,

below you will find the information for all the rest of my assignment, DO Not Count Assignment 2 because i have already done that,

 

i will attach the paper that i wrote for Assignment 2.

Please follow the directions

ASSIGNMENT TRACKING FOR DRAFT AND REVISED VERSIONS

 

Assignment

Week

Draft Version Due

Week Draft Version Returned to Student

Week

Revision Version Due

Assignment 1: Research Topics with Explanation
 

2
 

3

NA

Assignment 2: Research Proposal – Thesis, Major Points, and Plan
 

3

4

5
 

Assignment 3: Persuasive Paper Part I: A Problem Exists (with revised thesis)
 

5

6

7
 

Peer Review 1: Persuasive Paper Part 1: A Problem Exists

 

6

 

Assignment 4: Persuasive Paper Part 2: Solution and Advantages (with revised Part 1)
 =

7

8

9

Peer Review 2: Persuasive Paper Part 2: Solution and Advantages (with revised = Part 1)
 

 

8

 

Assignment 5: Persuasive Paper Part 3: Possible Disadvantages, Answers, with Visuals (with revised Parts= 1 & 2)
 

9

10

N/A

Peer Review 3: Persuasive Paper Part 3: Possible Disadvantages, Answers, with Visuals

 

10

10

Assignment 3: Persuasive Paper Part 1: A Problem Exists

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·
·
·
·
 

Assignment 3: Persuasive Paper Part 1: A Problem Exists

Due Week 5 and worth 100 points

 

Using your thesis statement and research, present the problem that needs to be addressed with your proposed solution. Note: Your solution, advantages, and challenges, will be in Parts 2 and 3.

 

Write a three to four (3-4) page paper in which you:

1. Provide an appropriate title and an interesting opening paragraph to appeal to your stated audience (appeal with logic, ethics, or emotion).

2. Include a defensible, relevant thesis statement in the first paragraph. (Revised from Assignment 2)

3. Describe the history and status of the issue and provide an overview of the problem(s) that need to be addressed. This should be one or two (1or 2) paragraphs.

4. Explain the first problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provide support for your claims. This should be one or two (1 or 2) paragraphs.

5. Explain the second problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.). and provide support for your claims. This should be one or two (1 or 2) paragraphs.

6. Explain the third problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provide support for your claims. This should be one or two (1 or 2) paragraphs.

7. Provide a concluding paragraph that summarizes the stated problems and promises a solution.

8. Develop a coherently structured paper with an introduction, body, and conclusion.

9. Use effective transitional words, phrases, and sentences throughout the paper.

10. Support claims with at least three (3) quality, relevant references. Use credible, academic sources available through Strayer University’s Resource Center.

Your assignment must follow these formatting guidelines:

· Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.

· Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.

Note: Submit your assignment to the designated plagiarism program so that you can make revisions before submitting your paper to your professor.

 

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

       Recognize the elements and correct use of a thesis statement.

       Recognize the use of summary, paraphrasing, and quotation to communicate the main points of a text.

       Analyze the rhetorical strategies of ethos, pathos, logos in writing samples and for incorporation into essays or presentations.

       Prepare a research project that supports an argument with structure and format appropriate to the genre.

       Recognize how to organize ideas with transitional words, phrases, and sentences.

       Incorporate relevant, properly documented sources to substantiate ideas.

       Write clearly and concisely about selected topics using proper writing mechanics.

       Use technology and information resources to research selected issues for this course.

 

Grading for this assignment will be based on answer quality, logic/organization of the paper, and language and writing skills, using the following rubric.

Points: 100

Assignment 3: Persuasive Paper Part 1: A Problem Exists

Criteria

 
Unacceptable

Below 60% F

Meets Minimum Expectations

60-69% D

 
Fair

70-79% C

 
Proficient

80-89% B

 
Exemplary

90-100% A

1. Provide an appropriate title and an interesting opening paragraph to appeal to your stated audience (appeal with logic, ethics, or emotion).
Weight: 10%

Did not submit or incompletely provided an appropriate title and an interesting opening paragraph to appeal to your stated audience.

Insufficiently provided an appropriate title and an interesting opening paragraph to appeal to your stated audience.

Partially provided an appropriate title and an interesting opening paragraph to appeal to your stated audience.

Satisfactorily provided an appropriate title and an interesting opening paragraph to appeal to your stated audience.

Thoroughly provided an appropriate title and an interesting opening paragraph to appeal to your stated audience.

2. Included a defensible, relevant thesis statement in the first paragraph. (Revised from Assignment 2)
Weight: 5%

Did not submit or incompletely included a defensible, relevant thesis statement in the first paragraph.

Insufficiently included a defensible, relevant thesis statement in the first paragraph.

 Partially included a defensible, relevant thesis statement in the first paragraph.

Satisfactorily included a defensible, relevant thesis statement in the first paragraph.

Thoroughly included a defensible, relevant thesis statement in the first paragraph.

3. Describe the history and status of the issue and provide an overview of the problem(s) that need to be addressed. (one or two (1 or 2) paragraphs)
Weight:15%

Did not submit or incompletely described the history and status of the issue and provided an overview of the problem(s) that need to be addressed.

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Satisfactorily described the history and status of the issue and provided an overview of the problem(s) that need to be addressed.

Thoroughly described the history and status of the issue and provided an overview of the problem(s) that need to be addressed.

4. Explain the first problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provide support for your claims. (one or two (1 or 2) paragraphs)
Weight:10%

Did not submit or incompletely explained the first problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

Insufficiently explained the first problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

Partially explained the first problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

Satisfactorily explained the first problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

Thoroughly explained the first problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

5. Explain the second problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provide support for your claims. (one or two (1 or 2) paragraphs)
Weight:10%

Did not submit or incompletely explained the second problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

Insufficiently explained the second problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

Partially explained the second problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

Satisfactorily explained the second problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

Thoroughly explained the second problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

6. Explain the third problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provide support for your claims. (one or two (1 or 2) paragraphs)
Weight:10%

Did not submit or incompletely explained the third problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

Insufficiently explained the third problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

Partially explained the third problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

Satisfactorily explained the third problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

Thoroughly explained the third problem (economic, social, political, environmental, complexity, inequity, ethical/moral, etc.) and provided support for your claims.

7. Provide a concluding paragraph that summarizes the stated problems and promises a solution.
Weight:10%

Did not submit or incompletely provided a concluding paragraph that summarizes the stated problems and promises a solution.

Insufficiently provided a concluding paragraph that summarizes the stated problems and promises a solution.

Partially provided a concluding paragraph that summarizes the stated problems and promises a solution.

Satisfactorily provided a concluding paragraph that summarizes the stated problems and promises a solution.

Thoroughly provided a concluding paragraph that summarizes the stated problems and promises a solution.

8. Develop a coherently structured paper with an introduction, body, and conclusion.
Weight: 10%

Did not submit or incompletely
developed a coherently structured paper with an introduction, body, and conclusion.

Insufficiently developed a coherently structured paper with an introduction, body, and conclusion.

Partially developed a coherently structured paper with an introduction, body, and conclusion.

Satisfactorily developed a coherently structured paper with an introduction, body, and conclusion.

Thoroughly developed a coherently structured paper with an introduction, body, and conclusion.

9. Use effective transitional words, phrases, and sentences.
Weight: 5%

Did not submit or incompletely used effective transitional words, phrases, and sentences.

Insufficiently used effective transitional words, phrases, and sentences.

Partially used effective transitional words, phrases, and sentences.

Satisfactorily used effective transitional words, phrases, and sentences.

Thoroughly used effective transitional words, phrases, and sentences.

10. Support claims with at least three (3) quality, relevant references.
Weight: 5%

No references provided

Does not meet the required number of references; all references poor quality choices.

Does not meet the required number of references; some references poor quality choices.

Meets number of required references; all references high quality choices.

Exceeds number of required references; all references high quality choices.

11. Clarity, writing mechanics, and formatting requirements
Weight: 10%

More than 8 errors present

7-8 errors present

5-6 errors present

3-4 errors present

0-2 errors present

A graceful exit? Decommissioning nuclear power reactors

Farber, Darryl; Weeks, Jennifer
Environment
07-01-2001

Jump to best part of document

A graceful exit? Decommissioning nuclear power reactors
Byline: Farber, Darryl; Weeks, Jennifer
Volume: 43
Number: 6
ISSN: 00139157
Publication Date: 07-01-2001
Page: 8
Type: Periodical
Language: English
Nuclear power reactors built in the 1960s and 1970s are coming of age around the world, and dozens are scheduled to end operations in the next several decades. Decommissioning-removing reactors from service and cleaning up the sites so that they can be released for other uses-is providing an increasing stream of business to the nuclear industry.1 Most countries that use nuclear power have decommissioned at least some small facilities, but the task is growing as larger reactors approach the end of their operating lives. As a result, policy issues associated with decommissioning are commanding increased attention.
Decommissioning involves removing spent fuel from reactors, dismantling components that have become activated (contain radioactive materials), decontaminating or removing components with surfaces that have become radioactive, disposing of wastes, and ensuring that the site has been cleaned up to required standards. Certain aspects of the process are highly controversial. For example, some stakeholders-particularly local activist and watchdog groups– do not believe that the nuclear industry or federal regulators are sufficiently committed to protecting the environment and public safety. The business environment for utilities that own nuclear reactors has changed with the ongoing transition in many states to competitive electricity markets, further complicating the decommissioning process.
This article outlines major policy issues involved in decommissioning and recommends ways to improve the process, focusing primarily on the country with the largest nuclear power industry-the United States. (The box on this page offers information on decommissioning in other countries.) Like other environmental cleanup issues, decommissioning requires citizens to judge risks that are often expressed in highly technical terms and over which even experts disagree. Therefore, the roles of risk communication and public participation in the decommissioning process warrant special attention.
Decommissioning in the United States
About 20 percent of U.S. electricity is generated by nuclear power. By the year 2033, all 103 reactors currently operating in the United States will have reached the end of their original 40-year license periods, and owners must either apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for 20-year license extensions or decommission the reactors (see Table 1 on pages 12-13 for a listing of license expiration dates for U.S. reactors).2 Their choices will be affected by questions such as whether plants need expensive upgrades to continue operating and whether they can provide power at competitive rates in a restructured energy market.3
A number of reactors have already shut down, some well before the end of their licensed operating lives. By and large, the plants that shut down in the 1990s before their licenses had ended did so because they needed expensive capital upgrades (typically, new steam generators), and the owners judged that they would not recover the costs of these upgrades over the plants’ remaining lives. As of May 2000, 3 NRC-licensed reactors had been fully decommissioned and 18 others were in various stages of decommissioning (see Table 2 on page 14). Major decommissioning work cannot be carried out until the spent fuel has cooled in on-site ponds for 5 to 7 years, but reactors must be fully decommissioned within 60 years after ceasing operations. Owners have three basic options:4
DECON or decontamination is an alternate uses as quickly as possible. Equipment, structures, and portions of the facility that contain radioactive contaminants are removed and dismantled. NRC estimates that DECON activities will take about nine years at large lightwater reactors.5 The amount of time involved is affected by factors such as the length of the reactor’s operation. Reactors that have operated for decades require extensive planning and analysis before decontamination can begin.
SAFSTOR or safe storage is an approach that takes advantage of the fact that most hazardous radioactive byproducts from reactor operation decay relatively quickly. (Cobalt-60, a major short-term radioactive byproduct from reactor operation, has a half-life of just over five years.) Spent fuel is removed from the reactor vessel and radioactive liquids, such as water from the cooling system, are drained. After a wait-period that could be as long as several decades, facilities are decontaminated and dismantled.
ENTOMB or entombment involves partial dismantling of the reactor, encasing the remaining radioactive structures in a long-lived material such as concrete, and monitoring the site until the radioactivity decays to levels that permit license termination. Most large power reactor sites would probably still produce too much radiation to permit unrestricted use even after 100 years and thus are not well suited for entombment, but NRC is re-examining this option, which is less expensive than dismantlement and disposal.6
Some owners are combining DECON and SAFSTOR by performing limited dismantlement and then putting the facility in storage for several years before completing dismantlement. In the case of some multi-reactor sites where one unit is shut down, owners have chosen SAFSTOR for the closed unit with the intention of simultaneously decommissioning the entire site when all of the reactors go out of service.
Decommissioning produces several types of radioactive wastes and emissions. NRC estimates that decommissioning a typical power reactor will produce minor releases of airborne radioactive dusts and particles, which are largely caught by filters in containment buildings. The process also produces radioactive liquid effluents, most of which are decontaminated through filtration and ion exchange methods used during reactor operations. The solids filtered out of liquid radioactive wastes are disposed of at low-level waste sites, as long as they meet federal low-level waste criteria. The main exception is water contaminated with tritium, which is normally discharged at controlled rates to surface water bodies.7 Decommissioning also produces three categories of solid radioactive waste.
Low-level waste (LLW) includes contaminated clothing, sludges, equipment, piping, and concrete. LLW constitutes 99 percent by volume, but less than 0.1 percent by radioactivity, of all commercial nuclear waste.’
Mixed low-level waste (MLLW) comprises blends of radioactive and hazardous substances, such as metallic lead shielding. It accounts for only a few percent of LLW.
High-level waste (HLW) consists of irradiated spent nuclear fuel. Because it is highly radioactive and poses serious public and worker health risks, spent fuel must be shielded to contain its radioactivity and so that the heat generated by radioactive decay can be dispersed slowly in a controlled manner.
NRC estimates that decommissioning a large power reactor will generate more than 18,000 cubic meters of LLW.9 Most LLW is buried in shallow trenches at licensed sites in Washington, Utah, and South Carolina. MLLW is generally stored on site. (Commercial reactors typically generate only about two 55gallon drums per year.) There is a shortage of capacity for some types of MLLW, although firms in Utah, Tennessee, Florida, and Texas accept and treat various types of MLLW.11 The Department of Energy (DOE) signed contracts in the 1980s to accept commercial spent fuel for disposition in a geologic repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada, starting in January 1998 but is far behind schedule and currently expects to start accepting fuel no sooner than 2010.
Risks in Decommissioning
Nuclear power regulation in the United States is shifting away from a philosophy that one recent analysis characterizes as “conservative . . . deterministic and prescriptive,” to a risk-based approach that seeks to make the regulatory process more efficient while still protecting public safety.11 NRC is moving to a risk-informed, performance-based regulatory strategy, oriented by a “risk triplet” of three basic questions:
What can go wrong?
How likely is it to occur?
What are the consequences?12
These questions are systematically analyzed through probabilistic risk assessment methods, such as event tree and fault tree analysis.13 The basic idea is to identify events that may cause engineering systems to fail and to characterize neering systems to fail and to characterize how radioactive material may be released into the environment, potentially harming workers or the public through inhalation, ingestion, or external exposure. Releases of radioactive material from decommissioning activities are monitored to ensure they meet NRC criteria. Current decommissioning regulations do not require licensees to use probabilistic risk assessment if activities are within the scope of the reactor’s license. However, if licensees seek changes that require license amendments and go beyond technical reviews that NRC has performed, then a licensee may be asked to submit a probabilistic risk assessment for review.14 NRC has used probabilistic risk assessment to identify risks from decommissioning, particularly hazards associated with spent fuel pool accidents as described below.
In general, decommissioning a power reactor poses substantially less health risk to the general public and to plant workers than an operating reactor. However, a release of radiation from an accident in the reactor’s spent fuel pool system could present a serious threat to public safety.15 The most dangerous scenario would arise if the spent fuel pool cooling system malfunctions or coolant leaks out and the zirconium in the fuel rods is exposed to air. Were this chain of events to occur, the rods could spontaneously catch fire and release radioactive material into the atmosphere. Currently, at most defueled reactors, portable, skid-mounted pumps and heat exchangers cool the pools. At operating reactors, additional safety measures, such as physical separation, barrier protection, and emergency on-site power sources provide further protection against cooling system malfunction.16 Analytical modeling has shown that if the cooling system fails at reactors that have ceased operations, a minimum of 100 hours would have to pass before the older, decayed, spent fuel would generate sufficient heat to boil off enough coolant to uncover the fuel rods and start a zirconium fire.17 For this reason, safety measures are relaxed at such sites. Because many measures, such as refilling the pool, may be taken in the time between system failure and rod exposure, the redundant safety measures required for operating reactors may not be necessary during decommissioning.
Table not reproduced: Table 1.
Plant workers may be accidentally exposed to radiation while performing decommissioning tasks. For example, at the Maine Yankee reactor, previously used shipping containers were moved on 29 September 2000 from the nuclear side of the plant to the non-nuclear side, where workers received a dose of I millirem (mrem), (NRC’s annual dose limit for the general public is 25 mrem.) which is considered to be a very low radiation dose. I Additionally, the general public may receive a very small dose simply by standing next to a transport vehicle when low-level radioactive waste (LLW) is moved for off-site disposal. NRC estimates that a person standing six feet from a transport vehicle for one hour would receive a dose of 10 mrem.19 There is greater risk if a transport vehicle is involved in a major accident. To reduce this risk, LLW is shipped in specially designed casks and is transported in solid form so that contamination from a transportation accident would be unlikely to spread beyond a small area.20
Decommissioning has smaller potential health and safety impacts than extending the license of an operating plant. This does not imply, however, that decommissioning is automatically preferable to life extension. In fact, NRC has made a generic finding that the environmental impacts of renewing a license and the concomitant risks are not expected to exceed its health and safety regulations.21 License extension decisions involve many factors, such as the replacement cost and the environmental impact of the substitute power, such as sulfur, nitrogen, and carbon emissions from fossil fuel plants, as well as the economic impact to the local community through job losses and decreased tax revenues after plant closure.22
Current Issues
As reactors age and the U.S. electric industry moves from regulated monopers are raising questions about decommissioning. Key questions include: Who should pay for decommissioning? How should the resulting waste be managed? And does the regulatory process adequately mitigate risks and give meaningful roles to stakeholders (e.g., local communities, state and local governments, workers at the reactor, the utilities that own the reactors, and contractors who perform much of the decommissioning work)?
Table not reproduced: Table 2.
Who Pays?
Decommissioning costs vary from site to site but average roughly $300 million to $500 million for large commercial power reactors (mainly for labor, energy, and radioactive waste management). NRC requires licensees to set aside or provide surety for decommissioning costs, which are estimated according to an annually adjusted formula.23 Currently, the minimum amount required to assure decommissioning is $290 million for pressurized-water reactors (PWRs) and $370 million for boiling-water reactors (BWRs) (in 1999 dollars). These figures do not include non-radioactive cleanup or storing spent fuel on site, even though both issues represent significant additional costs for licensees.25
Nearly all operating utilities earmark a portion of their revenues for decommissioning and deposit the money in dedicated trust funds. In 1999, the General Accounting Office (GAO) reported that under likely assumptions, nearly half of U.S. nuclear power reactor owners (36 out of 76 licensees) had not accumulated sufficient decommissioning funds through the end of 1997, although all but 15 had since increased their savings rate to make up these shortfalls.16 GAO implied that these shortfalls were due to major uncertainties in the decommissioning process, which are described below. Because licensees typically build up funds for decommissioning by investing a share of their profits over the life of reactors, restructuring the electric utility industry in many states-which has required utilities that once earned guaranteed rates of return to compete in the marketplace-raises additional concerns about paying for decommissioning. To date, most states that have restructured their electric utility industries have allowed nuclear plant owners to recover decommissioning costs through a “nonbypassable wires charge,” a mandatory fee paid by all consumers regardless of whether their source of electricity is nuclear power.27
Reactors that shut down well before the end of their licensed operating lives may not accumulate all of the funds needed for decommissioning. In such cases, if utilities seek to keep collecting decommissioning funds from ratepayers, they must gain approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and/or state public utility commissions, which may resist burdening consumers with the entire cost. For example, public utility companies in Maine and Connecticut required the owners of the Connecticut Yankee and Maine Yankee reactors, which closed in 1996 and 1997, respectively, to reach settlements in which ratepayers and shareholders would share decommissioning costs.28
Dealing with Radioactive Waste
Nuclear waste disposition raises major uncertainties for reactor decommissioning. Because no geologic repository for high-level waste is available, licensees are storing spent fuel at reactors in pools or dry casks.29 This may hinder release of decommissioned sites because storage facilities must be kept secure until DOE accepts the spent fuel (although other portions of the sites may be released).’ DOE is expected to start accepting fuel at Yucca Mountain no sooner (and probably later) than 2010. The opening of the Yucca Mountain facility has been delayed by many factors, notably the complex geology at the site. As of mid2000, 15 nuclear plants had built on-site dry cask storage facilities for spent fuel.31
Disposing of low-level waste (LLW) could pose a problem in coming decades. LLW disposal became the responsibility of the states after the passage of the Low-level Radioactive Waste Policy Act in 1980 (amended in 1985), which was designed to increase LLW capacity and to distribute the burden equitably among the states. Although states have spent nearly $600 million since 1980 on efforts to develop LLW disposal facilities, none have been licensed, due mainly to public and political resistance. Depending on how many reactors cease operation in the next several decades and how many licensees opt for rapid decommissioning, a shortage of LLW disposal space could occur. Possible remedies to this shortfall include opening the disposal market to private competition or requiring DOE to accept LLW at federal sites, but both of these options would have to overcome the unwillingness of states to host disposal sites.32
Low-Level Radiation Risks
Controversy over the health effects of low-level radiation has spurred debate over “how clean is clean” in decommissioning. NRC requires licensees to clean up sites so that the maximum total effective dose equivalent will not exceed 25 mrem per year from all pathways and to reduce doses to as low as reasonably achievable below that threshold.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is authorized under the Atomic Energy Act to set general standards for protecting the public from radiation hazards but not to implement or enforce them, supports an all-pathway limit of 15 mrem per year, plus an additional limit of 4 mrem per year for ground water. EPA has indicated that it may view NRC’s standards as inadequate and may seek to enforce tighter limits through its authority to regulate cleanups at Superfund sites.34
The nuclear industry supports the less stringent standard, arguing that some owners of nuclear plants may be subject to both NRC and EPA standards and that this potential dual regulation is redundant and inefficient. Conversely, many environmentalists argue that the primary goal in an area of scientific uncertainty should be protecting human health rather than minimizing cleanup costs.35 Even so, the cost of requiring licensees to comply with the higher standards could be substantial: NRC estimates that cleaning up ground water at a generic nuclear site from a baseline of 25 mrem per year to 3 mrem per year could cost up to $7 million.36 Nonetheless, in response to stakeholder concerns, several licensees have pledged to meet more stringent standards than those required by NRC.37
The risks associated with recycling slightly radioactive materials (including metals, concrete, and soils) from decommissioned facilities into other uses have sparked a debate. NRC has struggled for more than a decade to define a threshold level of radioactivity in waste streams below which materials need not be regulated and in the interim has approved release requests on a case-by-case basis.38 The controversy intensified in the mid1990s when DOE awarded cleanup contracts at nuclear weapons facilities that included plans to recycle large quantities of slightly radioactive metal.39 Labor and environmental groups objected that NRC and EPA had not been able to agree on national recycling standards and argued that there is no safe level of exposure to ionizing radiation.40
In mid-2000, then Energy Secretary Bill Richardson suspended radioactive recycling at DOE facilities, and NRC requested guidance from the National Academy of Sciences on how to regulate recycling of radioactive materials. No formal NRC action on the issue is expected until mid-2001, at the earliest. The issue is also contested in Europe: The European Union issued a radiation protection directive in 1996 that allows members to adopt their own standards for releasing slightly radioactive materials, but there is little agreement among member states on what levels and procedures should be considered safe.” U.S. and European metal industries that could receive recycled materials from nuclear facilities have opposed the general concept of radioactive metal recycling for fear of public resistance.
NRC Oversight of Decommissioning
Current U.S. decommissioning rules divide the process into three stages: initial activities, major decommissioning activities/preparation for storage or dismantlement, and activities to terminate the license.42 Specific fractions of decommissioning funds may be expended at each stage.
After deciding to end operations, a licensee must certify in writing to NRC within 30 days that the reactor is permanently shut down. Within two years of permanent shutdown, the licensee must submit a post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR) to NRC and appropriate state officials. The PSDAR describes decommissioning activities and provides schedule milestones and a general cost estimate. It also evaluates site-specific environmental impacts and determines whether these impacts were reviewed in NRC’s 1988 generic environmental impact statement on decommissioning or in the site-specific environmental impact statement issued when the reactor was originally licensed.43 The PSDAR demonstrates that the expected environmental impacts from decommissioning, such as radioactive releases to air or water, fall within the ranges projected in these documents; if not, the licensee must request a license amendment for the proposed activities and address these impacts.44
As part of the first stage, licensees must also update the final safety analysis report (FSAR), which describes the reactor, its design basis, and its safety systems.45 An updated FSAR explains how structures, systems, and compovents will be affected during decommissioning and provides the basis for the licensee to perform activities that do not require a license amendment.46 The PSDAR is a relatively sketchy outline of decommissioning activities, but the FSAR for decommissioning is a detailed description of the plant and its operations and the structures, systems, and components that affect safety-all in reference to the plant’s initial design. The FSAR for decommissioning may be several hundred pages and may include updates as decommissioning progresses.47
The second stage of decommissioning involves either removing and dismantling components (DECON) or preparing the reactor for safe storage (SAFSTOR). Licensees may perform major decommissioning activities 90 days after the PSDAR is submitted and 30 days after NRC holds a public meeting in the vicinity of the reactor. Major activities include permanently removing major radioactive components, such as the reactor vessel and steam generators, and altering the structure of the containment vessel (cutting it into pieces). Decommissioning techniques include cutting metals and concrete, using abrasive blasting to remove surface contamination, dismantling highly radioactive components (sometimes using remote equipment), and ultimately, demolishing the buildings.” These activities can affect soil conditions, ground water, plant and wildlife habitats, and wetlands at the site (see the box on page 16).
The third stage begins two years before the licensee is ready to terminate the license. At this point the licensee submits a license termination plan, which must include:
a site characterization,
a list of remaining dismantlement activities,
plans for site remediation,
detailed plans for the final radiation survey,
a description of the end-use of the site, if restricted,
an updated site-specific cost estimate,49 and
a supplement to the environmental report describing any new information or significant environmental change associated with the licensee’s termination activities.
If the licensee proposes restricted use of the site, it must show that it has discussed this decision with the local community.50 This final stage is a licensing action, so the public is entitled to petition NRC for a formal adjudicatory hearing.
Stakeholder Concerns
In general, decommissioning thus far has generated less public controversy than siting reactors or managing nuclear waste. There are many possible explanalions for this relative lack of concern: The decommissioning mission is relatively new, and therefore many projects are in their early stages. Furthermore, decommissioning is about the removal of nuclear technology, rather than its introduction. As nuclear safety engineer David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists observes, “Even those with safety concerns about the pathway see that outcome as lowering their risk.”51
In some cases, however, choices about how to decommission have drawn significant local criticism. One central question is whether stakeholders are able to evaluate the environmental and public health impacts of proposed decommissioning actions critically and independently. Critics contend that the regulatory process does not provide early opportunities to understand precisely how decommissioning activities will proceed and that it does not allow citizens ample time to intervene if they believe the plan poses a threat to public health or the environment.
Citizens, environmental groups, and state regulators have raised specific questions about issues such as emergency planning (especially for spent fuel pool accidents), the roles of federal and state regulatory agencies, and the adequacy of licensees’ radiation site survey methods.52 Some licensees have created citizen advisory panels to improve public participation in decommissioning, but these bodies are not mandated by NRC regulations and are convened at the discretion of the licensee. At a hearing on the Maine Yankee plant, one citizen remarked that the process “relies on a reporting system, basically a system of trust.”53
In contrast, prior to 1996, licensees were required to submit a decommissioning plan and were not permitted to carry out any major decommissioning activities until NRC reviewed the plan, assessed site-specific environmental impacts, and amended the reactor license. This process also offered an opportunity for state review.54 Currently, the post– shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR) effectively substitutes for a decommissioning plan in reactor decommissioning, and because the process does not involve a license amendment, the public cannot request a formal hearing with the right to conduct discovery and cross-examine witnesses. Citizens living nearby closed reactors complain that PSDARs contain few details about environmental impacts of decommissioning and assert that sitespecific analyses should be required.55
The first major controversy over NRC oversight of decommissioning occurred in 1993 under the system requiring decommissioning plans, when NRC allowed Yankee Atomic Energy Co. to conduct an “early component removal project,” which involved removing and dismantling major components accounting for 90 percent of the nonfuel residual radioactivity on site, before submitting a decommissioning plan for its Yankee Rowe plant in Massachusetts.56 Citizens Awareness Network (CAN), a local watchdog group, went to court after requesting hearings on the component removal plan. In CAN v. NRC, the First Circuit ruled that NRC’s action was arbitrary and capricious because it had not explained the shift in policy. The court argued that allowing Yankee Atomic to complete 90 percent of decommissioning prior to assessing environmental impacts amounted to a skirting of the National Environmental Policy Act.57
In 1996, NRC published its current decommissioning rule, establishing the PSDAR requirement in lieu of a decommissioning plan. NRC reasoned that major decommissioning activities were not sufficiently different from activities conducted during normal reactor operations to require a license amendment, as long as those activities did not prevent the site from being released from its license for some future use, result in significant environmental impacts that had not been previously documented in relevant environmental reviews, or threaten the availability of adequate decommissioning funds.58 By providing the reasoning underlying this new policy and offering opportunities for public review and comment on the new rule, NRC held that it had addressed the issues raised in CAN v. NRC.59 Critics assert, however, that the current regulatory process does not provide stakeholders enough information to conclude whether the planned decommissioning is indeed safe. For example, in 1997, Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company submitted a PSDAR for its Maine Yankee plant. The 12-page report contained a mere four paragraphs on radiation doses to workers and the public, low-level waste burial volumes, and radioactive effluent controls.60 Several years of debate followed as the power company sought approval for a controversial concept called “rubblization,” which would have allowed it to bury concrete contaminated wit
h low levels of radiation in the basement of the plant under a soil and clay cap. Opponents, including EPA, argued that this process amounted to creating an unlicensed low-level waste site. Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company also sought to prevent Maine state regulators from performing their own radiation soil surveys at the site. To the power company’s credit, it recognized the importance of listening to stakeholders and is revising its license termination plan: The company has abandoned the “rubblization” option and will clean up the site to radiation levels below federal requirements.61 It is not surprising that at a press conference in September 2000 company president Mike Meisner said, “The hard part [of decommissioning] is dealing with a range of stakeholders.”62
Observations and Recommendations
Although U.S. nuclear regulators are seeking to streamline the current system and make it less cumbersome, there is room for greater transparency and better communication about decommissioning activities-especially given its connections to other complex policy debates such as nuclear waste management and electric utility deregulation. European regulations are stronger on this point: The European Commission passed a directive in 1997 instructing member states to require site-specific environmental impact assessments for nuclear decommissioning projects and is putting specific emphasis on public information as part of its effort to develop a code of conduct for European decommissioning.63
Closing “knowledge gaps” that may undermine public confidence would be a key step in this direction. For example, after NRC holds a public meeting on a licensee’s post-shutdown decommissioning activities report, it releases a meeting transcript but does not issue any formal institutional response to concerns raised at the meeting. This shortcoming allows stakeholders no means to determine whether and how their concerns will be addressed during decommissioning. NRC should follow the example of other agencies by preparing a summary of the issues raised and an explanation of its regulatory response and by making these items available on-line. DOE has done this for several controversial issues, including environmental impact statements associated with nuclear weapons production facilities and several reports on management and disposition of excess plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons.
Another trust gap could be closed by verifying the accuracy of the information in the updated final safety analysis report (FSAR) for decommissioning. Under current regulations, licensees must follow NRC guidance in updating FSARs, but NRC does not systematically and critically review updated FSARs.64 NRC should perform some type of risk– informed, documented safety review of the updated FSAR, focusing on how decommissioning activities may affect the likelihood of accidents. NRC should make its analysis publicly available so that stakeholders can see for themselves how the updated FSAR addresses unresolved issues raised in connection with the post-shutdown decommissioning activities report, as well as issues affecting the risk of accidents.
As decommissioning progresses nationwide, NRC should provide more comprehensive reports on the mission– including lessons learned from completed projects-through an annual report or an Internet home page with space for public comments. Several states have created useful web pages to inform the public about local decommissioning projects, but only NRC is in a position to draw this information together and summarize what has been accomplished and what remains to be done.65
The Yankee Rowe and Maine Yankee examples have several common factors that may have contributed to tensions over decommissioning. Both reactors shut down before the end of their licensed operating lives after controversies about whether they were operating safely, leading some stakeholders to question the owners’ competence to manage nuclear risks.66 After closure, as discussed above, both sites pursued controversial approaches to decommissioning (early component removal at Yankee Rowe and rubblization at Maine Yankee) that intensified local safety fears and perceptions that the companies were seeking to decommission in the most expedient, rather than the safest, way. These issues may not arise at other sites, but they suggest that reactor owners with similar trust handicaps should pay particular attention to stakeholder concerns.
Conversely, experiences at other sites, such as Oregon’s Trojan reactor, suggest that decommissioning can proceed smoothly under the right circumstances. One factor that contributed to success at Trojan was thorough involvement of state regulators, who sought public comment independently of NRC on several controversial issues, such as the transport of large radioactive components by barge up the Columbia River for disposal in Washington State.67
As other analysts have observed, decommissioning received little attention during nuclear power’s worldwide expansion in the 1970s and 1980s. This is evidenced not only by the relative lack of emphasis on design for decommissioning in currently operating reactors but also by patchy and incomplete regulatory structures in key nuclear countries.68 Nuclear advocates contend that nuclear power is an appropriate response to climate change, but if decommissioning is not executed systematically and competently over the next several decades, it will likely erode public support for additional investments in nuclear power. Permanently contaminated sites will provide a visible counterweight to optimistic projections about the future performance of new advanced reactors, and failure of regulators to seriously address concerns over issues such as the health impact of lowlevel radiation will increase public mistrust of nuclear technologies. In sum, the administrative challenges posed by decommissioning civilian nuclear reactors are at least as hard as the technical mission. Though the nuclear industry has obvious incentives to push for a more efficient decommissioning process, the future of nuclear energy may depend on how much care is exercised during this end-stage for nuclear reactors.
SIDEBAR
Reactor Decommissioning Worldwide
Downs of nuclear reactors have been shut down or are expected to close soon in Europe, Canada,
the former Soviet republics, and Japan. The great majority of near-term-decommissioning work will take place in Europe: France, Germany, and Britain each are currently decommissioning 20 or more reactors, while nations using less nuclear power, such as Italy, Belgium, Spain, and Sweden, are decommissioning one or more reactors.
The European Commission (EC) is working to harmonize national decommissioning policies, which vary widely on key questions such as how long sites will be put in safe storage to allow radiation to decay (from a maximum of 30 years in Finland to 135 years in Britain). Waste management poses a serious challenge: The EC estimates that by 2060, decommissioning will produce more than 2 million metric tons of metallic waste and concrete, but many member states currently have limited storage and disposal options at best.1
The ongoing international effort to close unsafe Soviet-designed reactors in central and eastern Europe has important decommissioning implications. The European Community has made closure of these reactors a condition for membership and has pledged financial support for decommissioning eight reactors in Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia that are expected to be closed by 2008. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is collecting international contributions for these projects and supports pre
decommissioning work at Ukraine’s Chernobyl plant.
Four nuclear power plants have shut down in Russia, and another ten units may close in the coming decade, although Russian officials are considering life-extensions. Russia does not have adequate funding, a regulatory framework, or defined waste management and disposal plans for reactor decommissioning.2
Because most Asian reactors are not as far into their licensed operating lives, decommissioning there is a less urgent issue-although it will become a concern as reactors age in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, all of which derive major shares of their electricity from nuclear power. However, none of these countries currently has a viable plan for long-term management of radioactive waste, so decommissioning may loom larger in coming decades. In September 2000, Taiwanese Economics Minister Lin Hsin-Yi sparked controversy by arguing that Taiwan should scrap their partially constructed fourth nuclear power plant and phase out nuclear power by 2025 because it lacked a way to safely dispose of nuclear waste.
1. P. Vankerckhoven, “European Regulatory and Policy Strategy Aspects on Nuclear Decommissioning,” European Commission DGXI/C3, accessed via http://www.sckcen.be.eccdecmmissioning on 7 December 2000.
2. Review of Existing and Future Requirements for Decommissioning Nuclear Facilities in the CIS, prepared for the European Commission, Directorate General XI (January 1999), accessed via http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/nuclear/ reports.htm on 21 December 2000.
Reducing the Impact of Decommissioning
Environmental impacts of decommissioning may be reduced through techniques including:
decontamination procedures that minimize generation of radioactive residues (for example, scraping or sand-blasting may produce less residue than using a liquid wash);
segregation of radioactive waste and decontamination residues from nonradioactive waste;
minimization of potential releases during transportation of radioactive waste (for example, by avoiding urban areas);
use of controls and procedures during demolition to minimize contamination of tools and equipment, during spills and potential introduction of pollutants to ground water, and during generation of particulates and dust emissions; and
limited access to radiation control areas.
1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Federal Activities, “Pollution Prevention/Environmental Impact Reduction Checklist for Nuclear Decommissioning” (January 1995).
Illustrations/Photos: The reactor at the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant in Arizona (upper right), is one of 103 licensed nuclear reactors in the United States. Each plant owner eventually needs to decide either to decommisiion their reactor(s) or apply for license extensions. Decommissioning reactors is a long, costly process requiring the removal of spent fuel and contaminated material and the dismantling of large components, like this turbine at the Connecticut Yankee Nuclear Power Plant (above).
Removing spent fuel from the reactor is a crucial step in the decommissioning process
By seeking public comment on controversial issues during the decommissioning of Oregon’s Trojan reactor (scheduled for completion in 2003), state regulators avoided the public relations problems that have delayed the process in other cases.
Decommissioning involves the removal of large contaminated components from the reactor and the transfer of these components to appropriate waste storage facilities.
After fuel has been removed from a reactor, the internal surface remains radioactive. Under the SAFSTOR option, reactors are left on site for as long as several decades to allow the radioactivity to decay before being dismantled.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) signed contracts in the 1980s to accept spent fuel for geological disposition at Yucca Mountain in 1998. But, due to complexities in the geology of the site, DOE is far behind schedule and currently expects to start accepting spent fuel no sooner than 2010.
Footnotes:
NOTES:
1. N. Fell, “Decommissioning: A Rapidly Maturing Market:’ Nuclear Engineering International, 30 November 1999, 18.
2. NRC approved its first license extensions in 2000 for two plants in Maryland and South Carolina. Another five reactors located in Arkansas, Georgia, and Florida have filed for extensions, with up to 28 more expected to follow suit by 2004. (Nuclear Energy Institute, “License Renewal,” accessed via http://www.nei.org on 27 October 2000.)
3. The nuclear industry is in the midst of a major consolidation phase (driven by restructuring of the electric utility industry) in which many companies that owned one or a few reactors are selling them, but several large utilities that view nuclear power as a profitable business are investing heavily and merging. One of the largest owners is Exelon Nuclear, which was recently formed with the merger of PECO Energy, Commonwealth Edison, and AmerGen’s nuclear fleets; the company operates 17 reactors in the midwest and mid-Atlantic regions. Overall, the nuclear industry is performing better now than it was five or ten years ago: Plants are operating at higher capacity factors (i.e., are running more of the time) and a number of the worst run plants have closed down.
4. For a discussion on the benefits and costs of each alternative, see NRC, Staff Responses to Frequently Asked Questions Concerning Decommissioning of Nuclear Power Reactors, NUREG-1628 (Washington, D.C., June 2000), sections 2-6 to 2-13.
5. NRC, Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of Nuclear Power Plants, NUREG-1437, Volume I (Washington, D.C., 1996), section 7.2.2.1. Smaller reactors at Shippingport, Pennsylvania (72 megawatts), and Fort St. Vrain, Colorado, (330 megawatts) were decommissioned in less than four years, but neither reactor was heavily contaminated, and the Shippingport reactor pressure vessel was small enough to remove in one piece. The Shoreham, New York, plant (849 megawatts) was decommissioned in less than two years, but the plant was not heavily contaminated because it had operated only for the equivalent of two full-power days before it was closed in response to political opposition. Light-water reactors use ordinary water to moderate and cool the fission process; they are the dominant reactor design worldwide.
6. “The NRC Staff Hopes to Send a Rulemaking Plan on the Entombment of Shutdown Nuclear Power Plants,” Inside NRC, 23 October 2000, 4.
7. NRC, Generic EIS for License Renewal (Washington, D.C., 1996), sections 7.2.5.1-2; and NRC, note 4 above, pages 45-7.
8. Class A LLW, the least dangerous level, represents about 97 percent of commercial LLW and is hazardous for about 100 years. Of the balance, classes B and C are hazardous for about 300-500 years, and greater-than-class-C (GTCC) LLW is harmful for up to several thousand years. GTCC waste must be disposed of by the federal government in a geologic repository. (U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), Aging Nuclear Power Plants: Managing Plant Life and Decommissioning, OTA-E-575 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993), 108-13.)
9. NRC’s estimates are 18,340 cubic meters of LLW for pressurized-water reactors (PWRs) and 18,975 cubic meters for boiled-water reactors (BWRs). (NRC, Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement on Decommissioning of Nuclear Facilities, NUREG-0586 (Washington, D.C., August 1988), Tables 4.4-1 and 5.4-1, 4-16, 5-16). In its 1996 Generic EIS for License Renewal, NRC used lower estimates of up to 6,992 cubic meters for a PWR and up to 14,282 cubic meters for a BWR, reflecting advances in compaction tech
niques. However, because the 1988 Generic EIS for Decommissioning is the controlling regulatory document for decommissioning, licensee use of the higher numbers is consistent with NRC decommissioning regulations.
10. G. Lobsenz, “EPA Mixed Wasted Reprieve Good News for Nuclear Utilities,” Energy Daily, 1 May 1996. 11. The Center for Strategic and International Stud
ies; The Regulatory Process for Nuclear Power Reactors: A Review (Washington, D.C., August 1999). 1. See also U.S. General Accounting Office, Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Strategy Needed to Develop a Risk-Informed Safety Approach, T-RCED-99-71 (Washington, D.C.: Government Press Office, 4 February 1999).
12. See the NRC white paper on risk at http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/COMMISSION/POLICY/ whiteppr.html, accessed on 8 March 2001. The risk triplet is consistent with the risk assessment process advocated by the National Academy of Sciences. For more information, see National Research Council, Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1996).
13. NRC, An Approach for Using Probabilistic Risk Assessment in Risk-Informed Decisions oA Plant-Specific Changes to the Licensing Basis, Regulatory Guide 1.1174 (Washington, D.C., July 1998).
14. Ibid.
15. NRC, Technical Study of Spent Fuel Pool Accident Risk at Decommissioning Nuclear Power Plants (Washington, D.C., October 2000).
16. Ibid, page 3-2.
17. See NRC, note 15 above, page 2-1. The time it takes to heat up and boil off coolant depends upon many factors, including building air flow paths, fuel storage configuration, and decay heat rate. Boil-off in 100 hours assumes the spent fuel from a PWR has been cooling in the pool for 60 days. For a BWR, fuel cooling for 60 days would take 145 days to boil off. The longer the fuel has been decaying in the pool, the longer it would take to generate sufficient heat for boil-off.
18. C. Boynton, “Maine Yankee To Return to Work Next Week,” Boothbay Register, 12 October 2000.
19. NRC, note 4 above, section 9.2.2. 20. Ibid, section 9.2.10.
21. For a comparison of the respective environmental impacts of license renewal and decommissioning, see NRC, note 5 above, sections 7 and 8.4.
22. For an example of the environmental and economic impacts resulting from closure of one nuclear reactor, see R. E. Lofstedt, “Playing Politics with Energy Policy: The Phase-out of Nuclear Power in Sweden,” Environment, May 2001, 20-33.
23. 10 CFR 50.75(c).
24. NRC, note 4 above, section 10.1. BWRs generate more contamination than PWRs because they rely on a single loop that circulates water both to cool the reactor and to power steam turbines, spreading radioactivity further throughout the plant.
25. NRC excludes these costs from its formula for calculating decommissioning costs because it regulates on-site dry spent fuel storage separately from decommissioning and does not regulate nonradioactive site cleanup. 10 CFR 50.54(bb) ensures the adequacy of funds for on-site spent fuel storage and maintenance.
26. GAO, Nuclear Regulation: Better Oversight Needed to Ensure Accumulation of Funds to Decommission Nuclear Power Plants, RCED-99-75 (Washington, D.C., May 1999). GAO noted that although NRC had begun requiring more detailed reports from licensees on decommissioning funds, it had not defined acceptable levels of financial assurance or specified how it would respond if licensees failed to provide such assurance.
27. Many environmental organizations oppose this and other forms of “stranded cost recovery” for
nuclear plants. In response, the nuclear industry contends that decommissioning is a key public safety mission and that it is therefore essential to collect adequate decommissioning funds. For opposing perspectives, see A Federal Agenda for Electric Industry Restructuring (Washington, D.C.: Natural Resources Defense Council and other organizations, February 1997), available at http://www.nrdc.org/air/ energy/utagen/utaginx.asp; and Nuclear Energy Institute, “Decommissioning of Nuclear Power Plants” (Washington, D.C,, September 1999), available at http://www.nei.org.
28. Maine Public Utilities Commission, 22 December 1998; and Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control, 18 August 1997.
29. NRC has made a generic determination that spent fuel can be safely stored on site in either pools or dry casks for up to 30 years after the end of reactors’ licensed operating lives (10 CFR 51.23). Licensees typically build dry storage facilities when they have used up the maximum allowable amount of storage space in their spent fuel pools.
30. Licensees that own multiple reactors may be able to move spent fuel from closed plants to operating reactors that have on-site storage space available. Additionally, two private interim storage facilities are under development in Utah and Wyoming, although both are politically controversial and face strong local resistance. Some state officials contend that it will be hard to promote alternative uses for decommissioned sites if parts of those sites are still restricted for spent fuel storage.
31. Nuclear Energy Institute, “Used Fuel Storage,” fact sheet, accessed via http://www.nei.org on 29 November 2000.
32. GAO, Low-Level Radioactive Wastes: States Are Not Developing Disposal Facilities, RCED-99-238 (Washington, D.C., September 1999).
33. NRC has also set cleanup standards for restricted use at heavily contaminated sites that permit higher residual radioactivity and require institutional controls (such as fences and deed restrictions) to prevent activities that would lead to radiation exposures above the authorized levels. These levels are expected to be more applicable to nuclear processing facilities than to power reactors, which are relatively less contaminated. See NRC, note 4 above, section 8.13. Normal background radiation in the United States averages about 300 millirem (mrem) per year.
34. While NRC regulates radiological aspects of decommissioning, EPA has authority over selected areas such as liquid effluent discharges to bodies of water, which in many cases it delegates to states. EPA withdrew draft standards reflecting its proposed cleanup levels in 1996 but later issued them in nonbinding Superfund guidance. NRC promulgated its standards as a final rule in 1997. See “Radiological Criteria for License Termination,” 62 Federal Register (FR) 39058, 21 July 1997.
35. For example, see A. Makhjijani, “Decommissioned but Dangerous?” The Washington Post, 24 January 2000, A21.
36. GAO, Radiation Standards: Scientific Basis Inconclusive, and EPA and NRC Disagreement Continues, GAO/RCED-00-152 (Washington, D.C., 2000), 41, 44.
37. Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co. has pledged to meet the state of Maine’s 10 millirem all-pathway and 4 mrem ground water standards at its Maine Yankee plant. Similarly, Yankee Atomic has pledged to meet the state of Massachusetts’s 10 mrem all-pathway standard at its Yankee Rowe plant. (105 Code of Massachusetts Regulations 120.291; and Yankee Rowe Community Advisory Panel, Meeting Minutes, 11 May 2000.)
38. In 1990, NRC proposed “below regulatory concern” (BRC) standards of 1-10 mrem per year for individual doses and a collective annual dose of 1,000 person-rem, which it subsequently withdrew in the face of
sharp public and political criticism. See OTA, note 8 above, pages 104-5.
39. G. Lobsenz, “DOE Hopes Radioactive Recycling Will Reduce Cleanup Costs,” Energy Daily, 21 February 1996.
40. See, for example, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, “Warning: Radioactive Waste and Materials Are Being Used to Make Everyday Household Items,” (Washington, D.C., October 1999); and Public Citizen, “Tainted NRC Process on Radioactive Waste Recycling Continues,” (Washington, D.C., 9 May 2000).
41. A. MacLachlan, “Radiation Experts Don’t Agree on How to Release Materials,” Nucleonics Week, 30 March 2000; and A. MacLachlan, “Dicus Leaning Against Recycling of Radioactive Materials,” Inside NRC, 22 May 2000
42. 61 FR 39279-80, 29 July 1996.
43. Excerpts of the Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) relating to power reactors may be accessed at http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/REACTOR/ DECOMMISSIONING/GEIS/index.html.
44. In early 2000, NRC announced plans to update the 1988 GEIS, a process that is likely to change some of the parameters for environmental impacts. Notably, improvements in compaction techniques have reduced the volumes of LLW generated from decommissioning below earlier projections. It is unclear how licensees that are developing their decommissioning plans are to show that their environmental impacts are within the limits of the GEIS when these numbers will probably change in the draft supplement, scheduled for release in 2001.
45. 10 CFR 50.34(b).
46. 61 FR 39281, 29 July 1996; and 10 CFR 50.59. 47. FSARs in principle are public documents but are not widely distributed, although they may be accessed at NRC public document rooms.
48. For descriptions of major decontamination and decommissioning technologies, see OTA, note 8 above, pages 127-34.
49. 10 CFR 50.82(a)(9). 50. 10 CFR 20.1404(a)(4).
51. David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists, personal communication with authors on 28 February 2001.
52. See NRC, Transcript-Maine Yankee Decommissioning Meeting, 7 October 1997; NRC, Transcript– Maine Yankee Post-Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report (PSDAR) Public Meeting, 6 Novemher 1997; and NRC, Transcript-Public Meeting to Discuss Maine Yankee Atomic Power Station License Termination Plan, 15 May 2000, at www.nrc.gov/OPA/ reports.htm. (All of the sources above are available at this web page.)
53. A. D. Burt, quoted in NRC, Transcript-Maine Yankee Decommissioning Meeting, 7 October 1997, available at http://www.nrc.gov/OPA/reports/ my 100797.htm
54. See the Oregon Department of Energy report on its year-long analysis of the decommissioning plan for the Trojan nuclear plant, available at http://www. energy.state.or.us/siting/decom.htm.
55. See public comments at scoping meetings in the spring and summer of 2000 on NRC’s proposed revision of the GEIS on decommissioning, available at http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/REACTOR/ DECOMMISSIONING/GEIS/index.html.
56. The licensee sought permission for early component removal to take advantage of an opportunity to send radioactive waste to the Barnwell, South Carolina, site.
57. Citizens Awareness Network v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 59 Federal Reporter 3d 284 (1995), U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals. Local intervenors continued to contest Yankee Atomic’s decommissioning plans, arguing that the company was not providing enough detail about how it would address issues such
as radioactive waste buried on site and criticizing its calculations of residual radiation at the decommissioned site. EPA’s New England office seconded these concerns when Yankee Rowe released its License Termination Plan (LTP) in 1997. In 1999, after Citizens Awareness Network was granted intervenor status in hearings on the LTP, the company withdrew the plan to implement a new radiological survey program. (M. Cohen, “Critics Wonder If Yankee Atomic’s Plan Will Clean Up Site,” Boston Globe, 14 March 1999. 136. See also Yankee Rowe’s web page at http:// www.yankee.com for updates on decommissioning activities.)
58. 10 CFR 50.59; and 61 FR 39279-80, 29 July 1996.
59. See Issue 8-Court Decision in Decommissioning of Nuclear Power Reactors, Final Rule, 61 FR 39286-7, 29 July 1996. Arguably, NRC’s explanation addresses the court’s procedural concerns, but not its substantive concern that “[b]y allowing licensees to conduct most, if not all, of the permanent removal and shipment of the major structures and radioactive components before the submittal of a decommissioning plan, it appears that the commission is rendering the entire decommissioning plan approval process nugatory.” (CAN vs. NRC, note 57 above.) Currently, licensees do not have to submit detailed license termination plans until decommissioning is for all practical purposes completed-a process that appears to render much of the preceding NRC oversight and public comments moot.
60. The company claimed that conditions for significant environmental impacts would not occur because indices of radioactive risk, such as estimated radioactive waste volume and radiation protection controls, would be kept within the acceptable parameters outlined in the 1988 GEIS but provided no analysis or evidence to support this position.
61. Maine Yankee is expected to submit a revised license termination plan no sooner than 1 June 2001. 62. J. Weil, “Plan for Decommissioning Now or Pay
More Later, Meisner Says,” Nucleonics Week, 28 September 2000.
63. In the words of the Union’s Environment Directorate, “Decommissioning operations and the related strategy decisions should be undertaken in a spirit of transparency and openness, with the involvement of the public and an understanding of their concerns.” (Council of the European Union, Council Directive 97/11/EC of 3 March 1997, available at http://europa.eu.int/comml environment/ nuclear/decomml.htm.)
64. NRC staff contact and reactor project manager, interview with author (Farber), 5 December 2000.
65. See the state web pages on Trojan, at http://www.energy.state.or.us/ siting/trojan.htm, and Maine Yankee, at http:J/www.janus.state.me.us/ dep/rwm/myankee/homepage.htm.
66. In each case, safety investigations raised the need for expensive repairs, leading owners to close the plants rather than making major upgrades at reactors that had already run for much of their licensed operating lives. (M. L. Wald, “A-Plant Shut Down, Ending Industry’s Test Case,” The New York Times, 27 February 1992, 12; and P. J. Howe, “Talks To Sell Maine Plant Break Down,” Boston Globe, 2 August 1997, Al.)
67. Adam Bless, resident Trojan inspector, Oregon Office of Energy, personal communication with the authors, 2 January 2001.
68. See, for example, S. Owens and D. Cope. “The Wider Perspective of Decommissioning,” in M. J. Pasqualetti, ed., Nuclear Decommissioning and Society (New York: Routledge, 1990): M. G. Morgan, “What Would It Take To Revitalize Nuclear Power in the United States?” Environment, March 1993; NRC. “Improving Decommissioning Regulations for Nuclear Power Plants,” SECY-99-168 (Washington, D.C., 30 June 1999); and European Commission, “Decommissioning Policies in the EU:’ accessed via http://europe.eu.int/comm/environment/nuclear/ decomml,htm on 19 December 2000.
Author Affiliation
Darryl Farber received his Ph.D. from Penn State University and is a post-doctoral fellow in the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. His current research focuses on the role of the public in civilian nuclear decision making, principally in the United States. Jennifer Weeks directs the Kennedy School’s Managing the Atom Project. She worked as a congressional defense staffer and as a lobbyist for the Union of Concerned Scientists from 1991-97. The authors can be contacted at darryl_farber@harvard.edu and jennifer_weeks@harvard.edu.
Copyright HELDREF PUBLICATIONS Jul/Aug 2001

Brave Nuclear World?

Charman, Karen
World Watch
05-01-2006

Jump to best part of document

The planet is warming, and proponents of nuclear power say they’ve got the answer. Are nuclear plants the climate cavalry?
First of Two Parts
A few miles down an idyllic New England country road dotted with handsome homesteads and gentleman farms in central Connecticut sits the Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant-or what’s left of it. After shutting down in 1996, the 590-megawatt reactor is nearing the end of its decommissioning, a process spokesperson Kelley Smith describes as “construction in reverse.”
Most of the buildings, the reactor itself, and its components have been removed. Adjacent to the Connecticut River, the discharge pond, which received the reactor’s second-stage cooling water from the internal heat exchanger, is being dredged. The soil, including hot spots near the reactor that were contaminated with strontium-90 from leaking tanks, has been replaced. Forty concrete casks of highly radioactive spent fuel now sit on a fenced and guarded concrete pad surrounded by woods on the company’s property about threequarters of a mile from the reactor site. Soon the spent fuel pool that housed the irradiated fuel assemblies will be drained and dismantled. A twisted spaghetti-like tangle of metal protruding from a partially demolished building will be carted off to a dump site. Stories-high stacks of steel containers packed with mildly radioactive rubble are also waiting to be taken away. One of the final tasks will be to demolish the containment dome, which consists of 35,000 metric tons of steelreinforced concrete. When decommissioning is completed by the end of the year, over 136,000 metric tons of soil, concrete, metal, and other materials will have been removed from the site at a cost of more than US$400 million to the area’s electricity customers.
But for a fluke in timing, Connecticut Yankee might well have remained in operation today. Ten years ago, when the board of directors of the Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company decided to close its reactor at Haddam Neck, nuclear power was widely considered, if not a dying industry, then one that was seriously and chronically ill. In the newly deregulated electricity market, the company found it could buy electricity for less than its nuclear power plant could produce it. Connecticut’s deregulation of the electricity sector required the company to divest itself of the plant. Company directors didn’t think they could sell a single reactor of relatively low capacity, so they decided to shut it down.
Just a few years later, the economic landscape for nuclear power began changing with the emergence of companies like Exelon Corporation (a merger between Chicago-based Commonwealth Edison and Pennsylvania-based PECO) and the Louisiana-based Entergy Corporation, which began buying up reactors. Entergy purchased Vermont Yankee, a 540megawatt reactor, for US$180 million in 2002. Less than 80 kilometers south of Connecticut Yankee, Dominion Resources spent US$1.3 billion to acquire three reactors (two operating and one shut) at Millstone-a plant with the dubious distinction of landing on the cover of Time in 1996 for longstanding, egregious breaches of safety regulations. By 2002, just 10 corporations owned all or part of 70 of the nation’s 103 operating reactors.
Fast forward to today. The world has begun to wake up to the very real and growing perils of human-induced, catastrophic climate change. The war in Iraq, increasing tension in the oil-rich Middle East, and memories of both the (market-manipulated) energy fiasco in California in 2001 and the blackout that affected one-third of the United States and Canada in August 2003 have raised awareness and anxiety about unstable, unsustainable energy supplies. These factors, along with a very skillful, multi-pronged public relations and lobbying campaign, have put nuclear power, which is touted as carbon-free, back on the table.
IMAGE PHOTOGRAPH
Bugey Nuclear Power Plant, on the Rhone River near Lyon.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), nine new nuclear plants-three in Japan, two in Ukraine, and one each in South Korea, India, China, and Russia-have gone online since 2004. In that time, two plants in Canada were restarted after years of not operating, and there is talk of building a new reactor there. Currently 23 nuclear power plants are under construction around the world, including one in Finland, the first in western Europe since the 1986 explosion at Chornobyl in northern Ukraine. France, whose 58 reactors provide approximately 80 percent ofthat country’s electricity, is also considering building another reactor, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair is calling for new reactors to replace Britain’s aging fleet of 31 reactors, most of which are due to retire by 2020. In August 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush signed into law an energy bill that contained US$13 billion in public subsidies to help jumpstart a new generation of nuclear reactors.
Nuclear Power vs. Global Warming
A growing chorus of nuclear advocates, government officials, international bureaucrats, academics, economists, and journalists is calling for nuclear power to save us from devastating climate change. Nuclear reactors do not emit carbon dioxide (CO^sub 2^) and other greenhouse gases when they split atoms to create electricity. But it’s inaccurate to say that nuclear power is “carbon-free”-on a cradle-to-grave basis, no currently available energy source is. (Even wind turbines are guilty by association: the aluminum from which they are built is often smelted using coal-fired electricity.) In the case of nuclear power, fossil fuel energy is used in the rest of the nuclear fuel chain-the mining, milling, and enriching of uranium for use as fuel in reactors, the building of nuclear plants (especially the cement), the decommissioning of the plants, the construction of storage facilities, and the transportation and storage of the waste. In fact, the gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment plant at Paducah, Kentucky, is one of the single biggest consumers of dirty coal-fired electricity in the country.
Still, it seems impossible to pin down exactly how carbon-intensive the nuclear fuel chain is, and there is disagreement within the environmental community about nuclear energy’s potential contribution to global warming. Tom Cochrane, a nuclear physicist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, says nuclear power is not a large greenhouse gas emitter compared to other conventional sources of energy. But in order for nuclear energy to make a significant dent in greenhouse gas emissions, we would need a huge increase in the number of nuclear power plants now operating worldwide, which he does not support.
Just how huge? A widely quoted 2003 report by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers, “The Future of Nuclear Power,” calls for the construction worldwide of 1,000-1,500 new 1,000-megawatt reactors by 2050, an expansion that would potentially displace 15-25 percent of the anticipated growth in carbon emissions from electricity generation projected over that time. A 2004 analysis in Sdenceby Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, co-directors of Princeton University’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative, says 700 gigawatts of new nuclear generation-roughly double the number and output of the world’s 443 operating reactorswould be needed to achieve just one-seventh of the greenhouse gas emission reductions (at current emission rates) required to stabilize atmospheric carbon concentrations at 500 parts per million (ppm).
IMAGE PHOTOGRAPH
Mihama Nuclear Power Plant, near Tokyo.
The MIT report acknowledges such an expansion would create an enormous nuclear waste challenge requiring a permanent disposal site with the capacity of the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada “to be created somewhere in the world every three to four years.” If the spent fuel were reprocessed instead, as many nuclear proponents advocate, it would dramatically increase opportunities to spread nuclear material that could be used in making atomic bombs. The MIT report rejects reprocessing as uneconomic and, because of the weapons proliferation dangers, unnecessarily risky. To deal with the waste, it calls for the U.S. Department of Energy to develop “a balanced long-term waste management R&D program” and investigate the possibility of placing the waste in deep geologic boreholes. It also recommends the establishment of a network of centralized facilities in the United States and internationally that can store spent fuel for several decades until better solutions are worked out. Of course, the policy landscape is strewn with technically plausible recommendations that were dead on arrival because they glibly ignored the difficult politics of nuclear energy.
Pacala and Socolow maintain that a range of options is needed to address climate change. They identify 15 technologies or practices now in commercial operation somewhere in the world and say that scaling up any seven of them could stabilize carbon emissions over the next 50 years. These alternatives will be more fully explored in Part II of this series.
Nukonomics
“Nuclear Follies,” a February 11, 1985 cover story in Forbes, declared the United States’ experience with nuclear power “the largest managerial disaster in business history.” With US$125 billion invested, the magazine wrote, “only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of that money has been well spent. It is a defeat for the U.S. consumer and for the competitiveness of U.S. industry, for the utilities that undertook the program and for the private enterprise system that made it possible.”
Yet nuclear power is now widely promoted as one of the most economical sources of electricity, with a production cost of 1.68 cents per kilowatthour (kWh), compared to 1.9 cents/kWh for coal, 5.87 cents/kWh for natural gas, 2.48 cents/kWh for solar, 0.2 cents/kWh for wind, and 0.5 cents/kWh for hydroelectric, according to the Electric Utility Cost Group, a data group within the nuclear industry that draws its information from plant surveys, and Global Energy Decisions, a private energy data consulting firm. Those figures measure the operating cost of fuel, labor, materials, and services to produce one kWh of electricity. But like most sources of energy, nuclear power benefits from substantial government subsidies. Including nuclear’s subsidies, collateral costs, and externalities leads to a different economic assessment.*
Although a full nuclear revival with a new generation of reactors to replace the existing fleet could not take place-at least in the United States-without the participation of the private sector, commercial nuclear power has never had to compete in a true free market. From the beginning, nuclear power worldwide has always required government patronage. In the United States, the industry was launched in 1946 with the passage of legislation creating the Atomic Energy Commission (the predecessor to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or the NRC), which was charged with developing both civilian nuclear power and nuclear weapons. In 1954 the government brought the private sector in, and under President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative continued to encourage the development and commercialization of nuclear power.
IMAGE PHOTOGRAPH
Grafenrheinfeld Nuclear Power Plant, in northern Bavaria.
Although nuclear power currently provides about 20 percent of U.S. electricity (and about 16 percent of the world’s), between 1950 and 1993 the U.S. nuclear power industry received nearly 50 percent of the total federal spending on energy research and development-some US$51 billionaccording to energy economist Doug Koplow. Substantial government assistance appears to be the status quo for the nuclear industry around the world, he adds, though specific data from many countries is unavailable. Nuclear power continues to get favored treatment, with government assistance covering virtually all segments of the nuclear fuel chain to one degree or another.
Uranium mining companies operating in the United States, for example, get a “percentage depletion allowance” of 22 percent (the highest rate of all depletion allowances for minerals), which gives them a tax write-off for the market value of what they have extracted-a significant subsidy since the write-off is typically much greater than their actual investment. The manufacture of the reactor fuel has also been heavily subsidized. Until 1998, the government owned the country’s two uranium enrichment plants. When they were privatized into the U.S. Enrichment Corporation, the government retained liability for the waste clean-up associated with the operation of the facilities, an ongoing endeavor with a price tag in the billions.
During construction of the reactors, utilities were able to pass on the interest costs of the loans to their electricity customers, utilizing the “Allowance for Funds Used During Construction.” While this was available to all types of power plants, Koplow says it mainly benefited owners of nuclear plants, because costs on the already expensive plants ran out of control with construction delays. Nuclear plant owners also took advantage of highly accelerated depreciation and investment tax credits in the early 1980s. Koplow says these three accounting mechanisms significantly reduced the capital costs of the reactors. Even so, after states began deregulating electricity markets in the 1990s, utilities with nuclear plants found they needed to charge much more than the going rate for electricity to pay off their remaining debt, or “stranded costs,” and stay competitive with other electricity sources. State after state changed the rules to allow utilities to pass on these stranded costs to ratepayers as a surcharge on their electric bills, a gift to the nuclear industry that by 1997 was worth some US$98 billion.
The ratepaying public also bears the cost of dealing with the spent fuel-estimated at US$60-100 billion for the existing fleet of reactors-as well as for decommissioning the plants. And if there is another serious accident, the 1957 PriceAnderson Act shields nuclear plant owners from the lion’s share of the cost by capping their liability. According to Koplow, the utility responsible for the accident would pay US$300 million in primary liability plus US$95.8 million that it and the nation’s other nuclear utilities would contribute per reactor (paid in US$15-million annual installments over six years) to an insurance pool. With 103 operating U.S. reactors, the size of the insurance pool is approximately US$10 billion. By comparison, some estimates put the cost of the Chornobyl accident at over US$350 billion, and the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that a serious accident at New York’s Indian Point plant 56 kilometers north of New York City would be in the trillions-costs mainly left to individuals because of the standard nuclear exclusion clause in home insurance policies. Without this particular liability mitigator in the United States and similar instruments in other countries, commercial nuclear power probably would not exist.
Moreover, it seems that Price-Anderson is not the only mechanism available to nuclear utilities to protect themselves from full liability if something goes wrong. According to a 2002 report by Synapse Energy Economics, Inc., since the restructuring of the U.S. nuclear industry began as states started deregulating their electric utility industries in the mid-1990s, a few large corporations such as Exelon Corp., Entergy Corp., Duke Energy, and Dominion Resources, Inc. increasingly own and operate nuclear power plants through multi-tiered holding companies. The individual plants are often set up as limited liability companies (LLCs), a legal invention that restricts liability to the assets directly owned by the LLC. “The limited liability structures being utilized are effective mechanisms for transferring profits to the parent/owner while avoiding tax payments,” the report notes. “They also provide a financial shield for the parent/owner if an accident, equipment failure, safety upgrade, or unusual maintenance need at one particular plant creates a large, unanticipated cost. The parent/owner can walk away by declaring bankruptcy for that separate entity without jeopardizing its other nuclear and non-nuclear investments.”
This arrangement is especially valuable under deregulation. Before deregulation, nuclear reactors typically were built by investor-owned utilities and operated under the shelter of a “cost-of-service regulation.” This enabled the utilities to enjoy stable rates based on their actual costs rather than on electricity sales at market prices, which can fluctuate. With those stable rates stripped away, the usual risks of operating nuclear plants-unexpected shutdowns for nonscheduled maintenance, for instance, or even accidents-became more severe. The use of LLCs allowed much of that risk to be avoided. Yet, according to former NRC commissioner Peter Bradford, the agency failed to develop a comprehensive policy to ensure that the transfer of reactor ownership into these new corporate structures would not endanger the public. “In the absence of any such requirement, public protection has depended on the acumen of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission unversed in financial matters and of economic regulators unversed in health and safety issues. As has happened in financial and in utility restructuring circles, fundamental safeguards have been circumvented,” he writes in the forward to the Synapse report. The consequences, he adds, remain to play out.
The NRC rejects both Synapse’s and Bradford’s allegations. In a written statement, the agency said it believes its regulations “provide reasonable assurance that a licensee will have sufficient resources to operate, maintain, and decommission nuclear power reactors. The NRC fully considered the issues raised in the 2002 Synapse report and believed then-and continues to believe-that our regulations adequately address LLCs or other corporate arrangements.” The agency maintains that regardless of the new business arrangements, it continues to ensure that reactor owners meet their obligations, adding that most reactors also operate under regulation by state public utility commissions, which provide significant financial oversight.
“Their general platitudes don’t convince me that we were wrong on any issue,” says David Schlissel, lead author on the Synapse report. In addition, he says NRC is incorrect that state public utility commissions continue to oversee reactors in states where electricity markets have been deregulated. “The 19 plants owned by Exelon, they are all deregulated,” he says, “as are many nuclear plants in the Northeast and Midwest.”
Try, Try Again
On Valentine’s Day in 2002, the U.S. Department of Energy unveiled its Nuclear Power 2010 program for sharing costs with industry to “identify sites for new nuclear power plants, develop and bring to market advanced nuclear plant technologies, evaluate the business case for building new nuclear power plants, and demonstrate untested regulatory processes leading to an industry decision in the next few years to seek NRC approval to build and operate at least one new advanced nuclear power plant in the United States.” Currently three consortia, an 11-company group called NuStart Energy Development and smaller ones led by the Tennessee Valley Authority and Dominion Resources, have been formed to investigate building new reactors. Despite consortia members’ combined revenues of US$447 billion during 2003-which, Koplow points out, rivals the Russian Federation and exceeds the combined GDP of 104 countries-the U.S. government is now offering the nuclear industry additional incentives worth more than US$13 billion as seed money for new nuclear plant construction. According to an analysis released last year by the non-profit group Public Citizen, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 includes US$2.9 billion for R&D, at least US$3.5 billion worth of construction subsidies, more than US$5.7 billion for operating subsidies, and US$1.3 billion for shutdown subsidies.
Some of the package’s more notable elements include US$2 billion for risk insurance, which allows builders of the first six reactors to collect for any delays in construction or licensing, including challenges by the public on safety grounds (e.g., if a whistleblower reported faulty construction and a citizen group sued). It includes production tax credits of 1.8 cents per kilowatthour for eight years, an estimated US$5.7-7.0 billion that would otherwise go to the U.S. Treasury. There are also provisions for taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for up to 80 percent of the cost of a reactor. These loan guarantees are particularly handy, considering that billions of dollars were lost during the first round of nuclear plant construction when more reactors were cancelled than were built, many after hundreds of millions of dollars had already been spent.
That’s a big handout, but it remains to be seen whether it’s enough to kick-start a new generation of reactors in the United States, which industry observers say is necessary for a viable economic future for nuclear power. Thomas Capps, the recently retired CEO of Dominion Resources, head of one of the consortia seeking a license for a new reactor, told the New York Times last April that if his company announced it was actually going to build a nuclear plant, debt-rating agencies Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s “would have a heart attack, and my chief financial officer would, too.” Peter Wells, general manager of marketing for General Electric’s nuclear energy division, is cautiously optimistic but not yet convinced a new generation of reactors will be built. He says it will depend on friendly government policy and positive experience with the first of the new reactors coming in within budget and on schedule.
IMAGE PHOTOGRAPH
Sellafield Nuclear Power Plant, on the shore of the Irish Sea.
Bush Administration policy is increasingly agreeable to the nuclear industry, but whether reactors can be built for their advertised costs is another question. At US$1,500 per kilowatt, the new “advanced” Generation III+ reactors are said to be much cheaper than those in the existing fleet. According to a 2001 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on the prospects for new commercial nuclear reactors, total construction costs exceeded US$3,000/kw for reactors that were started after 1974, and those completed since the mid-1980s averaged US$3,600/kw. Anyone familiar with Pentagon procurement gaffes knows that chronic overruns and miscalculation of costs has been a longtime problem with large engineering projects, and the nuclear power industry is no exception. According to an analysis by the Energy Information Administration, plants that began construction between 1966 and 1977 underestimated their actual costs by roughly 14 percent, even when plants were 90 percent complete.
So far, only two reactors of new design, both of them GE Advanced Boiling Water Reactors, have been built (in Japan, for the Tokyo Electric Power Company). However, despite GE’s estimate that the cost would be US$1,528/kw, CRS reports the first came in at US$3,236/kw and the second at around US$2,800/kw. Wells says the price of those plants was inflated because they were “gold-plate plants with marble floors and the like” that otherwise would have cost much less.
Peter Bradford says that despite the passage of the Energy Policy Act, nothing has fundamentally changed that would improve the economics enough to see a new generation of nuclear reactors. “With US$ 13 billion in new subsidies, if the government wants to prove that if it spends enough it can build nuclear plants, it can do that. The Chinese prove that for us a couple times a year,” he said. “But that’s not the same as saying it makes economic sense to do it.” Still, Bradford acknowledges, “the stars have not been so favorably aligned for the industry since Atoms for Peace.”
In a dramatic turnaround from nudear’s dog days in the 1980s and ’90s, excitement is building on Wall Street. Steven Taub, director of emerging technologies at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, is confident new plants will be built, though he says the exact number will depend on how the various government incentives are distributed. Unlike the current fleet of nuclear reactors-nearly all of which were custom built-the next generation will be much more standardized to take advantage of economies of scale.
The government subsidies for new reactors are intended to offset the higher “first-of-a-kind” costs for the first few plants. If all goes without a hitch, the thinking is that lenders and utility shareholders will regain confidence that new nuclear plants can be competitive enough to finance without these subsidies. External factors will also determine the competitiveness and economic viability of nuclear power, Taub says. These variables include the price of natural gas, whether a carbon tax or other price-raising measures will be imposed on coal and other fossil fuels, and whether carbon sequestration technology for coal-fired power plants can be proven and widely adopted. “These are questions that nobody knows the answer to,” he says.
Part II of this series will look at the waste problem, the proliferation and other security risks stemming from nuclear power, and at the strength of arguments for nuclear power in the context of other options.
FOOTNOTE
* Although no comprehensive and integrated study comparing the collateral and external costs of energy sources globally has been done, all currently available energy sources have them. Large hydroelectric dams dramatically alter ecosystems, threaten species, and displace and impoverish people whose lands are flooded. Burning coal-the single largest source of air pollution in the U.S.-causes global warming, acid rain, soot, smog, and other toxic air emissions and generates waste ash, sludge, and toxic chemicals. Landscapes and ecosystems are completely destroyed by mountaintop removal mining, while underground mining imposes high fatality, injury, and sickness rates. Even wind energy kills birds, can be noisy, and, some people complain, blights landscapes.
AUTHOR_AFFILIATION
Karen Charman is an independent journalist specializing in environmental issues and the managing editor of the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism.Brave Nuclear World?
Byline: Charman, Karen
Volume: 19
Number: 3
ISSN: 08960615
Publication Date: 05-01-2006
Page: 26
Type: Periodical
Language: English

Do not phase out nuclear power – yet

Nature
03-24-2011

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Do not phase out nuclear power – yet

Fission power must remain a crucial part of the energy mix until renewable energy technologies can be scaled up, argues Charles D. Ferguson.

The ongoing Japanese nuclear crisis underscores yet again the risks inherent in this essential energy source. But it should not divert nations from using or pursuing nuclear power to generate electricity, given the threat from climate change, the health hazards of fossil fuels, and the undeveloped state of renewable energy. Instead, the events at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant should turn more attention to ensuring that nuclear power plants meet the highest standards of safety and protection against natural disasters.

More than 30 nations have commercial nuclear power plants. A further two dozen are interested in having them, including several in earthquake risk areas such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey.

Some nations are pro-nuclear for energy security; some for prestige. Others, including Iran, have invested in nuclear power because they may want the capability to make nuclear weapons. These nations are seeking to acquire uranium enrichment or reprocessing technologies: useful either for producing fuel for peaceful nuclear reactors or fissile material for nuclear bombs.

Although some national leaders profess to be interested in nuclear energy because operating plants do not emit greenhouse gases, this is usually a secondary motivation. If it were their primary concern, nations would invest far more than they have in measures such as energy efficiency and solar and wind technologies.

The Japanese crisis has affected three important criteria: public opinion, safety and economic costs. Governments and utilities have had to grapple with these for decades. Now they must renew their efforts to finance expensive nuclear projects and ensure that existing and future nuclear plants maintain the highest standards – and must be seen to do so by the public.

Building nuclear power plants has always been expensive. For a large reactor with a power rating of 1,000 megawatts or greater, the capital cost ranges from US$4 billion to $9 billion depending on reactor design, financing charges, the regulatory process and construction time. The recent nuclear crisis is likely to change all of these, pushing up costs.

Contemporary plant designs – ‘generation III’ – have better safety features than the 1970s-era generation II designs for the Fukushima reactors, making them more expensive. Some, such as the AP1000 designed by the Westinghouse Electric Company, headquartered in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, have passive safety features that do not require technicians to activate emergency systems or electrical power to ensure safety after a mishap. Others, such as Paris-based Areva’s EPR, have advanced active safety systems designed to prevent the release of radioactive material to the environment. Further designs, such as the pebble-bed modular reactor, may prevent nuclear fuel from ever experiencing a meltdown. Concerns were raised about the Fukushima designs as early as 1972, the year after reactor unit 1 began operations. But the nuclear industry opposed shutting down such reactors because 32 were in operation worldwide – about 7% of the world’s total. Almost one-quarter of the reactors in the United States are of this type. The remaining plants of this design should undergo a thorough safety review and, as a result, some may need to close. Since the crisis began, several governments, including China, Germany and Switzerland, have called for increased scrutiny of their plants and a moratorium on plant construction until plant safety is assured. Germany has also shut down its seven oldest reactors.

But phasing out nuclear power worldwide would be an overreaction. It provides about 15% of global electricity and even larger percentages in certain countries, such as France (almost 80%) and the United States (about 20%). Eliminating nuclear power would lead to much greater use of fossil fuels, and raise greenhouse-gas emissions. It will probably take at least a few decades to massively scale up use of renewable sources. Meanwhile, nuclear plants can bridge the energy gap.

So governments need to take practical actions to improve nuclear safety. All new nuclear plants should have enhanced safety systems, and plant designs that eliminate or substantially reduce the risk of a meltdown of fuel should be developed. Existing plants deemed to fail improved safety standards should be retrofitted or, when necessary, phased out. Further, governments must force their nuclear providers to remove spent fuel – typically after five years of cooling – from storage pools and place it in dry cask storage. As the world witnessed, spent fuel in the overcrowded above-ground cooling pools at Fukushima Daiichi became exposed to the air. If spent fuel catches fire, radioactive materials can be widely dispersed.

Because of decreased public confidence following the Japanese accident, governments and industry must have an honest conversation about the role of nuclear energy in meeting consumers’ electricity demands, the typically high safety record of almost all plants and the risks of this technology. These discussions must implement one of the primary lessons of the Japanese accident: that officials should dramatically increase transparency of nuclear operations. Simultaneously, nations need to invest far more in renewable energy sources, which offer the path to a truly sustainable global energy system.

GOVERNMENTS AND INDUSTRY MUST HAVE AN HONEST CONVERSATION ABOUT THE ROLE OF NUCLEAR ENERGY.

NATURE.COM

Discuss this article online at: go.nature.com/jjm47y

Charles D. Ferguson trained as a nuclear engineer and a physicist, and is president of the Federation of American Scientists in Washington DC and author of the forthcoming book Nuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, May 2011). e-mail: cferguson@fas.org

Charles D Ferguson

To view full document, view the PDF

Copyright (c) Nature Publishing Group 2011

Do not phase out nuclear power – yet

Nature
03-24-2011

Jump to best part of document

Do not phase out nuclear power – yet

Fission power must remain a crucial part of the energy mix until renewable energy technologies can be scaled up, argues Charles D. Ferguson.

The ongoing Japanese nuclear crisis underscores yet again the risks inherent in this essential energy source. But it should not divert nations from using or pursuing nuclear power to generate electricity, given the threat from climate change, the health hazards of fossil fuels, and the undeveloped state of renewable energy. Instead, the events at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant should turn more attention to ensuring that nuclear power plants meet the highest standards of safety and protection against natural disasters.

More than 30 nations have commercial nuclear power plants. A further two dozen are interested in having them, including several in earthquake risk areas such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey.

Some nations are pro-nuclear for energy security; some for prestige. Others, including Iran, have invested in nuclear power because they may want the capability to make nuclear weapons. These nations are seeking to acquire uranium enrichment or reprocessing technologies: useful either for producing fuel for peaceful nuclear reactors or fissile material for nuclear bombs.

Although some national leaders profess to be interested in nuclear energy because operating plants do not emit greenhouse gases, this is usually a secondary motivation. If it were their primary concern, nations would invest far more than they have in measures such as energy efficiency and solar and wind technologies.

The Japanese crisis has affected three important criteria: public opinion, safety and economic costs. Governments and utilities have had to grapple with these for decades. Now they must renew their efforts to finance expensive nuclear projects and ensure that existing and future nuclear plants maintain the highest standards – and must be seen to do so by the public.

Building nuclear power plants has always been expensive. For a large reactor with a power rating of 1,000 megawatts or greater, the capital cost ranges from US$4 billion to $9 billion depending on reactor design, financing charges, the regulatory process and construction time. The recent nuclear crisis is likely to change all of these, pushing up costs.

Contemporary plant designs – ‘generation III’ – have better safety features than the 1970s-era generation II designs for the Fukushima reactors, making them more expensive. Some, such as the AP1000 designed by the Westinghouse Electric Company, headquartered in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, have passive safety features that do not require technicians to activate emergency systems or electrical power to ensure safety after a mishap. Others, such as Paris-based Areva’s EPR, have advanced active safety systems designed to prevent the release of radioactive material to the environment. Further designs, such as the pebble-bed modular reactor, may prevent nuclear fuel from ever experiencing a meltdown. Concerns were raised about the Fukushima designs as early as 1972, the year after reactor unit 1 began operations. But the nuclear industry opposed shutting down such reactors because 32 were in operation worldwide – about 7% of the world’s total. Almost one-quarter of the reactors in the United States are of this type. The remaining plants of this design should undergo a thorough safety review and, as a result, some may need to close. Since the crisis began, several governments, including China, Germany and Switzerland, have called for increased scrutiny of their plants and a moratorium on plant construction until plant safety is assured. Germany has also shut down its seven oldest reactors.

But phasing out nuclear power worldwide would be an overreaction. It provides about 15% of global electricity and even larger percentages in certain countries, such as France (almost 80%) and the United States (about 20%). Eliminating nuclear power would lead to much greater use of fossil fuels, and raise greenhouse-gas emissions. It will probably take at least a few decades to massively scale up use of renewable sources. Meanwhile, nuclear plants can bridge the energy gap.

So governments need to take practical actions to improve nuclear safety. All new nuclear plants should have enhanced safety systems, and plant designs that eliminate or substantially reduce the risk of a meltdown of fuel should be developed. Existing plants deemed to fail improved safety standards should be retrofitted or, when necessary, phased out. Further, governments must force their nuclear providers to remove spent fuel – typically after five years of cooling – from storage pools and place it in dry cask storage. As the world witnessed, spent fuel in the overcrowded above-ground cooling pools at Fukushima Daiichi became exposed to the air. If spent fuel catches fire, radioactive materials can be widely dispersed.

Because of decreased public confidence following the Japanese accident, governments and industry must have an honest conversation about the role of nuclear energy in meeting consumers’ electricity demands, the typically high safety record of almost all plants and the risks of this technology. These discussions must implement one of the primary lessons of the Japanese accident: that officials should dramatically increase transparency of nuclear operations. Simultaneously, nations need to invest far more in renewable energy sources, which offer the path to a truly sustainable global energy system.

GOVERNMENTS AND INDUSTRY MUST HAVE AN HONEST CONVERSATION ABOUT THE ROLE OF NUCLEAR ENERGY.

NATURE.COM

Discuss this article online at: go.nature.com/jjm47y

Charles D. Ferguson trained as a nuclear engineer and a physicist, and is president of the Federation of American Scientists in Washington DC and author of the forthcoming book Nuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, May 2011). e-mail: cferguson@fas.org

Charles D Ferguson

To view full document, view the PDF

Copyright (c) Nature Publishing Group 2011

ENVIRONMENT: NUCLEAR ENERGY COSTLY AND PERILIOUS, ACTIVISTS SAY

Stephen Leahy
Global Information Network
06-02-2005

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ENVIRONMENT: NUCLEAR ENERGY COSTLY AND PERILIOUS, ACTIVISTS SAY
Byline: Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada, Jun. 1, 2005 (IPS/GIN) — Faced with the rising toll of global warming and soaring petroleum prices, countries like Canada and the United States are giving nuclear power another look.
But this might be among the most expensive ways to produce electricity, say experts and environmental advocates.
Canada has the highest per capita energy use in the world and, like most industrialised countries, has been unable to cut emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Under the Kyoto Protocol, an international pact to rein in global warming, Canada is committed to making significant reductions in its emissions of such gases, which are released when fossil fuels like coal and oil are burned and which contribute to climate change.
Motivated by growing energy needs and commitments to close polluting coal power plants, Canada is now considering building new nuclear power plants for the first time in 20 years. While nuclear plants do not produce greenhouse gases, they have a long history of expensive breakdowns. Additionally, the country faces the prospect of spending at least 24 billion Canadian dollars (19.2 billion U.S. dollars) to store radioactive wastes from the plants.
The moves come amid a possible resurgence in nuclear power plant construction in the United States, where industry expansion has been stalled since a high-profile meltdown in the late 1970s.
As in Canada, the U.S. nuclear industry and the administration of President George W. Bush have said nuclear power will play a key role in meeting demand for power without contributing to global warming and the droughts, floods, and disease outbreaks that have accompanied it.
The strategy will require massive government subsidies and likely will prove misguided, according to S.A. Sherif, a solar energy expert and professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Florida.
“Energy from nuclear power plants remains very expensive,” said Sherif, adding that if U.S. government had not invested more than 200 billion U.S. dollars in research and development, there would not be a nuclear industry.
The problem, he added, is that “the world’s supply of uranium is limited, while the sun’s energy is not.”
Additionally, new nuclear plants will add to existing problems of how to deal with nuclear waste, said Dave Martin of the environmental pressure group Sierra Club of Canada.
“Canada already has 40,000 tonnes of highly radioactive waste. It’s an insane idea to build new nuclear plants that will make even more waste,” Martin told IPS. “These wastes will remain radioactive for a million years.”
Nuclear power plants produce some 13 percent of Canada’s electricity generation. Another 57 percent comes from dams, 28 percent from geothermal, or under-earth heat, sources as well as coal, oil and gas, and about 1 percent from renewable sources including the wind, sun, and tides.
Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization proposed last month to bury the spent nuclear fuel from Canada’s 22 reactors in an underground vault carved 1000 metres deep in solid rock. It recommends spending the next 30-60 years finding a location and designing an impervious vault for permanent storage. Estimated cost: 24.4 billion Canadian dollars (19.6 billion U.S. dollars).
When it comes to nuclear power, cost estimates can prove unreliable. Canada’s most recent nuclear plant, the 3,524-megawatt Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, cost 14 billion Canadian dollars (11.2 billion U.S. dollars) to complete in 1993 — double the budgeted price.
And rather than having a 40-year life span, Canada’s CANDU reactors require multi-billion-dollar reconstruction after just 20 years of service on average, said Martin. In 1997, eight reactors had to be shut down for repairs and four of these had already been rebuilt in the mid-1980s at a cost of billions of dollars more than their original construction costs in 1971.
Repair costs have doubled and tripled from their original estimates and, eight years later, four are still shut down.
Due to the frequent shutdowns that last months and years, Canada’s nuclear power plants operate at about 50 percent efficiency, said Martin.
Calculating the ‘all-in cost’ of producing electricity from nuclear power is extremely difficult in part because the industry does not give out detailed cost information. Moreover, the Canadian government has underwritten research costs while insurance costs and liability, waste disposal, the need for an extensive transmission infrastructure and decommissioning of the plants all are considered external costs.
“There is no question today, that alternatives like natural gas or wind power are both cheaper and better alternatives to nuclear,” Martin said.
Brendan Hoffman, an energy expert with the U.S.-based advocacy group Public Citizen, endorsed that view.
“The cold hard fact is that nuclear is just too expensive, ” Hoffman said.
“The costs of building nuclear plants have been on average 400 percent over budget,” he added about the U.S. nuclear power industry.
No new plants have been approved in the United States since the partial meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island in 1979.
But now four big power companies are looking to get advance approval on sites for perhaps six to ten new nuclear power plants. If built, these would be improved versions of existing reactors rather than new designs because there has been no breakthrough in the technology.
In any case, he said, “the U.S. will get as many new reactors as the government is willing to build,” he said.
Hoffman argued that a better investment of public money would be in improvements in energy efficiency and conservation using simple, existing technologies like energy saving light bulbs, better house insulation, and replacing electric water heaters with solar units.
The Rocky Mountain Institute, a non-profit energy research organization, has calculated that improvements in energy efficiency are six times more cost effective than nuclear power and eliminate the need for all existing nuclear plants and any future ones.
“All of this could be done without any changes to our way of life,” said Hoffman.
Why the push for nuclear power? In Hoffman’s view, because “the nuclear industry are major donors to Bush Republicans and have a direct channel to power in Washington.”
(Copyright 2005 by Inter Press Service/Global Information Network)

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Lessons from the past

Nature
03-31-2011

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Lessons from the past

The Chernobyl disaster still has much to tell us about the long-term risks of low-level radiation exposure. But only if the necessary follow-up studies are supported.

As the battle to make safe the Fukushima nuclear reactors continues, the political fallout is spreading across Japan and around the world. Despite reassuring early reports, it is clear that significant amounts of radioisotopes have been released from the plant, and some workers there face severe radiation exposure as they try to cool the overheated nuclear fuel. In response, several governments are reviewing the safety and future of their own nuclear programmes. Fukushima has undoubtedly strengthened the hand of those who oppose nuclear power.

The global reach of the disaster brought an echo from history last week when iodine-131 from Fukushima was detected in Ukraine – home to the Chernobyl power plant, site of the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster. A quarter of a century ago, a flawed safety test at Chernobyl triggered a massive explosion and fire that spread tonnes of radioactive material across Europe, and shredded public confidence in atomic energy.

Like Fukushima, the consequences of Chernobyl were wide ranging. In the satellite countries, resentment of Soviet handling of the disaster contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union. Thousands of children developed thyroid cancer after drinking contaminated milk. Billions of crucial dollars from the economies of Ukraine and Belarus were redirected to remediation, health care and compensation. Every day, some 3,500 workers still labour at the plant to prevent further releases, while decommissioning of the site’s four reactors has barely begun. Recovering from a nuclear disaster is the task of generations: it will be another 50 years before Chernobyl is just a memory.

As we report on page 562, the pace of recovery at Chernobyl has been slowed by the reluctance of other countries to pay for it. The shattered reactor 4 still lies beneath a haphazard concrete sarcophagus, erected in the frantic months after the accident. Maintenance work keeps it secure – for now – but the walls are streaked with rust and its roof is in a poor state of repair. Engineers want to build a safe confinement arch to allow them to dismantle the reactor, at an estimated cost of US$1.4 billion.

The Chernobyl Shelter Fund, managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, has so far amassed more than $800 million of that sum, from 30 donors. But funding shortfalls have delayed the project by years and the 2015 target for completion will be difficult to achieve without more money from the international community.

One immediate consequence of the Fukushima disaster should be to encourage this money to flow. Nuclear accidents have global repercussions, and public mistrust of nuclear power demands that its problems not be left to fester. It is in the world’s interest to push forward with safe nuclear power – but also to deal properly with its damaging legacy when things go wrong, as they will.

Today, new nuclear power stations are being constructed in more than a dozen countries. China alone is working on almost half of the 65 reactors currently being built, and there is growing interest in the technology from developing countries. Supporters of the spread of civil nuclear power must acknowledge that some of these countries would be unable to cope alone if faced with a nuclear accident on the scale of Chernobyl.

Nations, particularly those pushing new nuclear build, must invest in bodies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, to ensure that new and old reactors around the world are sufficiently safe, and that they are fully prepared for the worst. And politicians and the nuclear industry must revisit their relationship with a sceptical public. Being open and transparent about the uncertain costs of new build in countries such as the United Kingdom would be a start. If a public subsidy is required to get them built, then say so. If the industry wants people to believe its assurances that nuclear power is safe, then now is not the time for obfuscation and weasel words, on any aspect of the technology (see page 549).

Governments must also work to present a clear narrative about the health implications of accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. For heroic plant workers exposed to extreme radiation doses – and for those still suffering from Chernobyl’s legacy of thyroid cancer – the risks are all too clear. But it is harder to pin down more subtle health effects. There are hints that low-level exposure can raise the risk of cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and other conditions, consistent with the idea that there is no safe threshold for radiation exposure. To clarify the situation, the world needs studies of large numbers of people exposed to very low doses of radiation – and Chernobyl can provide those. Funding such research is vital for those affected by Chernobyl’s radiation, but it should also answer some of the questions over the future of nuclear power.

People legitimately ask whether the low levels of radioactivity now drifting across Japan are safe. The current best answer is ‘probably’. A better response would be to find out, before another 25 years pass.

“Recovering from a nuclear disaster is the task of generations.”

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LINGERING HAZARDS OF NUCLEAR WASTE

Drey, Kay
Rachel’s Democracy & Health News
01-29-2009

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More than 20 years ago, environmentalists began warning Missourians that no safe place exists on Earth for radioactive waste. That was even before the Callaway plant began operation, and before it began to fission uranium fuel and generate its first tons of waste. To date no safe, politically viable site has been found, and no technology exists to contain the wastes or destroy their radioactivity.
At the Callaway nuclear power plant, where more than 99 percent of Missouri’s radioactive waste is generated, some of the “low-level” waste is so radioactively hot that it must be handled by remote- control equipment or the workers could get a lethal dose. The only radioactive waste allowed to be called high-level is the irradiated fuel after its removal from the reactor vessel; that is, the fuel rods themselves. All other waste at Callaway must be called “low-level.”
St. Louisans should know a lot about radioactive waste, because we still have over a million cubic yards of the oldest radioactive waste of the Atomic Age here in our midst. These historic wastes were generated from 1942 until 1957 for nuclear weapons purposes and now lie splattered in and around the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works buildings near downtown, at the St. Louis Airport, Latty Avenue in Hazelwood, West Lake Landfill next to Earth City, in Coldwater Creek, and along truck and rail routes. A million cubic yards, and no one knows what to do with the first cupful.
A thousand laboratories at Washington University use radioactive materials in research. They share a total of two curies at any one time; most technicians work with only tiny fractions of one curie and treat that with great care and caution. In comparison, the Callaway reactor vessel while in operation contains some 15 to 20 billion curies, and the spent-fuel pool contains hundreds of millions of curies. No site has been built or even geologically approved for the nation’s high-level fuel-rod wastes, and none may ever be.
Some particulate and gaseous wastes leak out of Callaway’s 50,000 fissioning fuel rods into the reactor vessel water and some leak into the air inside the buildings. Much is captured and filtered; the rest is released into the Missouri River or the atmosphere. [See Kay Drey’s 1991 article on routine releases from nuclear power plants.]
When the saturated filters are replaced, they are called “low-level” waste. That is, the same extremely dangerous fission products that are called high-level waste when inside the fuel rods are called “low- level” when they leak out of the rods. When highly radioactive parts and components are replaced because of accidents, defects or aging, they, too, are called “low-level.”
“Low-level” and high-level wastes will continue emitting radioactive particles and rays that can mutate and otherwise damage cells of humans and other living creatures virtually forever into the future. Power-plant wastes have half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years and longer.
In 1987 Michigan was chosen as the first state to receive the wastes of the seven-state Midwest Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact. Its citizens and political leaders understandably protested and got their state kicked out of the compact.
Ohio residents are now protesting their status as the Midwest’s next appointed host, as will people no doubt do in Missouri, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana when each state successively is threatened with becoming the host state.
At present, the only “low-level” waste facility willing to accept the nation’s commercial wastes – from nuclear power plants (containing over 91 percent of the U.S. “low-level” radio activity), medical/academic wastes (with only two-tenths of 1 percent), and industrial and government wastes – is located at Barnwell, S.C.,in a very humid and therefore unsuitable site. Even though the Barnwell facility is known to generate money for its state’s schools, nearby residents no doubt have legitimate concerns.
One would think that the federal government would mandate a moratorium on the generation of more nuclear-power and nuclear-weapons wastes until safe locations and technologies are found to isolate the stockpiles that are already burdening countless communities nationwide. Electric utilities and the public have found nuclear power to be too expensive, dirty and dangerous. That’s why the last viable order for a nuclear power plant in the United States was placed in October 1973 – 22 years ago.
When the Missouri Legislature reconvenes in January [1996], it is scheduled to begin debate on changes to the Midwest Compact. It would be helpful if the legislators and their constituents were provided accurate information about the hazards of Missouri’s “low-level” waste. Only then can we be assured that the Legislature will be able to evaluate responsibly Missouri’s continuing participation in the Midwest Compact.
AUTHOR_AFFILIATION
Kay Drey, University City, is a longtime activist on nuclear issues.
LINGERING HAZARDS OF NUCLEAR WASTE
Byline: Drey, Kay
Number: 996
Publication Date: 01-29-2009
Page: N_A
Type: Periodical
Language: English

Copyright Environmental Research Foundation Jan 29, 2009

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Why We Still Need Nuclear Power: Making Clean Energy Safe and Affordable

Moniz, Ernest
Foreign Affairs
11-01-2011

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In the years following the major accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, nuclear power fell out of favor, and some countries applied the brakes to their nuclear programs. In the last decade, however, it began experiencing something of a renaissance. Concerns about climate change and air pollution, as well as growing demand for electricity, led many governments to reconsider their aversion to nuclear power, which emits little carbon dioxide and had built up an impressive safety and reliability record. Some countries reversed their phaseouts of nuclear power, some extended the lifetimes of existing reactors, and many developed plans for new ones. Today, roughly 60 nuclear plants are under construction worldwide, which will add about 60,000 megawatts of generating capacity-equivalent to a sixth of the world’s current nuclear power capacity.
But the movement lost momentum in March, when a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the massive tsunami it triggered devastated Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant. Three reactors were severely damaged, suffering at least partial fuel meltdowns and releasing radiation at a level only a few times less than Chernobyl. The event caused widespread public doubts about the safety of nuclear power to resurface. Germany announced an accelerated shutdown of its nuclear reactors, with broad public support, and Japan made a similar declaration, perhaps with less conviction. Their decisions were made easier thanks to the fact that electricity demand has flagged during the worldwide economic slowdown and the fact that global regulation to limit climate change seems less imminent now than it did a decade ago. In the United States, an already slow approach to new nuclear plants slowed even further in the face of an unanticipated abundance of natural gas.
It would be a mistake, however, to let Fukushima cause governments to abandon nuclear power and its benefits. Electricity generation emits more carbon dioxide in the United States than does transportation or industry, and nuclear power is the largest source of carbon-free electricity in the country. Nuclear power generation is also relatively cheap, costing less than two cents per kilowatt-hour for operations, maintenance, and fuel. Even after the Fukushima disaster, China, which accounts for about 40 percent of current nuclear power plant construction, and India, Russia, and South Korea, which together account for another 40 percent, show no signs of backing away from their pushes for nuclear power.
Nuclear power’s track record of providing clean and reliable electricity compares favorably with other energy sources. Low natural gas prices, mostly the result of newly accessible shale gas, have brightened the prospects that efficient gas-burning power plants could cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants relatively quickly by displacing old, inefficient coal plants, but the historical volatility of natural gas prices has made utility companies wary of putting all their eggs in that basket. Besides, in the long run, burning natural gas would still release too much carbon dioxide. Wind and solar power are becoming increasingly widespread, but their intermittent and variable supply make them poorly suited for large-scale use in the absence of an affordable way to store electricity. Hydropower, meanwhile, has very limited prospects for expansion in the United States because of environmental concerns and the small number of potential sites.
Still, nuclear power faces a number of challenges in terms of safety, construction costs, waste management, and weapons proliferation. After Fukushima, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an independent federal agency that licenses nuclear reactors, reviewed the industry’s regulatory requirements, operating procedures, emergency response plans, safety design requirements, and spent-fuel management. The nrc will almost certainly implement a number of the resulting recommendations, and the cost of doing business with nuclear energy in the United States will inevitably go up. Those plants that are approaching the end of their initial 40-year license period, and that lack certain modern safety features, will face additional scrutiny in having their licenses extended.
At the same time, new reactors under construction in Finland and France have gone billions of dollars over budget, casting doubt on the affordability of nuclear power plants. Public concern about radioactive waste is also hindering nuclear power, and no country yet has a functioning system for disposing of it. In fact, the U.S. government is paying billions of dollars in damages to utility companies for failing to meet its obligations to remove spent fuel from reactor sites. Some observers are also concerned that the spread of civilian nuclear energy infrastructure could lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons-a problem exemplified by Iran’s uraniumenrichment program.
If the benefits of nuclear power are to be realized in the United States, each of these hurdles must be overcome. When it comes to safety, the design requirements for nuclear reactors must be reexamined in light of up-to-date analyses of plausible accidents. As for cost, the government and the private sector need to advance new designs that lower the financial risk of constructing nuclear power plants. The country must also replace its broken nuclear waste management system with a more adaptive one that safely disposes of waste and stores it for centuries. Only then can the public’s trust be earned.
SAFER AND CHEAPER
The tsunami that hit Japan in March marked the first time that an external event led to a major release of radioactivity from a nuclear power plant. The 14-meter-high wave was more than twice the height that Fukushima was designed to withstand, and it left the flooded plant cut off from external logistical support and from its power supply, which is needed to cool the reactor and pools of spent fuel. Such natural disasters, although infrequent, should have been planned for in the reactor’s design: the Pacific Ring of Fire has seen a dozen earthquakes in the 8.5 to 9.5 range in the last hundred years, and Japan has the most recorded tsunamis in the world, with waves sometimes reaching 30 meters high. Just four years ago, the world’s largest nuclear generating station, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, was shut down by an earthquake that shook the plant beyond what it was designed to handle, and three of the seven reactors there remain idle today.
The Fukushima disaster will cause nuclear regulators everywhere to reconsider safety requirements-in particular, those specifying which accidents plants must be designed to withstand. In the 40 years since the first Fukushima reactor was commissioned, seismology and the science of flood hazards have made tremendous progress, drawing on advances in sensors, modeling, and other new capabilities. This new knowledge needs to be brought to bear not only when designing new power plants but also when revisiting the requirements at older plants, as was happening at Fukushima before the tsunami. Outdated safety requirements should not be kept in place. In the United States, the nrc’s review led to a recommendation that nuclear power plant operators reevaluate seismic and flood hazards every ten years and alter the design of the plants and their operating procedures as appropriate. With few exceptions, the needed upgrades are likely to be modest, but such a step would help ensure that the designs of plants reflect up-to-date information.
The nrc also proposed regulations that would require nuclear power stations to have systems in place to allow them to remain safe if cut off from outside power and access for up to three days. It issued other recommendations addressing issues such as the removal of combustible gas and the monitoring of spent-fuel storage pools. These proposals do not mean that the nrc lacks confidence in the safety of U.S. nuclear reactors; their track record of running 90 percent of the time is an indicator of good safety performance and extraordinary when compared with other methods of electricity generation. Nevertheless, the incident at Fukushima clearly calls for additional regulatory requirements, and the nrc’s recommendations should be put in place as soon as is feasible.
New regulations will inevitably increase the costs of nuclear power, and nuclear power plants, with a price tag of around $6-$10 billion each, are already much more expensive to build than are plants powered by fossil fuels. Not only are their capital costs inherently high; their longer construction times mean that utility companies accumulate substantial financing charges before they can sell any electricity. In an attempt to realize economies of scale, some utilities have turned to building even larger reactors, building ones that produce as much as 1,600 megawatts, instead of the typical 1,000 megawatts. This pushes up the projects’ cost and amplifies the consequences of mistakes during construction.
All this can make nuclear power plants seem like risky investments, which in turn raises investors’ demands on return and the cost of borrowing money to finance the projects. Yet nuclear power enjoys low operating costs, which can make it competitive on the basis of the electricity price needed to recover the capital investment over a plant’s lifetime. And if governments eventually cap carbon dioxide emissions through either an emissions charge or a regulatory requirement, as they are likely to do in the next decade or so, then nuclear energy will be more attractive relative to fossil fuels.
In the United States, there is still a great deal of uncertainty over the cost of new nuclear power plants. It has been almost 40 years since the last new nuclear power plant was ordered. The Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally owned corporation, is currently finishing construction of the Watts Bar Unit 2 reactor, in eastern Tennessee, which was started long ago, and it has plans to complete another, Bellefonte Unit 1, in Hollywood, Alabama. The first new nuclear plants of nextgeneration design are likely to be built in Georgia by the Southern Company, pending the nrc’s approval. Scheduled for completion in 2016, the proposed project entails two reactors totaling 2,200 megawatts at an estimated cost of $14 billion. It will take advantage of substantial subsidies (loan guarantees, production tax credits, and the reimbursement of costs caused by regulatory delay) that were put forward in the 2005 Energy Policy Act to kick-start the construction of new nuclear plants. Even after Fukushima, Congress and the White House appear to still be committed to this assistance program. The success or failure of these construction projects in avoiding delays and cost overruns will help determine the future of nuclear power in the United States.
A SMALLER SOLUTION
The safety and capital cost challenges involved with traditional nuclear power plants may be considerable, but a new class of reactors in the development stage holds promise for addressing them. These reactors, called small modular reactors (smrs), produce anywhere from ten to 300 megawatts, rather than the 1,000 megawatts produced by a typical reactor. An entire reactor, or at least most of it, can be built in a factory and shipped to a site for assembly, where several reactors can be installed together to compose a larger nuclear power station. Smrs have attractive safety features, too. Their design often incorporates natural cooling features that can continue to function in the absence of external power, and the underground placement of the reactors and the spent-fuel storage pools is more secure.
Since smrs are smaller than conventional nuclear plants, the construction costs for individual projects are more manageable, and thus the financing terms may be more favorable. And because they are factory-assembled, the on-site construction time is shorter. The utility company can build up its nuclear power capacity step by step, adding additional reactors as needed, which means that it can generate revenue from electricity sales sooner. This helps not only the plant owner but also customers, who are increasingly being asked to pay higher rates today to fund tomorrow’s plants.
The assembly-line-like production of smrs should lower their cost, too. Rather than chasing elusive economies of scale by building larger projects, smr vendors can take advantage of the economies of manufacturing: a skilled permanent work force, quality control, and continuous improvement in reactors’ design and manufacturing. Even though the intrinsic price per megawatt for smrs may be higher than that for a large-scale reactor, the final cost per megawatt might be lower thanks to more favorable financing terms and shorter construction times-a proposition that will have to be tested. The feasibility of smrs needs to be demonstrated, and the government will almost certainly need to share some of the risk to get this done.
No smr design has yet been licensed by the nrc. This is a timeconsuming process for any new nuclear technology, and it will be especially so for those smr designs that represent significant departures from the nrc’s experience. Only after smrs are licensed and built will their true cost be clear. The catch, however, is that the economies of manufacturing can be realized and understood only if there is a reliable stream of orders to keep the manufacturing lines busy turning out the same design. In order for that to happen, the U.S. government will have to figure out how to incubate early movers while not locking in one technology prematurely.
With the U.S. federal budget under tremendous pressure, it is hard to imagine taxpayers funding demonstrations of a new nuclear technology. But if the United States takes a hiatus from creating new cleanenergy options-be it smrs, renewable energy, advanced batteries, or carbon capture and sequestration-Americans will look back in ten years with regret. There will be fewer economically viable options for meeting the United States’ energy and environmental needs, and the country will be less competitive in the global technology market.
WASTE BASKET CASE
If nuclear energy is to enjoy a sustained renaissance, the challenge of managing nuclear waste for thousands of years must be met. Nuclear energy is generated by splitting uranium, leaving behind dangerous radioactive products, such as cesium and strontium, that must be isolated for centuries. The process also produces transuranic elements, such as plutonium, which are heavier than uranium, do not occur in nature, and must be isolated for millennia. There is an alternative to disposing of transuranic elements: they can be separated from the reactor fuel every few years and then recycled into new nuclear reactor fuel as an additional energy source. The downside, however, is that this process is complex and expensive, and it poses a proliferation risk since plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons. The debate over the merits of recycling transuranic elements has yet to be resolved.
What is not disputed is that most nuclear waste needs to be isolated deep underground. The scientific community has supported this method for decades, but finding sites for the needed facilities has proved difficult. In the United States, Congress adopted a prescriptive approach, legislating both a single site, at Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, and a specific schedule for burying spent fuel underground. The massive project was to be paid for by a nuclear waste fund into which nuclear power utilities contribute about $750 million each year. But the strategy backfired, and the program is in a shambles. Nevada pushed back, and the schedule slipped by two decades, which meant that the government had to pay court-ordered damages to the utility companies. In 2009, the Obama administration announced that it was canceling the Yucca Mountain project altogether, leaving no alternative in place for the disposal of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. The Nuclear Waste Fund has reached $25 billion but has no disposal program to support.
Fukushima awakened the American public and members of Congress to the problem of the accumulation of radioactive spent fuel in cooling pools at reactor sites. The original plan had been to allow the spent fuel to cool for about five years, after which it would be either disposed of underground or partly recycled. Now, the spent nuclear fuel has nowhere to go. Many utilities have moved some of the spent fuel out of the pools and into dry storage facilities built on site, which the nrc has judged safe for a century or so. The dry storage facilities at Fukushima were not compromised by the earthquake and tsunami, a sharp contrast to the problems that arose with the spent-fuel pools when cooling could not be maintained. To deal with the immediate problem of waste building up in reactor pools, Congress should allow the Nuclear Waste Fund to be used for moving the spent fuel accumulating in pools into dry-cask storage units nearby. But such an incremental step should not substitute for a comprehensive approach to waste management.
Instead of being stored near reactors, spent fuel should eventually be kept in dry casks at a small number of consolidated sites set up by the government where the fuel could stay for a century. This approach has several advantages. The additional cooling time would provide the Department of Energy, or some other organization, with more flexibility in designing a geological repository. The government would no longer have to pay utilities for not meeting the mandated schedule, and communities near reactors would be reassured that spent fuel has a place to go. At each site, the aging fuel would be monitored, so that any problems that arose could be addressed. The storage facilities would keep Washington’s options open as the debate over whether spent fuel is waste or a resource works itself out. These sites should be paid for by the Nuclear Waste Fund, a change that would require congressional approval.
At the same time, Washington must find an alternative to Yucca Mountain for storing nuclear waste in the long run. As it does so, it must adopt a more adaptive and flexible approach than it did last time, holding early negotiations with local communities, Native American tribes, and states. Sweden upgraded its waste disposal program with just such a consensus-based process, and for a dozen years the U.S. Department of Energy has operated a geological repository for trans – uranic waste near Carlsbad, New Mexico, with strong community support. The government should also investigate new approaches to disposal. For example, it might make sense to separate out the longliving transuranic elements in nuclear reactor waste, which constitute a nasty but very small package, and dispose of them in a miles-deep borehole, while placing the shorter-living materials in repositories closer to the surface. Given the sustained challenge of waste management, an overhaul to the existing program should include the establishment of a new federally chartered organization that is a step or two removed from the short-term political calculus.
Another break from the past would be to manage civilian nuclear waste separately from military nuclear waste. In 1985, the government elected to comingle defense and civilian waste in a single geological repository. This made sense at the time, since the planners assumed that Yucca Mountain would be available for storing both types. But now, it looks as though it will be many years before a large-scale repository opens. Today, it makes more sense to put plans for storing military waste on a separate, faster track, since that process is less daunting than coming up with a solution to civilian waste. To begin with, there is simply much less military waste, and the volume will hardly grow in the future. Moreover, most of the military waste already has the uranium and plutonium separated out from the spent fuel, since the aim was to produce nuclear weapons material. Thus, what is left is definitely waste, not a resource.
Fast-tracking a defense waste program would allow the federal government to meet its obligations to states that host nuclear weapons facilities, from which it has agreed to remove radioactive waste. It would also make the finances of waste storage much clearer, since the nuclear utility companies pay for their waste management, whereas Congress has to approve payments for defense waste. And assuming a defense waste repository were established first, the experience gained operating it would be highly valuable when it comes time to establish a civilian one.
The United States’ dysfunctional nuclear waste management system has an unfortunate international side effect: it limits the options for preventing other countries from using nuclear power infrastructure to produce nuclear weapons. If countries such as Iran are able to enrich uranium to make new reactor fuel and separate out the plutonium to recover its energy value, they then have access to the relevant technology and material for a weapons program. Safeguards agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency are intended to make sure that civilian programs do not spill over into military ones, but the agency has only a limited ability to address clandestine programs.
Developing enrichment or separation facilities is expensive and unlikely to make economic sense for countries with small nuclear power programs. What these countries care about most is an assured supply of reactor fuel and a way to alleviate the burden of waste management. One promising scheme to keep fissile material out of the hands of would-be proliferators involves returning nuclear waste to the fuel-supplying country (or a third country). In effect, nuclear fuel could be leased to produce electricity. The country supplying the fuel would treat the returned spent fuel as it does its own, disposing of it directly or reprocessing it. In most cases, the amount of additional waste would be small in comparison to what that country is already handling. In return for giving up the possibility of reprocessing fuel and thus separating out weaponsgrade material, the country using the fuel would free itself from the challenges of managing nuclear waste.
The United States already runs a similar program on a smaller scale, having provided fuel, often highly enriched uranium, to about 30 countries for small research reactors. But with no functioning commercial waste management system in place, the program cannot be extended to accommodate waste from commercial reactors. Instead, Washington is trying to use diplomacy to impose constraints on a country-bycountry basis, in the futile hope that countries will agree to give up enrichment and reprocessing in exchange for nuclear cooperation with the United States. This ad hoc approach might have worked when the United States was the dominant supplier of nuclear technology and fuel, but it no longer is, and other major suppliers, such as France and Russia, appear uninterested in imposing such restrictions on commercial transactions. Putting together a coherent waste management program would give the United States a leg to stand on when it comes to setting up a proliferation-resistant international fuel-cycle program.
NOW OR NEVER
As greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, finding ways to generate power cleanly, affordably, and reliably is becoming an even more pressing imperative. Nuclear power is not a silver bullet, but it is a partial solution that has proved workable on a large scale. Countries will need to pursue a combination of strategies to cut emissions, including reining in energy demand, replacing coal power plants with cleaner natural gas plants, and investing in new technologies such as renewable energy and carbon capture and sequestration. The government’s role should be to help provide the private sector with a well-understood set of options, including nuclear power-not to prescribe a desired market share for any specific technology.
The United States must take a number of decisions to maintain and advance the option of nuclear energy. The nrc’s initial reaction to the safety lessons of Fukushima must be translated into action; the public needs to be convinced that nuclear power is safe. Washington should stick to its plan of offering limited assistance for building several new nuclear reactors in this decade, sharing the lessons learned across the industry. It should step up its support for new technology, such as smrs and advanced computer-modeling tools. And when it comes to waste management, the government needs to overhaul the current system and get serious about long-term storage. Local concerns about nuclear waste facilities are not going to magically disappear; they need to be addressed with a more adaptive, collaborative, and transparent waste program.
These are not easy steps, and none of them will happen overnight. But each is needed to reduce uncertainty for the public, the energy companies, and investors. A more productive approach to developing nuclear power-and confronting the mounting risks of climate change-is long overdue. Further delay will only raise the stakes.
SIDEBAR
Fukushima will cause nuclear regulators everywhere to reconsider safety requirements.
SIDEBAR
The U.S. government’s program for nuclear waste management is now in a shambles.
SIDEBAR
The public needs to be convinced that nuclear power is safe.
AUTHOR_AFFILIATION
Ernest Moniz is Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems and Director of the Energy Initiative at MIT. He served as Undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Energy in 1997-2001.
Why We Still Need Nuclear Power: Making Clean Energy Safe and Affordable
Byline: Moniz, Ernest
Volume: 90
Number: 6
ISSN: 00157120
Publication Date: 11-01-2011
Page: 83
Type: Periodical
Language: English