Source: Fairwinds Energy Education
http://fairewinds.org/podcast/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-accident-ongoing-lessons
About this Presentation:
This week Fairewinds Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen
participated in two panel discussions in Boston and New York City entitled “The
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident: Ongoing Lessons” Other panelists included
Ralph Nader, Peter Bradford, Naoto Kan, Gregory Jaczko and Jean-Michel
Cousteau.
The video above is a recording of Arnie’s speech entitled
“Forty Good Years And One Very Bad Day.” To watch the entire NYC presentation, visit this link
Presentation Transcript:
Special thanks to the Samuel Lawrence Foundation for
creating and underwriting these post Fukushima Daiichi events.
More importantly, today’s gathering would not be necessary
if Federal and State policy makers and business executives believed that
Fukushima Daiichi really happened. If they had believed what they saw on
television, they would understand that nuclear accidents happen. Nuclear
accidents are inevitable. They would understand that “Sooner or later, in any
foolproof system, the fools are going to exceed the proofs!”
Indian Point presents an interesting dichotomy. The Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) claims that the chance of a meltdown is one in a
million. With 400 operating nuclear reactors worldwide, the NRC data means one
meltdown would occur every 2,500 years. The NRC bases this analysis on a
technique called Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA- pray for short). On old
plants like Pilgrim and Indian Point, the NRC uses data from newer plants to
show how reliable these plants will be to continue if they operate for the next
20-years. That’s like my doctor telling me how long I will live based on the
heath statistics for 25-year-olds. If we apply the NRC’s methodology, the
probability of what happened at Fukushima Daiichi is one million x million x
million (a 1 with eighteen zeros) to one.
But that is not what has happened in real life. Instead,
history shows us that there have been five meltdowns during the last 35 years:
TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima Daiichi 1, 2, and 3 (apologies for not including
Windscale, Santa Susana, and about a dozen more reactors). The real numbers
show that there is a seven-year frequency between meltdowns. Policy makers and
business interests are ignoring history as they attempt to force the
relicensure of Indian Point.
While demanding that taxpayers cover the risk of a nuclear
accident by paying for the Price-Anderson nuclear insurance, it seems that the
NRC and every major politician and nuclear fabricator actually believes that A
Nuclear Accident Can’t Happen at Indian Point or Pilgrim. When someone’s brain
reasons in a way to justify support for what it wants to be true, psychologists
call it “Motivated Reasoning”.
Recently I was asked to testify to the Canadian Nuclear
Safety Commission because the Pickering Nuclear reactors have applied to
operate beyond their useful life. Pickering is located only 20 miles away from
the heart of Toronto. At the hearing in Toronto, speaker after speaker implored
the CNSC to keep this aged nuclear plant running because it is a major employer
that pays its taxes. They said that Pickering Nuclear Power Plant has great
employees who live in town, who are on the school board, on the soccer teams,
or sing in local church choirs. The statements suggested that surely, such nice
people would know if their plant was unsafe.
This situation reminds me of Garrison Keillor and his tales
about Lake Woebegone, where he would say, “…all the women are strong, all the
men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” Every town I
visit that has a nuclear plant believes its nuclear plant is better than
average. If history has taught us anything, it’s that nuclear accidents happen
despite the best intentions of the men and women who work there.
I knew the operators at Three Mile Island, they were active in
their community and they lived near the plant, yet an accident happened.
Nuclear Power is a technology that can have 40 good years and one bad day.
After the Chernobyl accident, I got to know some of the
operators there, and they were brilliant engineers who were very safety
conscious. They and their families lived very near to the Chernobyl reactor,
and still an accident happened. This is a technology that can have forty good
years and one bad day.
After I wrote my book Fukushima Daiichi: The Truth And The
Future, I got to know some of the Fukushima Daiichi operators. Like the
operators at TMI and Chernobyl, they too were meticulous and knew their reactor
like a book. They also lived right near the Daiichi plants with their families.
And yet, another accident happened. Nuclear Power is a technology that can have
forty good years of operation and one very bad day.
Policy makers and business interests clearly want to believe
the “forty good years” part of that sentence, but choose to ignore the “one
very bad day”!
Companies like Entergy claim that their nuclear plants are
“safe”. What does this mean??? This means that the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) has reviewed 5% of that plant’s paperwork and checked off in
boxes that the paperwork existed. However, those same companies did not tell
you that the nuclear industry lobbying group has vetted every NRC Commissioner
for the past twenty years before they allowed Congress to approve those
Commissioners. And, did you know that those same lobbyists worked with the NRC
to write those power plant regulations? So safe to Entergy and other nuclear
power plant owners means that plants like Indian Point comply with the minimum
acceptable criteria established by a compliant regulator.
Let’s talk specifically about the corporations that own
nuclear power plants, especially merchant plants.
1. The NRC has allowed many nuclear power plants to become
Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs): corporations that are separate from the
companies that own them. Why is that an issue or concern to the rest of us?
1.1. Did you notice that Indian Point 2 is a separate LLC
from Indian Point 3? Two entirely separate legal entities. Why is that? It
allows the Entergy to keep one plant running if the other one has a serious
radiation release. It allows one unit to be declared bankrupt, while the other
units continue to generate cash that can’t be spent on the radiation cleanup.
1.2. Entergy wouldn’t do such a thing, would they? One only
has to look at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to see that Entergy has
already used this legal maneuver. While the people of New Orleans where bailing
out their city, Entergy’s New Orleans LLC subsidiary declared bankruptcy, and
applied for federal disaster relief. The US government moved cash that had been
destined to help New Orleans poor community through a Community Development
Block Grant and gave it to Entergy. Entergy gave its executives bonuses.
2. What is the condition of these aging nuclear plants that
have been operating 30 to 40-years and have reached the end of their design
life?
2.1. According to the Indian Point Independent Safety
Evaluation Report July 31, 2008: The physical condition of the plant …is
visibly deficient… the care and maintenance of some other plant systems and
structures do not meet the standards of high-performing plants… it is the
Panel’s view that the maintenance and preservation of non-critical plant
systems, equipment and structures is important, because it communicates to
employees and the public alike the owner’s and operators’ commitment and
professionalism. (Indian Point Independent Safety Evaluation Report July 31,
2008, page 11)
2.2. The Vermont Yankee Oversight Panel, convened by the
State of Vermont, uncovered similar issues: “The issue of inadequate
application of resources takes on heightened importance given Entergy’s status
as an aging plant. Over the remainder of Entergy’s operating life, the
possibility of shutdown within a few years can never be ruled out and will
become a near certainty at some point. If the events of the last few years are
any guide, Entergy has a tendency to focus expenditure on safety systems and
systems of obvious reliability importance while withholding resources from
systems that it deems of secondary reliability importance.” [Emphasis Added]
“Limited resource allocation for non-safety systems might, therefore, be
systemic within Entergy.”
2.3. Most recently, Entergy announced across the board staff
cutbacks of five percent, euphemistically called its Human Capital Management
Initiative. So, in spite of two independent panels determining that Entergy is
not spending enough money, Entergy has decided to cut its staff at all of its
aging and most vulnerable nuclear power reactors.
What you may ask is the NRC doing about this? Nothing, absolutely
nothing. Instead, Neil Sheehan, the NRC Region 1 PR spokesperson said, “… the
NRC has the ability to determine whether there are any adverse impacts through
our Reactor Oversight process.” “If we observe any negative trends via
inspection findings and/or performance indicators, we could determine if there
was any linkage to human resource changes.”
To me, Sheehan’s quote says that after an accident, the NRC
might determine that Entergy had cut too much staff.
For that matter, staff reductions have become the nuclear
industry’s approach to make more money when electricity prices are down as they
are now. The Millstone nuclear power plant in Connecticut “reduced staff to
approach industry average”. The NRC allowed them to reduce staff. But if
Millstone was above the industry average, then other plants must have been
below the industry average. Why hasn’t the NRC approached those plants to
increase the number of employees in order to measure up to the industry
average? The industry only puts downward pressure on its reactor staffs, and
the NRC is unwilling to put on the breaks.
Every day we at Fairewinds Energy Education receive
questions asking us how American nuclear power plants compare with those that
melted down at Fukushima Daiichi. Is Indian Point or Pilgrim really any
different from Fukushima Daiichi? No! Actually both plants have many worse
features:
Population centers are much closer to Indian Point and
Pilgrim. And, before the Daiichi accident people believed that the emergency
planning in Japan was far better than in US. Even Japan’s strong emergency plan
failed because every safety system at Fukushima Daiichi failed.
The spent fuel pools at both Indian Point and Pilgrim holds
five times more nuclear fuel that Fukushima Daiichi and they hold more cesium
than all the atom bombs dropped in above ground testing. And, that is just
cesium… think about all the other radioactive isotopes.
Indian Point and Pilgrim are the same age, first generation
designs. Daiichi 1 started commercial operation in 1971 and had just received
its authorization to run an additional 10 years only one month before the
tsunami hit. Daiichi 2 started operation in 1974.
Fukushima Daiichi experienced an earthquake and tsunami, but
what really knocked them out were the Loss of Offsite Power and the Loss of the
Ultimate Heat Sink. Both could happen at Indian Point and Pilgrim. LoUHS can be
created from a terrorist attack on the intake structure.
What about earthquake frequency? Indian Point has the
highest probability of its nuclear core being damaged during an earthquake
(core damage frequency) of any reactor in the US, according to the NRC by
applying USGS seismic hazard curves. Experience at the North Anna nuclear plant
in Virginia indicates that the frequency of a severe earthquake is grossly
underestimated. The worst earthquake in 10,000 years was expected to be a
Richter 6 at North Anna. Yet a Richter 6 happened in 30 years, meaning that the
worst is yet to come. Indian Point has an earthquake fault one mile from the
reactors that could easily create a quake greater than the plant was designed
to withstand.
Let me sum this up. It is easy for the nuclear industry to
allow arrogance to set in when one looks at the sheer size of a nuclear plant.
I started my career in 1972 with a Master degree in nuclear engineering from
RPI. The nuclear engineering department visited Indian Point when it was being
completed. Both then and now, it is an impressive building. No one asks why
does that building have to be so impressive? What is inside these plants that
requires such an impressive structure in the first place?
But now that we have seen first hand that nuclear power
safety systems can fail with catastrophic results, we need to ask why we should
build such an uncontrollable and unmanageable technology. The forces within
these plants are enormous, and must always be contained 24/7/365. Fukushima
Daiichi, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island proved just how utterly impossible it
is to always contain these forces. One operator error or one significant
weather event, or one earthquake or one terrorist attack, and all of New York
City will face a very bad day, and like Japan, a very sad future.
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