The NRC is meeting with the public Thursday, May 2, 2013, from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm (Eastern Time), in the Commissioners’ Hearing Room at NRC Headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. The NRC will provide 300 toll-free telephone lines through 1-888-603-9750 (Passcode 5506147) for the general public and interested media to listen to the groups’ arguments for enforcement action. The NRC will also broadcast the public meeting in a LIVE video webcast .

You can sign-up to be a co-petitioner with the Beyond Nuclear call to revoke the operating license of these dangerous Fukushima-design reactors.

In the background, plastic covers piles of soil contaminated with radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. This sign, one of thousands thoughout the abandoned expanse of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan reads, "Do Not Enter Local Storage for Contaminated Soil, Ministry of the Environment"

The only relevant protection is prevention.

The citizen effort to close dangerous Fukushima-design reactors here in the United States goes before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.  It will be live webcast and telephone conferenced from the federal agency’s headquarters in Rockville, MD on that Thursday afternoon. The speakers are from across the US who are calling for the revocation of the operating licenses for 31 GE Mark I and II boiling water reactors operating with unreliable containment structures. This same containment design has demonstrated an 100% failure rate resulting in the radioactive catastrophe in Fukushima, Japan.  This absolute level of unreliability is an unacceptable standard for continued operation.

You can tune into the webcast from 1 PM to 3 PM (EST) on Thursday, May 2, 2013 as scheduled on the NRC Webcast Portal 

You can also listen to the proceeding by dialing the Toll Free NRC Bridge line 1-888-603-9750 and enter Passcode 5506147.

APRIL 18. 2013 UPDATE: Web cast and  toll free call in to the NRC Thursday 1PM to 3 PM (EST) May 2, 2013 to revoke GE Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactor operating licenses.

You can tune into the webcast from 1 PM to 3 PM (EST) on Thursday, May 2, 2013 as scheduled on the NRC Webcast Portal 

You can also listen to the proceeding by dialing the Toll Free NRC Bridge line 1-888-603-9750 and enter Passcode 5506147.

 On March 19, 2013, a majority of the five-member Commission voted to reject  the agency’s Japan Lessons Learned Project Directorate and their senior staff’s recommendation to promptly Order to back fit all General Electric boiling water reactors with Mark I and Mark II containments with the installation of engineered high-capacity radiation filters on more robust severe accident capable vents on the Fukushima-style containment structures.  Instead by majority vote (4-1), the Commissioners sided with the industry agenda for dangerous half measures that will potentially leave the downwind communities vulnerable to the uncontained releases of radioactivity in the event of an accident involving reactor core fuel damage and introduces undue, indeterminate and imprudent delay in addressing these aging reactors with dangerously flawed and vulnerable containment structures.

You can join Beyond Nuclear and safe energy organizations in petitioning the NRC to revoke these Fukushima-style reactors here in the United States by signing up here. 

You can also read the full petition filed on March 21, 2013 by Beyond Nuclear and safe energy groups.

The current fight is over whether the agency’s five President appointed Commissioners will side with the nuclear industry’s position or support their own staff’s safety recommendation on the unreliable containment structures as demonstrated by multiple explosions in Japan following the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.  In large part, the root cause of that disaster--and potentially the next--is a bad reactor design feature; during a nuclear accident the all-important reactor containment component is not expected to actually “contain” the tremendous pressure, explosive hydrogen gas and the massive amounts of radiation generated by a melting nuclear core.

The NRC staff, after much study and a visit to European reactors where filtered vents were largely installed after the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, determined that it is necessary to Order the industry to install a high-capacity filtered venting system on these unreliable containments. In the event of an accident, US operators will then have the option to temporarily release extreme pressures, high temperatures, explosive hydrogen gas rather than permanently rupture the final barrier system like those that exploded at Fukushima Daiichi.  Installing the high-capacity radiation filter, the staff has determined would significantly restore much of the containment’s functional role during venting by capturing a large portion of the radioactivity, principally the micron-sized particulate, released from damaged reactor fuel.  

However, the industry wants to focus all its resources on preventing core damage in the GE reactors. Industry argues that the “unlikely” event of fuel damage should be studied for several more years and then, maybe, put a filter on the venting system.  Their position is that the public health and safety benefit of installing a filter in a containment vent is so marginal that the cost is not unjustified. The cost of a filtered venting system for the Mark I containment is currently estimated to be around $45 million per unit. The Mark II containment filtered vent system is more expensive and Beyond Nuclear has learned begins around $70 million per unit. 

Even if the NRC issues a prompt Order as according to the staff recommendation, the nuclear power plant operators do not need to complete the installation until December 31, 2017.  Meanwhile, the Fukushima-style reactors keep running and gambling safety margins with profit margins.

Sometime over the coming weeks, the five Commissioners will cast their votes either with their staff’s safety-minded professional engineering judgment or with the industry’s claim that the probability of another Fukushima can be made so remote that the cost of managing another meltdown isn’t justified. 

In our view, this is the lesson of Fukushima unlearned in the United States.

In fact, this has been a recurring fight over the GE reactors since at 1972, when a chief safety officer then with the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) first identified that the GE design is fundamentally flawed and should be permanently shut down.  

In a warning to his AEC colleagues, Dr. Stephen Hanauer penned a safety memo.  Dr. Hanauer had concluded that GE’s 1960’s vintage reactor containment design, the final barrier to protecting public health and safety from the catastrophic release of radiation, was volumetrically too small to withstand the tremendous pressure generated under potential accident conditions. He urged the agency to discontinue all further use of the Mark I and not license any more units. The AEC and its successor the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) would ignore his warning and license 16 more Mark I units for a total of 24 units operating in the US. 

Thus, “Round 1” for the GE reactors ended with the nuclear industry edging out public safety concerns with expanded nuclear production capacity. 

Following the 1986 nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl in Ukraine (where Russian nuclear technology was faulted for a reactor “without a containment”), the NRC revisited one of its own unreliable containment series, the GE Mark I.  It had come to light that the Mark I’s small containment was built with less concrete and steel to gain a competitive edge over the larger Pressurized Water Reactors domed containments.  Mark I reactors---like Oyster Creek just sixty miles from New York City---have a containment volume 1/6^th the size of the larger dry containment structures like the ill fated Three Mile Island Unit 2 that melted down in March 1979.  It was the summer of 1986 when NRC’s top safety officer Harold Denton summed up the GE Mark I containment risk with a 90% chance of catastrophic failure if faced with a severe accident.

“Round 2” of the regulatory fight over the safety of the Mark I containment was underway by 1989.  The NRC staff sought to increase the reactors’ odds against containment failure by retrofitting the vulnerable structures with “reliable hardened vents.” The Mark I operators could then have the option to “temporarily” defeat containment to vent extreme heat and pressure in an effort to prevent fuel damage and the build-up of explosive hydrogen gas and large releases of radiation during an accident.  In fact, the NRC  staff  had earlier chosen to ignore independent scientific experts Professor Frank von Hippel and Jan Beyea’s recommendation in 1982 that the GE reactors  be fitted with containment vents specifically featuring high-capacity radiation filters to preserve some margin of the all important containment feature during venting operations in the event of an accident. 

The apparently captured regulator could not then muster itself to “Order” industry to install the reliable hardened vents, let alone one with a filter.  Instead, the NRC “requested” that the nuclear industry “voluntarily” install a containment venting system consisting of a “hardened” pipe with a set of control room operated valves to temporarily open a path from the vulnerable containment to a 300-foot tall stack to disperse heat, pressure, hydrogen gas and what ever amount of radiation to the atmosphere prior to any significant fuel damage. Moreover, the design and installation of the reliable vent was conducted under a set of NRC regulations governing “non-safety” related equipment that neither required NRC oversight or inspections and did not allow for independent expert and public hearings because the modifications presented no change in accident risk or hazardous consequence. Five of the 24 Mark I units in the U.S. initially refused to volunteer the safety changes. Four of the five units would eventually agree to voluntarily install the “hardened” vent. But the FitzPatrick nuclear power plant in Oswego, NY refused to make any modifications to its GE containment arguing that they already had a reliable venting strategy. In the event of a nuclear accident, the FitzPatrick nuclear power plant's venting strategy, as still approved today, is to release high pressure, extreme temperature, potentially explosive hydrogen gas and massive amounts of radioactivity into a duct work system adjacent auxiliary building that will "rapidly disassemble" blowing off the doors at ground level. FitzPatrick operators have assumed that there will be "no likely ignition points" in this process that might detonate explosive hydrogen gas.

So “Round 2” went to the GE reactors with a willy-nilly regulator that O.K.’d a dubious voluntary back fit to keep generating profits for operators with makeshift vents inconsistently installed throughout the fleet, without effective NRC oversight or any enforcement consequences on patently dangerous unreliable containment systems.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company adopted the same NRC voluntary “reliable hardened vent” system for its GE Mark I reactors and completed installation in 1992. This is the vent system design and installation that would prove unreliable on the multiple unit reactor complex in the aftermath of March 11, 2011. Back to the drawing board.

“Ding,” the bell rings in the opening of Round 3 in the prize fight for production margins versus public safety margins. 

The nuclear industry and its Capitol Hill champions are fighting to stave off a NRC staff recommendation to finally Order the costly back fit of high-capacity filtered hardened vents on the nation’s Boiling Water Reactors.  The industry wants to keep its Fukushima-style reactors operating into their twenty-year license extensions at minimum expense and maximum profit.  The identified vulnerable reactors have grown from the 23 GE Mark I units (Connecticut’s Millstone Unit 1 permanently shutting down in 1995) to include also the eight the Mark II boiling water reactors now similarly recognized with undersized containments. 

The fight now is more over whether the NRC has a shred of meaningful regulatory authority and control to exercise its staff's professional judgment and fulfill its Congressional mandate to protect public health and safety with enforceable requirements on the nuclear industry.

The public and the communities that surround these dangerous reactors need to weigh in now with letters to the Commissioners supporting the NRC staff decision to require the installation of radiation filters in these vents on unreliable containments. 

Send a letter to the Commissioners asking them to vote for the protection of public health and safety by supporting the installation of the filtered hardened vent on all Mark I and Mark II reactor containments.

Commissioner Kristine L. Svinicki

Commissioner William D. Magwood, IV

Commissioner William C. Ostendorf

Commissioner George Apostolakis,

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Washington, DC 20555-0001

By email: Secretary Annette Vietti-Cook NRCExecSec@nrc.gov

I write to you in an appeal to promote the protection of the public health and safety in communities surrounding the thirty-one (31) General Electric Mark I and Mark II Boiling Water Reactors similar to those that exploded and melted down at Fukushima Daiichi, Japan on March 11, 2011.

In the coming weeks, the Commission will be voting on whether or not to affirm the NRC staff’s professional judgment (SECY 2012-0157) to require by Order that the operators of these vulnerable reactors install on their containment structures a severe accident capable hardened vent with a high-capacity radiation filter.

I urge you to support the installation of the filtered vent on all Mark I and Mark II reactor containments.

Thank you

The NRC technical staff from the Japan Lessons Learned Task Force briefed the Commission on January 9, 2013 on their recommendation to install a hardened reliable containment venting system capable of withstanding extremely high temperature and pressure with radiation filtration systems. The modifications would not need to be completed before December 31, 2017. The staff concluded that with the modifications, operators might better manage a severe nuclear accident after the reactor core starts to melt down initiating the release of massive amounts of radioactivity and the generation of explosive hydrogen gas. The staff recommended Order, if adopted, would supersede the current NRC Order (March 12, 2012) that requires Mark I and Mark II operators to install a hardened venting system on the unreliable containments by December 31, 2016. The vent currently on Order would only provide reactor operators the option to release high temperature and pressure to the atmosphere in an effort to prevent reactor core damage. However, the March 2012 Order expressly states that the these vents need not be required for service in the event of a severe accident involving reactor core damage, the massive release of radioactivity and the generation of explosive hydrogen gas.

The NRC five-member Commission will now review the staff recommendation to order reactor containment modifications costing upwards of tens of millions of dollars per unit. The Commissioners will then take a vote to adopt the staff recommendation or whether to adopt one of three other options; take no further action, install a severe accident capable vent without a radiation filter or conduct further studies on how to address Mark I and Mark II vulnerabilities to a severe accident. The House Republicans are recommending that the Commission further study the implications of the Fukushima reactor explosions and massive land contamination in Japan for US reactor containments.

The controversial and expensive "fix" for the unreliable, aging and failing GE designs has clearly politicized the Commissioners' upcoming vote as one more financial "straw" to be factored on the economic back of any number of the 31 units.

The Massachusetts citizen group Pilgrim Watch has formally written to the Commissioners in an appeal that the NRC immediately issue a new order requiring the installation of radiation filtering vents on these unreliable containments. The public is encouraged to alert their elected officials and write the Commissioners (Office of the Secretary,  Annette.Vietti-Cook@nrc.gov  ) in support of the NRC staff recommendation and the Pilgrim Watch appeal for the stepped up action at vulnerable Fukushima-style reactors.

Charlotte, NC

Duke's McGuire Units 1 and 2 are just 17 miles north of Charlotte, and its Catawba Units 1 and 2 are just 18 miles south of Charlotte. All four units are ice condensor designs, a pressure-suppression containment, similar in that regard to the Fukushima Daiichi GE Mark I boiling waters.

CREDO Action has published an alert calling for action to pressure Duke Energy to stop funding the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its voter suppression and anti-environment efforts.

Charlotte-based Duke's other atomic reactors are: Brunswick 1 & 2 (GE Mark Is), NC; Crystal River, FL; Harris, NC; Oconee 1, 2, and 3, SC; Robinson, SC.

Thanks to Debra Stoleroff of Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance for sharing with us news of "three opportunities to keep the fact that Vermont Yankee is still operating in the public eye and to voice your opinion regarding this fact that Entergy continues to undermine Vermont's democratic process for its own profits; gambling away the health of people in VT, MA, and NH as well as our environment.   Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant remains an accident away from devestating the region."

Sat, Sept. 1: We Are Not Going Away Until VT Yankee is Shut Down and Safely Decommissioned With a Greenfield

Sat, Sept. 8: Our River Runs Through It Flotilla Down the Connecticut River to VT Yankee (see event poster, left, and SAGE Alliance website for details)

Sun, Sept. 23: Burlington Friends Meeting at Vermont Yankee followed by NVCD at Vt Yankee

For more info., see Beyond Nuclear's NUCLEAR POWER website section.

The five member NRC Commission unanimously rubberstamped Vermont Yankee's 20 year license extension on 3/10/11, one day before the beginning of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. NRC Staff then finalized the paperwork on the rubberstamp a couple weeks later. Vermont Yankee and Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4 are identidically designed: General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors.