, maintenance, testing and engineering. Especially troubling was the finding that the isolation valves in the core spray system could not be relied upon to close properly and prevent the release of radioactive materials in the event of an accident. The operators of the plant agreed to plant upgrades and management changes to fix the problems revealed in the DET report. As the work proceeded additional problems were uncovered in the fire protection systems and the original design for the isolation valve system. Ultimately, the plant was closed over a year in order to make the necessary changes. The NRC issued a warning to other plants about the isolation valve problems that were uncovered at FitzPatrick.

         During the extended outage, the operators of the plant reported dozens of safety problems that had been known for years including deficiencies in the fire protection systems, the isolation valves already mentioned, failure to test equipment properly and flawed electrical installation. Of grave concern is the fact that the NRC had repeatedly inspected the FitzPatrick plant over the preceding years and yet had not identified many existing problems.

         In 1999, poor maintenance led to a hydrogen fire on the roof of the control building which forced a shutdown of the plant.

         Once again, a plant with a wide variety of problems continued to operate because the NRC failed in its oversight function for years. We have design flaws, fire suppression problems, electrical problems and failures to test equipment properly. Fortunately, in view of all the long-standing problems at FitzPatrick, there was not a serious accident that endangered the public.

          The Donald C. Cook Nuclear Generating Station is located eleven miles north of St. Joseph, Michigan on the southeast shore of Lake Michigan. The plant contains two 1000 megawatt Westinghouse four loop pressurized water nuclear reactors. The Unit 1 reactor was put into operation in 1974 and was licensed until 2014. The Unit 2 reactor was put into operation in 1977 and was licensed until 2017.  In 2005, both reactors were granted extended licenses, 2034 for Unit 1 and 2037 for Unit 2. The plant is owned by American Electric Power and operated by a subsidiary, Indiana Michigan Power.

          The population in the NRC plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of ten miles around the plant contains about fifty five thousand people. The NRC ingestion pathway zone with a radius of fifty miles around the plant contains about one million two hundred thousand people. The NRC estimates that there is a low risk of an earthquake that could damage the plant.

          In 1976, argon gas in a recirculation pit asphyxiated two workers. In 1979, one thousand gallons of radioactive coolant were sprayed over upper levels of the containment building. In 1990, the explosion of switchgear severely burned four people, killing one.

           In 1997, an NRC inspection questioned whether the plant was designed to be able to withstand a variety of possible accidents including earthquakes, explosions, fires, flood and tornados. The operators dealt with the specific problems that the NRC identified by early 1998 and preparations were made for a restart. The Union of Concerned Scientists pointed out that some identifiable problems at the plant had not been remedied, some of which concerned the ice condenser containment equipment. Problems of ice condensers had been identified at other nuclear reactor plants but the NRC took no actions on those warnings until the complaint of the UCS. Further inspection by the NRC confirmed that there were twenty nine violations of federal requirements at the plant. The plant operators proceeded to work on the identified problems and eventually reported back that over two hundred material conditions and seventy design problems had been fixed. Both Units were out of service for about three years while the work was done. In addition to the physical repairs and changes at the plant, there were changes in management.

          In 2003, a problem with a transformer triggered an automatic shutdown in Unit 1. Also in 2003, a huge number of fish entered the cooling intake and caused both units to be shut down for a day. In 2008, the main turbine and generator in Unit 1 was damaged by broken turbine blades. There was also a fire in the generator of Unit 1 that same year.

          The main problems at this plant stemmed from poor design at the plant and poor oversight on the part of the NRC. If the Union of Concerned Scientists had not intervened, the reactors at the plant would have been restarted while serious design problems were still present. In addition, we see that the behavior of fish in the lake providing cooling water forced the plant to shut down. Nuclear power is hyped as being a constant and reliable source of power in contrast to renewable energy such as wind and solar. Being shut down for three years for repairs is not my definition of reliable.

Photo from David Wayne Prins:

          Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant is located on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. The plant contains two nine hundred megawatt Combustion Engineering  Generation II two-loop pressurized water reactors. Unit 1 was put into commercial operation in 1975 with a license to operate until 2014 and Unit 2 was put into operation in 1977 with a license to operate until 2016. Unit 1 was relicensed until 2034 in 2000 and Unit 2 was relicensed until 2036 in 2000. The plant is owned by Constellation Energy Nuclear Group (CENG) which is a joint venture between Exelon Corporation and Electricity of France (EDF), a French energy company.            

          The population in the NRC plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of ten miles around the plant contains about fifty thousand people. The NRC ingestion pathway zone with a radius of fifty miles around the plant contains almost three million people. The NRC estimates that there is a very low risk of an earthquake that could damage the reactors at the plant.

          In 1989, while Unit 1 was shut down for refueling, leaking pressurized heater sleeves had to be replaced which took over a year to accomplish. Unit 2 also had pressurized heater sleeve that leaked and it required over two years to fix those problems after a shut down for refueling in 1989. The NRC was tracking declining performance for months but was unable to force the needed changes until the problems became too serious to ignore.

          From 2000 on, operators knew that a roof was leaking whenever it rained but did nothing about the problem for years. Finally, in 2010 electrical equipment was shorted out by the water that came through the roof and one of the reactors shut down automatically. The second reactor automatically shut down because an inoperative protective device had not been replaced due to cost-cutting at the plant.

           In 2007, UniStar Nuclear Energy, a company jointly owned by CENG and EDF, launched a proposal to build a third reactor at Calvert Cliffs  and the plan began working its way through the licensing process. In 2009, an opponent of the plan to build the new reactor asked the NRC to deny an emissions permit needed for the third reactor. In 2010, CENG sold its stake in the UniStar Nuclear Energy to EDF. In 2011, the NRC said that UniStar could not own a reactor in the United States because it was not a U.S. company.

          Calvert Cliffs is another example of poor design/improper construction that required reactors to be shut down for years to remedy. It is also another example of the regulatory impotence of the NRC which saw problems but could not get them fixed until they became serious. The operators knew about a leaking roof for years but did nothing until the leak shut down the reactors. Calvert Cliffs is also the first plant that we have discussed where inoperative safety equipment was not replaced because the operators wanted to save money. Given the history of the operators of this plant, it is probably just as well that the plan to build a third reactor failed.

Photo from Jbs666:

          The Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station is located in Oak Harbor, Ohio on the southwest coast of Lake Erie. It has one nine hundred megawatt pressurized water reactor that was put into operation by FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company in 1977 and was licensed to operate until 2017. FirstEnergy Nuclear applied to the NRC for a twenty year license extension in 2010.

          The population in the NRC plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of ten miles around the plant contains about nineteen thousand people. The NRC ingestion pathway zone with a radius of fifty miles around the plant contains about one million eight hundred thousand people. The NRC estimates that there is a very low risk of an earthquake that could damage the plant.

           In 1977, the reactor was shut down because of problems with the feedwater when the relief valve for the pressurizer was stuck in the open position. The NRC ranks this as the fourth most dangerous safety incident at a commercial U.S. reactor since 1979 In 1985, the main pumps that supply water to the steam generators shut down. The operator made an error when he tried to start the emergency pumps. It took about a year and a half to repair the problems before the plant could be restarted. In 1988, there was a tornado that damaged the supply of external electrical power to the plant and the reactor had to be shut down until power could be restored.

          In 2002, borated water that cools the reactor leaked from a cracked control rod drive above the reactor and ate a roughly one foot in diameter hole through six inches of the carbon steel reactor pressure vessel. Only three eights of an inch of steel was left to contain the high pressure reactor coolant. If the pressure vessel had been breached, a jet of superhot super pressurized coolant would have been released into the reactor’s containment building triggering emergency measures to shut down the reactor. If the jet had hit nearby control rod drives, it might have interfered with the shut down and resulted in a core meltdown. When the accident was analyzed, other problems with safety procedures were discovered including the containment sump, high pressure injection pumps, the emergency diesel generators, containment air coolers, reactor coolant isolation valves and the plant’s electrical wiring. It took two years and cost six hundred million dollars to repair the problems. Fines were leveled against the operators for safety and reporting violations. The NRC ranks this incident as the fifty most dangerous safety incident at a commercial U.S. reactor since 1979.

           In 2003, the computer systems of the plant were infected with the Slammer computer worm and safety monitoring was lost of five hours. There was a small leak of tritium in 2008. In 2010, the operators of the plant discovered that one third of the nozzles in the replacement reactor vessel that had been installed in 2003 were corroding and could cause leaks of the borated water that corroded the original vessel. In 2011, a thirty foot long crack was discovered in the concrete shield building around the reactor containment vessel. In 2012, a small pinhole leak was discovered in a weld in the reactor coolant pump. The plant had to be put into limited operations while the problem was explored.

         This is one of the most troubled nuclear power plants in the United States with the dubious distinction of being the location for two of the five most dangerous incidents since 1979.  The original design was flawed, equipment failed, dangerous system problems went unnoticed or unreported, tornados damaged power supplies, the NRC had to review procedures and design issues, computer worms invaded the computer system, etc. There are a number of groups that strongly oppose the relicensing of the aging Davis-Besse and they are fighting to prevent it.

              The Indian Point Energy Center is located in Buchanan, New York. It draws cooling water from the Hudson River. There are three Westinghouse pressurized water reactors at the Center. Unit 1 was put into operation in 1962 and permanently shut down in 1974 because it did not have an emergency core cooling system. Unit 2 was built by Consolidated Edison and began commercial operation in 1973 with a license to operation until 2014. The New York Power Authority built Unit 3 and put it into commercial operation in 1976 with a licensed to operate until 2016. Unit 2 and Unit 3 are currently generating two thousand megawatts of electricity. Around 2000, Unit 2 was purchased by Entergy from Consolidated Edison and Unit 3 was purchased by Entergy from the New York Power Authority.

             The population in the NRC plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of ten miles around the plant contains about two hundred and seventy five thousand people. The NRC ingestion pathway zone with a radius of fifty miles around the plant contains about seventeen million people. Although Indian Point is located on an active fault, the NRC estimates that there is a moderate risk of an earthquake that could damage the plant. Entergy says that Unit 2 and Unit 3 can withstand an earthquake of 6.0 on the Richter Scale.

            Indian Point has had numerous problems since it was constructed and has been included in lists of the worst nuclear power plants in the United States. In 1973, Unit 2 had to be shut down because the steel liner of the concrete dome enclosing the reactor was buckling. In 1980, a hundred thousand gallons of water from the Hudson River flooded the Unit 2 reactor building undetected by safety equipment. Two pumps failed to remove the water because they were not operating. Problems continued to arise up to the year 2000 when a radioactive steam leak caused the plant to be shut down for eleven months.

          In 2001, there were a series of leaks in a non-nuclear area of the plant. In 2005, the operators discovered a leak from the spent fuel pool. Water contaminated with tritium and strontium-90 was leaking into the Hudson River. In 2006, radioactive nickel-63 and strontium-90 were discovered in the groundwater under the plant. In 2007, after a history of transformer problems the plant experienced a fire in a transformer in Unit 3. The NRC fined the operators in 2007 because the emergency sirens at the plant did not perform as required. In 2010, around six hundred thousand gallons of radioactive steam was deliberately vented after an automatic shutdown. Later in 2010, there was an explosion at the main transformer for Unit 2 which spilled oil into the Hudson River.

        In 2007, Entergy applied for twenty year license extensions for both Unit 2 and Unit 3. Anti nuclear activists in Friends United for Sustainable Energy filed legal papers with the NRC to stop the relicensing citing lax design standards imposed on the original construction of the plant by the NRC. Later the NY Dept of Environmental Conservation, the Office of the NY Attorney General, the NY Governor at that time and other non-governmental organizations joined the legal challenge to the relicensing of the plant. New York City officials support the relicensing because the city relies on electricity from the plant. The current Governor of NY opposes relicensing.

       With respect to Indian Point, we have concerns about the original design, poor construction, inoperable equipment, leaks of radioactive material into the environment, fires, unplanned automatic shutdowns and a host of other problems. Once again we have opposition on the part of state government and environmental groups to the relicensing by the NRC of dilapidated and unsafe nuclear reactors.

Photo by Daniel Case:

           I have already written a post about decommissioning nuclear reactors. In that previous post, I ending it by writing about concerns I had with the funding of the decommissioning. In this post, I want to drill down into that subject a bit more. The NRC requires nuclear power companies to maintain sufficient funds to dismantle nuclear power reactors and decontaminate the land where the reactor was located. Recently, the NRC reported that companies operating eighteen of the one hundred and four nuclear reactors in the U.S. do not have sufficient funds to satisfy the decommissioning requirements.

           The cost of constructing nuclear reactors is currently in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The projected cost of decommissioning a nuclear reactor can be over one billion dollars. In the past few years a reactor sold for ten million dollars. It is interesting that the cost for decommissioning a non-functioning reactor can be five times the cost of building a new one and a hundred times the cost of buying an existing functioning reactor. I believe this is a unique situation for major electricity producing power plants.

           One problem that may increase the cost of decommissioning could be the problem of disposing of spent nuclear fuel. The U.S. government will not have a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel before 2040 at the earliest. That being the case, any spent nuclear fuel at a shut down nuclear power plant would have to be stored on or off site in temporary storage which could be an additional expense that would have to be added to the general decommissioning cost.

           Another problem that comes to mind is the cost of the actual decommissioning work. Decommissioning a reactor is a difficult and time consuming task requiring special equipment and special expertise. Most of the 100 reactors in the U.S. are nearing the end of their projected lifespan. Some are being relicensed for an extended period but some are just too old to keep operating safely and must be shut down soon. As more and more reactors are shut down and decommissioned, there will be less and less call for decommissioning and there may be fewer and fewer companies with that capability. This could lead to an increase in price for the services of the remaining companies.

          The length of the process is also troubling. Companies in the U.S. have up to sixty years from the date of shut down to decommission a nuclear power plant. If the market for nuclear power becomes less lucrative, some companies may go bankrupt and cease to exist. If a company owning a reactor fails, then what happens to the decommissioning fund is a critical question. If it goes into the bankruptcy proceeding and is divided up between credit

           If the cost estimate of the decommissioning is too low, then what will happen if the company closing the reactor cannot afford the extra cost? The U.S. government and tax payers will have to pay the extra.

         The general health of the U.S. economy is also a concern. Recently a nuclear power company assured that NRC that they had sufficient funds because they had invested the funds and the stock market was doing well. What happens if the decommissioning funds are invested in the stock market and the market crashes, wiping out the invested funds? In this case, there might not be enough tax revenue for the U.S. government to cover decommissioning costs.

          Recently the U.S. government instituted the Sequester which required across the board cuts in government programs. New leaks at the Hanford Nuclear reservation have been in the news recently and there is pressure on the Federal government to do something about them. It has been reported that the cuts from the Sequester may slow down the cleanup work at the Hanford facility. If there are government budget problems in the future and more cuts in government programs, any nuclear decommissioning work that the government is committed to could also be slowed down or canceled.

        Problems with the nuclear decommissioning funds maintained by nuclear power companies are not usually among the top issues discussed when the viability of nuclear power being considered but, in the long run, they may prove to be very important.

Estimates of Vermont Yankee decommissioning costs and available funds from a fairwinds.org report:

               The Clinton Nuclear Generating Station is located near Clinton, Illinois. It is a General Electric Generation II boiling water reactor with a one thousand megawatt generation capacity. It was built by Illinois Power and put into operation in 1987 with a forty year operating license until 2026.The plant owners also own a five thousand acre cooling reservoir, most of which is open for recreational use. In 1999, Exelon bought the power plant from Illinois Power for forty million dollars.

             The population in the NRC plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of ten miles around the plant contains about fifteen thousand people. The NRC ingestion pathway zone with a radius of fifty miles around the plant contains about eight hundred thousand people. The estimated risk of an earthquake that could damage the plant is very low.

            In April of 1996, failure of an electrical transformer caused an automatic shutdown of the reactor. The reactor was maintained in what is known as a hot standby condition because that would reduce the time that the reactor would have to be offline. This put a severe strain on a seal in the recirculating pump. In June of 1996, the reactor was shut down again and placed in a hot standby mode. They could have used this shutdown to find and fix the seal in the pump but they did not. Consequently, in September, the plant operators had to work to fix the pump seal which was leaking. The measures that they took deviated from the correct and safest procedures required in such circumstances. The reactor was allowed to operate for several extra hours even though its condition mandated a shutdown which was eventually accomplished.

             When the NRC sent in a team of inspectors to investigate the improper responses to the problem with pump seal, many other problems were found. The operators of the plant worked on fixing the list of problems and notified the NRC that they were ready to restart the reactor in August of 1997. The next day, a circuit breaker broke down at the reactor. The NRC which had been ready to grant the restart cancelled permission, partly because they had just fined the operators of the plant for having problems with the circuit breakers. A major finding of the NRC was that there was not a sufficient focus on safety at the Clinton reactor. The problems at Clinton and six other reactors in 1997 prompted the NRC to change their processes for plant inspections.

            In 1997 and 1998, there were multiple repairs, attempts to restart the reactors and multiple inspections by and fines by the NRC. The NRC found numerous violations of proper procedures, many necessary repairs and changes at the reactor, serious problems with staff training and insufficient concern with safety in general. It took two more years of work on the reactor before the NRC was ready to grant permission for a restart. Finally in 1999, the operators at Clinton had cleared the backlog of changes required by the NRC and the reactor was restarted after been out of service for over two year.

             The Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station is located in Plymouth, Massachusetts and draws its cooling water from Cape Cod Bay. It is a General Electric boiling water reactor built in 1972 by Boston Edison with a six hundred and ninety megawatt generation capacity. It was sold to Entergy Corporation in 1999. The original license expired in 2012. In 2006, Entergy applied for a twenty year extension which was granted.

           The population in the NRC plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of ten miles around the plant contains about seventy six thousand people. The NRC ingestion pathway zone with a radius of fifty miles around the plant contains about four million eight hundred thousand people. The estimated risk of an earthquake that could damage the plant is moderate.

            In 1983, the plant was shut down for ten months to replace cracked recirculating piping that had only lasted for ten years when it was supposed to last for forty years.  In 1986, the plant experienced a series of forced shutdowns due to recurring equipment problems. Repairs and replacements of equipment were made over the next couple of years and the reactor was restarted at the end of 1988. It was shutdown do to the fact that the equipment monitoring the core was not functioning. The problem was fixed and the reactor was restarted. It was shut down because of inoperable breakers for the drywell vacuum. The problem was fixed and the reactor was restarted. It was shut down because of a leak in the instrument air system. The problem was fixed and the reactor was restarted. It was shut down after a failure of the main transformer. The transformer was replaced and the reactor was restarted and reconnected to the power grid. The plant was shut down for two and one half years and the owners had to spend over a billion dollars to correct the series of problems.

           The NRC had told the operators that the reactor had serious problems in 1986 but had not insisted that the reactor be shut down to correct the problems. The reactor automatically shut itself down due to problems after the NRC notification. The operators restarted the reactor and two days later it automatically shut down again. This time the NRC insisted that the problems all be addressed before the reactor was started again. Critics are concerned that the NRC did not require a shutdown when the problems were known and waited until two automatic shutdowns before insisting that the problems be fixed.  An internal report at the NRC said that some staff had not provided accurate information on the problem but they were not fired or disciplined.

           When Entergy filed for the license extension in 2006, local activists challenged the renewal on the basis of all the problems that the plant had had. The NRC voted to grant the extension anyway. The state of Massachusetts filed suit to prevent the license extension. Ultimately the federal courts denied the legal challenge and the license extension was granted.

          Once again we have a case of poor design, ignored warnings, problems with repairs, incompetence of NRC staff and poor oversight on the part of the NRC. In addition, this is another case where a state did not want a trouble reactor to be relicensed but the federal courts overruled the state authorities.