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Peter Bradford, former NRC commish on nuke power's future
magnu96196@aol.com wrote:
> Source:
> <A HREF="http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/02win/nuclear1.asp";>
> http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/02win/nuclear1.asp</A>
> =========================================================
> Too Close for Comfort
>
> by Peter Bradford
>
> Most Americans are finding it harder than ever to take their local nuclear
> power plants for granted. A former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner forecasts
> a cloudy future for an industry that suddenly looks vulnerable -- in more
> ways than one.
>
> n the years after Hiroshima but before nuclear power, the Atomic Energy
> Commission (AEC) created a committee to evaluate the radiation dangers of
> nuclear power plants. With no experience to guide it, the committee --
> seeking to make plants inherently safe -- recommended that power reactors be
> sited far from cities. Its chair, Edward Teller, went so far as to suggest
> building them underground. These conservative approaches collided with
> economic reality. With oil and coal inexpensive, utilities would not
> undertake the cost of building new power plants underground or far from their
> urban power consumers. Instead, massive concrete containment domes became the
> primary safeguard. A 1957 AEC study concluded that a catastrophic accident
> breaching the containment might cause 3,400 "early" deaths and 43,000 serious
> injuries. Nevertheless, among the first sites licensed by the AEC were Indian
> Point, twenty-five miles north of New York City, and Dresden, close to
> Chicago.
>
> As reactors grew larger, containment alone no longer sufficed. Cooling and
> pressure suppression systems were added. The AEC, later the Nuclear
> Regulatory Commission (NRC), still had to assure "adequate protection of the
> public health and safety." However, the ideal of inherent safety had been
> displaced by a less reliable safeguard: government's ability to predict. The
> commission undertook to sort possible events from impossible events. Some
> events that might defeat the safety systems were considered impossible, and
> therefore, plant owners were not required to defend against them. The
> deliberate crashing of a large, fully fueled passenger plane was among these
> impossible events.
>
> On September 11, American Airlines Flight 11 flew down the Hudson River,
> directly over Indian Point on its way to the World Trade Center. The wind
> blew north to south that morning.
>
> eptember 11 demands fundamental reassessment of several aspects of nuclear
> regulation. The inevitable uncertainty, controversy, and expense -- forces
> that have prevented the ordering of any new U.S. nuclear power plants since
> 1978 -- are not good news for the industry.
>
> Until September 11, the industry had been celebrating remarkably improved
> economic performance and a political resurgence. The Bush administration,
> especially the vice president, had supported the construction of new plants
> using safer designs -- so safe, it was said, that containment would not even
> be necessary. Now, new U.S. plants seem remote. As potential investors and
> potential neighbors see the National Guard dispatched to nuclear power sites,
> as no-fly zones are established overhead, and as antiaircraft guns are
> installed at nuclear facilities in Europe, yesterday's Edward Teller sounds
> wiser than today's Dick Cheney.
>
> A few times in the five-decade history of nuclear power, some event once
> deemed impossible has taken place, forcing fundamental change, great expense,
> and the abandonment of plants already built. In 1974, India tested a nuclear
> weapon using materials provided, for peaceful purposes, by the United States
> and Canada. President Ford then ordered the deferral of U.S. programs for
> nuclear fuel reprocessing and fast breeder reactors, which would make bomb
> material more accessible. President Carter later canceled them outright.
>
> In 1975, a technician with a lighted candle started a fire that disabled most
> of the safety systems at the Brown's Ferry plant in Alabama. Expensive
> reengineering of fire protection and other systems followed. The changes
> wrought by Brown's Ferry paled, however, beside the changes that followed
> Three Mile Island in 1979. The required modifications cost billions of
> dollars, and many plants were canceled.
>
> In short, events that change what the NRC calls the "design basis accident"
> can have significant consequences for the nuclear industry. While September
> 11 involved nothing nuclear, its implications for the "design basis terrorist
> event" are dramatic.
>
> First, the vulnerability of nuclear plants to large aircraft must be
> reassessed. Soon after the World Trade Center attacks, the NRC claimed that
> nuclear reactor containments would withstand similar impacts. That assertion
> is indefensible. The NRC -- though not some power plant owners -- has now
> abandoned it and says that it can't predict the outcome. For that matter,
> neither can terrorists. Containment failure does not automatically mean
> radiation release, and radiation release does not automatically mean
> catastrophe. Uncertainty may be enough to cause terrorists to go elsewhere.
> But uncertainty does not allow the NRC to assure "adequate protection of the
> public health and safety."
>
> The NRC will also have to reexamine its assumptions about truck bombs, armed
> attack, and sabotage from within; about the transportation of nuclear waste;
> about terrorists' ability to acquire nuclear weapons through power reactor
> programs abroad. In all of these categories, it will have to update its
> safety assumptions to include attacks by large trained groups willing to
> become martyrs. Furthermore, the commission can no longer permit the kinds of
> shortcomings it has tolerated in the past, such as the several recent
> instances in which nuclear plants failed their security drills.
>
> The industry and the NRC need to make substantial changes at all nuclear
> power plants. Everyone who has flown since September 11 has some sense of the
> practical meaning of increased security: more safety, but also more
> regulation, more delay, more expense. Plants will have to hire more people,
> install more checkpoints, build more barriers. Plants long since completed
> may have to make substantial design modifications. None of this comes cheap.
> Even the related public hearings will be expensive and contentious. Moreover,
> the costs can no longer be rolled into monopoly electric rates. Most power
> plants must now compete for their customers, and higher costs will mean lower
> profits.
>
> As it happens, the law that provides nuclear power's insurance framework --
> and sets an upper liability limit for a catastrophic accident -- is up for
> renewal. Having just spent billions to revive the airline industry, Congress
> might show some skepticism about further open-ended exposure to unforeseeable
> events.
>
> Yet there is still strong sentiment in Congress for reauthorizing the
> liability law without change. Unfortunately, much of the energy debate on
> Capitol Hill is dominated by arguments that amount to "The facilities are
> safe because they are needed" or "No chain is weaker than its strongest link"
> or "The unknowable can be stated with certainty."
>
> So the unforeseeable event of one decade becomes the nightmare of the next,
> one almost-rational step at a time. An enemy sufficiently resourceful and
> determined could convert today's nuclear power plants to weapons. Perhaps
> that vulnerability can be corrected. If not, the plants -- which are
> replaceable, though at some cost -- should close.
>
>
> Peter Bradford served as a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as
> well as chair of the New York and Maine utility regulatory commissions. He
> teaches energy policy at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental
> Studies.
>
> ==========================================================
>
--
Coalition for Peace and Justice and the UNPLUG Salem Campaign; 321 Barr Ave., Linwood, NJ 08221; 609-601-8537 or 609-601-8583 (8583: fax, answer machine); ncohen12@home.com UNPLUG SALEM WEBSITE: http://www.unplugsalem.org/ COALITION FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE WEBSITE: http:/www.coalitionforpeaceandjustice.org The Coalition for Peace and Justice is a chapter of
Peace Action.
"First they ignore you; Then they laugh at you; Then they fight you; Then you win. (Gandhi) "Why walk when you can fly?" (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
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