I have discussed the fact that nuclear reactors require an enormous amount of water to cool them in previous posts. This means that they have to be located near major sources of water such big rivers, big lakes or the ocean. Since many big cities are near large bodies of water, this makes such locations convenient for major power plants that supply electricity to cities. Unfortunately this also makes the reactors vulnerable to flooding. It was the flood waters from a tsunami that caused the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.

          Several different meteorological phenomena converged recently to create one of the worst storms to hit the New England states in a century. Hurricane Sandyhas taken at least thirty lives and wracked havoc from Virginia to Maine. The ferocious winds have blown down buildings and brought down trees. The pounding waves have flooded coastal communities and left million of people without power. The storm is weakening but the damage and flooding will take weeks to deal with.

           The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent out teams to monitor nuclear reactors in the path of the storm. These are some of the power plants that were affected by the storm.

            Public Service Enterprise Group manually shut down its Salem Unit 1 reactor near Wilmington, Delaware because four of the six pumps that circulate cooling water were no longer functioning.  A lot of grass and debris were brought in by the storm and could have clogged the water circulation system.

            The CENG owned Nine Mile Point reactor near Scriba, New York shut down automatically because there was a power disruption in a switchyard.

             Entergy Corporation’s Indian Point 3 nuclear plant in New York shut down automatically because there were problems with the power grid caused by the storm. The 911 hijackers flew right over Indian Point and could have crashed into it but they thought that it was protected by anti-aircraft missiles.

             Exelon Corporation’s Oyster Creek nuclear plant north of Atlantic City, New Jersey declared an alert because of rising water levels in its water intake system. There was also a disruption in the switch yard. Three reactors were shut down as a precaution. Oyster Creek is the oldest operating commercial reactor in the United States.

             These events illustrate some of the types of problems that extreme weather events can cause nuclear power plants. Interruption of cooling water systems and problems with the electrical grid at two of the most important. The response to this storm was swift and professional. There has been no indication that there was any danger to the public or the environment from the reactors in the path of the storm.  

           There were twenty six nuclear power plants that could have been impacted by the storm. With global climate change, we can expect more extreme weather events in the future. Following the clean up from Hurricane Sandy, it would be a good idea to review that extreme weather events pose for nuclear reactors and the response systems in place to deal with them.

Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant:

          Seventy percent of Finland’s power comes from coal, gas, hydro and biofuels. Some power is imported from Russia. Coal is imported from Poland and Russia. All imported gas comes from Russia. Finland has four operating nuclear reactors that supply about thirty percent of their electrical power. When the annual rainfall is low, there is a power shortfall and more electricity must be imported. Finland is working to be more energy independent.

          Two boiling water reactors were purchased from a Swedish company and brought on line in 1978.  They were originally rated at generating about six hundred and fifty Megawatts of electricity but were eventually upgraded by thirty percent to eight hundred and sixty Megawatts. There are plans to upgrade them to one thousand Megawatts each. Their lifespans have been extended from forty years to sixty years and their status will be reviewed every decade. The other two reactors were purchased from a Russian company, had Western control systems installed and then put into operation around 1980. They have also had their power output upgraded and life spans extended from thirty years to fifty years. The Finnish reactors have an excellent record of maintenance, stable output and safety. They have an average capacity factor over the last ten years of over eighty five percent.

        The fuel supply for the two Swedish reactors illustrate the global nature of the nuclear industry. Uranium for the two reactors has been purchased from Canada, Australia and Africa. The uranium was converted to UF6 in Canada and France and the Russians enriched it. The fuel rods have been fabricated Germany, Sweden and Spain.  At least nine countries located all over the globe have been involved in providing fuel for the two Swedish reactors. This makes those reactors especially vulnerable to any events that interfere with international trade and/or global transportation networks. The operators of the two Russian reactors contracted with Russia for a complete fuel service. This makes the fuel supply less vulnerable to global problems but makes it more vulnerable to interruption if there are any problems in Russia.

       Finland started working on spent nuclear fuel disposal in 1983. A fund was established to accumulate funds for final disposal and it now contains over two billion Euros. The companies operating the reactors are responsible for handling and storing waste until it is moved to permanent storage facilities. There are already permanent repositories for low–level waste and they are being upgraded to eventually take spent nuclear fuel rods. In 2010, a Finnish mining company announced plans to recover uranium from nickel and zinc mining operations.

       Plans have been approved for the construction of a fifth reactor. This reactor is the first new reactor project in ten years in Western Europe. There are additional discussions and planning for the construction of a sixth and seventh reactor in Finland. Finland is an example of a country that has proceeded with an efficient, safe and responsible implementation of nuclear power for generation of electricity.

Seal of Finland:

            The Fukushima nuclear disaster was partly caused by the tsunami triggered by the nearby earthquake. The generator room that supplied power for monitoring and cooling was located in a basement which flooded. Without monitoring and cooling , several of the reactors overheated and generated gases which exploded causing major damage to the reactor buildings. There is some evidence that the cores of several of the reactors may have melted through the bottom of the containment vessels and penetrated into the earth, threatening the ground water.

            Researchers from Penn State University presented a new idea for nuclear reactor monitoring at the Annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in late October. They suggest the creation of something they call a thermoacoustic standing wave engine inside a fuel rod. Sound is created by variations in air pressure when the air pressure rises and falls in a repeating pattern. Thermoacoustics has to do with the interaction of sound and heat. In a thermoacoustic system, there are variations of heat in a repeating pattern in some material that is related to sound waves traveling through the material. It is possible to create heating systems, cooling systems and engines which generate sound from heat differences with the thermoacoustic effect. One benefit of a thermoacoustic device is that it can be built with no moving parts.

           The Penn State researchers created a nuclear fuel rod that incorporates a thermoelectric engine. The engine would resonate at a frequency based on the temperature of the fuel rod. In addition, heat would be distributed more evenly in the fuel rod which would make it more efficient as an energy source. The device was constructed from a stack of ceramic plate full of a parallel pores that was originally made for catalytic converters in car exhaust systems.  The stack transfers heat to a resonator full of gas and sound is generated by temperature differences. With this device, the temperature of the fuel rod is measured and signaled without the need for external power making the whole system less vulnerable to accidents.

          The thermoacoustic effect will circulate gas between the fuel and the steel shell of the rod and transfer heat out into the surrounding liquid increasing efficiency. The sound generated by the thermoacoustic engine in the fuel rod will travel out of the rod and into the surround fluid. The sound can then be detected by microphones that are some distance from the rod.

           The Idaho Nuclear Laboratory has been working in conjunction with the Penn State researchers to extend the use of the thermoelectric effect to monitor microstructural changes in the fuel rods, measure the composition of gas mixtures and to act as a failsafe device in case of emergencies.

         Hopefully, utilization of such advanced techniques as thermoacoustic engines can help make future generations of nuclear reactors safer, simpler and more efficient.

Diagram of Penn State Thermoacoustic standing wave engine:

           Muons are elementary particles similar to electrons. They were discovered in 1936 by Carl Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer at Caltech in 1936. They have a negative charge and are two hundred times as heavy as an electron. They occur naturally as a result of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere of the Earth. About ten thousand muons hit every square meter of the Earth’s surface every minute of every day. They decay in about two millions of a second into an electron and some neutrinos.

          Muons do not interact as much with ordinary matter as electrons and are not influenced as much as electrons by magnetic fields. They tend to pass through ordinary matter and penetrate deep into the earth. Muon detectors have been placed between one of the great pyramids in Egypt to detect hidden chambers. The muon images look a lot like x-rays and will show the shadows that map out different densities of matter and cavities.

         Muons are strongly affected by passing through uranium and plutonium because they are so dense. Scientists have speculated that muons might be useful in detecting these elements in buried repositories. The problem is that the shadow muon “x-ray” is two dimensional and not very good for identifying the exact position of things.

         Recently, scientists led by Guy Jonkmans at Atomic Energy of Canada in their Chalk River Laboratories nuclear lab in Ontario, Canada, have announced a method for generating a three dimension image from a muon scan. By placing muon detectors above and below repositories, the trajectory of muons passing through the repository can be tracked. With this information, computer image processing can build up a three dimensional image.

         This muon scanning technique could be very useful in identifying the presence and location of uranium and plutonium in buried waste repositories. Jonkmans and associates have tested their new technique and verified that it works. Now they have to work on creating a practical system that can be deployed to the field. Working with buried radioactive materials will make such work difficult and dangerous.

         There are buried nuclear waste materials at various sites which are not well documented. It is not know exactly what is buried and where. The Hanford site in Washington State is an example of a waste disposal site with a lot of uncertainty about many casks of liquid and solid waste buried over a wide area. Many of them are wearing out and leaking into the ground water. This new technique developed by Jonkmans and associates would be very valuable in identifying locations and types of nuclear waste.

          This new technique will not be easy to develop but it is critical that we find some way to deal with these buried nuclear waste depositories that are threatening the environment in many different places.

The Berkeley Lab Cosmic Ray Telescope Project:

  I have discussed many issues that might lead to closing a nuclear power plant. There can be concerns about earthquakes, flood, tornados, hurricanes, explosions, leaks and many other problems. One thing that has nothing at all to do with reactor design, the weather but does have to do with the location is the demand for electrical energy. The United States is working to upgrade our power grid to be able to distribute power better across the country so that we can location wind farms and solar farms where is convenient and get the power to where it is needed but we don’t have that grid yet. Since up to one third of electrical energy can be lost during transmission, we still try to site the power plant as close to where the energy will be used as possible.

         The Kewaunee Power Station, a nuclear power plant in Wisconsin is owned by Dominion Resources, Inc. They bought the plant in 2005 from two utilities which now buy power from Dominion. The plant generates about one half of a gigawatt of power which is enough to power about one hundred forty thousand homes.

          Recently, Dominion announced that it was going to close the Kewaunee Power Station in 2013 because it could not find a buyer for the plant. Dominion said that the low price of natural gas which sets the price of electricity on the wholesale power market was a big factor in the decision. Dominion had had contracts to sell two nuclear power plants to utilities in Wisconsin but the contracts expire next year. Late last year, Alliant Energy Corporation in Madison, Wisconsin ended negotiations with Dominion over the purchase of a plant.

          Dominion’s CEO said that it was a difficult decision because the plant is running smoothly and the employees are dedicated. The plant had just been granted another license which would have extended the life of the plant to 2033. They had intended to expand their Midwestern fleet of nuclear power plants but were unable to. They will have to write down a two hundred eighty million dollar expense connected to the shut down and decommissioning of the Kewaunee Power Station.

         Politics reared its ugly head as Governor Scott Walker blamed the inability of Dominion to find a buyer for the Kewaunee Power Station and to expand the number of reactors that it owns on burdensome EPA regulations that were discouraging the “job creators”. While there are some EPA regulations that might affect the future operation of the plant, Dominion VP of Operations said that the new EPA regulations were not the main reason that they decided to shut down the plant. He said that it was the recent boom in fracking and the abundance of cheap natural gas that was the main problem. Many utilities are switching to natural gas and coal because it is cheap than nuclear for electrical power generation.

          This will be the first US nuclear power plant shut down since two plants were shut down in the late 1990. Out of all the problems that can accompany the use of nuclear power to generate electricity, the reason that this plant is being shut down is purely economical.

Kewaunee Power Station from Reznick111:

French scientists discovered natural radioactivity and explored its properties early in the history of nuclear science. France was involved in nuclear research prior to WW II and, following the war, the government created the Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique  to fund and guide research. In the 1950s, the emphasis was on nuclear weapons research but progress was made on civilian use and the first nuclear reactor in France started in 1963.

          After the oil crisis in 1973, France’s Prime Minister, Pierre Messmer, announced the Messmer plan. With few energy resource of its own, France was going to start a massive nuclear power program with the goal of generating all of its electricity from nuclear power. The plan called for eighty nuclear power plants by 1985 and one hundred seventy plants by the year 2000. In actuality, fifty six reactors were built and put into operation by 1990.     

          Today, about eighty percent of France’s electrical energy is generated by nuclear reactors. The reactors generate around four hundred and twenty five terawatts. This makes France the most nuclear powered nation on Earth. France generated the lowest amount of carbon dioxide per unit of GDP of any nation on Earth and it also exports the most electricity to other nations.

         France’s 59 reactors are managed by the Électricité de France (EDF) company which has eighty five percent in government hands. France’s reactors are not being used at full capacity all the time because of low demand.  This is a problem because the costs of operation are relatively constant so the return over operating costs is lower than it could be. Another company, Avera, is owned mostly by the French government and acts something like the U.S. Department of Energy.

         In 2006, the government asked Areva and EDF to build a next generation nuclear reactor to be known as the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR). EDF was hurt by the 2008 recession and is heavily in debt. The EPR project is plagued by cost overruns and delays with a current projection of 2016 for completion. EDF has said that if continued political and economic problems caused further cost overruns and delays for the EPR, the new type of reactor could be replaced by a cheaper and simpler French-Japanese design.

        The Fukushima disaster in 2011 has reverberated throughout the world and all countries that utilize nuclear power to reevaluate the further use of nuclear power to generate electricity. France was no exception but after consideration, France is still going to continue its dependence on nuclear power. However, the head of the French nuclear safety agency said that France really needs to upgrade the safety and security features and procedures at all of its nuclear plants. This will, of course, result to an increase in the price of electricity.

         When François Hollande was elected President of France in 2012, it became probable that there would be a partial phase out of nuclear power in France. His party is in favor of closing twenty four of the older reactors by the year 2025. With the uncertainty of politics in France, this could change at the next Presidential election, of course.

Great Seal of France:

 

          Germany currently has operational nuclear reactors at present. Nuclear power accounts for about twenty percent of Germany’s electricity. Following the disaster in March of 2011 at Fukushima, Japan, Chancellor Angela Merkel appointed a panel to look into the issue of shutting down Germany’s reactors. The previous government in Germany had announced that all German reactors would be shut down by 2012 but the Merkel government had extended the lifespan of German reactors by 12 years. In May of 2011, the Merkel government announced that all German reactors would be shut down by 2022.

           Following the Fukushima disaster, seven of the oldest reactors were taken offline for examination. They will not be restarted. Another reactor that had been shut down temporarily due to technical problems will not be restarted. Six more will go offline in 2021 and the three newest will be shut down in 2022. The spent fuel disposal fund which collects almost two billion Euros a year will continue to collect fees.

            The nuclear industry had argued that shutting down Germany’s reactors would cost many jobs and do great damage to Germany’s industrial base. The Merkel government had tried to extend the lifespan of the existing reactors as a “bridge” to the full implementation of green energy.

             The Green Party in Germany was very anti-nuclear. Germany has invested heavily in renewable energy and some studies have suggested that renewable energy could supply all electricity world-wide by 2050. They have pointed out that the decision of Germany in 2000 to invest in renewable quadrupled its green energy output by 2010 and created three hundred and forty thousand jobs. New homes being build in Germany are outfitted with solar collector to supply electricity.

             Supporters of the shutdown of the reactors point out that Germany will be able to cut its use of electricity up to ten percent by making buildings and machinery more efficient. Germany is currently an exporter of energy but critics of the shutdown say that it will wind up having to import energy for neighboring countries like France.

         When the Merkel government announced the intentions to halt all use of nuclear power by 2022, concern about reducing CO2 to slow down climate change and heavy investment in renewable energy were also stressed as actions the government would take.

         Wind power is touted as taking up the slack in energy generation when the reactors are shut down. The biggest wind farms being planned are sited for the North Sea, but most of the reactors are in the south part of the country. This will require a major change to the German power grid including a high-capacity trunk line to carry electricity from the north to the south. Protests are already building from people who don’t want an ugly system of cables and pylons running through the beautiful countryside of the center of the country. It looks like Germany will have a mess on its hands as technology, climate change, politics, and economics all battle it out over nuclear energy.

German national seal:

          In my previous post, I discussed recent rule changes at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with respect to extending the time allowed from 30 years to 60 years for utilities to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel in pools or dry cask storage while a permanent geological repository is sited and developed. The new rules went into effect in January of 2011. In February of 2011 Connecticut, New York and Vermont sued the NRC to repeal the new rule for storage.

          The lawsuit filed by the three north-eastern states claims that when the NRC made the rule changes it “acted arbitrarily, abused its discretion, and violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, the Atomic Energy Act, the Commission’s policies and regulations.” The suit was filed on February 14^th, 2011 in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

          The suit said that the NRC must carry out site-by-site environmental impact statements before extending the storage rules. They are concerned about possible leaks that would threaten the groundwater and environment in their states. They also raised the issue of the cancellation of the Yucca Mountain Repository for permanent waste storage and the failure of the U.S. government to identify and begin development of another site for permanent spent fuel storage.

          The attorney general of the state of Connecticut said “The NRC has a mandatory legal duty to provide state and local governments and public with a full and comprehensive analysis of the potential environmental impact of additional decades of storage of high-level nuclear waste.”

          The NRC responded that their action was misrepresented by the lawsuit and that they were merely extending the storage period and not changing the rules to allow any plant to store spent nuclear fuel.

          On March 11, 2011, New Jersey petitioned the Appeals Court to allow them to join the lawsuit filed by the other three states.

          On June 8, 2012, the Appeals Court said that the NRC rule change was “major federal action necessitating either an environmental impact statement or finding of no significant environmental impact” as required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.”

          The NRC responded by agreeing to have its staff develop an environmental impact statement, revise the waste confidence finding and issue a new rule on temporary waste storage.

          The attorney general of Connecticut said that “This action affirms the position Connecticut and other states have taken for years – that environmental impact needs to be assessed before any decision is made to allow longer storage of spent nuclear fuel at reactor sites. We look forward to working with the NRC in this process.”

          Personally, I think that this is a good outcome. There are very real issues with the temporary storage of spent nuclear fuel that need to be addressed before the utility companies are allowed to double their temporary storage period. And the most pressing problem of all that has to be addressed as soon as possible by the U.S. government is the siting and development of permanent spent nuclear fuel storage.

 

          On January 24, 2011 a new rule was put in place by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with respect to the storage of spent nuclear fuel. The new rule covered the storage of spent nuclear fuel in pools near the reactor, onsite in temporary storage casks or offsite in independent storage facilities. The NRC made changes in 1990 to the Waste Confidence rulemaking procedures to allow for the extension of temporary storage. The new Waste Confidence report included the following five findings.

1. The Commission found that there is “reasonable assurance” that safe disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel in a geologic repository is technically feasible. While this may be true in theory, finding a safe repository site has turned out to be difficult to say the least.
2. The Commission found that there is “reasonable assurance” that at least one such repository will be available in the United States by the year 2025 and that there will be sufficient capacity within thirty years beyond the licensed life of any operating reactor to accept all the waste generated by such reactors. Considering that the Yucca Mountain Repository was cancelled in 2010 and that it is estimated that it may take twenty years or more to site and develop a repository, it would appear that we are already behind schedule.
3. The Commission found that there is “reasonable assurance” that safe temporary storage of nuclear waste and spent fuel will be carried out until the repository is available. We can only hope that this is true.
4. The Commission found that there is “reasonable assurance” that until the repository is ready, waste and spent fuel can be stored safely for up to thirty years beyond the licensed life of thirty years for any reactor without adverse environmental impact. This means that the NRC feels that it is reasonable to allow temporary nuclear waste and spend fuel storage for up to sixty years.
5.  The Commission found that there is “reasonable assurance” that safe temporary onsite or offsite storage will be made available if needed. This better be true because it is estimated that at current levels of spent nuclear fuel generation, all the spent fuel pools in the United States reactors will be full by 2017.

 

           In 1999, the NRC reviewed the findings from the Waste Confidence study of 1990 and concluded that experience with nuclear waste storage since 1990 had basically validated the 1990 findings. Therefore the NRC decided that it was not necessary to carry out a comprehensive reevaluation of its 1990 findings. It further stated that it would consider such a reevaluation after the current repository developments and regulatory activities had been completed. Or, of course, if there were serious unforeseen events at some time in the future. Well, the Yucca Mountain Repository has been cancelled and there was that disaster at Fukushima. The Unit 4 spent fuel pool at Fukushima is a threat to the whole world right now. Perhaps that reevaluation is now due.

           In the previous post, I talked about the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. On December 12, 2011 before the release of its final report, the BRC sent a letter Secretary of Energy and President Obama.

           One of the things that the letter emphasizes is that the President should move as soon as possible to makes changes with the Nuclear Waste Fund collected as fees on nuclear utilities. The letter says that the Commission learned in its investigation of the NWF that the fund is not working as intended. They charge that actions by the Executive Branch and Congress have made the twenty seven billion dollars in the NWF unavailable for the current nuclear waste management program. The intent of the creation of the NWF was to reserve money for nuclear waste management and keep it out of the annual budget fight for funding that most Federal programs are subjected to. Without access to the NWF, nuclear waste management now does have to fight for a share of the Federal budget to do its work.

         Under the current contract, the government is collecting seven hundred fifty million per year from nuclear utilities. Since the passing of the deadline for a U.S. nuclear waste repository in 1998 to take spent nuclear fuel, utilities have successfully sued the U.S. government for violation of contract and government liabilities may climb to sixteen billion dollars under the present contract.

         The Commission letter suggests that the President move to amend the standard nuclear waste contract with nuclear utilities so that the utilities are only required to pay a fee to cover the current temporary storage of spent nuclear fuels. At the same time, Congress should change the budgetary treatment of the fees collected from nuclear utilities to divert them from a permanent disposal solution to temporary disposal management. The Commission requests that these actions be undertaken for the Fiscal Year 2013 budget proposal.

         The Commission recognizes that there would be an impact on the national deficit because the current seven hundred fifty million dollars being collected is used to decrease the annual deficit. On the other hand, the Commission points out that the mounting costs of fines and litigations from utility lawsuits are increasing the deficit. If these changes are made to the NWF, then current nuclear waste management could be reliably funded and the lawsuits from nuclear utilities would end.

          The Commission letter mentions that it worked with both advocates for the taxpayers concerned about the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel and the industry associations that are advocating for expanding nuclear. Both of these groups support the recommendations outlined in the letter and detailed in the final report from the Commission delivered on January 26, 2012. Even though the report lacked specifics for dealing with permanent spent nuclear waste disposal, the recommendations in the report and the letter are an important first step.

Spent nuclear fuel cask on a railcar: