Tag: nuclear power plant safety

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, propaganda Tagged with , , , , , ,

In a discussion on the merits or nonmerits of nuclear power plants, with particular emphasis on nuclear power plant safety, someone sent me an article by Gregory Clark. Clark argues that because another nuclear plant down the road from Fukushima had a higher seawall and was not damaged by the tsunami, nuclear power should be considered a good alternative.

This one really had me scratching my head; it’s one of the most bizarre arguments for nuclear power I’ve ever seen. Just because one plant managed to avoid a problem that brought several plants at Fukushima to collapse, how is that any kind of justification for the technology?

Here’s what I wrote in response:

I find Dr. Clark’s argument particularly puzzling: that a different nuke didn’t not fail during the earthquake/tsunami that clobbered Fukushima s not even relevant. I don’t know of ANYONE who would argue that every nuclear power plant will have a catastrophic failure. The argument against nukes boils down to two areas:

1. ROUTINE nuclear power plant operation is unhealthy, inefficient, does NOT solve the carbon problem (because the fuel cycle has many carbon-intensive and environmentally destructive components, starting with mining the uranium and continuing through milling, processing, transportation, creating the fuel rods, transporting again, actually running the fuel through the reactor, aging of the waste, transportation of the waste, etc.), causes thermal pollution, and releases radiation into the environment.

2. The potential for CATASTROPHIC FALURE is constant, and the industry’s safety record is abysmal. Although there are a relatively small number of nuclear plants operating in the world, at least a dozen have had major failures (including, ironically, the Fukushima plant the summer before the tsunami–as well as others you never heard of, like Windscale, Enrico Fermi, and Browns Ferry), and hundreds have had serious safety issues).

Here’s a very brief and far-from-complete list of the problems: Huge creation of carbon, huge safety risk, chance of wiping out a large area, need to store the waste completely isolated from the environment for a QUARTER OF A MILLION YEARS–which we have no clue how to accomplish, btw–risk of sabotage, risk of structural failure (especially on older nukes that have been embrittled by decades of high-intensity radiation, uranium mining that’s just as destructive to the environment as oil drilling etc., centralized power generation with all its problems, risks, and wastage…

I applaud the bureaucrat who built the higher seawall at Onagawa–that was a good decision. But I fail to see how that in any way justifies this corrupt and very dangerous industry that does nothing to solve our environmental problems and could make them quite a bit worse.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Greenwashing, Technology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , ,

Scary article on Huffington Post: Duke Energy’s Oconee nuclear power plant is at serious risk of flooding–and the NRC has lied to Congress about it. The plant is only 11 miles downstream from Jocassee Dam, whose likelihood of failure has been estimated at a completely unacceptable 1 in 163 per year. If Jocassee fails, it could generate a 16.8-foot wall of water at Oconee–which is only built to handle a 5-foot flood.

This highly dangerous nuclear power plant plant should be Shut. Down. Now. Fukushima completely eliminates the “it can’t happen here” argument.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , ,

Here is the smoking gun—the clear, hard evidence that the nuclear industry AND its regulators care nothing about our safety.

The Associated Press spent a year investigating nuclear power plant safety. And found something really scary: when regulators encounter problems, instead of shutting the plants to make repairs, the regulators relax their standards. Double-plus ungood, as George Orwell would say.

In a long bylined story by investigative reporter Jeff Donn, the respected journalism group lays out a harrowing picture of deferred maintenance, aging parts, reactor licenses renewed without any semblance of adequate investigation, and a “regulatory” agency whose response to problems is to say, oh, we didn’t mean to be so tough, sorry, go right on risking the public safety:

Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased…

The result? Rising fears that these accommodations by the NRC are significantly undermining safety…

Examples abound. When valves leaked, more leakage was allowed — up to 20 times the original limit. When rampant cracking caused radioactive leaks from steam generator tubing, an easier test of the tubes was devised…

Failed cables. Busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals and rusty underground pipes…could escalate dangers in the event of an accident.

To name one of many examples cited in the article: valves that were allowed to leak up to 11.5 cubic feet per hour each (there are four, so total permissible leakage was 46 cubic feet per hour per plant) could not meet that standard, so the NRC bumped the limit all the way up to 200 cubic feet per hour for the set of four—that’s more than 500% over the original standard. Even this was not enough, however; one Georgia plant admitted releases of 576 cubic feet per hour.

In short, not only have we experienced a whole lot of radiation releases as these parts age, but the risk of catastrophic accident is far higher than most of us would have imagined. Especially since the plants were only designed with a 40-year lifespan in mind, and yet the NRC is granting 20-year license renewals in a way that seems almost like a pro forma rubber stamp.

And speaking of radiation releases, Donn posted a new article June 21, documenting that…

Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping

Under the best of circumstances, nuclear power is an extremely risky, energy-intensive operation where human error and mechanical failure can combine to create massive catastrophe. And this is far from the best of circumstances; this is playing Russian roulette not with a single individual but with the lives of thousands or even millions, all around the country.

This is a game with no winners.

It is time to demand from Washington the leadership it should have shown all along. It is time to shut down every operating nuclear power plant and take steps to stabilize the infrastructure so serious accidents won’t happen even after the plants are no longer generating power. The stakes are unacceptably high.

Read those two stories all the way through—and let’s think together about action!

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , , , , , ,

The news from Japan remains very troubling:

Now…let’s remember that nuclear power is a really stupid way to boil water for electricity generation:

  • Over the entire fuel cycle, starting with mining uranium and ending with attempting to find a solution for safe storage of nuclear waste, the process requires enormous energy inputs, so the actual gain in usable power is very tiny, if it exists at all. One study I’ve seen, by John J. Berger, states that from 1960-76, the nuclear power “generation” industry actually consumed five times as much power as it generated. I cited this study in my first book, Nuclear Lessons, published waaaay back in 1980.
  • If a plant has a major problem, and has to be removed from service permanently, it causes disruption in the energy systems of the communities that depend on it, because a lot of power generation is taken off the grid at once. In the case of Daichi, most of those reactors can never be used again.
  • In the US, nuclear power is subsidized with the Price-Anderson Act, a low-premium accident insurance policy that sharply limits liability. Basically, if you don’t own the plant, you probably won’t collect damages in case of  an accident.
  • And don’t forget: there is no permanent solution to storage of radioactive waste, isolated from the environment for up to a quarter of a million years (I, for one, don’t believe this is actually possible).
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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , , ,

It seems we’ve escaped complete catastrophe at the six failed reactors in Japan damaged in the earthquake and tsunami—for the moment, But it was (and may still be) pretty dicey.

Two of the reactors had to be cooled with seawater, in a last-ditch effort to prevent catastrophic meltdown. Those reactors probably can’t be used to generate electricity ever again. And the chance that the other four will return to service is probably pretty low, considering the extensive damage, high levels of radiation, etc., not to mention the risk of further damage in future quakes.

Thank goodness this happened in Japan, the country with probably the best earthquake-related building codes in the world (imagine what would have happened if a nuke had been sitting on earthquake fault during last year’s quake in Haiti—shudder!)

But here’s my question: WHY in the name of creation are we still hopelessly, haplessly, playing with nuclear fire? Did we learn nothing from the Chernobyl disaster? Or the barely-contained accidents at Three Mile Island, Browns Ferry (Alabama), Enrco Fermi (Michigan) and other near-calamities at nuke plants not only in the US but around the world? The nuclear industry’s safety record is horrible, and as Chernobyl proved, we don’t always get lucky with containing the damage—and when we don’t, large areas are rendered uninhabitable for decades.

Back in 1979-80, I had a monthly column about the dangers of nuclear power. I devoted two of my columns to the possibility of accidents resulting from earthquakes, and that information was taken form commonly available sources (even in the pre-Google era). More than 30 years later, we appear to have learned nothing. And earthquakes are only one of a dozen or more very compelling reasons NOT to use nuclear power. Some of the others include terrorist threat, waste disposal issues that need to be addressed for a longer timespan than human history, the problem (with US nukes of sharply limited liability in the event of an accident), diversion for bomb-making…and perhaps most shocking, the lifecycle analysis that shows that by the time you count the energy and fossil footprint of mining, milling, processing, transporting, running the reactors, reprocessing, waste storage and transportation, etc., you don’t actually create very much energy. One study I saw even claimed it was a negative number! (And another study showed that renewable energy is two to seven times as effective in reducing greenhouse gases.)  For this very dubious benefit, we’re putting our own and every future generation at enormous risk???

Here’s my call to action:

  1. IMMEDIATE world-wide shutdown of any nuclear power plant within 100 miles of an active earthquake fault and entombment in the most solid possible barrier
  2. Phased shutdown of remaining N-plants over perhaps six months
  3. A world-wide Marshall Plan-style initiative toward the high-gain, relatively renewable low-cost energy solutions of the sort promoted by Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute in their “Winning the Oil End Game”: a plan to rapidly exit from fossil fuels without needing nuclear.
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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , ,

Some good news on page one of my morning paper: In Vermont, the only state that gives the legislature a voice in nuclear plant licensing, the state Senate has rebuffed an attempt by Vermont Yankee to relicense the aging and long-troubled N-plant for another 20 years, after its license expires in 2012.

The vote was 26 to 4—not exactly close, and to me, living less than 40 miles from the plant, that big margin provides substantial comfort. The plant’s owner, Entergy, would have to work pretty hard to get a majority.

All the way back to the 1970s when it was new, Vermont Yankee was named “one of the 10 worst nukes in the country” in No Nukes, by Anna Gyorgy et al (South End Press, p. 106)—a book that I used heavily in researching my own 1980 book on nuclear power and still consider the definitive work on the subject. According to Gyorgy, Vermont Yankee reported 39 “abnormal occurrences” in 1973 alone, and was shut down 17 times during a 19-month period.

Vermont Yankee was only a year old when it had those 39 incidents. Consider this: Nuclear plants do not age gracefully. The corrosive effects of high-level radiation and a toxic chemical stew, on top of normal aging and fatigue, inevitably lead to severe problems. Parts crack, pipes leak, systems fail—and the public’s health and safety are put at risk.

And like so many nuclear plants around the world, the plant is located near a border, so that other states share any potential catastrophe. In the far southeast corner of the state, the plant sits on the Connecticut River directly across from New Hampshire, is about three miles north of Massachusetts (a ten-minute bike ride). Activists in these adjoining states have used the slogan, “Radiation without Representation.” (Ask the citizens of Denmark how they feel about the Swedish nuclear power plant directly across the Orsund that threatens their nuclear-free country.)

Vermont Yankee has continued to be plagued with problems. Recently, to name one among many examples, it’s been spewing huge levels of radioactive tritium into the water—at 130 times the safety standard :

Since then, the levels of contamination found in some wells has risen dramatically. The federal safety standard for tritium in drinking water is 20,000 picocuries per liter, but water from one monitoring well measured nearly 2.6 million picocuries per liter.

Dr. William E. Irwin, the radiological health chief for the Vermont Department of Health, said Thursday that tritium has not yet been detected in the nearby Connecticut River, but it probably has reached it.

Not extending the license is indeed a people’s victory. Closing, once and for all, this dangerous plant that should have been shuttered decades ago is long overdue. And President Obama would do well to reconsider his ill-advised push for nukes.

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