SOARCA and the Decreasing Risk of Death

How likely is it that a major accident at a nuclear energy facility would kill you? Japan just had such a major accident and no one died due to radiological exposure – there were industrial accidents at Fukushima that led to worker death but those were specific to occurring at a physical plant. The general public, while suffering displacement and its attendants stresses – not to mention those caused by the earthquake and tsunami that precipitated the accident – has been fatality free.

The NRC has been investigating the risk of death from a nuclear facility accident and has an answer: your risk is vanishingly small.

The study found there was "essentially zero risk" to the public of early fatalities due to radiation exposure following a severe accident. The long-term risk of dying from cancer due to radiation exposure after an accident was less than one in a billion and less than the U.S. average risk of dying from other causes of cancer, which is about two in one thousand.

Another conclusion: severe accidents at nuclear energy facilities would unfold more slowly and potential releases of radioactive material would be much smaller than earlier studies indicated.

The NRC looked at Surry and Peach Bottom for the study because they are different kinds of reactors.

If core cooling is not restored [following an accident], the NRC said containment failure and radiological release could begin at about 8 hours for Peach Bottom and at 25 hours for Surry.

That’s the worst case scenario, of course, with safety systems intended to prevent its occurrence at multiple points. (Remember, though, that this report assumes that all these systems fail and radiation is released – that eventuality is what it wants to model)

The story doesn’t go into evacuation, but the report does:

For the purposes of evaluating accident consequences in the SOARCA project, the most evident part of a plant's emergency response plan is the evacuation of the public in the 10-mile (16-km) plume exposure pathway Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ). Actions in this EPZ could be expanded if the plume projections suggest that the population in a wider area need to take protective actions. Thus, the project team assessed additional aspects of emergency response, including relocation from areas of relatively high potential for exposure, as well as variations of evacuation and sheltering of population groups outside the 10-mile EPZ to a distance of 20 miles from the plant.

The plume is what many think of as a cloud of radiation.

The report also says that existing safety measures—including those put in place after 9/11—would be highly effective in protecting the public. Moreover, even if mitigating measures fail or are not used, “the analyzed accidents would cause essentially zero immediate deaths and only a very, very small increase in the long-term cancer deaths.”

Any industry – from chemical and gas plants to paper mills to refineries – has to know the worst possible event that can happen and figure out how to keep people alive though it and get them out of the way should it occur. These are the risks of an industrialized society and not specific to the nuclear energy industry.

But it does suggest the responsibility industry and government regulators have to know the risks and how to mitigate them. This report, State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses (or SOARCA, in Washington-acronym speak), provides a careful analysis and concludes that the risk is present, and must be acknowledged, but it is very, very small.

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

How Much Land Does Nuclear, Wind and Solar Really Need?

Not too long ago, we reviewed a report that looked at nuclear energy (and other energy sources) as biodiversity agents. This had to do, in part, with the amount of land a facility needs to function. Nuclear energy and fossil fuel plants use relatively little, wind farms and solar arrays quite a lot of land . Based on an objective and transparent analysis of our sustainable energy choices, we have come to the evidence-based conclusion that nuclear energy is a good option for biodiversity conservation (and society in general) and that other alternatives to fossil fuels should be subjected to the same cost–benefit analyses (in terms of biodiversity and climate outcomes, as well as sociopolitical imperatives) before accepting or dismissing them. Writer Barry Brook, who collected 75 scientists to endorse his paper, is interested in land use as it impacts flora and fauna. Biodiversity concerns do not get as much play as they might – and, when they do, it annoys many when land is withdraw...

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