bjbj"9"9 JEFFREY BROWN: In the wake of the
Fukushima nuclear disaster, how should government
regulators here set the safety bar for nuclear
power plants in the U.S.?
This week, the head of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission announced his resignation, and
news reports suggest that battles within the
commission over safety requirements may partially
account for his departure.
NewsHour science correspondent Miles O'Brien
has been looking into these bigger questions
well before the latest news.
His report was produced in partnership with
ProPublica.
MAN: We're staying on AOP-1 for reactor scrams
and AOP-2 for turbine trips.
And the immediate actions for AOP-1 reactor
scram are complete.
MILES O BRIEN: This is a test, only a test.
If it were a real nuclear accident in the
making, you would know about it by now.
MAN: Also, right now, we have sustained a
loss of RPS, plus Bravo.
MILES O BRIEN: We're in the simulator at the
River Bend nuclear power plant near St. Francisville,
Louisiana, where these technicians are practicing
how to respond to an accident.
Since the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979,
this has been part of the routine at all U.S.
nuclear power plants, one of many changes
in the way the industry does business in the
wake of that accident.
But now, in the wake of the Fukushima meltdowns,
U.S. regulators and the industry are grappling
with how best to respond, or not, to what
happened in Japan.
Gregory Jaczko is the outgoing chairman of
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
GREGORY JACZKO, chairman, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Agency: Nuclear power plants generally work
well when a lot of things aren't changing.
So there is, I think, an inertia against change
and against improvement.
And I think it's something we have to be vigilant
about and continue to push, as the regulator,
to make sure that that change happens.
MILES O BRIEN: An inertia against improvement,
that doesn't sound like a very safe approach.
GREGORY JACZKO: Well, I think you look at
the industry and where it is today vs. where
it was 10, 15, 20 years ago, there have been
a lot of enhancements to safety.
Performance is much better than it used to
be.
MILES O BRIEN: I joined Jaczko as he toured
the River Bend plant.
Managers here showed us the layers of safety
measures that stand between controlled nuclear
fission and disaster.
In industry parlance, it is called defense
in depth.
These portable generators at River Bend are
the last line in that defense if a failure,
a disaster, or terrorism knocks out the three
larger backup generators designed to keep
the cooling water flowing and the nuclear
fuel from melting.
But industry watchdogs warn there are holes
in the defense at U.S. nuclear power plants.
DAVE LOCHBAUM, Union of Concerned Scientists:
The biggest concern I have had with the NRC
over the years I have been monitoring them
is lack of consistency.
MILES O BRIEN: Dave Lochbaum is a nuclear
engineer who spent 17 years working for the
industry before publicly blowing the whistle
on safety concerns and joining the Union of
Concerned Scientists, which just released
an eye-opening report on the NRC and nuclear
plant safety in the U.S. in 2011.
It documents 15 near-misses, many occurring
because reactor owners either tolerated known
safety problems or took inadequate measures
to correct them; problems with safety-related
equipment that increased the risk of damage
to the nuclear core; recognized, but unresolved
problems that often cause significant safety-related
events at nuclear power plants or increase
their severity.
And it says NRC inspectors all too often focus
just on a specific problem, not its underlying
cause.
DAVE LOCHBAUM: I think the challenge the NRC
has is, when something happens, it's easy
to convince people they need to spend money,
prevent the next one.
But when something hasn't happened yet and
it's just a postulated event or a hypothetical
disaster, it's more difficult to get people
to pony up millions of dollars to fix the
hypothetical problem.
MILES O BRIEN: The case in point may be the
Indian Point nuclear plant that sits on the
Hudson River, 35 miles from Times Square in
Manhattan.
The 40-year licenses to operate the reactors
here are up for renewal.
Indian Point's owner, Entergy, is seeking
a 20-year license renewal.
But where to set the safety bar, especially
after Fukushima, is at the heart of a raging
debate over whether Indian Point should get
a new lease on life.
Eric Schneiderman is the attorney general
of the state of New York.
ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN, New York attorney general:
It is clear to us that, at this point in time,
they have not met their burden of proof of
showing that they deserve to be relicensed.
MILES O BRIEN: After Three Mile Island , a
federal court ruling forced utilities to expand
their list of what-if scenarios and consider
the cost of protecting against more unlikely
events than required by the NRC.
They are called severe accident mitigation
alternative analyses, or SAMAs.
ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN: All that requires the utility
to do is to examine, do a cost-benefit analysis
of safety measures that are not prohibitively
expensive, but could provide substantial additional
safety for the plant.
MILES O BRIEN: Indian Point's SAMA analysis
revealed 20 cost- beneficial safety upgrades
Entergy could perform.
They include adding a diesel generator to
charge batteries, a flood alarm, better flood
protection, additional devices to monitor
for leaks, and a valve to reduce the risk
of hydrogen explosions.
In all, the upgrades carry a $77 million price
tag.
But, surprisingly, implementation of SAMA
upgrades like these wasn't a prerequisite
for an NRC license renewal.
Why not?
GREGORY JACZKO: We have a two-track approach
to our review.
The first part is really the safety decision,
and that's about the license.
The second part is about the federal government
needing to do a review to look at environmental
consequences.
So, it's as part of that -- that second review
that we look at these severe accident issues,
and they really are about looking at environmental
impacts.
MILES O BRIEN: So, that means you don't have
to factor in a Fukushima scenario as you consider
the possibility of relicensing a plant?
GREGORY JACZKO: We -- again, we do it as part
of the environmental review, but not specifically
in the safety context.
ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN: The NRC has taken a very
narrow view of what's required for relicensing.
It defies common sense.
There is no one out there who thinks that
that's the way a regulatory agency should
behave.
MILES O BRIEN: So Schneiderman took Entergy
to court, and his unprecedented legal challenge
paid off.
In a landmark decision, the independent tribunal
responsible for relicensing ruled that the
company must now consider, and likely implement,
the SAMA upgrades in order to get a new license.
ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN: We're not talking about
wild, expensive stuff.
These are only things that pass through this
cost-benefit analysis.
These are cheap remedies that yield a substantial
safety, big bang for the buck, or little bang
for the buck, I guess.
But it's something that they should absolutely
be required to do.
And now, in the context of Indian Point, because
it will be a condition of their relicensing,
they will be required to going forward.
That should be our policy in every nuclear
power plant in the country.
MILES O BRIEN: Should be a given?
ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN: Yes, absolutely.
MILES O BRIEN: Schneiderman hopes his victory
will change the way the NRC does business,
but as Gregory Jaczko points out, the agency
is resistant to change.
In fact, the announcement of his resignation
comes amid a battle with other commissioners
over whether to embrace a menu of a dozen
changes proposed by a task force that studied
the Fukushima meltdowns.
Among the recommendations?
A requirement that plants have vents designed
to prevent buildup of explosive gas, that
operators plan for outages at more than one
reactor simultaneously, and, most important,
the installation of extra generators like
this one at River Bend that would allow a
nuclear plant to endure a long blackout of
at least eight hours without losing the ability
to keep cooling water flowing over the hot
nuclear fuel rods.
GREGORY JACZKO: That effort is going to take
probably at least two years, and it will require
focus and diligence on the part of the agency,
as well as on the part of the industry, to
make sure that we get that rule change done,
and then we implement everything that it requires
in a prompt and timely way.
MILES O BRIEN: Two years, that's lightspeed
for you guys.
GREGORY JACZKO: I think two years would be
an aggressive schedule, but it's one that
I think we can achieve.
MILES O BRIEN: But other NRC commissioners
and the nuclear industry are fighting the
Fukushima task force safety upgrades, saying
they need more time to implement them.
The meltdowns in Japan may have forced the
industry to think about the unthinkable, but
it is still unclear what actions may follow,
and if the NRC will take the lead or be forced
into taking action.
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