Everything you never wanted to know about nuclear non-regulation and were afraid to ask...
or
How a 90-Day Plan Turned Into More Than 130 Days [and counting]
On August 2 of this year the Environment and Public Works Committee of the U.S. Senate held a hearing called to "look into" NRC foot-dragging on the 12 recommendations of the Near-Term Task Force Report on the accident at Fukushima, which had been released in July.
NRC Must Act on Fukushima Report -
"Delay is not an acceptable option," Senator Bernie Sanders told the five NRC Commissioners at the hearing. "I applaud the recommendations made by the task force, but I am disturbed that a majority of the NRC [commissioners] does not want to move forward on all 12 recommendations within three months. I know what delay means in this town, it means that nothing is going to happen."
Sanders also cited an Associated Press investigation that pointed out flaws in safety regulations at U.S. nuclear plants and found a cozy relationship between the NRC and the nuclear power industry it regulates. "Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them," according to the AP investigation.
At the Senate hearing, Sanders supported NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko's roadmap for action which calls for agency to respond to the task force recommendation within 90 days.
For those of you paying attention, the very same Senate committee held yet another hearing on Thursday, December 15, essentially on the very same subject but more than 130 days later. This time spiced up with a full cup of rancor and ridiculous in-fighting and a 'demand' from four of the commissioners for the removal of the Chairman, Gregory Jaczko. Stall, stall, stall. It's working, obviously.
As reported at Huffington Post, Thursday's hearing drew some frankly frustrated admonishments from members. Such as from Senator Frank Lautenberg, who said…
"What we're seeing today," Lautenberg said, "is what you get when commissioners put the profit interests of the industry they're supposed to regulate ahead of the safety of the indsutry." Chairman Jaczko, Lautenberg noted, is the first chairman in the history of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who has not come from the industry. "He's a scientist running his commission based on science," Lautenberg said, "and clearly some powerful people don't like his style."
Which is actually an understatement. So, I thought we should take a look at the 12 recommendations from the Near-Term Task Force that the shills on the commission don't plan to act on, and why they don't plan to issue any new rules to the industry they protect and serve, but which presents an obviously huge existential threat to people here in the United states who happen to live near one (or more) of our 104 nuclear plants.
The report can be found here (pdf warning). For this diary as part of the overall Fukushima/nuclear archive of the group I'm just going to list each one and discuss. The first recommendation comes in under the heading of
Clarifying the Regulatory Framework -
1. The Task Force recommends establishing a logical, systematic, and coherent regulatory framework for adequate protection that appropriately balances defense-in-depth and risk considerations. [Section 3]
First, the intent of Section 3: …this section addresses the elements of the NRC regulatory framework that play a part in providing from design-basis events, as well as events as severe and complex as the Fukushima accident. Those elements include protection against seismic and flooding events [characterized as design-basis events], protection for loss of all ac power [characterized as beyond-design-basis events], and mitigation of severe accidents [addressing beyond-design-basis topics of core damage and subsequent containment performance], as well as EP. The Fukushima accident therefore highlights the full spectrum of considerations necessary for a comprehensive and coherent regulatory framework. [p.15]
Basically, recommendation 1 would officially expand the considerations of NRC when rule-making for safety and response procedures to include all foreseeable design-basis events (earthquakes, floods, fires, small break LOCA, etc.) and some beyond-design-basis events (scram failure, loss of site power, major explosions, bigger earthquakes and/or floods, etc.). What the 4 dissenting commissioners object to here on behalf of NEI/industry, is the ability for NRC to actually impose regulations that cost the utility some money for events the utility would rather pretend can't ever happen. In that, it would change the NRC's long time SOP of weighing proposed safety regulations against made-up probabilities that such events might happen during the operational lifetime of the plant.
i.e., North Anna unit 2 could under this regulatory framework have been required to spend money on actual seismic monitoring protections, even though the assigned probability of a 5.9 earthquake (beyond design-basis) was arbitrarily set at 1 in ~2200 years. Despite the fact that the area suffered a 5.9 earthquake less than 100 years previously that was entirely ignored in factoring the probability risk.
Or Calhoun might have been required to ensure its spent fuel pool and external power switching were secured against encroaching floodwaters in that '100-year flood' that happens every decade or two or three despite what the label says (which is sort of as reliable as "storm of the century" that happens every other year). So the fuel pool didn't get muddy water in it and the power stayed on without fires.
If this recommendation is acted upon, the real dangers at all plants would have to be re-factored to something a lot more realistic, and retrofits to ensure their ability to withstand and/or respond to said events would cost utilities some money. The industry, through its in-house shills at NRC (NEI industry lobby), says nay, and 4 of 5 NRC commissioners side with NEI against the senior staff task force and the Chairman.
In this new framework's establishment, come recommendations 2 and 3.
Ensuring Protection
2. The Task Force recommends that the NRC require licensees to reevaluate and upgrade as necessary the design-basis seismic and flooding protection of structures, systems, and components for each operating reactor.
Well, there you go. Note the word "require" in this recommendation. Gift of a tooth for the toothless NRC, but not something the 4 dissenting commissioners will allow because their handlers at NEI don't want the agency to have any teeth.
3. The Task Force recommends, as part of the longer term review, that the NRC evaluate potential enhancements to the capability to prevent or mitigate seismically induced fires and floods.
This would authorize the establishment of other dedicated task forces of experts to look at ways that plants could actually mitigate the damages they might suffer as a result of earthquakes and fires/floods that result. You never know, such things might be possible someday. But as it stands, we human's can't prevent earthquakes or make them smaller than Mother Nature determines them to be. Protections to prevent the possibility of resulting fires and resistance to tsunamis or floods caused by dam failures upstream are more possible. But not desirable to the industry, thus not to the 4 dissenting commissioners.
Enhancing Mitigation
4. The Task Force recommends that the NRC strengthen station blackout mitigation capability at all operating and new reactors for design-basis and beyond-design-basis external events.
Consideration of how quickly ubiquitous spring tornadoes wiped out the electrical grid in northern Alabama last spring, causing this very sort of loss-of-power event at all 3 of the Brown's Ferry reactors, and the fact that offsite power wasn't restored for nearly two weeks (and a non-operational EDG caused unit 1 to overheat) should put this into its proper perspective. It can happen here.
It takes all of 16 hours for a reactor to melt all the way down, on its way through. It takes mere seconds for fuel to transition from solid to molten. We know this.
5. The Task Force recommends requiring reliable hardened vent designs in boiling water reactor facilities with Mark I and Mark II containments.
This one is very specific to the design of the reactors that [so explosively] failed at Fukushima and which are just waiting to explosively fail right here in the U.S. of A. The vents failed at Fukushima, and they'll fail here if stressed, in ANY of our many GE Mark I and II BWRs. This is a hard rule for retrofit that is extremely important and needs immediate attention. Why the 4 commissioners and NEI oppose this has to be purely monetary. The greedy nukes don't want to spend the money.
6. The Task Force recommends, as part of the longer term review, that the NRC identify insights about hydrogen control and mitigation inside containment or in other buildings as additional information is revealed through further study of the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident.
Here's your sign, Svinicki, Ostendorff and Magwood. You can 'study' this one from now until kingdom come, nobody minds. Lots of money for assorted 'experts' and lazy-assed research via web-surfing, forever. Everybody already knows where the hydrogen comes from, so it's not like this is as pressing as #5 or anything. But I guarantee the Congress would give y'all more money to play with on this.
7. The Task Force recommends enhancing spent fuel pool makeup capability and instrumentation for the spent fuel pool.
Duh. And double duh to the dissenters and their NEI overlords, this one is entirely sensible and not that expensive.
8. The Task Force recommends strengthening and integrating onsite emergency response capabilities such as emergency operating procedures, severe accident management guidelines, and extensive damage mitigation guidelines.
Obviously not something that would be favored by people whose entire raison d'être is to avoid all responsibility. Still, just a matter of meetings and writing up procedures among utilities and their local constabularies. Not that difficult or expensive.
Strengthening Emergency Preparedness
9. The Task Force recommends that the NRC require that facility emergency plans address prolonged station blackout and multiunit events.
You could probably group this one with #8 because it requires just that much time and trouble.
10. The Task Force recommends, as part of the longer term review, that the NRC pursue additional emergency preparedness topics related to multiunit events and prolonged station blackout.
Yeah, building them right on top of each other wasn't that bright an idea after all, was it? Magnifies the danger in a station-wide event exponentially.
11. The Task Force recommends, as part of the longer term review, that the NRC should pursue emergency preparedness topics related to decisionmaking, radiation monitoring, and public education.
Again, the dissenting commissioners should easily be able to live with this kind of wishy-washy meetings and endless pot-lucks and jawing, without ever really having to come up with anything that would tend to cost real money or require anybody to take real responsibility for anything. But, whiners that they are, even this is way too outrageous.
Improving the Efficiency of NRC Programs
12. The Task Force recommends that the NRC strengthen regulatory oversight of licensee safety performance (i.e., the Reactor Oversight Process) by focusing more attention on defense-in-depth requirements consistent with the recommended defense-in-depth framework.
Well, there you go. This one needs to be discussed and debated and shelved and tabled and un-shelved and re-hashed and un-tabled and batted around in circles for at least until all our current and planned nuclear plants have all been decommissioned. No WONDER the 4 dissenting commissioners don't want to implement any of these recommendations!!!!! Lord'a mercy. Next thing you know someone will be claiming in public that the NRC's job is to ensure the safe and proper operation of nukes in the interests of public health and safety instead of industry profits or something. Ridiculous.
In the end, all anybody really needs to know is that the NRC has been rendered entirely dysfunctional due to the "inherent conflict of interest" between the industry and the regulators that led to the abolishment of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1975 and the establishment of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The industry is still ruling the roost, and they now demand the removal of Obama's designated Chairman Gregory Jaczko, because he takes the public health and safety mission seriously.
We see that Thursday's Senate hearing is just one more in a line of hearings since Fukushima. Nothing has changed, still no one in or out of government wants to take responsibility. Except Jaczko, that is. And for that, he has been dubbed anathema. Nothing will change now, nor will it ever change after any conceivable (or inconceivable) nuclear disaster in the future, anywhere in the world. The power that this crazy game is all about isn't the power you use to communicate in cyberspace or toast bagels for breakfast. It's another kind of power entirely, and we the people get none of it. We just get the deadly waste products in our food and water supplies, washing up on our beaches, raining out of our skies, killing our children. That's all we were ever supposed to get from it, from the very beginning.
Or, as Albert Einstein said…
"Nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water."
Some links to coverage of the situation, then and now:
Aug. 2: Senate Panel Prods NRC to Act on Fukushima Report
Aug. 3: NRC Must Act on Fukushima Report
Dec. 15: Key senator defends nuclear commission chief
Lautenberg Defends NRC Chairman at EPW Hearing
Concerns about Jaczko Continue in Senate Hearing
NRC chair responds to critics at Senate hearing
Senate hearing on NRC infighting has quieter tone, still intense
NRC Chairman Attack Dismissed as 'Witch Hunt,' 'Character Assassination'