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ARTICLE ARCHIVE

Nuclear Reactors

The nuclear industry is more than 50 years old. Its history is replete with a colossal financial disaster and a multitude of near-misses and catastrophic accidents like Three Mile Island and Chornobyl. Beyond Nuclear works to expose the risks and dangers posed by an aging and deteriorating reactor industry and the unproven designs being proposed for new construction.

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Tuesday
Feb142012

Anti-Davis-Besse coalition presses case against cracked containment, seeks to block license extension

The "Red Photo," showing boric acid corrosion of Davis-Besse's reactor vessel head, which came within 3/16ths of an inch of a Loss of Coolant Accident in 2002Yesterday,  the environmental coalition opposing the 20 year extension at the problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor near Toledo defended its contention about the recently revealed severe cracking in the concrete shield building against challenges by FirstEnergy nuclear utility, as well as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff. Terry Lodge of Toledo serves as the coalition's attorney.

One revelation the coalition exposed today is that FirstEnergy, with NRC staff complicity, kept secret from the public, and even from FirstEnergy investors, cracking in the upper 20 feet of the structure for five weeks -- until pressure by U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat-Ohio) forced NRC staff to admit the truth to his staff. Kucinich made the information public the very next day, and won NRC Chairman Gregory Jackzo's support for an NRC public meeting near Davis-Besse, where FirstEnergy was forced to admit publicly for the first time the expanded extent of the problem.

The environmental coalition intervening against Davis-Besse's license extension includes Beyond Nuclear, Citizens Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Don't Waste Michigan, and the Green Party of Ohio. Davis-Besse has had a disproportionately large number of near-misses with disaster in its 35 years of operations, including a Three Mile Island precursor incident 18 months before the infamous meltdown, a very dicey direct hit by a tornado in 1998, and its own infamous "Hole-In-The-Head Fiasco" in 2002.

Tuesday
Feb142012

Environmental coalition defends Fermi 3 EIS contentions against challenges by NRC staff and DTE

NRC file photo of Fermi 2 on the Lake Erie shore, where Detroit Edison wants to build a giant new reactorOn Feb. 13, 2012, attorney Terry Lodge of Toledo, on behalf of an environmental coalition, filed a rebuttal to challenges by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff and Detroit Edison. The agency and utility were challenging contentions filed by the environmental coalition on Jan. 11, 2012 concerning NRC's Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) about the new Fermi 3 reactor, a proposed General Electric-Hitachi ESBWR (so-called "Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor"). The new contentions involve such issues as impacts on endangered and threatened plant and animal species, and their critical habitats, from the overall Fermi 3 proposal, as well as related sub-proposals, such as the contemplated transmission line corridor; radiological health impacts on the Monroe County community from Fermi 3, which has already suffered a half century of radiological and toxic chemical harm from the Fermi 1 and Fermi 2 reactors, as well as a number of giant coal burning power plants; and impacts on the Walpole Island First Nation, just 53 miles away across the U.S./Canadian border. The coalition includes Beyond Nuclear, Citizen Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, Don't Waste Michigan, and the Sierra Club Michigan Chapter. Beyond Nuclear has compiled all the filings relating to the battle over the Fermi 3 Draft Environmental Impact Statement.

Friday
Feb102012

AP1000 design, approved for construction in Georgia, has major safety flaw

Graphic courtesy of Fairewinds AssociatesBy a 4 to 1 vote, the Commissioners of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) today approved the combined Construction and Operating License Application (COLA) of Southern Nuclear Company, paving the way for two 1,100 megawatt-electric Toshiba-Westinghouse "Advanced Passive" AP1000s to be built at the Vogtle nuclear power plant near Augusta, Georgia. NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko cast the sole "no" vote, while Commissioners Kristine Svinicki, George Apostolakis, William Magwood IV, and William Ostendorff voted in favor. Chairman Jaczko had previously cast the sole dissenting votes against such controversial proposals as: the 20 year license extension at the Oyster Creek, NJ GE BWR Mark I, the oldest operating reactor in the U.S. and identical in design to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4; and the Private Fuel Storage, LLC high-level radioactive waste "parking lot dump" targeted at the tiny Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah. Recently, Beyond Nuclear's Linda Gunter pointed out that Chairman Jaczko, although not perfect, shows concern for safety that sets him apart from the other four NRC Commissioners.

Beyond Nuclear responded to the Vogtle Units 3 and 4 NRC approval with a media statement, pointing out that a NRC license does not ensure project success. Read more, including updates, at our "New Reactors" section...

Friday
Feb102012

"New Containment Flaw Identified at the BWR Mark I"

Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen (pictured at left), in a video now posted at the homepage of Fairewinds Associates, explains that a non-radioactive test performed at the Brunswick, North Carolina General Electric Boiling Water Reactor of the Mark I design 40 years ago, supports his theory that the primary reactor containment head at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 lifted, due to elongation of bolts, allowing hydrogen gas generated by the meltdown in the reactor core to escape into the secondary or outer reactor containment building. "It only took a spark" to then detonate the hydrogen gas, destroying the reactor containment building. Thus, and very significantly, all the talk (including in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Fukushima Task Force deliberations) about "hardening" the vents at U.S. and other Mark Is around the world is irrelevant. This is a flaw in the Mark I design that any hardening of the vents to make them "new and improved" cannot solve. Arnie shows a photo revealing that the vent at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 appears to have been functioning before the explosion -- steam is visible exiting the top of the Unit 1 "smoke stack." Despite this, it did not prevent the explosion that followed.

Thursday
Feb092012

New NRC study downplays cancer risks from hypothetical nuclear accident in US

In the midst of mounting public health concerns in Japan over radiation releases from the very real Fukushima nuclear accident, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently released a synthesis of twenty years of computer modeling studies on the hypothetical consequences of a severe nuclear accident.  The “State-of-The Art Reactor Consequences Analysis” (SOARCA) would have you believe that blowing up a nuclear reactor isn’t really that bad after all.  The NRC brochure is boiled down for general public consumption from the agency’s voluminous technical study (Volumes 1 and 2). Basically, it states, reactor accidents are likely to occur slowly, giving plenty of time for evacuation and the public health impacts will be significantly smaller than previously forecast, in fact, near “zero.”  Don’t worry, be happy -- and disregard what’s happening in the real world in Japan.  

The NRC study focuses in on several hypothetical accident scenarios at two reactors; Peach Bottom, a GE Mark I Boiling Water Reactor in Pennsylvania and Surry, a Westinghouse Pressurized Water Reactor in Virginia.

There are many concerns with the report, not the least of which is that, as pointed out on the last page of a U.S. congressional analysis, it does not evaluate the consequences of hundreds of tons of high-level radioactive waste stored at each of these reactors becoming involved in the reactor accident and a catastrophic release, as mounting evidence indicates has happened at Fukushima Daiichi. Beyond Nuclear has published a backgrounder on the risks of high-level radioactive waste pools at General Electric Boiling Water Reactors of the Mark I design in the U.S., in light of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe.

But pool risks extend to pressurized water reactors as well. A 2001 NRC study about pool risks revealed that 25,000 to over 40,000 people could die from latent cancer fatalities caused by catastrophic radioactivity releases downwind of a waste pool fire, such as one caused by the drop of a heavy load instantly draining the pool's cooling water supply. An earlier federal report on waste pool fire risks put the potential deaths downwind at over 140,000. These studies are cited in a major report on irradiated nuclear fuel pool risks by Alvarez et al., published in 2003, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. National Academies of Science largely validated Alvarez et al.'s findings in 2005. Robert Alvarez at Institute for Policy Studies published another report on high-level radioactive waste storage pool risks in the U.S. in the aftermath of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe as well.

Beyond Nuclear, along with nearly 200 other environmental groups, has called for a decade for "Hardened On-Site Storage," emptying the pools into monitored and retrievable, quality assured dry casks, fortified against attacks, safeguarded against accidents, and built well enough to not leak for centuries. Of course, as Beyond Nulear board member Judith Johnsrud, who has described high-level radioactive waste as a "trans-solutional problem," a problem beyond a solution, the only real solution is to stop making it in the first place.

The SOARCA study also makes many broad assumptions about human behavior. NRC predicts that populations around nuclear power plants will cooperate with emergency plans and not spontaneously evacuate until ordered so as not to trap those close to the plant in traffic jams; or, emergency responders will not delay or abandon their duties, such as assuming volunteer bus drivers and teachers will assist school children in evacuation, before they tend to their own families' safety.   

The main concern is that SOARCA is the precursor to further NRC and industry streamlining of new reactor construction and old reactor license extension, perhaps even to reduce the size of emergency planning zones and in order to decrease the associated costs.

SOARCA has been in the works for many years at NRC. It is an update on "CRAC-2" (Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences), a study NRC commissioned Sandia National Lab to do in the early 1980s, but then tried to cover up. U.S. Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) made the CRAC-2 report public in congressional hearings. CRAC-2's figures for deaths, injuries, and property damage due to catastrophic radioactivity releases across the U.S. are shocking. NRC has since disavowed the CRAC-2 study with a disclaimer on its website. On March 1, 2011 -- ten days before the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe began -- a three judge panel of the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, the NRC staff, and FirstEnergy Nuclear claimed not to know what "CRAC-2" referred to, when Beyond Nuclear cited it as evidence to be applied against a 20 year license extension at the problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor near Toledo.