The Love of 1000 Razors: UCS on Small Reactors

Our friends over at the Union of Concerned Scientists have always had an interesting approach to nuclear energy. It claims to support it - if reactors could be, you  know, safer, less expensive and more secure. You could call it the love of 1000 razors, each cut inflicting another wound, but all for the benefit of nuclear energy.

So knowing that UCS has a new report on small reactors leads one to suspect that the conclusion will be that that these sub-350 megawatt reactors will not be safer, less expensive than their full size counterparts or more secure. And so it is.

Now, let’s allow that no small reactor has been deployed or even licensed, though interest runs high. The Department of Energy is working with Babcock & Wilcox on prototyping and licensing the B&W design, with other vendors to follow. The Tennessee Valley Authority has expressed interesting in using them at its Clinch River site. Still, early days. A lot could happen.

It also means that anything I could say about them beyond the basics would be conjecture. That’s equally true of UCS, but it certainly proceeds as though small reactors have already pulled loose from their moorings and run amuck through the countryside.

Well, alright, let’s be fair. UCS knows it is engaging in preemptive scaremongering (SMRs are small modular reactors):

certain safety regulations of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could be relaxed for SMRs.

whatever intrinsic safety advantages are unique to SMRs could be lost if the NRC allows safety margins to be reduced in other respects.

mistakes on a production line can lead to generic defects that could propagate through an entire fleet of reactors and be costly to fix.

I did not count rigorously, but UCS must have used “could” at least 40 times in this short report. A small reactor could open a portal to the fifth dimension and bring forth a murderous glop monster. Anything goes in the world of “could.”

This one struck me as particularly funny:

For example, efficiencies associated with the economics of mass production could lower costs if SMRs are eventually built and sold in large numbers. Such factors are speculative at this point…

Pot, kettle, shake hands.

Now, here’s the thing beyond the thing: A lot of UCS’s worries are just extensions of their 1000 razors – because full size reactors are so problematic, surely small reactors will be more of the same, only, um, smaller.

But consider: the NRC’s most recent annual report to Congress on “abnormal occurrences” at full-scale reactors—unscheduled incidents or events that the agency determines to be significant from the standpoint of public health or safety – showed only one such occurrence at a U.S. facility (in 2011) during the past decade. (I should add that abnormal events do not actually endanger safety – they hold the potential to do so if unchecked.) Similarly, the latest report from the NRC’s Industry Trend Program identified no significant adverse trends in industry safety performance.

Let’s be clear: there’s nothing wrong with criticizing small reactors, their makers, government regulators or, heck, NEI. But UCS does not offer criticism. It extends a pile of bad assumptions about full-size reactors to small reactors with no proof offered at all to justify them.

Small reactors are not precisely new technology – submarines have used a variation for years without incident – and the earlier generation of full-size nuclear plants generated less electricity than they do – the first commercial reactor at Shippingport ran at 60 megawatts. None of that means criticism wouldn’t be useful. But this is useless criticism, a sop to the anti-nuclear gullible.  Even if I hated nuclear energy, I’d be insulted by it.

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The Nuclear Death By a Million Little Cuts

You’re motoring down a lonely country road. Ahead of you, there is a person walking in the middle of the road. You honk your horn. Nothing. So you go around the person, take a quick look to make sure there’s nothing wrong, and continue on your way.

But you might have had a collision and killed the person. That was close, a near-miss. You saw risk (person in road who might be killed by your driving), tried to reduce the risk (honked at person), avoided the risk (drove around the person). But the risk was always there and could have ended in disaster.

So, logically, driving when other people are around, even only one other person, always presents a risk. Shouldn’t driving therefore be banned to eliminate the risk? We’d be safer, right? Even if the initial risk is small and you mitigate it and avoid it, risk is risk.

So when I hear the Union of Concerned Scientists offer its comments about nuclear energy, I sometimes wonder, Why not driving? Why nuclear energy? Isn't driving riskier?

UCS sees some of the benefits of nuclear energy.

While there are currently some global warming emissions associated with the nuclear fuel cycle and plant construction, when nuclear plants operate they do not produce carbon dioxide. This fact is used to support proposals for a large-scale expansion of nuclear power both in the United States and around the world.

Let’s leave aside the fact that building and transporting wind turbines cause carbon emissions – that’s the world we live in- and say: they do get some of the benefits, somewhat. But still:

It must be borne in mind that a large-scale expansion of nuclear power in the United States or worldwide under existing conditions would be accompanied by an increased risk of catastrophic events—a risk not associated with any of the non-nuclear means for reducing global warming.

These catastrophic events include a massive release of radiation due to a power plant meltdown or terrorist attack, or the death of tens of thousands due to the detonation of a nuclear weapon made with materials obtained from a civilian—most likely non-U.S.—nuclear power system.

I suppose UCS sees the person in the road of nuclear energy and frets. In the UCS view, that person will be run over sooner or later – either in a way that has never happened (terrorist attack) or is strongly guarded against (proliferation) or is dynamically prevented (safety issues – by dynamic, I mean the safety culture is always evolving.)

But while UCS waits for the inevitable disaster, all it can do in the meantime is cut away at nuclear energy, a little at a time, one little thing after another after another until the portrait of nuclear energy looks like that of Dorian Gray in the attic, warped and corrupt. Call it the death of a million little cuts, no one of them fatal, but damaging in their accumulation.

Lately, UCS tried for 14 cuts, releasing a report that says that 14 "near-misses" at nuclear plants in 2011-12 indicate that the United States "has been lucky" to avoid a serious nuclear accident. Lucky?

Let’s take a look at one of the more alarming sounding near-misses.

After an age-related problem caused one of four reactor coolant pumps to fail, the Unit 1 reactor and turbine automatically shut down as designed. Due to a design error in a recent modification, the decreasing voltage output by the main generator caused electrical breakers to open that disconnected Units 1 and 2 from the offsite power grid. One of the emergency diesel generators started but failed to supply electricity to safety equipment due to another design error when it was installed in 1984.

And this is how the NRC describes the same event (I’ve bolded some bits to cut through the thicket):

On 04/04/12 at 2003 hours, Unit 1 tripped from 100% power following a trip of reactor coolant pump 1D. Shortly after the Unit 1 generator power circuit breakers opened, the Zone G protective relaying system unexpectedly actuated on an instantaneous under frequency condition as a result of an error in the relay logic. This opened the switchyard breakers thereby isolating Unit 1 from the grid and resulting in a Loss of Offsite Power (LOOP). At the time of the trip, Unit 2 was in Mode 5 during its End-of-Cycle 18 Refueling Outage with both of its essential busses aligned to Unit 1 offsite power. Therefore, Unit 2's essential busses lost power as a result of the LOOP. Both emergency diesel generators (EDGs) on each unit automatically started and powered their respective essential busses as designed. A Notification of Unusual Event (NOUE) was declared as a result of the LOOP and the Catawba Emergency Response Organization was activated. Approximately five and one-half hours later, after confirming that the sources of the fault were cleared, offsite power was restored to one essential bus on each unit and the NOUE was terminated. The root causes of this event and the planned corrective actions in response to this event are described in detail in the respective sections of this LER. All plant safety related systems required to litigate the event were operable and capable of performing their required safety related functions. These systems functioned as designed in response to this event. Therefore, the health and safety of the public were not adversely affected by this event.

No need to get into busses and LOOPS unless you want to. A near-miss in UCS terms means something out of the ordinary occurred at a plant and the personnel did exactly as it should to solve the problem. But that’s not good enough. If I were inclined to be unfair, I’d say UCS’s solution here would be to close the plant, tear it to the ground, and salt the earth on which it stood.

But fairness dictates that UCS says no such thing. It is saying that this is one episode among many episodes. For UCS, it is one of a million little cuts that shows you their “truth” about nuclear energy.

Now, to square this up really fairly, the NRC has a category that tracks closely enough to UCS’s “near-miss” for our purpose which it calls an abnormal occurrence. This is defined as an unscheduled incident or event that the NRC determines to be significant from the standpoint of public health or safety. Federal law requires that the NRC report these to Congress annually.

During the past 11 years of reporting (2001-2011), the agency found only two abnormal occurrences at U.S. nuclear power plants (Davis Besse in 2002 and Browns Ferry 1 in 2011). That’s two too many, but that’s all – not 14, not a million, not even actual near-misses as most people would define the term.

After more than 50 years of commercial nuclear energy production in the United States—including more than 3,500 reactor-years of operation—there have been no radiation-related health effects linked to the operation of nuclear facilities – and that’s not overlooking the Three Mile Island accident, which frightened people but did not do harm.

But there is one person standing in the road waiting for the car that is just around the bend. That person has to be rescued, even if by a million little cuts.

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You're welcome, Mr. Lochbaum

One of the blogs we regularly monitor is All Things Nuclear, the blog on commercial nuclear energy sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

It was impossible to miss this passage in a post published there yesterday by David Lochbaum. He wrote the following after participating in a panel discussion on industry safety at the 2012 Nuclear Energy Assembly:

Before closing, I wish to express my appreciation to Marv Fertel, Tony Pietrangelo and NEI for including me on this panel. They knew beforehand that my views would not align with theirs and could have easily and justifiably not invited me to the panel. I applaud Marv and Tony for soliciting a broader spectrum of viewpoints.

You're welcome, Mr. Lochbaum.

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Revisiting Nuclear Energy and Cooling Water

Earlier this week, the journal Nature Climate Change published a study concerning how warmer weather and reduced river flows might impact electricity generation at nuclear and coal-fired power plants. Here's how Reuters reported the findings:

In a study published on Monday, a team of European and U.S. scientists focused on projections of rising temperatures and lower river levels in summer and how these impacts would affect power plants dependent on river water for cooling.

The authors predict that coal and nuclear power generating capacity between 2031 and 2060 will decrease by between 4 and 16 percent in the United States and a 6 to 19 percent decline in Europe due to lack of cooling water.

The nuclear energy industry isn't unfamiliar with the topic. Here at NEI Nuclear Notes, we first dealt with the issue during the Summer of 2006 when a heat wave struck Europe and forced a number of nuclear plants to reduce power.

Back then, our points were pretty clear: the industry was well aware of the situation and that there were a number of adaptations that could be implemented in order to mitigate it. When we revisited the issue in response to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists back in November 2011, I turned to one of our policy experts, Bill Skaff, to handle the question. I spoke with Bill again this week about the latest study, and he passed along the following note to me:

Environmentally conscious regulators and companies are already taking into account flow, discharge temperature, and intake temperature projections when locating and permitting new power plants and other industrial facilities. The Nature study’s time parameters remind us that gradual change allows time for adaptation. Additionally, there are engineering solutions being implemented today that can mitigate climate change impact. For instance, Browns Ferry is building small cooling towers to pre-cool discharge water.

Sustainable development will require electricity for quality of life and a mix of energy sources to generate that electricity—renewable, nuclear, and fossil. We must balance all environmental, social, and economic factors and make trade-offs when considering what energy source or cooling system to deploy at each of our diverse ecosystems around the country.

Wind and solar energy use very little water, but their electricity output is variable and intermittent. An electricity grid can only balance a limited amount of these electricity shortfalls, limiting how much renewable energy can be accommodated by a grid before it becomes unstable and black outs occur. Moreover, the variable, intermittent output of these renewables is usually balanced by fossil plants, which emit carbon dioxide and air pollutants.

The electricity grid requires steady, reliable baseload electricity—the output of nuclear and fossil plants. Nuclear power plant water use is comparable to coal plants. Natural gas uses less water, but produces half as much carbon dioxide as a coal plant as well as nitrogen oxides, which contribute to ground level ozone formation, a cause of respiratory ailments. By contrast, nuclear power plants produce no greenhouse gases or air pollutants during operations.
--------------------------------------------------------------
EPRI, Water & Sustainability, Vol. 3 U.S. Water Consumption for Power Production, 2002, p. viii. National Energy Technology Laboratory (G. J. Stiegel, J. R. Longanbach, M. D. Rutkowski, M. G. Klett, N. J. Kuehn, R. L. Schoff, V. Vaysman, J. S. White), Power Plant Water Usage and Loss Study, August 2005, revised May 2007, p. xiii.

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Looking Back at NEA 2012

After a whirlwind three days in Charlotte at NEA 2012, I'm back in Washington. And while I'm done unpacking my suitcase at home, we're not done unpacking all of the content we created during the conference.

One of the highlights of the conference had to be a roundtable discussion on industry safety and Fukushima that was moderated by NEI's Chief Nuclear Officer Tony Pietrangelo. Joining Tony were Chip Pardee of Exelon, David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Bill Borchardt of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Luckily, we captured the entire discussion on video, and will be sharing it with you as soon as we're able to get the clip processed and uploaded to our YouTube Channel. In addition, we'll also be combing the questions that were submitted for the session that our panelists weren't able to answer due to time constraints.

Among my favorite moments from the conference had to be getting to see the pride and joy on the faces of our TIP Award winners. That was clearly the case when I got a chance to speak with the combined team from Duke Energy and AREVA that came home with the B. Ralph Sylvia Award, what's know in the industry as the "best of the best."

Click here to watch the video I shot with my iPhone just minutes after Preston Gillespie from Duke strode to the stage to claim the award. (Apologies ahead of time, as in my excitement I botched the name of the award.) For the total download on what won the award for the Duke/AREVA team, be sure to watch the video I embedded below.



We were also honored to be joined by Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a Democrat from North Carolina's 1st District. He spoke on Tuesday morning and delivered the following address:


I promise more tomorrow, but for now, I'll refer you back to the NEA 2012 landing page that was set up on NEI.org for further details. Look for more video tomorrow.

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Your Chance to Ask Questions of Industry Executives at NEA 2012

This morning at around 10:00 a.m. U.S. EDT, NEI's Chief Nuclear Officer, Tony Pietrangelo, will chair a panel session at the 2012 Nuclear Energy Assembly entitled, "Ensuring Operational Safety While Implementing Lessons Learned from Fukushima." Panelists for the session include:

• Charles G. Pardee, Chief Operating Officer, Exelon Generation Company, LLC 

• R. William Borchardt, Executive Director for Operations, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

• David Lochbaum, Director, Nuclear Safety Project, Union of Concerned Scientists 

As part of our effort to better leverage social media, we'll be taking questions for panel members from online audiences. You can submit your question either by sending an email to questions@nei.org or simply tweeting the question with the conference hashtag, #NEA2012. Here's hoping our readers can participate.

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Our Question for UCS: Why not charge your car with nuclear-generated electricity?

Yesterday the Union of Concerned Scientists published a new study about how using electric vehicles could help the U.S. cut fuel costs and reduce emissions. When auto companies begin manufacturing electric vehicles in larger numbers, the nation's 104 nuclear reactors (and counting) will be standing by to supply that zero emission electricity that UCS loves so much.

Unfortunately, the press team at UCS apparently forgot how to spell the word nuclear (I know you're shocked) when they put together their report. From the press release:

[T]o fully realize the benefits of EVs will require changing not just the kind of vehicles people drive, but also the power that drives them. Electric drive vehicles can be zero emission today, when powered by renewables like solar and wind. But it will take continued steps to ramp down coal and ramp up renewables so that every region can enjoy clean energy and the best benefits EVs have to offer.

Given that wind and solar only generated about 3% of U.S. electricity in 2011, we've got a long way to go before those two sources produce enough juice to contribute a significant portion of normal U.S. demand, never mind being able to provide electricity for millions of vehicles. Right now, when it comes to zero emissions electricity, nuclear is the only source of baseload power that's available.

The New York Times produced its own map as a companion to their story on the study. I've posted a portion of the map below. Take a good look the states of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.


According to the key, an electric vehicle driven in Montpelier, Concord, Boston or Hartford all clock in at an impressive 67 mpg. And in New York City, the figure is 74 mpg. Buffalo* clocks in at an amazing 86 mpg. What do these cities have in common? They're all on a regional electric grid that's served extensively by nuclear power plants.

In contrast, take a look at the figure for Hempstead, a town on Long Island just a few miles outside New York City. The figure there is a comparitively unimpressive 39 mpg. Why is that figure so low for a town that's only a short drive from New York City? It's because a good portion of New York City's electricity comes from Indian Point Energy Center, home to a pair of nuclear reactors. Meanwhile, the only nuclear reactor ever built on Long Island, Shoreham, was decommissioned in the 1980s before it could ever supply electricity to the grid.

The bottom line here: UCS neglecting to mention nuclear energy in the press materials for this report was one heck of an oversight. It's almost as if they didn't want anyone to know that nuclear energy was emission free. But don't forget, UCS says they aren't anti-nuclear, right?

*We should note that Buffalo gets lots of power from hydroelectric too.

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UCS Channels Goldilocks In Response to Fukushima

NEI's Senior Vice President of Communications, Scott Peterson, passed along the following note concerning last week's report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, "U.S. Nuclear Power Safety One Year After Fukushima."

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has weighed in on the U.S. response to Fukushima and their conclusion is clear: We’re moving too slowly….No, wait, we’re moving too fast!...Check that, too slow!

Taking a page from Goldilocks, who couldn’t seem to find the right size chair, UCS can’t seem to find the right speed for applying lessons learned in the aftermath of the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan a year ago.

After first praising the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for reacting quickly to the events in Japan, a new UCS report prods the agency to move faster. Then report declares that “speed is not always a virtue.” In the most remarkable twist of logic, UCS criticizes the nuclear energy industry for “acting too hastily by launching a voluntary program” to improve safety.

Really? Moving too quickly to improve safety?

At least the UCS report got something right. The industry is not waiting for orders from the NRC to act. Our FLEX strategy protects against the two main safety issues at Fukushima¬—the loss of electrical power and the loss of cooling capability—by stationing emergency backup equipment in multiple locations, including regional centers.

Every U.S. nuclear operator has committed to order additional equipment by the end of the month, and more than 300 pieces of backup emergency equipment has already been delivered or ordered. Rather than applauding these proactive safety measures, UCS complains that the industry is “jumping the gun” by getting ahead of the NRC.

The industry and the NRC are in general agreement on the issues that need to be addressed, but the regulatory process takes time. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the NRC fast-tracked the industry’s safety response by issuing a series of orders, with a deadline of October 2004.

After the industry met that deadline, the NRC began a rulemaking process to codify the orders and essentially get its procedural/bureaucratic house in order. Along the way, it added a few more requirements that weren’t finalized until close to the end of the decade. In that case, UCS distorts the facts to complain that the industry’s response was too slow.

Now that we are moving even more quickly to respond to Fukushima, UCS says we are going too fast. Does UCS seriously believe we should just sit and wait while the NRC process unfolds? We see ways to strengthen our defenses against extreme events now, and we are acting. To do otherwise would be an abrogation of our responsibility.

The NRC will oversee our safety enhancements, and will not hesitate tell us to do something more or something different—backed by the agency’s full enforcement authority—as the regulatory process plays out.

That approach might not satisfy Goldilocks or UCS, but we think it is juuuuust right to ensure that lessons learned from Japan are applied as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Scott also contributes on occasion to the Huffington Post.

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Leak at San Onofre Not Fault of Southern California Edison Says UCS

Overnight, we've seen a lot of breathless coverage about the steam generator leak that happened at San Onfre Generating Station on Tuesday, one that led to a story on the AP's national wire and another during the first segment of ABC's World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer on Wednesday evening.

What happened at San Onofre is a pretty typical operational event. If you don't believe us, feel free to ask David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Here's what he told one Southern California newspaper about the incident at San Onofre:

The "pinhole"-sized leak in a steam generator tube that caused a partial shutdown at the San Onofre nuclear plant Tuesday is something that is actually to be expected when a plant has new generators like San Onofre does, according to one expert.

San Onofre recently replaced its old generators.

Whenever generators are new or very old, leaks can occur, and engineers know to be alert for the problem, said David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Lochbaum said that as long as sensors detected the problem and the operators were prepared, "it's not the fault of [owner] Southern California Edison. It just happens" with new generators as they are being broken in.

If you want to know why our nation is having trouble devising a sound energy policy, you should know that the sensational coverage we've seen about San Onofre over the past 48 hours is a part of the reason.

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