While there are many issues we can raise about the manner in which nuclear energy has been managed in this country, few are more concerning than the industry’s unwillingness to respond to lessons taught by the Fukushima disaster.
Time and again, the same siting and engineering mistakes have been repeated in location after location, so that the viability of the entire industry depends on denying that any risks even exist.
Despite overwhelming evidence of the price for underestimating a plant’s vulnerability to water inundation, Duke Energy is playing what amounts to the same game of chicken with the Oconee Nuclear Power Station in South Carolina.
Only a seven-and-one-half-foot-high dam separates the Power Station from the furry of a flooding Lake Keowee, should it be hit with a catastrophic storm event, or the dam be otherwise breached.
but previous estimates showed that between nine and sixteen feet of increased water could be generated by flooding and threaten Oconee’s backup control system.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, perhaps realizing at last that it has been somewhat under-vigilant in matters of flooding, is getting nervous. So Duke commissioned it’s own “study” which it recently submitted to the NRC:
The reports given by Duke Energy representatives showed that, while the licensee admits that it is not impossible, they do not consider the failure of the massive 385 foot upstream dam a “credible risk”.
Where have we heard that before?
Arnie Gundersen, chief engineer for Fairewinds, laments the very verbage used by Duke officials commenting, “Not credible, is that not the same thing that TEPCO once said about risks from 50 foot tsunami waves?”
If past history is an indicator, the NRC will probably just say, “Glad to hear everything’s fine.”
‘Anyone got plans for a radiation-shielded ark?
The word “credible” conceals multiple layers of meaning here.
Begin here: the core fact about nuclear power has always been that catastrophic accidents ARE possible. There have always been imaginable accident scenarios. Even the most devoted industry proponents, when pushed, will acknowledge that fact.
For me, that raises a very simple question: is there any amount of power that a power plant could generate which would provide so much benefit that it outweighs the costs of such a catastrophic accident (however improbable)? For me, since the answer is clearly no, the matter ends there. That, in a nutshell, is why I’ve opposed the use of this technology for as long as I have.
But many disagree with that simple analysis, and prefer to gage the PROBABILITY of such an accident. (It is worth noting that all efforts to do so scientifically – notably the NRC’s WASH 1400 and its successor – have failed).
And that’s where the word credibility comes in.
If the probability of an accident is quite small, then it seems reasonable to some folks to consider it as “almost impossible.” Such, I submit, are 50-foot tsunamis and 8 foot floods. When pushed, no one is actually saying that such things CAN’T happen. What they’re saying is that they’re so unlikely that we can MAKE BELIEVE that they WON’T happen. They are, to use the word of the day: not credible.
This matters because it defines not just an attitude, but a regulatory response. Regulators demand that plants have contingency plans and procedures to meet “credible” threats, but allow operators to simply dismiss and push to the side “non credible” events or threats. The threats which regulators consider “credible” are the ones which become the “design basis accidents” for a given plant. Accidents within the design basis must have detailed contingency planning; those “beyond design basis” can “safely” be ignored.
And here’s the nub of the matter. Looking at the accidents (and many of the near accidents) that have occurred in the nuclear industry to date, there are few common causes: Fukushima was caused by earthquake and tsunami; Chernobyl, by worker error, etc. But they do share one common characteristic: namely, they had previously been declared “non-credible” by informed observers.
The problem, I submit, is not reducible to greed or incompetence. Sure, both are contributing factors, but it’s too simple to declare all of those involved with this technology greedy and stupid. The better explanation is faith: faith in a technology which SEEMS so beneficial that those in its thrall prefer to chararcterize improbable risks as “non credible” rather than to recognize that, however small their probability is, the magnitude of being wrong simply defies imagination.
In short, this one word, in my estimation, includes within it the very core of what is wrong with using nuclear reactors to generate power.
have a common thread called “human error”, the main reason it never should have been allowed or used as a power source.
And, they consistantly err on the wrong side of ‘caution’, which was always the fatal flaw in their logic, at this stage of the game it is simply inexcusable.
The “Lessons Learned” are that if all bases are covered it would be unprofitable, as it stands the profit is capitalized as well as subsidized while the risk is socialized which has financed a highly-paid & very long gravy train. If an investor won’t touch it & an insurance co. cannot be found to insure it, it should never have been undertaken & now knowing what we know it should be phased out asap. All fuel pools should be transferred to casks- the only structures unharmed by the tsunami & quakes.
Conflicting reports:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-20…
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/201…
But they could probably both be accurate.