Friday,
January 13, 2017
Why This Nuclear Engineer Says Every Nuke Plant in the US Should Be Shut Down Yesterday
"I’d
like to see every nuclear plant shut down yesterday.”
The good—the very good—energy news is that the
Indian Point nuclear power plants 26 miles north of New York City will be
closed in the next few years under an agreement reached between New York State
and the plants’ owner, Entergy.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has long been calling for the
plants to be shut down because, as the New York Times related
in its story on the pact, they pose “too great a risk to New York City.”
Environmental and safe-energy organizations have been highly active for decades
in working for the shutdown of the plants. Under the agreement, one Indian
Point plant will shut down by April 2020, the second by April 2021.
"If the general public would see these secret 'red'
reports, its view on nuclear power would turn strongly negative."They
would be among the many nuclear power plants in the U.S. which their owners
have in recent years decided to close or have announced will be shut down in a
few years.
This comes in the face of nuclear power plant accidents—most
recently and prominently the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan—and
competitive power being less expensive including renewable and safe solar and
wind energy.
Last year, the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant in Nebraska closed
following the shutdowns of Kewanee in Wisconsin, Vermont Yankee in Vermont,
Crystal River 3 in Florida and both San Onofre 2 and 3 in California. Nuclear
plant operators say they will close Palisades in Michigan next year; Oyster
Creek in New Jersey and Pilgrim in Massachusetts in 2019; and the closure of
California’s Diablo Canyon 1 in 2024 will be followed by Diablo Canyon 3 in
2025.
This will bring the number of nuclear plants down to a few more
than 90 — far cry from President Richard Nixon’s scheme to have 1,000
nuclear plants in the U.S. by the year 2000.
But the bad—the very bad—energy news is that there
are still many promoters in industry and government still pushing nuclear
power. Most importantly, the transition team of incoming President Donald Trump
has been “asking for ways to keep nuclear power alive,” as Bloomberg reported last month.
As I was reading last week the first reports on the Indian Point
agreement, I received a phone call from an engineer who has been in the nuclear
industry for more than 30 years with his view of the situation.
The engineer, employed at nuclear plants and for a major nuclear
plant manufacturer, wanted to relate that even with the Indian Point news—“and
I’d keep my fingers crossed that there is no disaster involving those aged Indian
Point plants in those next three or four years”—nuclear power remains a
“ticking time bomb.” Concerned about retaliation, he asked his name not be
published.
Here is some of the information he relayed – a story of
experiences of an engineer in the nuclear power industry for more than three
decades and his warnings and expectations.
The Secretive INPO Report System
Several months after the accident at the Three Mile Island
nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in March 1979, the nuclear industry set up the Institute
of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) based in Atlanta, Georgia. The idea was to
have a nuclear industry group that “would share information” on problems and
incidents at nuclear power plants, he said.
If there is a problem at one nuclear power plant, an INPO report
will communicate the incident other nuclear plant operators. Thus the various
plant operators could “cross-reference” happenings at other plants and
determine if they might apply to them.
The reports are “coded by color,” explained the engineer. Those
which are “green” involve an incident or condition that might or might not
indicate a wider problem. A “yellow” report is on an occurrence “that could
cause significant problems down the road.” A “red” report is the most serious
and represents “a problem that could have led to a core meltdown” and could be
present widely among nuclear plants and for which action needs to be taken
immediately.
The engineer said he has read more than 100 “Code Red” reports.
What they reflect, he said, is that “we’ve been very, very lucky so far.”
If the general public would see these secret “red” reports, its
view on nuclear power would turn strongly negative, said the engineer.
But this is prevented by INPO, “created and solely funded by the
nuclear industry,” thus its reports “are not covered by the U.S. Freedom of
Information Act and are regarded as highly secretive.” The reports should be
required to be made public, said the engineer. “It’s high time the country
wakes up to the dangers we undergo with nuclear power plants.”
The NRC Inspection Farce
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is supposed to be
the federal agency that is the watchdog over nuclear power plants and it
frequently boasts of how it has “two resident inspectors” at each nuclear power
plant in the nation, he noted.
However, explained the engineer, “the NRC inspectors are not
allowed to go into the plant on their own. They have to be escorted. There can
be no surprise inspections. Indeed, the only inspections that can be made are
those that come after the NRC inspectors “get permission from upper management
at the plant.”
The inspectors “have to contact upper management and say they
want to inspect an area. The word is then passed down from management that
inspectors are comingso ‘clean up’ whatever is the situation is.”
“The inspectors hands are tied,” said the engineer.
The 60- and Now 80-Year Operating Delusion
When nuclear power plants were first designed decades ago,
explained the engineer, the extent of their mechanical life was established at
40 years. The engineer is highly familiar with these calculations having worked
for a leading manufacturer of nuclear plants, General Electric.
The components in nuclear plants, particularly their steel
parts, “have an inherent working shelf life,” said the engineer.
In determining the 40-year total operating time, the engineer
said that calculated were elements that included the wear and tear of refueling
cycles, emergency shutdowns and the “nuclear embrittlement from radioactivity
that impacts on the nuclear reactor vessel itself including the head bolts and
other related piping, and what the entire system can handle. Further, the
reactor vessel is the one component in a nuclear plant that can never be
replaced because it becomes so hot with radioactivity. If a reactor vessel
cracks, there is no way of repairing it and any certainty of containment of
radioactivity is not guaranteed.”
Thus the U.S. government limited the operating licenses it
issued for all nuclear power plants to 40 years. However, in recent times the
NRC has “rubber-stamped license extensions” of an additional 20 years now to
more than 85 of the nuclear plants in the countrypermitting them to run for 60
years. Moreover, a push is now on, led by nuclear plant owners Exelon and
Dominion, to have the NRC grant license extensions of 20 additional yearsto
let nuclear plants run for 80 years.
Exelon, the owner of the largest number of nuclear plants in the
U.S., last year announced it would ask the NRC to extend
the operating licenses of its two Peach Bottom plants in Pennsylvania to 80
years. Dominion declared earlier that it would seek NRC approval to run its two
Surry nuclear power plants in Virginia for 80 years.
“That a nuclear plant can run for 60 years or 80 years is
wishful thinking,” said the engineer. “The industry has thrown out the window
all the data developed about the lifetime of a nuclear plant. It would ignore
the standards to benefit their wallets, for greed, with total disregard for the
country’s safety.”
The engineer went on that since “Day One” of nuclear power,
because of the danger of the technology, “they’ve been playing Russian roulette,
putting one bullet in the chamber and hoping that it would not fire. By going
to 60 years and now possibly to 80 years, “they’re putting all the
bullets in every chamber and taking out only one and pulling the trigger.”
Further, what the NRC has also been doing is not only letting
nuclear plants operate longer but “uprating” them allowing them to run “hotter
and harder” to generate more electricity and ostensibly more profit.
“Catastrophe is being invited,” said the
engineer.
The Carbon-Free Myth
A big argument of nuclear
promoters in a period of global warming and climate change is that “reactors
aren’t putting greenhouse gases out into the atmosphere,” noted the engineer.
But this “completely ignores” the “nuclear chain” the cycle of
the nuclear power process that begins with the mining of uranium and continues
with milling, enrichment and fabrication of nuclear fuel “and all of this is
carbon intensive.” There are the greenhouse gasses discharged during the
construction of the steel and formation of the concrete used in nuclear plants,
transportation that is required, and in the construction of the plants
themselves.
“It comes back to a net gain of zero,” said the engineer.
Meanwhile, “we have so many ways of generating electric power
that are far more truly carbon-free.”
The Bottom Line
“The bottom line,” said the engineer, “is that radioactivity is
the deadliest material which exists on the face of this planet and we have no
way of controlling it once it is out. With radioactivity, you can’t see it,
smell it, touch it or hear it and you can’t clean it up. There is nothing with
which we can suck up radiation.”
Once in the atmosphere having been emitted from a nuclear plant
through routine operation or in an accident “that radiation is out there
killing living tissue whether it be plant, animal or human life and causing
illness and death.”
What about the claim by the nuclear industry and promoters of
nuclear power within the federal government of a “new generation” of nuclear
power plants that would be safer? The only difference, said the engineer, is
that it might be a “different kind of gunbut it will have the same bullets:
radioactivity that kills.”
The engineer said “I’d like to see every nuclear plant shut down
yesterday.”
In announcing the agreement on the closing of Indian Point,
Governor Cuomo described it as a “ticking time bomb.” There are more of them.
Nuclear power overall remains, as the experienced engineer from the nuclear
industry said, a “ticking time bomb.”
And every nuclear power plant needs to be shut down.
This work
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Karl Grossman has been a professor of journalism at the State
University of New York/College at Old Westbury for 32 years. He is a specialist
in investigative reporting. He is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear
Power. He is the host of the nationally aired TV program, Enviro Close-Up.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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