Nuclear Reactors

Introduction

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  George Santayana

The nuclear industry is more than 50 years old. Its history is replete with a collosal financial disaster and a multitude of near-misses and catastrophic accidents like Three Mile Island and Chornobyl.

This page is dedicated to exposing the risks and dangers posed by an aging and deteriorating reactor industry and the unproven designs being proposed for new construction.

Breaking News

July 1, 2008: Congressional investigative report reveals nuclear power plants still rife with fire protection violations as NRC fails to resolve long standing safety issues

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued an investigative report on June 30, 2008 that was initiated at the request of Congressman  David Price, North Carolina Democrat. The report is critical of NRC handling of long standing fire protection violations of requirements vital to safely shutting  down and cooling the reactor in the event of a significant fire. Read our press release here.

The GAO found that the long standing violations included 1) nuclear power plants reliance on manual actions  (turning valves, pulling circuit breakers) by workers dispatched into a burning reactor building to ensure safe shutdown of the reactor rather than maintain control room operations through inspectable passive design features such as qualified fire barriers for electrical circuits, sprinklers systems and minimum electrical cable separation to prevent a single fire from knocking out all the safety systems; 2) worker's use of "interim compensatory measures" (mainly roving fire watches) that have been maintained over many years rather than fixing the fire safety violation that prompted the compensatory action; 3) NRC is unable to resolve old and new issues regarding inoperable and bogus fire barriers that do not protect the electrical circuits needed for the control room to safely shut down and maintain the reactor in the event of fire and; 4) NRC is unable to resolve safety issues and impacts arising out of multiple short circuits and equipment malfunctions as the result of fire damage to unprotected circuits.

Compounding these issues, NRC has not maintained a centralized data base on how many exemptions from regulations, manual actions or compensatory actions are in place throughout the industry that might inform the risk from a fire causing a reactor to meltdown.

May 19, 2008: NRC's reactor relicensing process: photocopy and shredder

According to a May 2, 2008 memo from the Office of the Inspector General for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC staffers routinely destroy their working files as well as the list of nuclear power plant documents that they reviewed in preparing technical safety evaluations for extending reactor operations by 20 years.  The technical evaluations focus on  projecting the remaining safety margins in vital reactor equipment that are subject to deterioration and potential failure by corrosion, cracking, fatigue, thinning and embrittlement.

By the OIG's assessment, the lack of documentation makes it "difficult," if not impossible, to authenticate the agency's process and thoroughness in evaluating remaining safety margins for license extensions.

This process raises very serious policy and safety concerns for the 48 reactors that have been approved to date and the 12 reactor units that are currently under review where the paper trail is being shredded.

The investigative memo follows the more extensive September 6, 2007 OIG report which revealed that NRC license renewal staff copied verbatim whole sections from licensees' applications for inclusion in NRC "independent" environmental and safety evaluation reports. The OIG reported that "A reader could conclude that they were reading NRC's independent analysis and conclusions when, in fact, it was the licensee's conclusions." The NRC practice of "cut and paste"  was so extensive and widespread throughout the relicensing process that it raises questions of the authenticity and adequacy of the nuclear safety reviews.

The September 2007 OIG report provided the example of South Carolina's Oconee nuclear power station license extension review. The Duke Energy application stated that minor local containment coating failures (flaking) had been observed and repaired. The NRC license renewal reports did not show that NRC reviewers independently verified Oconee's operating experience for coatings, where lack of proper management of coating failure can become a safety issue that jeopardizes the safe shutdown of the reactor following an accident. The NRC authored safety evaluation report, endorsing the extension, quotes and paraphrases the Oconee operator's conclusion that the containment coatings are being well managed. To the contrary, the OIG found extensive and continuing problems with Oconee's coating management program.

Given that NRC staff had deleted working files for Oconee as for other reactor sites, it was not possible to verify how the agency "independently" arrived at its own erroneous safety conclusions. The 2007 OIG report further points out, the license renewal audit reports were composed largely of "summary language" that "did not provide a detailed description of applicant interviews or the contents of documents reviewed by the NRC staff."

The problem regarding the lack of retention of NRC working papers and reviewed company documents stems from the fact that many of the license renewal documents are reviewable only on the reactor site where they are maintained as the property of the power company. While subject to NRC inspection and review onsite, they are not available for public review. If onsite documents are shared by site inspectors with offsite NRC personnel they then become publically available as NRC documents or obtainable through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. 

The crux of the emerging issue centers on what constitutes "federal records" that must be retained for public review or the "personal records" of NRC employees that can be discarded. To ensure that agency decisions and procedures particularly those relating to public health and safety are properly documented, the criteria are established in written NRC policy Management Directive 3.53 "NRC Records Management Program" (Handbook 1).

According to the Directive, documents, drafts and "rough notes" are classified federal records "appropriate for preservation" where they serve as "evidence of agency activities or unique information" and "Information (including video tapes and photographs) generated or acquired by NRC while inspecting a licensee's facility that contains unique information, the rationale for an NRC decision, or guidance that is not documented in the official record."

On the other hand, the Directive defines "personal records" as 1) private or non-official documents of persona affairs and "do not affect the conduct of agency business, such as family matters and personal correspondence" or "Notes prepared by the NRC employee pertaining to agency business but that; (a) Are prepared for the individuals own use and have not been circulated to others in the course of transacting NRC business; (b) Are not required to be maintained by NRC policy or procedures; (c) Are retained or discarded at the author's sole discretion; (d) Would not be considered agency records if requested under FOIA."

Without NRC staff working papers and a complete list of the documents reviewed there is no factual support for safety evaluation reports and subsequently no factual support for safety-based agency decisions granting 20-year license extensions.  

In fact, a May 15, 2008 joint filing  to the Commission  by groups challenging license renewal applications raises the contention that the destruction of federal records in a reactor relicensing proceeding is illegal and the basis for denying the license extension to the nation's oldest reactor; Exelon's Oyster Creek nuclear power station in Lacey Township, New Jersey.   

April 10, 2008:  NRC warns of counterfeit substandard parts installed in US nukes

Old problems are re-emerging in the nuclear industry.

On April 8, 2008 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a warning regarding an Information Notice to all US nuclear power reactor operators on the recent discoveries of counterfeit and substandard parts installed at reactors.  While the NRC notice assures that bogus circuit breakers and valves were not installed in safety-related systems, the warning included the fact that failure of the circuit breakers  can initiate a fire.  Fire is a highly safety-significant even given the outcome is not reliably predictable and a controversial state of nuclear power plant fire protection. Overall, fire figures promeniently in the risk and probability of initiating a core melt accident.

More disconcerting is the regulatory context in which this announcement comes. There is already a long history of widespread non-compliances involving quality control / quality assurance violations of reactor license conditions.  Counterfeit "nuclear grade" parts installed throughout the nuclear industry first emerged in the 1970's.  A 1990 report from the General Accounting Office, now the Government Accountability Office, found that counterfeit parts can fail and cause an accident and the loss of life. The report further disclosed that agency was deferring its regulatory responsiblity to the non-compliant nuclear power industry. In fact rather than bring the nuclear industry back into compliance with their design requirements and technical specifications, in 2004 NRC instead re-catagorized and downgraded the safety-significance of a wide range of these fraudlent components so that significantly less expensive commercial parts can no be substituted for the formally higher industry safety standard. The final rule change was still the focus of an ongoing Differing Professional View from three NRC engineers concerned that the move can result in significant loss of safety margins from uninspected and potentially unreliable parts going into nuclear power plant systems by unqualified installation. In a November 2004 communication, the dissenting engineers called for the pubilc comment to be re-opened stating that the final approved rule "raises more safety concerns than the proposed rule that was released for public comment n May 2003." 

A "renaissance" of new reactor construction here in the United States is very likely to be plagued with a "relapse" to the use of substandard parts as more and more cost cutting measures threaten to undermine safety. New reactor construction of Areva's Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR) has already evidenced this unresolved problem where counterfeit and substandard steel re-enforcement bar was discovered in the concrete pours for the new reactor under construction in Flamanville, France.  More EPR substandard parts are under investigation.

February 20, 2008: First Round Win for Nuclear-Free Texas!

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) attempt to rubber-stamp the first round in the licensing and construction application for two new reactors in South Texas was dealt a swift blow this week.

A new coalition – Nuclear-Free Texas – (including Beyond Nuclear, SEED Coalition, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Public Citizen, and the Sierra Club) along with the Southwest Workers Union filed a successful motion to halt the countdown for public objections to two new reactors in Bay City. The proposed reactors comprise the first application filed by the nuclear industry since 1978.

The public had been given 60 days – or until February 25 – to mount a case against the proposed new reactor construction through the formal hearing process before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.

The citizens’ motion disclosed evidence of gaping holes in the application from the utility that the NRC had earlier glossed over. But when challenged by the public, the NRC commission was forced to demand that the utility, NRG Energy, complete major revisions, thus delaying the licensing process.

The Commission’s decision has indefinitely postponed the deadline by which petitions to intervene must be filed although the Commission did not address the specific issues raised by the citizen motion.

The NRC will republish a Federal Notice when South Texas Nuclear Operating Company has submitted a complete application.

This first delay is a strong indication of the protracted and challenging process of delivering a new reactor in the United States where citizen opposition is mounting. It demonstrates once again the impracticability of continuing with nuclear power – for climate change or for any other reason.

True Costs of New Nuclear Could be Triple Current Predictions

The News: While publicly the nuclear industry touts the price tag for a new reactor at less than $4 billion, the true costs look to be triple that figure. Beyond Nuclear has obtained documents filed by Florida Power and Light that reveal sky-rocketing costs of as much as $12 billion per reactor unit. However, even these estimates likely do not accurately predict the final cost of financing and completion of construction. The FPL document can be found at: http://www.psc.state.fl.us/library/filings/07/09467-07/0946-07.pdf with the specific reference on pages 250-251.

Our View: The $4 billion price tag was already obscene but $12 billion is the wakeup call for anyone who still imagines nuclear energy has utility in addressing climate change. The nuclear industry, like our economy, is headed for a financial meltdown, which can only be made worse if our tax dollars are used to foot these enormous projected costs for new nuclear reactors.

What You Can Do: We must convince our representatives in the House and Senate not to support any further susbsidies for nuclear energy. Instead, they must direct meaningful funding toward sustainable energy options that can make a real difference economically, safely and in time to address climate change. Please contact your representatives and urge them to endose a position that cuts taxpayer subsidies for nuclear energy and fully supports renewable energy options. And please support our campaign to end nuclear subsidies by making a donation today.

Check out the Union of Concerned Scientists Reactor Tracker