Germany decided to shut down all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. Switzerland will follow suit by 2034. Jordan is rethinking plans for nuclear power. The U.S. and France remain committed, and new builds surge ahead by the dozens in China and Russia.
Much has changed worldwide in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, according to a recent analysis by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. But have things changed enough?
Japan was the only nation to fundamentally restructure its nuclear regulatory framework after Fukushima – modeling it largely on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency, the GAO found.
And critics here say that model bureaucracy, the NRC, has been dragging its feet on critical reforms, endangering the public. That’s a charge the NRC vehemently denies.
‘UNACCEPTABLE DELAY’
At 2:46 p.m. March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 quake hammered the Earth’s crust northeast of Tokyo, unleashing walls of water 30 feet high. The giant waves smashed into the coast of Japan, devouring buildings, severing escape routes and sweeping thousands away to their deaths.
The resulting tsunami also flooded the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, cutting off electrical power and disabling backup generators. That ushered in the meltdown of three reactors and the most extensive release of radiation since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
“More than two years ago, the NRC charged its most senior nuclear safety officials with making recommendations to help prevent a similar disaster at facilities in the United States,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer at a hearing on post-Fukushima “lessons learned” earlier this year. “Some of the 12 recommendations that NRC’s Task Force proposed have been acted on. The NRC has issued orders to enhance safety when plants lose electrical power and to increase the reliability of venting systems to prevent explosions.
“Other measures to enhance nuclear safety have not moved forward as quickly as they should have,” Boxer continued. “For example, the NRC has allowed three full years for seismic evaluations of nuclear reactors in the Western United States to be completed. If a seismic evaluation finds that there is a seismic risk, the NRC provides an additional three years for yet more analysis.
“This is an unacceptable delay – earthquakes will not wait until after the paperwork has been completed. When the NRC is made aware of new seismic risks, as it was for the Diablo Canyon nuclear facility near San Luis Obispo, it should require immediate steps to be taken to protect the people who live and work near these facilities.”
The Union of Concerned Scientists – a nonprofit watchdog that keeps an eye on the NRC – takes the criticism a bit further. While the NRC is not an incompetent regulator, it displays a Jekyll-and-Hyde dichotomy, coming down hard on a problem in one place and letting the same problem slide in another, the UCS charged in a recent analysis. And nowhere does it see that dichotomy more clearly than in Diablo’s continued operation.
“In 2008, an earthquake fault line was discovered in the seabed close offshore from the two Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors,” said the UCS’ recent critique of the NRC. “An earthquake on this fault line could cause ground motions greater than the plant was designed to withstand. The NRC inspector assigned full-time to Diablo Canyon concluded that (owner) Pacific Gas & Electric had not properly and thoroughly evaluated the new hazard, but his position was overruled by managers in NRC’s Region IV offices who allowed both reactors at the plant to continue operating.”
When similar earthquake protection deficiencies were identified at other nuclear plants, the NRC’s Dr. Jekyll ordered them shut down until their owners provided adequate protections, the UCS said. “Yet today, the NRC’s Mr. Hyde allows Diablo Canyon to operate despite the known risks. … Absent random decision-making processes like flipping a coin or tossing a dart at a ‘yes/no’ chart, such disparate treatment cannot be explained.”
Another critic is Gregory Jaczko, former chairman of the NRC, who was at the helm when Fukushima melted down in 2011 and resigned in 2012 after controversy over how he treated workers – and after expressing the desire for swifter adoption of Fukushima’s lessons learned.
In an interview last fall with the industry magazine IEEE Spectrum, Jaczko said that more Fukushima-type accidents are inevitable. “For nuclear power plants to be considered safe, they should not produce accidents like this. By ‘should not,’ I don’t mean that they have a low probability, but simply that they should not be able to produce accidents like this (at all). That is what the public has said quite clearly. That is what we need as a new safety standard for nuclear power going forward,” he said.
New designs, like small modular reactors, might meet that standard, but Jaczko was skeptical.
“This is not a future technology. It’s an old technology, and it serves a useful purpose. But that purpose is running its course,” Jaczko told IEEE Spectrum. “The industry is going away. Four reactors are being built, but there’s absolutely no money and no desire to finance more plants than that. So in 20 or 30 years we’re going to have very few nuclear power plants in this country – that’s just a fact.”
NRC’S VIEWS
The NRC moved swiftly after Fukushima, said the chairwoman of the NRC, Allison Macfarlane, on the third anniversary of the disaster.
“When it comes to post-Fukushima actions, the NRC and industry can both be proud of the hard work we’ve done to date, to learn from this tragedy and take strategic actions to enhance safety,” she said in a speech that day. “There are some who may feel we’ve done too much, and some who’d argue we haven’t done enough. But, as the most safety-significant changes draw nearer to completion, we’re confident that the requirements we’ve imposed, and the actions industry has taken, supplement an already rigorous oversight program.”
But it can’t do everything instantly. The NRC is “committed to appropriately prioritizing and integrating the Fukushima lessons learned to ensure that they do not create an adverse impact on the agency’s other safety-significant work,” she told the critical Sen. Boxer and her Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works this winter.
Since Fukushima, the NRC has done “extensive inspections” at each U.S. nuclear power plant and will be requiring them to handle the effects of a “beyond design-basis accident.” The plant operators “are in the process of re-evaluating their seismic and flooding hazards, and are making significant progress in implementing the new requirements stemming from the Fukushima lessons learned.”
Then Macfarlane got specific.
Seismic and flooding re-evaluations: Each plant is required to use modern methodologies and “updated regulatory guidance” to re-evaluate earthquake and flooding hazards it might face, and then plan a response to those hazards. The majority of the plants that submitted flood hazard re-evaluations last year did, indeed, find hazards greater than what they were designed to withstand, and will need to take further action. On the earthquake front, plants have begun “performing the analyses necessary to reassess the seismic hazards,” but that work won’t be finished for years. The three plants in the western United States – which include Diablo – “must conduct significant additional research in order to submit their seismic hazard reassessments,” which are due by March 2015. In the meantime, plants will upgrade certain safety systems and equipment, with many plants completing safety enhancements by 2016, she said.
Enhanced capabilities to handle beyond-design-basis accidents. The NRC has required the plants to have “additional capabilities to maintain or restore core cooling, containment, and spent fuel pool cooling after an extreme natural event.” That means portable power supplies, cooling pumps and the like, to supplement existing safety systems. Many will have the work done by the end of 2015, and the rest in 2016. The industry is also establishing “Regional Support Centers” in Memphis and Phoenix, to deploy additional emergency equipment within 24 hours to any site that needs it. These should be fully operational by the end of 2014.
Emergency preparedness communication and staffing. New requirements will better equip plants to handle extreme accidents. Each must reassess staffing plans, train workers to handle accidents involving several reactors at once, and ensure that communication equipment can function during a prolonged power loss. Much has been done here already, and it’s all to be completed by 2016.
Spent fuel pool instrumentation. New equipment must be installed at all sites by 2016 so the water levels in spent fuel pools can be continuously monitored during extreme events. If water gets too low, the fuel heats up, can catch fire, and release radiation. The NRC is also considering whether plants should move spent fuel from pools to dry cask storage more quickly.
Reliable hardened vents. To protect the integrity of the containment vessels at America’s 31 boiling-water reactors similar in design to those at Fukushima, the NRC ordered the installation of “reliable hardened vents” that can relieve high pressure within (and hopefully avoid an explosion that could release radiation). Those systems must be in place by June 2017.
“The NRC is taking a careful and deliberate approach to this work … to avoid unintended safety or security consequences,” Macfarlane said.
“The day-to-day safe and secure operation of the NRC’s licensed facilities … remains our top priority. All operating reactors in the United States are performing safely.”
Contact the writer: tsforza@ocregister.comTwitter: @ocwatchdog
