Coalition files Petition to NRC to strengthen reactor license extension rules due to significant new revelations on radioactive waste risks

Environmental coalition attorney Diane CurranA Petition for Rulemaking was filed on Feb. 18th by Washington, D.C.-based attorney, Diane Curran (photo, left), as well as Mindy Goldstein of the Emory U. Turner Environmental Law Clinic, to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The Petition seeks to re-open the License Renewal GEIS (Generic Environmental Impact Statement), in order to consider new and significant information about irradiated nuclear fuel storage impacts that was generated by the NRC Staff during the Expedited Spent Fuel Transfer proceeding, carried out under NRC's Fukushima "Lessons Learned" activities. Curran and Goldstein filed the Petition on behalf of three dozen environmental groups, including Beyond Nuclear.

One of these risks newly recognized by NRC Staff is the contribution of high-level radioactive waste storage pool risks to reactor catastrophes, and vice versa.

NRC staff has also admitted that release into the environment of even a small fraction of the contents of a high-level radioactive waste storage pool could cause the long-term dislocation of more than 4 million people, and could render more than 9,000 square miles of land uninhabitable for long time periods. What would the socio-economic costs of such a catastrophe be? Don't people have the inalienable right to safety, health, and environmental protection?

Also, what are the risks to the environment and non-human biota? Answering such questions is part and parcel of the requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act, as the Petition points out.

The filing urges that no reactor license extensions be approved by NRC until the Petition for Rulemaking has been integrated into NRC's safety regulations.

"Energy sector a prime target for cyber attacks"

As reported by Taylor Armerding at NetworkWorld:

Candid Wueest, a researcher for security firm Symantec...reported that there were an average of 74 targeted cyberattacks per day between July 2012 and June 2013, with the energy sector accounting for 16.3% of them, which put it in second place behind government/public sector at 25.4%.

The U.S. government's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported last year that its Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) responded to more than 200 incidents between Oct. 2012 and May 2013 -- with 53% aimed at the energy sector.

There have, so far, not been any successful catastrophic attacks on the grid, and there is ongoing debate about how high the risk is for what both former Defense secretary Leon Panetta and former Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano called a "cyber Pearl Harbor" attack.

Some experts contend that while the risks are real and should cause concern, they are unlikely to cause catastrophic, long-term damage. Others say the nation's economy could be paralyzed for a number of months to more than a year while critical infrastructure (CI) systems are rebuilt.

Of course, while loss of electricity would be a major to complete disruption to modern society, another catastrophic aspect, at atomic reactors and other nuclear facilities, such as high-level radioactive waste storage pools, could be releases of hazardous radioactivity if safety and cooling systems are disabled by a cyber-attack.

Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a well-coordinated and efficient attack, by a team of snipers, on a PG&E electrical sub-station near San Jose, CA on April 16, 2013 could be a warning of even worse to come. The assailants have never been apprehended, and there appear to be few leads.

As reported: the attack was "the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred" in the U.S., said Jon Wellinghoff, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time...To some, the Metcalf incident has lifted the discussion of serious U.S. grid attacks beyond the theoretical. "The breadth and depth of the attack was unprecedented" in the U.S., said Rich Lordan, senior technical executive for the Electric Power Research Institute. The motivation, he said, "appears to be preparation for an act of war." Military experts regarded the attack as a professional job.

The entire incident has been largely hushed up ever since, apparently in an attempt to not inspire copy cat attacks, and perhaps also in order to not reveal how very vulnerable the U.S. electric grid is to such attacks.

However, Wellinghoff took it upon himself, while still chairing FERC, and even after the leaving the agency and returning to the private sector, to try to warn other federal agencies about the potentially catastrophic implications of a coordinated attack taking a large portion of the U.S. electric grid down, perhaps for a prolonged period of time.

Not mentioned in the article is the nightmare scenario of what could happen at nuclear power plants, if such a prolonged loss of the electric grid were to occur. The grid is the primary source of alternating current (AC) electricity for running safety and cooling systems at atomic reactors and high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) storage pools.

Although emergency diesel generators (EDG) can provide AC power to reactor cooling systems, such back ups are not required on HLRW storage pools. However, the amount of fuel for EDGs stored on-site is limited, so a prolonged loss of the grid would require delivery of more. In the 1990s, the direct hit by Hurrican Andrew on the Turkey Point nuclear power plant in south Florida required the diversion of diesel fuel from hospitals to the atomic reactor, to keep the EDGs running.

It is also critical to ensure that EDGs don't themselves fail to start, or break down. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has documented 74 instances, over about a decade, where EDGs did not work when called upon, or else malfunctioned after a time, including an especially serious near-miss in June 1998 at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio, after a direct hit by a tornado that took down the electric grid for days.

The Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in Japan has shown what can occur when both the electric grid and EDGs are lost at operating atomic reactors.