Understanding the Facts About Radiation and Public Health at Turkey Point

The following guest post was submitted by NEI Media Manager, Mitch Singer.

Last month I attended two public hearings in Homestead, Fla., focusing on the proposed two new additional nuclear plants, Turkey Point 6&7, at the nearby facility that has two operating reactors and a natural gas plant. Turkey Point has significant support and people are upbeat about the prospects of the additional units.

Aerial view of Turkey Point

But as to be expected there were a number of opponents. One person who testified identified himself as a biologist.

Unfortunately, he sounded more like a script writer for a 1950s horror film as, he accused the operators of Turkey Point of causing all sorts of flesh-eating maladies as the result of radiation leaks from the plant.

Back in high school, all of my science teachers taught me the same valuable lesson: science is the pursuit of truth based on evidence from study and experimentation.

It was a lesson I took to heart, and one that I wish more members of the public would apply to questions of public policy, like the licensing of new nuclear power plants.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sets an individual exposure limit for nuclear plant workers of 5,000 millirem (mrem) per year. The average plant worker receives 115 mrem…that’s less than one percent a year of that amount. To put it into perspective, the average American is exposed to about 600 mrem of radiation per year from all sources. That includes natural background radiation. As it turns out, the largest source of radiation exposure to the general public is from medical applications like X-Rays.

If you were to Google facts about radiation the search results would be voluminous. NEI has saved you the trouble by creating a Radiation: Standards and Organization Provide Safety for Public and Workers fact sheet with top-line information and footnoted sources from reputable, independent organizations including the National Academy of Sciences and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.

I hope the biologist/screen writer takes a look at this information. Perhaps he’ll discover the lessons of scientific study that were drilled into me during my youth in New Jersey by dedicated teachers like Mrs. Lustbader, Mr. Mitros, Mrs. Kratt, Mr. Edack and Mr. Susskind .

Nobody is more concerned with protecting the health and safety of its workers and the surrounding community than the operators of a nuclear power plant. After all, the folks who work at the plant also live in the surrounding community. Their diligence doesn't only buttress their own safety, it also guarantees the safety and health of their family, friends and neighbors.

Perhaps the most compelling input I heard at the hearings was from Faith Banks, a quality assurance manager who has worked at Turkey Point for more than two decades. During that time she never worried about her health because of the emphasis on safety by plant owner, Florida Power & Light.

“I worked before, during and after my two pregnancies,” she said. “I’m healthy and my children are healthy.”

Editor's Note: Over at the News section of the new NEI website, we've recently posted a story about Turkey Point's economic impact on South Florida.

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A Little Now, A Lot Later–Florida and Cost Recovery

Michael Waldron, who is director of nuclear communications at Florida Power & Light, takes an unusually pugnacious tone in this op-ed in the Miami Sun-Sentinel. He is defending the concept of cost recovery, a process by which a company can levy a small surcharge on ratepayers to improve or build reactors. In this case, FPL is using this to upgrade their reactors at Turkey Point and do some early work on two more potential reactors there:

Over the past several years, Florida's nuclear cost recovery statute has allowed FPL to upgrade our existing nuclear plants and add over 500 new megawatts of clean, cost-effective power-generation to our fleet.  To put this in perspective, this is about the same amount of electricity generated by a medium-sized nuclear power plant without having to build one.

Waldron says that FPL is saving a lot of money for its customers – for itself, too, of course, but that also benefits customers:

For example, the 400 new megawatts we have already added will save our customers roughly $7.5 million a month on fuel costs going forward.  Over the lifetime of the units, these upgrades are expected to save customers approximately $3.8 billion. These projects would not have been possible without Florida's nuclear cost recovery statute.

Waldron is answering Stephen Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, an anti-nuclear group. Smith’s argument is actually a – little – strange. Aside from just generally not thinking nuclear energy represents a worthwhile investment, Smith links cost recovery to socialism and rapacious capitalism. There’s a ton of risk associated with it and it’ll be a financial bonanza. His argument is actually kind of wacky.

But this law now socializes costs and all the risk of reactor construction by shifting it to customers. Meanwhile it privatizes all the reward to big power company shareholders, such as FPL — even though they shoulder no risk. FPL has recently requested an 11.25 percent return for its shareholders as part of a base rate increase. The FPL project, if ever completed, is estimated to cost upwards of $20 billion. Clearly an 11.25 percent return on $20 billion is a sweet return for FPL shareholders for a risk-free investment.

This might be the part that actually made Waldron put up his dukes, because it’s not exactly what is happening. He explains this:

Under the law, FPL is only reimbursed for amounts that we have already spent IF these expenses are deemed prudent through an independent evaluation by the Florida Public Service Commission.  In practice, this means that during the licensing phase, customers pay only for licensing activities; during construction, FPL must borrow the money and customers pay only for financing charges, not the construction itself; and, it is only after the plant is in operation that customers would pay for the charges incurred during construction.

Waldron doesn’t point out that paying interest charges early reduces the overall cost of the project – as when you double pay on your credit card. Cost recovery can be used for any large capital projects – it works especially when the outcome benefits the commonweal, as it does here.

Florida is always going to be a somewhat prickly environment when it comes to even small surcharges because so many people there live on fixed incomes. I cannot fault that – and maybe it’s a better angle from which to make an argument about cost recovery, especially in Florida. But Waldron’s aggressive response to Smith seems exactly correct – Smith isn’t giving cost recovery its due and Waldron says so.

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A Good Time to Speed Up – Vietnam, Iowa, FOE

Not getting respect:

“We also have a good chance in Vietnam,” the minister added. “The United States, France, Canada, Russia, Japan and Korea can build nuclear power plants, but the U.S. lags behind in technology as it hasn’t built one for 20 to 30 years. This is a good time for us to speed up (atomic power plant construction).”

Ouch! That stung a little.

This is South Korea’s Knowledge Economy Minister Hong Suk-woo. He’s not exactly right – falling behind in construction and in technological advance are two different things and the U.S. has not fallen behind – at all – in technology. But Hong is selling Korean capacity in both, so fine. Still – ouch!

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Land of corn and plenty:

Dueling videos debuted Wednesday on possible nuclear power expansion in Iowa.

A group that opposes nuclear power launched a television ad on the eve of today’s Senate committee hearing on a proposed compromise that advocates hope will push the bill ahead.

And minutes later, MidAmerican Energy released its own Web video, featuring Bill Fehrman, the company’s president and chief executive officer.

The opposing ad is from Friends of the Earth, our old FOEs. I generally find anti-nuclear advocates interesting if not always on target, but not FOE. It’s notably fact free.

But the pleasant surprise is that MidAmerican isn’t standing for it and has put its own ad in response. It’s simply done but that means there’s no manipulation or appeals to emotion. It’s simply Fehrman providing the company’s viewpoint:

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Hey, South Korea was talking about Vietnam above, wasn’t it? Care to know just what Vietnam is up to these days?

"The consistent view of Vietnam is to utilize nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in a responsible manner while ensuring safety and security," [Le Dinh Tien, deputy minister of the Vietnamese Ministry of Science and Technology, which] is responsible for overseeing the country's nuclear power, said in January.

By 2030, Vietnam aims to build 10 reactors and, by 2050, it hopes to generate enough nuclear power to account for 20-25 percent of its energy consumption.

Now you know.

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NEI’s main site and the Safety First site have been doing a good job of keeping you up to date on post-Fukushima information and updates (Safety First has a great infographic up right now showing how FLEX, the industry’s response to Fukushima, will work – poster worthy – really), but we’d be remiss not to note good work done by some of the nuclear companies out there.

If you have a few minutes, check out these pages by FPL (Florida Light & Power) and NextEra Energy to see how they are presenting nuclear energy, the accident in Japan and the drive to apply the lessons learned to their fleets. Both are very nicely done – corporate speak kept to a minimum, little to no attempt at spin. (We noticed FPL redid its nuclear energy launch page, too – a lot less text heavy and more inviting.)

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