New Legislation Proposed For Nuclear Safety

mdsolar writes "Recent problems at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant have spurred Congresspeople from Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire to introduce legislation that would allow State governors to request independent safety reviews of nuclear power plants. The reviews would exclude NRC employees who usually work on that plant and include non-NRC reviewers. This review model is based on one that found problems at Maine Yankee before it closed. Problems at Vermont Yankee have included a cooling tower collapse, a SCRAM caused by an un-greased valve, and failure of a safety system during the SCRAM. The plant is coming off of heightened review after shipping nuclear material with insufficient shielding. The plant's application for a 20 year license extension is also currently under review."

Entergy safety culture

[mdsolar (1045926)]

Entergy, the company that has been buying up old reactors to try to run them harder as they reach then end of their design lifetimes gets quite a few safety related criticisms. They use solo guards at security posts so it is not too surprising that one was found asleep at Indian Point last month: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/27/ap405783 6.html [forbes.com]. They were recently reprimanded for for a worker taking a nap at the Pilgrim Reactor as well. The Simpsons is reality based television.

They also try to cut costs by refueling quickly. They boast of 90% up-times because of their quick refueling, but with reduced staff, how can they manage to both refuel and to scheduled maintenance, or avoid deferring maintenance that cannot fit within the shortened down time window? In the present case they seem to even be willing to run at reduced power rather than to promptly address the broken cooling tower. Was the ungreased bearing that caused their SCRAM on a list that just got skipped to get more up time? They give the impression that controlling costs it their primary function. Installing required warning sirens at both Indian Point http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articl e?AID=/20070830/NEWS01/708300442/1025/NEWS09 [thejournalnews.com] and Vermont Yankee http://www.reformer.com/headlines/ci_6835609 [reformer.com] has been lagging. In Vermont they want Boy Scouts to distribute warning radios rather than doing it themselves.

Nuclear power does have a safety culture, using systems like lessons-learned to attempt to improve safety. But, pushing aging reactors past their design capacity or refueling faster with fewer people seem like lessons learned just waiting to happen. Shoestring methods lack the kind of redundancy that provides for safety margins.
--
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Old reactors

[zeromorph (1009305)]

I can't say how it is in the US but in Europe old reactors (that have been wriiten off) are very profitable - much more than newer ones. Since old reactors are more profitable but tend to be less secure, this is clearly a case were legislation has to intervene, it's just to dangerous.

Extern, independent reviews in such critical businesses cannot be wrong anyway.

Re:

[Rei (128717)]

There's a simple reason for that, and it has nothing to do with a security/profitability tradeoff. The basic facts are:

A) Building nuclear power plants is *very* expensive.
B) Running nuclear powerplants is, proportionally to other types of power plants, very cheap.

Hence, any extension of the lifespan of a plant is a windfall, and any premature termination or even cost overruns in construction is an unmitigated disaster.

In the US, building new nuclear power plants, by the 1970s, had become so uneconomical du

Refueling Efficiency

[tjstork (137384)]

I wouldn't necessarily say that you need to have a mountain of people to refuel a reactor quickly. A lot of companies do refueling simulations apriori and can set up a pretty good refueling script without the need for as many drones.

And, honestly, the need for safety at a nuclear power plant is so overstated that you can tend to drone it out and thus ignore those things that really do need to be safe. For example, when a company installed guard towers at its nuclear plants, the biggest dispute was that neither union or management could agree on the steps. It's just absurd, and to some extent, really, the union used the steps on the guard tower as a negotiating plank to get more money, more than any concern for safety or the obvious admonition - hang on to the rails.

Re:

[mdsolar (1045926)]

Refueling still takes resources and during the down time there are other chores such as maintenance on valves and their bearing that need doing. If you reduce staff and shorten the down time, then there is a greater chance that something will be neglected, or won't fit into that peroid of time. We need to wait for the conclusion of the investigations but it would seem that sagging in the cooling tower or regular greasing of bearings might have been deferred or neglected owing to Entergy's policy on rapid

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power does have a safety culture, using systems like lessons-learned to attempt to improve safety. But, pushing aging reactors past their design capacity or refueling faster with fewer people seem like lessons learned just waiting to happen. Shoestring methods lack the kind of redundancy that provides for safety margins.

I work in the nuclear industry. Decisions to uprate power reactors are not made willy-nilly. There is extensive engineering work done to provide technical justification to the NRC,

Mod parent up

[kestasjk (933987)]

We need more people who know what they're talking about to cut through the damaging anti-nuclear FUD

FUD

[falconwolf (725481)]

We need more people who know what they're talking about to cut through the damaging anti-nuclear FUD

And what of the pro nuclear FUD? Whatever happened to "Too cheap to meter"?

Falcon

Re:

[mdsolar (1045926)]

The Simpson's bit was about the napping. I'm sure there are plants that don't eschew redundancy and post guards in pairs. The post doughnut nap is pretty classic in the show. In the case of Vermont Yankee, there are clearly problems with their over-rating generation since they keep pushing to up the temperature limit on their discharge into the Connecticut River. They also seem to be skipping steps in their refueling procedure. The degree that this impacts safety should likely be judged independently.

Re:Entergy safety culture

[ushering05401 (1086795)]

Vermont Yankee has been a sore subject in Vermont for a while, and not because of FUD. Doing things like losing spent fuel rods, and then trying to spin the situation as not-such-a-big-deal is not going to endear you to Vermonters or their neighbors.

Link: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/plant-specific-items/v ermont-yankee-issues/location-spent-fuel-rod.html [nrc.gov]

The rods are not in the cooling pool, they weren't found, and after observing this and other Yankee Nuke related issues as a concerned citizen I am convinced that Entergy and Co should get the fuck out of Vermont.

VT Yankee has been run too poorly for too long. Nuclear done right is a beautiful thing, nuclear done the VT Yankee way leads to disasters.

Regards from Burlington 05401.

Re:

[zerus (108592)]

Refuelings can be performed faster these days because employees go through multiple dry-runs for the refueling and repairs before the system is brought off-line. This reduces exposure to maintenance crews and engineers. I can't fault them for going faster as the methods used across the entire industry are nearly identical and work over 99% of the time (103/104). Could it be a systematic problem at the plant? Maybe, as the number of tasks increase while the time each employee spends in the containment ar

Re:

[dattaway (3088)]

Capitalism is great, but if there's no review or auditing, they are going to give nuclear a very bad long term image. I'd rather live next to a nuke plant than a coal plant. They need to respect energy sources more than the almighty buck if nuclear is going to have a future.

Meltdowns are expensive and its likely our tax paid EPA Superfund will pick it up rather than their insurance. The greed needs to stop and they will run a clean shop.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism is great, but if there's no review or auditing, they are going to give nuclear a very bad long term image.

And any review or auditing WILL be the result of governmental regulation. It's naive to think that any company will regulate itself when it can save money by not doing so. Since capitalism is about spending as little as possible to get the greatest output, these two ideas go against the very grain of each other. Capitalism is a wonderful thing, but like everything in the world, it cannot s

Re:

[falconwolf (725481)]

And any review or auditing WILL be the result of governmental regulation. It's naive to think that any company will regulate itself when it can save money by not doing so. Since capitalism is about spending as little as possible to get the greatest output, these two ideas go against the very grain of each other. Capitalism is a wonderful thing, but like everything in the world, it cannot stand entirely on its own.

That is why I support both some regulations and a strong court system. With good courts th

Re:

[Goaway (82658)]

If there are market pressures that favor self-regulation,

But there aren't. And no, letting consumers choose their power company isn't going to change that, as they will just go with the cheapest, thus introducing even more market pressure to NOT self-regulate!

Re:

[Goaway (82658)]

And have American cars taken over the entire US market? What about eco-friendly companies?

"Safe nuclear power" is not worth much if it's a fucking niche market.

Not the EPA, the Treasury

[mdsolar (1045926)]

The Price-Anderson Act already limits the liability of the nuclear power industry for the consequences of a meltdown by shifting that liability to the government. This is getting to be a problem because if you consider property values and casualyy payouts for a large accident at Indian Point, it would be possible to make the federal government insolvent.

Re:

[mdsolar (1045926)]

I think this is an interesting point. Up until recently, problems at US plants had to be disclosed to the public and so there was a flow of information that could be broadly helpful. In Japan there have been coverups of problems that have lasted years and at the UKs Sellafield plant outside monitoring by non-governmental groups were needed to document the existance of problems. In the US, the culture is changing. For Official Use Only desiganations are being used to hide serious hazards and the DOE proj

Governor Douglas' reservation

[mdsolar (1045926)]

Vermont Governor Douglas expresses reservations about the idea that governors of neighboring states could call for a safety review. He feels there may be jurisdictional issues. In the context of nuclear safety, border crossing effect would seem to make this provision pretty sensible. It should be remembered that New England has pushed for scrubbers for mid-western coal plants because of cross-border effects on water quality.
--
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Vermont and renewables

[mdsolar (1045926)]

Vermont limits the amount of net metering in the state no more than 1% of peak capacity http://www.dsireusa.org/library/includes/incentive 2.cfm?Incentive_Code=VT02R&state=VT&CurrentPageID= 1&RE=1&EE=1 [dsireusa.org], while at the same time participating in the Northeast regional climate agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Perhaps the issues arising at Vermont Yankee will prompt Vermont to follow New Jersey and remove the cap, or at least follow Maryland and California and raise it.
--
Rent solar power for you home: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]

I like solar, too, but eough of the spam

[ishmalius (153450)]

I know it's a slow Sunday, but please, enough of the sales pitch.

I for one am hoping that US nuclear operators will begin investing in newer technology, like the pebble-bed reactor. This one is an old idea, but recently implemented. It is inherently safer than rods & dampers, and is unable to go into meltdown. And the reactors can be smaller and can be located closer to the power-users for efficiency and economy.

Re:

[Grishnakh (216268)]

I disagree. I don't think we have any business at all building ANY more nuclear plants, and we should shut down the ones we do have. Nuclear is UNSAFE in America.

This doesn't mean nuclear power is unsafe everywhere. There are other cultures where nuclear power works great, like France for instance.

But we in the USA have no business messing around with nuclear power. It's a recipe for disaster. We're too greedy and shortsighted, and by letting private industry, run by greedy CEOs, run nuclear plants, it

Re:

[Grishnakh (216268)]

I'm not anti-nuke. I'm just anti-nukes-in-the-USA. We don't deserve them, precisely because of the bean counters you mention. We don't have a culture that values doing things the right way, instead of cutting corners and making things unsafe not just to save a nickel, but to save money and give the executives a huge bonus.

If we had a culture that valued doing things the right way, and doing it safely, instead of trying to make as much profit as possible even if it means paying off regulators to look the

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[YU Nicks NE Way (129084)]

Your source lists a set of theoretical problems, none of which has been realized in almost three decades of testing. The one "example" of an issue is a stuck pebble being incorrectly handled during the very early experimentation with pebble bed reactors -- which led to a redesign of the reactor to fix the problem.

Renewables are not going to provide enough energy, ever. Yes, they should be used -- but there is no way we will ever be able to extract the exawatt we need for modern society from renewable sources. We have no choice but to make nuclear power work, and the longer we pretend otherwise, the more trouble we're going to be in, both economically and ecologically.

Re:

[amorsen (7485)]

Renewables are not going to provide enough energy, ever. Yes, they should be used -- but there is no way we will ever be able to extract the exawatt we need for modern society from renewable sources.

So, modern society is destined to only last a few hundred years, maybe a thousand?

Re:

[YU Nicks NE Way (129084)]

So, modern society is destined to only last a few hundred years, maybe a thousand?

Have you got any idea how much readily available Th232 and U238 there is in the Earth's crust?

Re:

[amorsen (7485)]

Have you got any idea how much readily available Th232 and U238 there is in the Earth's crust?

Not much good in a PBR.

The only good way to do nuclear is to place an unshielded reactor at sufficient distance from the Earth, and simply catch its radiation.

Re:

[YU Nicks NE Way (129084)]

The only good way to do nuclear is to place an unshielded reactor at sufficient distance from the Earth, and simply catch its radiation.

Ah. So you oppose geothermal power usage? Bully for you.

Re:

[quanticle (843097)]

So, modern society is destined to only last a few hundred years, maybe a thousand?

Either that or we master controlled fusion.

The way I see it, there's an energy stepladder of sorts, with each step requiring more technology and expertise, but producing more output than the step before:

1. Human Power
2. Animal Power
3. Combustion
4. Fission
5. Fusion
6. Other, more exotic means of energy generation

Re:

[quanticle (843097)]

s/Dark Energy/Vacuum Energy or Antimatter

The problems with "coal" go on and on...

[Joce640k (829181)]

The list of problems with coal reactors is a mile long but are they EVER discussed?

A: Nope.

Re:

[cliffski (65094)]

or we could stop wasting energy. that's a European idea, hasn't really caught on in the USA yet.

Re:

[YU Nicks NE Way (129084)]

Really? Do you know how Germany pays for its "more efficient" lifestyle? You know, the one with the exponentially increasing energy consumption levels? By buying (nuclear generated) electricity from France. Italy does the same thing.

You might want to find out about the truth on European energy markets. It's completely true that the EU nations do a much better job of avoiding CO2 emissions -- for which they should be praised -- but it isn't through energy efficiency, but rather by source replacement.

Re:

[Eternauta3k (680157)]

It seems like there are still a few quirks to work out with pebble bed as well.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor#Cr [wikipedia.org] iticisms_of_the_reactor_design

Well thank you, I read the whole article and now I'm a pebble bed reactor fanboy
;(

Ok, this raises the question...

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves (236787)]

Why haven't they been allowed to do this previously?

Oh great

[by Anonymous Coward]

There are probable 500 people in the entire country who are qualified to rate nuclear reactors and they are all employed working for the big energy companies or the NRC. Now the States want to get involved. I can guarantee that they are not going to rewrite their civil service wage scales just to accommodate nuclear regulators. Instead of ponying up the $250K+/yr needed for each qualified engineer they will instead hire inexperienced engineers from a "related field" for $80K/yr and the situation will look like it does for their state nuclear transportation officials: it will be a clusterfuck.

But this is probably what they want. Instead of regulating the older plants they will hire a bunch of inexperienced engineers to throw a wrench in the works and slow down the commissioning of newer safer reactors. Brilliant!

Homer Simpson will take that job!

[Joe The Dragon (967727)]

Homer Simpson will take that job and like other civil service works sleep when even he can even when his control board is full of lights red.

Frustration

[kidcharles (908072)]

I don't know who I am more frustrated with, the plant operators who allow safety/security to lapse, or the overreactors (no pun intended) who are knee-jerk anti-nuke and use every small thing to bash nuclear power. People need to wake up; we are facing massive climate change and in the short term (decades) there are two sources of energy that can serve as an energy backbone to meet global need: coal or nuclear. The only question is, do you want your pollution in the form of carbon, causing massive global warming leading to human and economic destruction in the form of wars over water and category 5 hurricanes, or do you want your pollution in barrels stored underground? How is this even a question at this point?

Re:

[Grishnakh (216268)]

The problem with nuclear is that the pollution will create a huge uninhabitable radioactive zone when you have a meltdown. Look at Chernobyl. This is why we have no business running nuclear plants in America.

Nuclear works fine in countries like France where they take safety seriously, and aren't worried about how to improve the next quarter's financials and create "shareholder value". Here, our plant operators will happily cut corners so they can save a few bucks. This is why we shouldn't be using nucle

Re:

[kidcharles (908072)]

There are new reactor designs that are literally meltdown-proof (such as pebble-bed reactors [wikipedia.org]. Also, while I agree that federal regulations at all levels have taken a beating under the current administration, we can't just sit back and go "oh well, can't trust the government" and just continue on an unsustainable path. That's defeatism. This country has the capability to do extraordinary things, good or bad. Also, this administration is coming to an end, I'm cautiously optimistic.

Re:

[Grishnakh (216268)]

I disagree entirely. I think "oh well, we can't trust the government" is absolutely the right choice to make. Yes, it's defeatism, but we need to admit to ourselves that we as a nation are just not capable of extraordinary things any more, and it'd be better to just sit back and allow someone else to take over. Our glory days are long since over, and our empire is in its decline. It would be nicer to the rest of humanity if we stopped trying to cling to it. The Roman Empire collapsed too, and so is our

IAEA

[BlueParrot (965239)]

Ok, now call me naive here, but why not just do what everyone else does when they have trouble like this and ask the IAEA to inspect their power plants? This is what Sweden did after the incident at Forsmark, it's what Japan did after the leaks associated with the recent earthquake, and I believe quite a few other countries have done so as well. As an extra bonus, getting the thumb down from IAEA would be rather embarrassing for the NRC, so chances are it would make them actually do their job... Really, the US pays for a huge portion of the UN's budget, so why not actually use its services...

Re:

[turgid (580780)]

Someone with a clue.

Might I also add, that as a former Reactor Physics Engineer in the UK nuclear industry, the USA could learn a lot from the way we do things in the UK, IMNSHO.

Re:

[Registered Coward v2 (447531)]

Actually, you'd want INPO or WANO to the inspections; they actually have an impact.

Re:

[GPL Apostate (1138631)]

I know what you anti-nuke people are gonna say, but Vermont is NOT 1980s Ukraine.

It sounds like they're working on it, though.

Re:

[OriginalArlen (726444)]

Here's the thing that bothers me about nuclear power. They pretty much have to be sited on rivers or the coast to get water for cooling. The IPCC says we could be looking at 4-6m sea level rise in teh next century (they're not saying that's certain, they're saying it's a probability under particular CO2 emission scenarios.) Hansen says it's more like 15-25m, though the difference is fairly academic for sites at sea-level on the coast or on tidal rivers. So, how many of today's nuclear power stations will be

Re:

[WindBourne (631190)]

the oceans rise do not mean that rivers and lakes will rise. The truth is that few nuclear power plants are located that close to a nations borders (which would make them easy targets to take out during say a time of war) esp. the ocean. How many would be under water? I suspect that no more than 5 throughout the world.

Re:

[confused one (671304)]

Locating a reactor near a water source is a convenience, not a requirement. Besides, the rising sea level isn't going to affect units on rivers. By the way, you wouldn't be looking at on-site storate of the reactor components if the powers that be would allow the repository to open.

Well, that is not entirely accurate either

[WindBourne (631190)]

I am huge fan of IFRs (yet to be built), but I am no fan of those who spread dis-information. When you say that no deaths occur, that is just plain wrong.

In particular, the mineral had to be mined. Well, it was from the same mines that went into Gov. projects. A large amount of Cancer has developed not in just the miners, but local populations by these mines. To us in western USA, it is a BIG concern esp. since the feds will not pay for health care (in particular, they argue that some of the uranium went t

Re:

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

I understand that's pretty much how France does it ... standardized a lot of their reactor designs and components. Maintenance teams can be trained at one facility, and be easily shifted to another.

Once a technology is mature enough that you can afford to settle upon a particular design for a while, it makes a lot of sense. That's entirely unlike the United States' approach to reactor design, where every individual plant is a goddamn work of art, a snowflake among snowflakes. I agree that large-scale fis