Archive for category News
Boycotting Anti-Nuclear Activist Companies & Celebrities
Posted by John Wheeler in Audio Podcasts, Myth Busting & Analysis, News on June 6th, 2010
Podcast – download the MP3 File Here
During a recent conversation over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a friend asked if anyone in the group was boycotting BP. This led to a lively discussion about the effectiveness of boycotts and the inevitable question,
“Who do you boycott?”
Before I answer that question, I want to make it clear that I don’t want to get overly negative. I am sometimes critical of so called “environmental” groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace who seem to be against everything yet provide no realistic alternatives. In my view, to boycott one person, place or thing means I will support an alternative.
You don’t have to look very hard to find celebrities or companies who are actively working against the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. There was a time in my life that going to the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream shop was a ritual. The company opened one of their first retail stores in a renovated gas station about a block from my apartment in Saratoga Springs, NY where I lived when I worked at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory. As the company grew and the profits rolled in their founders began to become politically active in Vermont. Unfortunately they jumped on the anti-nuclear bandwagon and began to support groups like Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility who advocate shutting down the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. I made the decision not to buy Ben & Jerry’s ice cream because every scoop I ate was helping to fund activist efforts to shut down Vermont’s only nuclear plant. It’s too bad Ben & Jerry’s fails to understand that without Vermont Yankee the electricity used to manufacture their ice cream would necessarily come from fossil fuels, and would contribute to air pollution and climate change. They are probably unaware that Vermont is one of the only states to continue burning oil to generate electricity. Their anti-nuclear campaign is in effect supporting the continued use of oil and other fossil fuels. Fortunately for me there are plenty of ice cream alternatives!
I’m a big fan of Tom Clancy novels, and one of my favorites is “Hunt for Red October.” I’ve read the book and enjoyed the movie when it premiered, but unfortunately I’ll never watch it again. That’s because one of the stars of that movie is Alec Baldwin, an actor who has personally contributed millions of dollars to efforts to shut down the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York and the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in New Jersey.
Baldwin and his actress wife Kim Basinger support the anti-nuclear Radiation and Public Health Project, and have lobbied the NY State Government to acquire funding for the group. The Radiation & Public Health Project is responsible for several junk science reports that claim commercial reactors are responsible for thousands of cancer deaths to plant workers and the general population around the plants. Baldwin is also a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post which gives him a soap box on which to promote his radical anti-nuclear ideas (I am not against the Huffington Post. In fact I follow a few of their other contributors regularly). Some recent anti-nuclear articles by Alec Baldwin include The Hidden Costs of Nuclear Power and The Truth About Nuclear Power in Utility Reactors.
I will not watch any movie or television show in which Alec Baldwin or Kim Basinger appear. To do so would support their ability to provide financial aid to anti-nuclear groups. If you think about it, their ability to influence public opinion is based on their celebrity, and that is directly tied to the size of their audience. If everyone quit watching Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger then their value as lobbyists and spokespersons would diminish and their ability to financially support such efforts would decline.
So tell me . . . do you boycott any companies or entertainers? If so, who?
Post a comment and share your thoughts.
NY State Gives Fossil Fuels Favored Treatment
Posted by John Wheeler in Audio Podcasts, News on May 31st, 2010
Podcast – Download Audio File Here
This is a follow up to the podcast titled “Water Wars in New York” on May 27, 2010 in which I discussed how NY State is using their authority to issue Water Quality Certificates to wage war against the Indian Point Nuclear Plant. In case you missed that show, New York is holding the plant’s 20 year license renewal hostage by refusing to issue a Certificate of Water Quality unless the plant agrees to install expensive cooling towers. The plant has argued that the cost of cooling towers, approximately $2 Billion, is excessive and disproportionate to the environmental benefit that would be derived. In fact, the plant has identified an alternate technology that would provide greater environmental benefits at about one-tenth of the cost of installing cooling towers. Thus far those arguments have fallen on deaf ears.
In my further research on this topic I discovered a damning piece of evidence that proves NY State is giving preferential treatment to fossil fuels while at the same time imposing unfair regulations on neighboring nuclear energy facilities, the largest competitors to fossil fuels.
There are several other large power plants on the Hudson River that generate electricity by burning coal, oil, and natural gas. All of those plants, like Indian Point, use the Hudson River for cooling. One of the plants, the Bowline plant, is in Haverstraw, NY only about five miles across the river and downstream from Indian Point. 
Bowline is a two unit gas and oil fired power plant with a combined output of 1,182 MW (slightly larger than each Indian Point nuclear unit).
There are many similarities between Bowline and Indian Point: Bowline, like Indian Point, is required to maintain a NY State water permit. Bowline, also like Indian Point, evaluated several alternative technologies to reduce fish and fish larva mortality. The Bowline analysis reached similar conclusions to the one performed by Indian Point; they concluded that converting to a closed cooling water system using cooling towers would provide the greatest reduction in fish mortality, but at a very high cost. Instead, the Bowline plant offered to use a combination of technologies that would provide 80% to 95% percent of the benefit that would be derived from the vastly more expensive cooling towers, but at 1/30th of the cost.
That’s where the similarities end. In the case of the Bowline oil and gas plant, the New York State Department of Environmental Conversation accepted the lower cost alternatives to installing cooling towers. On the topic of cooling towers, in a letter from Denise Sheehan, the DEC Commissioner they stated;
The estimated cost of retrofitting Bowline with a closed cycle cooling system is more than 30 times greater than the selected suite of technologies yet yields approximately equivalent reductions in impingement mortality. While potential entrainment reductions from closed-cycle cooling would be approximately 10 -15% greater than called for in this permit, the Department has determined that, at this time, the cost of closed cycle cooling at Bowline is wholly disproportionate to the reductions.
The cost of the “alternative technologies” at Bowline were estimated to be less than one percent of one year’s revenue, while the cost of cooling towers were said to be about 30 times more.
So here’s the “smoking gun” proving institutionalized anti-nuclear bias in the NY State government: for a gas and oil power plant they allowed the cost of various technologies to be considered, and they ruled out cooling towers because the high cost was “disproportionate” to the benefit provided. Yet, when the nuclear plant next door tried to make the exact same argument the state refused! In the case of Indian Point, New York stated cooling towers are the only available option, even though the plant provided for lower cost alternatives that would, over the life of the plant, provide GREATER reductions in fish fatalities!
Here’s another tidbit to consider: because of the high cost of oil and natural gas the Bowline plant (according to NY State) operates only about half of the time. If Indian Point is forced to install cooling towers the plant will have to shut down for about 44 months. During that time Bowline will be one of the electricity generating plants that will be called upon to make up for the lost generation. This means the Bowline plant will be running more, killing more fish, and emitting more air pollution and greenhouse gases. And don’t forget when they run at 100% rather than their normal 50% their profits double too!
This favoritism towards oil and gas and bias against nuclear is occurring in a deregulated, competitive electricity market. The state’s role in a deregulated energy market is to set fair policies and laws that promote fair competition and to protect the customers from unfair practices. In this case NY State is doing the opposite by imposing unfair and onerous rules on one form of generation while giving competitors a pass! If the state gets their way the ratepayers will suffer two ways; their electricity bills will be higher and the air they breath will get dirtier. I’ll pose this question to my listeners, “In light of this clearly biased treatment, do you think the federal government should intervene? Could this case fall under the jurisdiction of either the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or the US Environmental Protection Agency?”
Indian Point is not alone in this battle. The State of New jersey is going down the same path with the Oyster Creek Nuclear plant, and the State of California has recently imposed similar rules on nuclear plants on the Pacific Ocean. At least in California they are applying the rule uniformly to fossil fueled plants, but that’s a story for another day.
Links to Documents discussed in this show:
- Letter on the Bowline Plant from the NY DEC
- Response from the NY DEC on Indian Point’s Water Permit Application
John Wheeler
# # #
Water Wars in New York
Posted by John Wheeler in Audio Podcasts, News on May 27th, 2010
Podcast – Download the MP3 Here
In April the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation denied Indian Point Nuclear Plant’s application for a water quality certification. In their 28 page letter, the NY DEC told the plant they have no alternative but to install expensive cooling towers to eliminate the plant’s impact on fish and fish larva in the Hudson River.
Power plants of all types (not just nuclear plants) that draw cooling water from bodies of water adversely affect aquatic organisms in three primary ways: thermally by heating the water, by entrainment where small fish and fish larva are sucked into the cooling system and are injured as they pass through, and by impingement where fish are injured by the plant’s intake but not sucked though the cooling system.
The plant had proposed installing “wedge wire screens,” essentially large high tech strainers on the water intake. The screens would virtually eliminate fish impingement, and would reduce entrainment (according to the DEC) by between 72% and 76%. That was not a sufficient reduction in entrainment to satisfy NY State.
The letter covered many issues, but the main reasons they denied the proposal are:
- They said cooling towers are a better option because they would eliminate about 20% more entrainment (at least 90%) than wedge wire screens.
- They said wedge wire screens are still “experimental in nature” and unproven in aquatic environments like the Hudson River, and at nuclear power plants like Indian Point.
- They also stated Indian Point was violating the law by killing endangered shortnose sturgeon by impingement and entrainment.
I would like to address each of these three claims:
First, while it is true that on any given day cooling towers are slightly more effective at eliminating fish and larva entrainment than wedge wire screens. That’s not the whole story. To assess the full benefit to the river one must consider how long each mechanism is in service. Wedge wire screens are relatively easy to install and could be in service within five years. That would mean the screens would be working and reducing entrainment for virtually the full term of Indian Point’s 20 year license extension. Cooling towers on the other hand would require 15 years to permit and build. This means cooling towers would provide no benefit at all for at least 15 years. When you consider the entire remaining life of the plant, wedge wire screens offer far more protection to Hudson River aquatic life.
It is illogical for NY State to object to the use of wedge wire screens one the basis that the technology is experimental and unproven. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency wedge wire screens have been successfully tested in a variety of settings in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Florida, and Kansas, and on bodies of water including the St John River and the Delaware River in conditions very similar to the Hudson River. In these examples wedge wire screens essentially eliminated impingement and reduced entrainment from 66 to 99%. On the issue of lack of experience at large nuclear plants, from the perspective of the cooling source, the fuel source is irrelevant; steam plants are steam plants. Wedge wire screens have been used at large 770 MW fossil fueled plants. While not quite as large as Indian Point where each of the two reactors is about 1000 MW, the size is in the same ballpark. Keep in mind each unit has it’s own separate intake from the river.
The DEC’s argument that Indian Point is killing endangered sturgeon is so ridiculous that it is 
almost hysterical! They should be embarrassed! The current Indian Point nuclear reactors have been on line since the mid-1970’s and during that time the population of shortnosed sturgeon in the Hudson River has INCREASED more than 400% (Sturgeon populations have skyrocketed in the Hudson River since the 1970’s). In fact, the fish population has recovered so much that shortnosed sturgeon are no longer endangered in the Hudson River. The fish is being kept on the endangered species list because it has not yet recovered in other rivers. While it may be true some baby sturgeon and sturgeon eggs are destroyed by the plant’s cooling water system, the impact on the fish population in the river ecosystem is negligible.
Cooling towers have problems of their own. The water in the Hudson River near Indian Point is brackish and contains a good deal of salt. If that water is used in a cooling tower it will emit a considerable amount of salt spray to the immediate vicinity. Salt is corrosive to vehicles, power lines, and building materials. Constant salt spray on vegetation will cause much of it to die, and salt deposition on the ground could make its way into drinking water wells. Turkey Point Nuclear plant in Florida experimented with a saltwater cooling tower many years ago and discovered it defoliated acres of sensitive wetlands. The same thing could happen if cooling towers are installed at Indian Point.
The state is focusing solely on water quality and is failing to consider the overall impact to the environment. Cooling tower construction would force the plant to shutdown for an extended period of time. During that shutdown replacement power would come primarily from coal and natural gas, both of which cause air pollution and greenhouse gasses. In addition, cooling towers emit particulate air pollution of their own.
Why is the NY DEC so insistent that Indian Point Nuclear Plant should install cooling towers? Just follow the money: cooling towers would cost about ten times more than wedge wire screens. Wedge wire screens would provide more benefit over the life of the plant at one-tenth of the cost of cooling towers.
It’s Not About the Environment!
Don’t forget that the New York State Atty General Andrew Cuomo is hard core anti-nuclear. He’s made it very clear he wants the plant to shut down (as a side note, Andrew Cuomo recently announced he is running for governor of New York). The NY position on Indian Point is not about protecting the environment; it is about imposing onerous financial burden on the plant to make it less competitive with the end goal of shutting the plant down for good. In this regard, New York like New Jersey and California is using the state’s authority over water quality permits as a way to raise costs and drive nuclear plants out of the market.
Why is the water quality certificate so important? The clock is ticking; the current operating licenses for the Indian Point rectors will expire in 2013 and 2015. The plant must have a valid water permit from NY State before the NRC can issue a license renewal.
Thankfully, this legal fight is far from over.
John Wheeler
Huge Untapped Uranium Reserves in Virginia
Posted by John Wheeler in Audio Podcasts, News on May 25th, 2010
Podcast – Download the MP3 Here
This has been a deadly year for fossil fuels in the United States. In February five workers lost their lives in an explosion at the Kleen Energy natural gas power plant in CT. Then in April 29 coal miners perished in a mining accident at the Massey Energy coal mine in West Virginia. Of course that was followed by the disaster on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform that killed 11 workers and caused a massive oil spill that is contaminating hundreds of miles of coastline.
With events like these (and others similar events around the world), and our growing reliance on huge quantities of imported oil and natural gas, it is time for America to expand its domestic supply of uranium.
On this show I was joined by a panel of experts who discussed efforts underway in Virginia to unlock the vast potential of uranium resources that have been discovered there. My guests were:
- Aaron Ruby from the Virginia Energy Independence Alliance
- Patrick Wales, the project manager and geologist for Virginia Uranium, Inc, and
- Lisa Stiles, a nuclear engineer with many years experience in the nuclear industry, and a former president of NA-YGN and the International Youth Nuclear Congress.
Topics we discussed included why allowing safe uranium mining in Virginia is so important, the huge untapped Coles Hill uranium deposit, uranium mining safety, and the many benefits that developing the Coles Hill mine would bring to an economically depressed region.
Enjoy!
John Wheeler
Happy Earth Day
Posted by John Wheeler in News on April 22nd, 2010
Here’s a nice nuclear Earth Day Article from one of my favorite pro-nuclear environmentalists, Dr. Patrick Moore:
This Earth Day, which celebrates the 40th year of its founding, is special for another reason beyond its anniversary date. On the topic of nuclear, 2010 is a good year for both the environment and world peace.
You can read the entire article here.
P.S. Regular readers and listeners have probably noticed it has been a while since I last published a new blog or podcast. Work and family commitments have kept me very busy for the last several weeks. I hope to begin regular updates very soon. Thank you for your patience!
Peace!
Putting Picos In Perspective
Posted by John Wheeler in Audio Podcasts, Myth Busting & Analysis, News on February 12th, 2010
Fast Fission Podcast #23 – Download mp3 Here
Ever thought about how many zeros there are there in a “pico” something?
Remember back in grade school when we learned the metric system of measures? We started out with units that are easy to visualize: meters get 1000 times bigger and become kilometers; meters 
get 1000 times smaller and become millimeters. We understand these intuitively because we have a frame of reference and can visualize each of those unites of length and distance. Units of mass are the same way; we know a gram is a small unit of mass – we can hold a gram of almost any material in the palm of our hand. For example, a penny weighs 2.5 grams. Stack up 400 pennies and you have a kilogram, or 1000 grams. Cut a thin copper shaving off a penny and you have a milligram, or one 1,000th of a gram. Again, these are things we can see, and that makes it easier to understand.
As our schooling progressed we learned about very large and very small numbers, exponents, and scientific notation. We put these principles to use in science and learned there are other units of measure larger than a “kilo” and smaller than a “milli”. These are harder to visualize because we have to think in terms we can’t see. For example, the mass of Mount Everest, is 3E18 grams, or 3 “exa-grams” and the mass of the planet earth is 6×10^24 kg, or 6E27 grams (6,000 “yotta-grams”) (see note below).
On the opposite end of the scale is the prefix “nano” or 1E-9 of a unit. A nanometer is 1E-9 meters, and a nanosecond is 0.000000001 seconds. I had a hard time visualizing a nano second of time until I learned that it takes about 1 nanosecond for a beam of light to travel one foot. That kind of puts a nano into perspective, doesn’t it? The newest computer chips, for example have transistors with a thickness of 45 nanometers! We can only see things that small with powerful electron microscopes.
A “pico” is even smaller than a “nano” , 1000 times smaller! “Pico” means there are 12 places behind the decimal point. Even for a person like me who deals with engineering and science all the time, it can be difficult to visualize a “pico” of something. A pico is so small that even a million picos is still very small amount. It takes a million, million pico grams to make one gram. If you have a 
million pico-curies in a liter of water, it would take one million liters to provide a total of one curie. To give you a sense of scale, an Olympic sized swimming pool (about 2.5 million liters) filled with water containing one million pico-curies of tritium per liter would hold a total of about 0.3 milligrams of tritium. Said another way; if I had an olympic swimming pool full of pure water and I sprinkled in 0.0003 grams of tritium (less than the mass of one drop of water), then mixed it up, I would have a mixture containing 1,000,000 picocuries of tritium per liter.
It is very hard to measure anything as small as a nano or pico of anything. There’s one area where we can: with advances in science, we’ve gained the ability to measure radioactivity in very, very small amounts down to the energy released by single energy particles or beams. This gives us the ability to quantify radioactive material in extremely small quantities.
Anti-nuclear activists around the country aided by an uninformed media have grabbed on to the issue of tritium leaks at some nuclear plants around the USA, and are using the issue very effectively to create fear and distrust. Nervous politicians are retreating from positions of outward support for nuclear plants even though the federal government, state agencies, and independent scientists all agree that the leaks pose no threat to public health and safety. The leaks have produced concentrations in special monitoring wells (not drinking water wells) in the range from few hundred to a million or so pico-curies per liter. As I’ve shown, a million pico-curies per liter may sound like a lot, but in reality it is a tiny, tiny amount.
Every form of energy production has some impact on the environment. Even wind and solar energy which are viewed by many as environmentally benign, have measurable effects. The production of solar panels results in highly toxic chemicals, and worn out panels could leach chemicals into water supplies. Wind turbines cause noise pollution, kill bats and migratory birds, and catastrophic blade failures can throw lethal fragments hundreds or even thousands of feet. Coal plants dump toxins into the land, water, and air, and the radioactive releases from coal plants are hundreds of times higher than allowed by nuclear plants. Gas power plants emit greenhouse gases and, as we’ve seen in the last week, can and do explode and kill people. Gas pipeline accidents kill people in the USA every year.
When nuclear plants shut down all the other plants in that market make money – lots of money. Don’t think for a moment that fact is lost on people who are in the business of selling electricity from natural gas. The increase in gas demand causes gas prices to rise and that hurts everyone else, except but gas distributors, of course. I’m also sure this cash bonanza is not lost on politicians who are recipients of donations from coal, oil and gas companies.
It’s time for lawmakers, public service boards, and elected officials to do a reality check. In the case of tritium in groundwater we’re talking about microscopic amounts of material with ZERO safety impact, and ZERO environmental risk. Any time a nuclear plant is shut down, forced to reduce power, or delayed in starting up the replacement power has to come from another form of energy, usually natural gas. When gas demand rises the price goes up and we get higher electricity bills, huge increases air pollution, and further reliance on a volatile, dangerous energy source.
John Wheeler
2/16/2010 Note: Thank you to a listener who recognized errors in my discussion of the mass of Mt Everest and planet Earth – my numbers were way too low! After double checking my math, and performing the Earth mass calculation from scratch (there were errors in my source data) I revised these show notes with the correct values. I’ll update the audio podcast as soon as I am able.
John
World Class Performance One Step at a Time
Posted by John Wheeler in News on February 8th, 2010
On December 16th I found myself in Birmingham, Alabama on my way to visit the offices of Southern Nuclear Operating Company. The purpose of my trip was to benchmark some of their work practices and processes. A few weeks earlier a friend at Southern had called and asked if I would be willing to pay them a visit to meet with a manager who had recently assumed responsibility for their workforce planning strategies, an area in which I have some expertise. As we discussed this possibility, I let them know I was interested in learning about their succession planning process. So we made a deal: we would each bring something to the table – I would share workforce planning ideas, and in return they would share their succession planning program. A Win Win situation!
As I navigated the winding, hilly roads on that crisp, December morning, it dawned on me that this kind of exchange between companies is a uniquely nuclear experience. In other industries the idea of sharing good practices among different companies in the same business is viewed as giving away trade secrets and squandering competitive advantage, but in the nuclear industry this culture of sharing has led to impressive results. Learning from one another, and holding one another accountable, has catapulted the entire industry to impressive levels of safety, cost, and reliability. The results are enough to make other industries envious:
In 1971 the average nuclear plant ran 48.2% of the time. In contrast, for the last several years 
the output from US nuclear plants has been greater than 90% and continues to creep higher, making nuclear plants the most reliable source of energy on the grid.
By sharing information and best practices about nuclear and industrial safety, nuclear plants have become even safer. Human performance errors and work related injuries have plummeted. Workers self report when they have made mistakes, then use the expereince to learn and improve. Today it is common for workers at nuclear plants to go millions of work hours without a loss time injury, and human errors are less frequent than one in 10,000 hours worked. That’s the equivalent of working more than four years without an error!
In the 1990’s I participated on an industry team that was looking for practices and behaviors that led to low costs. We discovered a fascinating trend – the safest and most reliable nuclear plants were also the ones with the lowest costs. As we dug deeper, we realized that the same collaborative management styles, culture of 
learning and discipline to follow procedures that resulted in high reliability and safety also led to lower costs.
The rest is history: over the last 20 years the cost of nuclear generated electricity has fallen from 2.7 to 1.7 cents per kW-Hr, making nuclear electricity cheaper than even coal, and by far the lowest cost of low-carbon energy.
This learning culture is one of the many improvements that followed the core meltdown at the Three Mile Island reactor. After the accident the government formed a commission to determine the factors that led to the event, and to recommend solutions to prevent it from happening again. The Kemeny Commission was named after the Chairman, John Kemeny who was the President of Dartmouth College and a former research assistant to Albert Einstein. In their report, the Commission identified there had been a 1977 event at the Davis Besse nuclear plant that was very similar to the TMI accident. In the Davis Besse event the operators correctly diagnosed what was happening and were able to prevent conditions from worsening. Following the Davis Besse event the reactor manufacturer B&W issued a warning to power plant operators with instructions on how to respond to the event.
Unfortunately news about the Davis Besse event, and the warning by the reactor vendor never reached the operators at TMI. If it had, the accident at TMI would not have happened.
So coming out of the TMI accident the nuclear industry established a mechanism to share information between reactors, and vendors throughout the industry; and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) was born. INPO, among other things, created the framework for sharing “operating experience” between nuclear utilities, nuclear reactor suppliers, and other industry participants. Initially the information sharing was almost purely technical in nature, but as the industry matured and improved so did INPO. Today the sharing of best practices goes way beyond technical information and includes topics like outage planning, supervisor development, organizational effectiveness, and workforce planning. The culture and habits of sharing between companies no longer relies on INPO to facilitate. Formal and informal peer groups have sprung up all over the industry covering topics like human resources, new construction, and knowledge management. These peer groups have also spread worldwide with the formation of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) and working groups facilitated by the IAEA, a division of the United Nations.
My visit with Southern Company that day was a huge success! I took home several great ideas that would have cost me tens of thousands of dollars had I paid an external consultant. They in turn were pleased with the ideas and experiences I shared with them. Best of all, we were able to build new professional relationships and friendships that we’ll draw upon in the future. Word must be getting around, too, because a couple of weeks ago I got a call from friends at TVA. We have a similar meeting set up for a few weeks from now. That’s what it is all about – one small improvement repeated time and time again across the industry. Before you know it you’re the safest, most reliable, and lowest cost energy source in the world!
John Wheeler
What if: Nuclear Rules for Automobile Safety Recalls?
Posted by John Wheeler in Audio Podcasts, News on January 31st, 2010
Fast Fission Podcast #23 – Download MP3 Here
I’ve been reading a lot about the Toyota gas pedal recall because I own a Camry that is a few years old. Several people have been killed in accidents resulting from sudden acceleration caused by a faulty accelerator design. So far my car is not in the group of affected vehicles, but I’m keeping my eye on it.
I’m sure you’ve noticed the press is having a feeding frenzy and many are demonizing Toyota.
Congress has decided to get involved – they’ve scheduled a hearing to oversee the government’s response. Overall it’s been much like when an airplane crashes or a contaminated food product gets recalled – some people die, government agencies demand action to fix the immediate problem, and politicians act concerned until the media moves on to the next high profile news story.
Then the hypocrisy dawned on me – how differently we treat problems in the nuclear industry! For example, in Vermont where a minute, a barely measurable quantity of slightly radioactive liquid in test wells has politicians demanding action from Federal regulators, the state government and Public Service Board are delaying important decisions that threaten the plant’s long term financial viability, and many newspapers are regurgitating unsubstantiated claims of environmental harm made by sworn enemies of the plant. Keep in mind that the tritium that has leaked from Vermont Yankee has not broken any laws, not exceeded any environmental limits, nor harmed even the smallest field mouse.
Consider that in the entire history of the US nuclear industry (about 40 years) not a single person has died from a reactor mishap at any commercial nuclear reactor in the United States. However, in this single instance of a gas pedal design defect a number of people have died (the exact number is not available) , many more have been injured, and these types of problems occur almost every year! If the government response to the Toyota acceleration issue, a problem that has actually killed people, used the same rules that we apply to the operation of commercial nuclear plants (where no deaths have occurred) we would have
- Placed a federal ban on driving all Toyotas until the problem was thoroughly analyzed, the root cause determined, and repairs completed.
- There would be an extent of condition analysis by a team of engineers to determine what other vehicles have similar gas pedals, and to recommend a course of action.
- We would have added two full time government (NTSB) inspectors to every automobile manufacturing plant and every licensed automobile repair shop. The auto makers and repair shops would have to pay the salaries of the inspectors, plus a mark-up for administrative costs. They would raise prices to pass along the cost to car buyers and owners.
- Every car in America would be retrofit with two redundant emergency braking systems and battery backup power. Car owners would be forced to pay for the upgrades even if the cost was more than the car was worth. Violators would be subject to fines and prosecution.
- We’d require special training for all drivers on how to respond to stuck accelerators, and what to do even if both emergency braking systems failed while driving at 120 mph hour going into a sharp turn – after all, that’s the worst case scenario, right?
- Don’t forget we’d have to place a tax on every mile driven so we could pay for the environmental impact of waste oil and exhaust fumes, and for the eventual scrapping and decommissioning of the vehicles.
I am suggesting none of this. I’m merely pointing out the inequity in the amount and cost of Nuclear regulation considering the low risks posed by nuclear plants and the great benefits they provide: low cost, clean, reliable energy.
There are many risks in life that we as a society choose to ignore. Sometimes we’re willing to accept what is actually a very high risk (for example, riding a bicycle, driving a car, smoking, eating unhealthy foods, and playing sports) because we believe those activities add to our quality of life. We also tend to perceive the risk to be less when we feel we have some control over the outcome.
There are many people who stand to gain financially and politically if Vermont Yankee shuts down or is denied a license renewal. The big financial winners would be companies and individuals who sell competing energy from gas and coal because that’s where the replacement power would come from. The political winners would be anti-nuclear activists and politicians who have aligned themselves with the antis. The rest of us would be the losers: we’d suffer from higher energy prices, greater amounts of air pollution, and the loss of thousands of direct and indirect jobs.
If this scenario were to evolve in part from this ridiculous focus on an inconsequential tritium leak it would be an immense travesty of justice.
John Wheeler
Tritium: Fuel for Antinuclear Reactions
Posted by John Wheeler in Audio Podcasts, News on January 22nd, 2010
Fast Fission Podcast #22 – Get the MP3 File Here
There is a political and public relations cauldron boiling in Vermont over a 
recently discovered tritium leak at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. Tritium is a mildly radioactive isotope of hydrogen and has a 10 day biological half-life when it is ingested by humans.
The leak is minute and completely inconsequential from a safety standpoint: the tritium levels very low. Only one ground water sample is slightly above federal drinking water standards (even though the sample points are far away from any sources of drinking water). In fact, the levels are so low that even if you drank water from the test wells, and nothing else, for an ENTIRE YEAR your radiation exposure would be only about 1/10 of what you would receive from one medical x-ray, and a small fraction of your exposure from the natural background radiation. Eating the same quantity of brazil nuts every day, one of the most naturally radioactive foods, would result in MORE exposure to radiation than bathing in the water in these test wells!
These facts have not stopped the antinuclear groups in the area from going berserk. They know when they have the upper hand on a public relations issue, and they are doing everything they can to take advantage of it. Adding fuel to the fire are allegations of false statements by plant officials. At a PSB hearing last spring a plant executive stated he did not believe there was any active buried piping containing radioactive fluids. The official said the plant would verify that was the case and would get back to the board, but reportedly they did not. Potentially adding to the communication difficulties - the phrases “Buried piping” and “underground piping” do NOT mean the same thing. To an engineer the term “buried” piping refers to piping that is buried underground in direct contact with the soil. Underground piping means the piping is below grade and could be located in a vault or concrete trench.
Plant personnel have apologized for the miscommunication and are actively looking for the source of the leak. Timing could not be worse because the VT public service commission has yet to make a ruling on Entergy’s proposal to create a new nuclear only generating company, and the VT state legislature has yet to vote on the plant’s request for a license extension.
Vermont Yankee has passed every NRC inspection in flying colors and is operated both safely and reliably. In fact, the plant recently earned the highest possible rating from the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations.
John Wheeler
Cloudy Days Ahead for the Sunshine State
Posted by John Wheeler in Audio Podcasts, News on January 19th, 2010
This past week the Florida Public Service Commission voted to deny requests by the state’s two largest utilities to upgrade the state’s electrical systems by adding renewable energy, new gas turbines, a new gas pipeline, new reactors, and transmission lines. This politically motivated decision is mind-numbing in a state with an over-taxed grid and an electricity supply that has not kept up with population increases.
In this podcast Rod Adams of The Atomic Show and the Atomic Insights blog joins me for a chat about this terribly near-sighted decision, some possible motivations, and what it means for the people of Florida.
Some other links related to this story:
Renewable Energy plans will be scuttled by the FL PSC Decision.
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