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Fukushima Fallout: American Utilities Cannot Make The Claim That It Can't Happen Here
By Richard McCormack
richard @manufacturingnews.com
Globalization has impacted many American industries. One that looked like it was spared was the electric utility sector. But the unfolding meltdown of four nuclear reactors in Japan fundamentally changes the equation for the U.S. nuclear electric generating industry.
Unlike the RBMK ("reactor of large powerful channels") nuclear plant at Chernobyl, which did not have a containment structure (and had a positive void coefficient), the reactors emitting radiation in Japan are General Electric boiling water reactors. They are "made in America" and are operated by a utility in a first-world nation with strong nuclear expertise, like many in the United States.
The Japan event has put to rest the argument that a Chernobyl type of meltdown could not happen in America.
Two weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown on April 26, 1986, the United States Committee for Energy Awareness (USCEA), the public relations arm of the nuclear industry, produced a series of advertisements in an effort to distance the U.S. nuclear program from the USSR's. "We tried to make clear that there was a major difference between Russian plants and U.S. plants," USCEA leader Harold Finger told The Energy Daily shortly after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. Advertisements were placed in all major news magazines with a headline that read: "Why what happened at Chernobyl didn't happen at Three Mile Island."
Today, with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants having experienced explosions that were felt 70 kilometers away and emitting dangerous levels of radiation, the U.S. nuclear industry cannot make such a claim. Two of the Japanese reactors have been reduced to rubble and look a lot like Chernobyl. If it can happen in Japan, it can happen anywhere. The Japanese event represents another fundamental shift for the global nuclear power industry.
Even with no proof of outright failure of the containment structures, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission called for Americans in Japan to evacuate a 50-mile radius of the GE Fukushima reactors. This means that if a similar loss-of-station power and loss-of-coolant accident were to occur at the Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland, the U.S. government would be ordered to evacuate Washington, D.C. The White House, Congress and the Pentagon would all be abandoned. Calvert Cliffs (a Combustion Engineering pressurized water reactor which has been considered a reliable design) is 44 miles as the crow flies to the U. S. Capitol building.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko was asked at a press conference in the White House on March 17 why the United States was recommending a 50-mile evacuation zone. "We took the available information we had and we looked at how we would deal with a similar situation here in the United States and we made the recommendation about 50 miles," he said.
Seabrook is 40 miles north of Boston. The 50-mile radius around San Onofre extends all the way to downtown San Diego and includes three million people living in Orange County. The controversial Indian Point nuclear station is located 34 miles to the middle of Central Park. If a similar loss-of-coolant accident occurred at the facility, then all five New York City boroughs, including the entirety of Brooklyn to Rockaway Beach, most of Staten Island, most of northern New Jersey and the entire eastern third of Long Island would have to be evacuated. Imagine.
Yet if Indian Point were to close, how would New Yorkers react if they didn't have enough power for their air conditioners in July and August?
There lies the tradeoff.
In many ways Japan was "lucky." The prevailing winds are transporting most of the radiation out to the ocean. Had such an event occurred in Ohio, Indiana or Illinois, the prevailing winds would have taken the plume into places like Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia or Washington. Radiation from the Fukushima plant traveled 5,000 miles to Southern California.
Chernobyl was a wake-up call for the American nuclear industry. The topic that became paramount among utilities that had invested most heavily in nuclear generating capacity was making sure that the "weak sisters" - the electric utilities that had poor operational records - were reformed or removed from the business of operating nuclear reactors. Lists were drawn of the weakest operators. The industry immediately began to police itself, realizing that a catastrophic failure at one plant would bring down the entire U.S. nuclear industry and billions of dollars of investment. A major restructuring of ownership and management of the U.S. nuclear fleet was quickly undertaken and shortly thereafter completed.
All U.S. utilities operating nuclear plants "are in the same boat," said William Lee, CEO of Duke Power on May 9, 1986. "We are captive to the weakest member in that boat." The strongest nuclear operators were "in dialogue with the CEOs of the weakest companies," Lee said "We don't want that company in the boat unless it is a worthy member of the lifeboat crew and we're getting tough about it."
Unfortunately, the industry did not include in its assessment international nuclear utilities like Tokyo Electric Power Co. operating American-designed plants.
Not long after the nuclear industry identified its "weak sisters," the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) closed its Babcock & Wilcox reactor 25 miles from downtown Sacramento. Long Island Lighting Co. (LILCO), which was ready to start producing electricity at its new Shoreham nuclear station, was not granted a full power license from the NRC, due to the lack of a viable evacuation plan for the densely populated area around the plant on Long Island. The $4.6-billion Shoreham boiling water reactor designed by General Electric was decommissioned in 1994, having never produced a kilowatt-hour of electricity.
The U.S. industry had also learned from Three Mile Island, lessons it applied to the disaster at Chernobyl. The U.S. industry and government regulators could not be perceived as hiding anything from the public during a nuclear incident. Tokyo Electric Power Co. never learned such a lesson.
From the Fukushima disaster, there will be another transition period of learning and adapting in the global nuclear industry. Questions are going to be raised about all aspects of the industry's operations. Implementing more layers of safety systems will further undermine the economics of nuclear power generation. A new coal plant in the United States costs around $2,500 per installed kilowatt. Oil generators cost about $1,500 per kilowatt. A highly efficient natural gas electric generating facility can be built for as low as $800 per kilowatt. By contrast, the cost of a new nuclear unit is an order-of-magnitude higher: $8,000 per installed kilowatt. Will strapped American taxpayers continue to provide the industry with cash grants and limited liability?
Helicopters apprehensively and wishfully dumping water from high altitude over blown up reactors emitting radioactive nuclides is not a good public relations image. The massive industry with tens of thousands of well paid nuclear-trained engineers and scientists along with national laboratories that spend billions of dollars every year on all things nuclear has no capability of dealing with a serious accident. It is the second time in a year that a powerful, wealthy, profitable energy industry has been exposed for engineering fraud. British Petroleum and the entire global oil industry had no plans or available resources to deal with a worst-case scenario and it took months to close the blown out well in the Gulf of Mexico.
The inability of the nuclear industry to quickly react to a serious event anywhere in the world - with its trans-national implications - must now be addressed in order for there to be a nuclear "renaissance."
And it all feeds into the growing sense that profit for a few is taking precedence over the safety and economic security of many.
Today, hundreds of millions of people who lead quiet lives in peaceful neighborhoods wonder whether one day through no fault of their own they will be forced to evacuate or seal themselves with duct tape into their home. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese are moving out of the radiation zone some perhaps permanently. Japan does not have much arable land, and losing any to radiation poison could be a setback for a nation that must feed 127.5 million people located on a landmass the size of California.
The totalitarian Soviet Union deployed more than 500,000 members of the Red Army to get Chernobyl under control. Can a democratic nation find such volunteers?
The radioactive fallout from Japan is now lodged inside of the world's psyche. Such contamination has a long half-life.
-- Richard McCormack covered the nuclear power industry in 1986 and 1987 as a reporter on the staff of The Energy Daily.
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