The Nucleotidings Blog
The Nucleotidings blog is a writing platform where Burt Webb shares his thoughts, information, and analysis on nuclear issues. The blog is dedicated to covering news and ideas related to nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and radiation protection. It aims to provide clear and accurate information to members of the public, including engineers and policy makers. Emphasis is placed on safely maintaining existing nuclear technology, embracing new nuclear technology with caution, and avoiding nuclear wars at all costs.
Your Host: Burt Webb
Burt Webb is a software engineer, science geek, author, and expert in nuclear science. Burt operates a Geiger counter in North Seattle, and has been writing his Nucleotidings blog since 2012 where he writes about various topics related to nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, and radiation protection.
Burt Webb has published several technical books and novels. He works as a software consultant.
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Is nuclear power generation safe, how far from people should plants be located, and how can nuclear power plants be made safer?
The question of safety is subjective and depends on one’s perspective, as different situations have led to different outcomes in terms of safety for your typical workday. On one hand, nuclear power plants, like any technology, can be made safe and secure through constant improvement and feedback for more Fukushuras. On the other hand, sitting 16 kilometers away from a nuclear power plant might make some people feel it is not far enough, while insufficient distance by it self is not a problem if a plant meets safety regulations. Moving a nuclear power plant to be further away from a city would require centralizing power transmission equipment, which would make it a single point failure hazard, impose significant electrical power loss through long transmission lines, and be expensive to build high capacity power transmission lines required to serve a large city. Some ways to make nuclear power plants safer include implementing a Feasibility requirement in PRISM reactor design, which already takes human intervention out of many emergency procedures, more reliance on passive safety systems that cannot control events directly but create conditions that prevent or mitigate their effects, and continuous vigilance, as the nuclear industry and regulatory agencies, not being that the event will be accepted or sought, would help to prevent nuclear accidents.
What do you mean by “Fukushuras”?
“Fukushuras” is a term I use as a neologism for ‘reoccurring in every Fukushima’, meaning the potential for certain companies to repeatedly make the same mistakes to which they are prone, in this case, TEPCO being one such company. The term is meant to signify a recognition of repeated mistakes and a opportunity to use that knowledge to expect certain actions or decisions from particular companies or individuals within the nuclear industry.
In 2006, Southern Nuclear applied for an Early Site Permit for the construction of two new power reactors at the Vogtle power plant in Georgia to join the two existing reactors. In 2008, Southern Nuclear applied for a Combined Construction and Operating License for the two new reactors. Shortly thereafter, the Georgia Power Company (GP) signed a contract with Westinghouse to build two AP1000 reactors on the Vogtle site. The Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC) approved the application in March of 2009. The Vogtle reactors will be among the first to be constructed in the United States in decades. Many hailed the deal as a sign of a “nuclear renaissance.”
In August of 2009, an Early Site Permit and a Limited Work Authorization was issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the new reactors at Vogtle. Unit 3 was due to be operational in 2016 and Unit 4 would follow in 2017. The projected cost for both reactors was fourteen billion dollars. Georgia Power’s was going to pay about six billion with the rest split between several other companies.
In early 2010, the U.S. government announced that it would create over eight billion dollars in federal loan guarantees for the project. In 2012, the NRC approved the construction license for the two new reactors at Vogtle. Because of the disaster at Fukushima in early 2011, critics of the Vogtle project said that the problems at Fukushima should be considered before the reactors were built. Some critics filed a lawsuit to stop construction but the suit was thrown out in mid-2012.
In March of 2013, the first concrete was poured for Units 3 and 4 at Vogtle. By June of 2013, the project was behind schedule by fourteen months. In early 2014, the U.S. Department of Energy approved a six and one half billion dollar loan guarantee but waive some of the usual fees for such a guarantee. Westinghouse refused to give GP and the GPSC a firm date for project completion until January 2015 when they said that the project would be delayed by another eighteen months. Now Unit 3 would be operation in mid-2019 and Unit 4 in 2020.
GP has estimated that the cost of the delay would be about seven hundred million dollars. In addition to that, GP and Westinghouse had been arguing since 2012 about who would pay the billion dollar cost of previous delays and problems. GP has not agreed with the new schedule yet. GP says that it is skeptical that Westinghouse has done everything it could have done to prevent the new delay. The cost of the new delay will probably wind up being added to the ongoing lawsuits. Westinghouse says the delays were caused by design changes required by the NRC. GP says that the delays were caused by “ongoing issues with modules and overall contractor performance.”
The new Units at Vogtle are using new designs, new materials and new components. There are new regulatory and licensing procedures. Delays and cost overruns in nuclear construction projects are so common that the GPSC is constantly updating the cost of potential delays for up to four years in the future. It was hoped that the Vogtle project would demonstrate that constructing new nuclear power reactors would be economical even with the flood of cheap natural gas and the lower cost of gas fired power plants in the U.S. Unfortunately for nuclear supporters, the delays and cost overruns at Vogtle may be doing just the opposite.
Vogtle construction site:
I have written numerous posts about nuclear safety on the blog. One point that I keep coming back to is the idea governments are failing in their duties to protect their citizens because of what is called regulatory capture. This occurs when the industry being regulated exerts political pressure to avoid being held accountable for violating regulations. But in order for this to happen, there has to be regulation in the first place. Often, industries will lobby against new or existing regulations. This is a more direct route. You cannot violate a regulation that does not exist.
The Swiss have been pushing for more stringent international regulation of nuclear power plants to prevent nuclear meltdowns. They have been strong supporters of an European Union initiative to modify and strengthen existing international reactor safety standards since the horrible nuclear disaster in Fukushima Japan in March of 2011. Both the United States and Russia have been strong opponents of changing the safety regulations. The E.U. coalition was going to present a formal amendment to safety standards for a vote at the February 2015 International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Convention on Nuclear Safety. However, intense lobbying by the U.S. delegation to the Convention resulted in the plans for the formal presentation to be cancelled. Instead, the E.U. coalition will present a statement that has not voted upon and does not make any changes to existing safety standards.
Officially, the U.S. delegation stated that they were not opposing the call for safety upgrades to nuclear reactors because it would increase costs to the nuclear industry and result in a loss of market share. However, there are people in the U.S. Congress that doubt that statement. Senators Edward J. Markey (Dem/MA) and Barbara Boxer (Dem/CA) sent a letter to the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December of last year. The NRC head, Allison Macfarlane, resigned her post at the end of 2014. In the letter, the senators detailed the reasons for their opinion that the NRC helped to undermine the proposed changes safety standards in spite of a statement by Macfarlane that cost of upgrades to nuclear power plants was not a factor in U.S. opposition.
There is precedence for the Senator’s concerns. The NRC Japanese Learning Task Force was charged with learning what lessons could be learned from the Fukushima disaster. The JPTF recommended that all U.S. power reactors with the same design as Fukushima (GE Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors) “install high capacity external radiation filters for hardened vents on the vulnerable containment systems.” The JPTF said that such filters were “a cost-benefited substantial safety enhancement.” The new filters would vent extreme heat, high pressure and explosive gases while at the same time preventing the release of radioactive particles into the atmosphere. An international energy investment bank predicted that the NRC would reject the call for the new filters because “added stress this places on the incumbent’s portfolio and the fragile state of affairs of their licensees’ financial and economic condition.” While Europe and Japan have made it a practice to install such filters, the third of the U.S. power reactors that share the Fukushima design are not required to install them.
Basically, it appears that the rejection of the new safety standards at the Convention were a result of the NRC and the U.S. government protecting the nuclear industry in the U.S. from having to pay the substantial cost of upgrading their power reactors. Adding insult to injury, when pressed, the U.S. government lied when it said that nuclear industry costs were behind rejection of the new standards.
IAEA Convention on Nuclear Safety:
Fuel from Fukushima reactors is “melting down daily.” enenews.com
