The reactor relapse takes 3 hits to the head
Harvey Wasserman
The reactor relapse takes 3 hits to the head
November 12, 2009
The much-hyped “Renaissance” of atomic power has taken three
devastating hits with potentially fatal consequences.
The usually supine Nuclear Regulatory Commission has told Toshiba’s
Westinghouse Corporation that its “standardized” AP-1000 design might
not withstand hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes.
Regulators in France, Finland and the UK have raised safety concerns
about AREVA’s flagship EPR reactor. The front group for France’s
national nuclear power industry, AREVA’s vanguard project in Finland
is at least three years behind schedule and at least $3 billion over
budget.
And the Obama Administration indicates it will end efforts to license
the proposed radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
After more than fifty years of trying, the nuclear industry has not a
single prospective central dump site.
“If history repeats itself as farce, then the nuclear power industry
represents the most incompetent jester of all time,” says Michael
Mariotte of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service. It “seems
intent on repeating every possible mistake of its failed past—from
promoting inadequate, ever-changing reactor designs to blowing through
even the largest imaginable budgets. If the computer industry followed
the practices of the nuclear industry, we’d still be waiting for the
first digital device that could fit in a space smaller than a
warehouse and cost less than a family’s annual income.”
Nuclear sites throughout the world sit on or near earthquake faults.
Ohio’s Perry reactor was damaged by a tremor in 1986, just before it
went on line. In 1991 Hurricane Andrew did $100 million in damage to
Florida’s Turkey Point, causing a critical loss of off-site
communication. In 2007 a massive earthquake shook Japan’s Kashiwazaki,
shutting seven reactors (
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2007/1573).
And radioactive waste continues to build up at sites throughout the
world, including some 50,000 metric tons here in the US.
The vote of no confidence from regulators in three European countries
has stunned AREVA, not to mention its potential customers, including
the United Arab Emirates. “It hasn’t helped at all,” says one key
source. (http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/
articles/djf500/200911110905DOWJONESDJONLINE000473_FORTUNE5.html) “One
of the key arguments has been that the EPR is safer than all the
others.”
That AREVA would sell reactors to the UAE at all has raised widespread
fears that atomic Bombs will soon proliferate throughout the Middle
East. Both India and Pakistan got radioactive weapons materials from
their commercial reactors.
AREVA’s design safety fiasco follows a Pink Panther-style stumble in
October, when federal and state officials bailed on a massive media
celebration planned for the Cadarache nuclear facility’s 50th
anniversary. As much as 39 pounds of plutonium dust is now believed to
contaminate the historic research center, enough to make numerous
Nagasaki-sized Bombs. According to the Financial Times
(http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fbb38bd0-bab3-11de-9dd7-00144feab49a.html)
“the discovery that France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) had wildly
under-estimated the quantity of plutonium dust that would accumulate -
and then delayed notifying the Nuclear Safety Authority – has led the
latter to hand its findings to the public prosecutor, who will decide
if there should be an investigation into the CEA’s management … This
is a severe blow to the credibility of the CEA, flagship of French
nuclear research, and to Cadarache, soon to be the site of the world’s
first fusion reactor.”
The uproar, writes Peggy Hollinger, has “cast a shadow over the
Nuclear Safety Authority’s behaviour since it became independent of
the government.”
Finnish regulators have also gone to virtual war with AREVA over the
catastrophic Olkiluoto project. In a conversation with me in southern
Ohio this summer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v43ahQHvObI) CEO Anne
Lauvergeon blamed AREVA’s problems on the Finns. But similar
complaints are now coming from French regulators over AREVA’s parallel
project at Flamanville, in northern France.
AREVA has also run afoul of British regulators, who say its massive
incursions into the UK’s nuclear industry have raised serious safety
concerns.
Meanwhile the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s critique of the
Westinghouse AP-1000 reactor has shattered the industry’s expensive
image of a “renaissance” that is “ready to go.” As the machine of
apparent choice at vanguard sites throughout the US, the industry has
touted the AP-1000 as a standardized “cookie-cutter” design that might
make reactor construction and operations easier to manage. Regulators
in Florida and Georgia have already imposed massive consumer rate
hikes to pay for proposed AP-1000 reactors. An army of high-priced
lobbyists is pushing hard for huge subsidies and loan guarantees to go
into the Climate Bill.
Wall Street has made it clear it will not finance (or insure) new
reactor construction unless backed by the federal treasury.
Congressional critics warn half the reactor construction loans are
likely to go into default. “This only underscores Moody’s assessment
that new reactors are ‘bet the farm’ investments,” says Michele Boyd
of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “So why is the federal
government going to back these projects with US taxpayer dollars?”
Now these critiques from the American NRC and regulators in Britain,
France and Finland confirm that no safe standardized design exists,
either here or in France, and that the industry could be years away
from finalizing one that can be successfully deployed.
The same applies to radioactive waste. The Obama Administration now
seems poised to finalize its promise that “all license defense
activities will be terminated” on the proposed Yucca Mountain dump (
http://www.lvrj.com/news/memo-casts-doubt-on-license-for-yucca-repository-69639342.html
). Distinguished by its $10 billion price tag and the visible
earthquake fault running through it (not to mention the dormant
volcanoes that surround it and the water perched at its peak), Yucca
is bitterly opposed by some 80% of Nevada’s citizenry. After a hugely
subsidized half-century of futility, the US reactor industry has not a
single named prospect for a centralized commercial waste dump. The
“solution,” as put forth by Stewart Brand and other industry advocates
(http://kpfa.org/archive/id/55967; about 32 minutes in) seems to be
focussed on leaving high level radioactive waste at the sites and
letting future generations deal with it. In the years since the
Shippingport (PA) reactor opened in 1957, the industry’s go-to device
is a concrete “dry cask” with vent holes and armed guards.
Meanwhile, despite repeated industry denials, the bad news about the
health impacts of reactor radiation pours in. “Downwind or near eight
reactors that closed in the 1980s and 1990s,” says New York-based
expert Joe Mangano, “there were immediate and sharp declines in infant
deaths, birth defects, and child cancer incidence age 0-4″ when the
reactors shut. “The highest thyroid cancer rates in the U.S. are in a
90 mile radius of eastern PA/New Jersey/southern NY, an area with 16
reactors at 7 plants, which is the greatest density in the U.S.”
The near-simultaneous demise of Yucca Mountain with the regulatory
credibility of the AP-1000 and AREVA EPR, along with the attacks by
Moody’s and other financial critics, might come as a death blow to any
such technology in a sane society. But the financial reach of the
atomic lobby remains powerful in Congress and the White House.
At this point, the only certainty about the future of reactor
construction is that still more shoes will drop on an industry whose
decomposed credibility has become legend.
–
Harvey Wasserman is author of SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH
(www.harveywasserman.com) and Senior Editor of www.freepress.org,
where this article first appeared.
