Last week, as a result of a FOIA request the NRC made available online transcripts of agency conference calls made during the Fukushima meltdown disaster. Released without much media fanfare, these transcripts may have a pretty limited readership, but it really is fascinating first-hand stuff.
Regardless of your view of nuclear power, the first confused conversations made after the March 11, 2011 tsunami are a little unsettling. We should all be uneasy – not just because of the nuclear crisis unfolding in Japan, horrible enough, but because, as the NY Times suggests:
An undercurrent of the transcripts is how the United States would handle such an event.
Part of that dark undercurrent is the snail’s pace the NRC Fukushima Task Force’s recommendations are moving at. The earliest of Chairman Jaczko’s “fast-tracked” recommendations are still five years away from implementation. The remaining changes face many years of lengthy review and a generous helping of ‘stakeholder’ (industry) input before NRC final approval .
The following excerpt is part of a call from Dan (Dan Dorman, Deputy Director for Engineering and Corporate Support) who is calling and wakes up Mr. Mamish (Nader L. Mamish, NRC Assistant for Operations). Included briefly is a Ms Doan (who may be Margaret Doan, Director, Office of International Programs.
The call took place early Saturday morning March 12, 2011.
DAN: So, have you gotten any sleep?
MR. MAMISH: I came home, ate and just crashed, had a couple of beers and crashed, right away. So, I just woke up.
DAN: You fit for duty?
MR. MAMISH: What?
Continued after the jump … “are you fit for duty”
DAN: Are you fit for duty? You're recorded live.
MR. MAMISH: Just a couple [beers], come on, Dan, give me a break.
DAN: All right.
MR. MAMISH: So, do we know anything about the rad level?
DAN: We have no specifics.
MR. MAMISH: Okay.
MS. DOANE: Hey, Dan. We were talking, TMI, maybe a refresher would be good for some of us.
DAN: Yes, okay.
The second conference call is also from March 12.This, in part, is an exchange between NRC Chairman Jaczko and Dan Dorman (click here for the NRC transcript PDF).
CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay.
MR. DORMAN: Sir, a quick synopsis of the message that was sent from Mr. Condo to Mr. Poneman. The issue is that Unit 1 at Daiichi, this is the unit that's similar to Oyster Creek, the isolation condenser plant.
CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Yes.
MR. DORMAN: Based on the information in the email, it's evident that there is core damage at that facility, and that they are very recently in the process of venting the containment, and the — it makes mention of the wind direction, blowing to sea, that they are — do not have any at the plant, injection and cooling systems available, because of the loss of power. But they are using anything that they can find, in terms of fire trucks and perhaps, batteries from vehicles, to power pumps, to get water into the core.
‘Undercurrent’? More like an undertow.
About three weeks after the event I received a call from a friend in the renewable energy industry. He had been talking with a friend of his at the U.S. Department of Energy. DOE personnel were over in Japan monitoring radiation levels. They had portable suitcase sized radiation monitors powered by internal batteries. These were distributed across the landscape around Fukushima. (Power being out in the area around Fukushima after the tsunami) The problem was that none of these monitoring devices had a big enough battery to last more than a few days. They were having to helicopter in to the danger zone to replace batteries. The question they had for me was, how fast could I design and start building portable solar power systems to keep the radiation monitors going?
I dug into it, but those efficient Japanese emergency workers got generators going at enough police stations and municipal building to deal with the recharging problem.
That was great, but the thing that struck me was that the DOE doesn’t have portable radiation monitors capable of operating independently for more than a couple of days.
It seems like a no brainer to me. A natural disaster that would knock out a plant would also probably knock out electrical distribution in general. It makes me wonder about the real state of preparedness behind the glossy pamphlets and confident pronouncements.
The DOE official I dealt with remarked, after he gave me the stop-work order, that maybe they should have a few of the solar power systems in stock, just in case. Never heard back from him.
exactly are the duties of the Deputy Director for Engineering and Corporate Support?
I get the engineering part…
Just found this on PRI:
http://www.pri.org/stories/wor…
This is my main issue with the NRC and how it regulates the industry. We are told over and over again ‘safe, clean, reliable’ and that it can’t happen here…