NEI Nuclear Notes

The Associated Press yesterday ran a sensationalized account of an internal Nuclear Regulatory Commission dispute over the seismic safety of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. It actually wasn't much of a dispute insomuch as one NRC voice advocated to have Diablo Canyon shut down until additional seismic testing of the site could be conducted, while the larger regulatory body over many years has exhaustively analyzed seismic threats at Diablo Canyon,  always concluding that the site is safe .    Diablo Canyon Power Plant Federal regulations require that nuclear plants be able to withstand extreme natural events that may occur in the region where they are located, and the NRC most recently required that nuclear utilities have seismic experts re-evaluate the potential earthquake impact at their sites using the latest available data and methodologies. But earlier this year the NRC reminded the pub...

I wanted to return to Jeff Donn's piece from earlier this week concerning nuclear safety inspections . As I mentioned in a post from last night, I've been working with NEI's Jim Slider on taking a closer look at it. Jim is an old pro who has worked in the nuclear industry for more than 35 years, beginning his career at NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation as a design basis accident analyst. One of the first things I asked Jim about concerned the figures that Donn cited in his report. According to the story, the GAO report AP obtained a copy of said that NRC cited 10,776 "low-level" violations and 257 "higher-level" violations at U.S. nuclear plants between 2000 and 2012 (see page 3 of the AP story that was posted at ABCNews.com for the aggregate numbers). Those data points puzzled Jim because according to the Reactor Oversight Process (ROP) that NRC instituted in 2000, NRC categorizes inspection violations from 1 (most significant) to 4 (...

We just got the news a few minutes ago that the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) has presented an award for in depth reporting (3rd place) to Jeff Donn of the Associated Press for his series on the safety of nuclear energy facilities. When the series first appeared in June 2011, NEI had this to say : The coverage has factual errors, fails to cite relevant reports on safety that contradict the reporting, and raises questions about historic operating issues while ignoring more recent evidence of improved performance in areas that it examines. As it turns out, we're not the only ones who found the series wanting. Specifically, I'm referring to the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review : [T]he AP series, while it tackles a critically important public policy issue, suffers from lapses in organization, narrative exposition, and basic material selection, what to leave in and what to leave out. Too much is left to rest on inconclusive he-said-she-said exchanges that e...

The Associated Press published a misleading article in newspapers across the country last week in which it largely calls into question some of the nuclear energy industry’s emergency preparedness programs . The article suggests that new changes to federal regulations were passed behind closed doors and fail to adequately test evacuation procedures. This mischaracterization in reporting, not a far cry from its faulty four-part series that was critiqued by the Columbia Journalism Review last year, could not be further from the truth as it blatantly disregards the latest scientific evidence on how accident scenarios could potentially unfold at nuclear energy facilities and the rigorous drill cycles conducted annually at the nation’s nuclear plants. At issue here are changes that were approved last August by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to enhance the nuclear industry’s emergency preparedness regulations. Sue Perkins-Grew, NEI’s director of emergency preparedness, provide...

Yesterday the winners of the 2012 Pulitzer Prizes in journalism and the arts were announced. Though it failed to win a Pulitzer, a series by the Associated Press (AP) on safety at American nuclear plants was nominated in the national reporting category . We were a little taken aback by the news considering some of the criticism that was directed at the series by the Columbia Journalism Review earlier this year: [T]he AP series, while it tackles a critically important public policy issue, suffers from lapses in organization, narrative exposition, and basic material selection, what to leave in and what to leave out. Too much is left to rest on inconclusive he-said-she-said exchanges that end up more confusing than illuminating for readers. CJR's Irene M. Wielawski also concluded: "Reading it was, for me, a hugely frustrating experience." One wonders whether the Pulitzer committee might have come to the same conclusion. POSTSCRIPT : Click here for the formal response to...

It's been a full week since we first raised some questions about a claim made by Arnie Gundersen about soil samples he took in Japan recently. Gundersen claims the lab results he obtained indicated that the soil would be classified as radioactive waste here in the U.S. -- a statement that was reported by the Associated Press in a subsequent story . We had our doubts about the story, so NEI decided to do some investigating of its own. 24 hours later, we sent an email to the AP asking questions about how they went about reporting the story. We wanted to know how they were able to verify Gundersen's claims without working with a radiation protection professional who could properly interpret the data. We wanted to know why the story lacked any specifics about the lab results that Gundersen provided to the AP. We were also concerned that the AP identified Gundersen as a "nuclear consultant" when in fact he has long track record as an anti-nuclear activist and is current...

It's been about 24 hours since we sent our last note to the Associated Press concerning claims that Arnie Gundersen has made about some soil samples he took in Japan recently -- soil samples that he says would have been classified as radioactive waste here in the U.S. While we've yet to get a response from the AP, we're going to open an additional avenue in our inquiry to get to the bottom of this story. Here's a note I sent to Arnie Gundersen at Fairewinds Associates a few minutes ago. Dear Mr. Gundersen, For the past week or so, many of us here at NEI have had serious questions concerning claims you made to the Associated Press about the soil samples you took in Tokyo. In order for us to resolve these questions, we'd like to ask you to provide us with a complete copy of the results of the test results you've been referencing. We'd also like to obtain contact information for the laboratory that you used, in order that we may be able to ask some follow up ...

Our readers will recall that last week we forwarded a note to some editors at the Associated Press concerning some irregularities I identified in a story that ran earlier in the week that contained a claim from anti-nuclear activist Arnie Gundersen that soil samples he took in Tokyo would be classified as low level radioactive waste in the U.S. Late on Friday afternoon we received a one line answer from Cara Rubinsky, the AP's New England Editor: "We have reviewed your concerns and obtained a copy of the report from the lab that did the testing. We do not believe a correction is warranted." Considering the details we shared in our message to the AP, the response seemed less than adequate. Here's the latest note I shared this morning with Rubinsky, AP Editor Evan Berland and reporter Dave Gram. Hi Cara, Please forgive me if I find your response to be insufficient, and hardly in the spirit or the letter of your organization's own published standards. In fact, your...

By now I'm sure most of you have seen the AP story that ran earlier this week that quoted Arnie Gundersen saying that soil samples he took in Tokyo would be classified as low level radioactive waste in the U.S. Yesterday, I published a short blog post on the subject after speaking with NEI's Chief Health Physicist, Ralph Andersen. After discussing the situation further with our media relations staff, we decided to take our case directly to the AP. The following note was sent to AP Editors Karen Testa and Evan Berland in Philadelphia this afternoon. We'll provide updates once we hear back from them. Dear Ms. Testa: I am writing to you in reference to an unbylined Associated Press story that appeared in a number of newspapers earlier this week with the headline, " Vt. consultant Gundersen: Tokyo soil is N-waste ." The claim made in this article by Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates that soil collected in Japan could be classified as radioactive w...

Here at NEI, my colleagues and I have been batting around a press release from Environment America and U.S. PIRG claiming that nuclear power plants represent a threat ground water from leaks of tritium. The report is titled, “Too Close to Home: Nuclear Power and the Threat to Drinking Water.” From where we sit, the story seems a lot like one that the AP pushed out in June 2011 about the subject. The public needs to know that there has been no known adverse impact on public health or safety from a tritium release at commercial nuclear power plants. While we'll have more on that later, it's also important to point out that the four co-authors of this study lack any scientific credentials. Jennifer Kim of U.S. PIRG has a degree in history from the University of Michigan; According to her own MySpace page , Courtney Abrams of Environment America graduated with a degree in Psychology from Wake Forest; Her Environment America colleague Rob Kerth has a BA in history from Yale;...

A few days back, I pointed to a piece by the Columbia Journalism Review that took a look at NEI's dispute with the Associated Press over their series on the safety of nuclear power plants. Since that piece was published on Wednesday, a number of readers have weighed in with some interesting comments. We've included a few below: I see you think the plants were designed for 40 years of use. I think rather that the plants were licensed for 40 years of use. When you get a drivers license lasting for four years, do you expect to quit driving after four years? When a steam generator is replaced in a plant is the new steam generator less reliable that the same steam generator placed in a new plant? The point here is safety is not determined by plant age. Safety is determined by measuring how safe something is. Is the plant safe when it is new? Is the plant safe 10 years later? Is the plant safe 40 years later? Is the plant safe 60 years later? Safety is not based on the age of the ...

Over the Summer that the Associated Press (AP) ran a four-part series on safety at America's nuclear power plants by reporter Jeff Donn. Needless to say, everyone here at NEI believed the stories had some significant holes, ones that we detailed in a formal rebuttal back in June. Earlier today, the Columbia Journalism Review published a the latest edition of its Audit Arbiter series about our dispute with the AP . Please give it a read right now. POSTSCRIPT : Click here for the formal response from NEI's media team. Click here for additional material we published here on NEI Nuclear Notes, including links to other third party sources that found the AP's work less than convincing. NEI's Chief Nuclear Officer, Tony Pietrangelo, outlined his objections to the reporting in a video report that can be found here .

Around the time of the July 4 holiday, we responded to a four-part series published by The Associated Press that was larded with inaccuracies about the nuclear energy industry. It’s one thing for a single newspaper to get something wrong in a single print file; quite another when a global news wire service devotes more than a year and notable resources to an “investigative” series characterized by shoddy reporting throughout. What could have been a notable public service by the AP instead turned out to be a grievously misguided series that lacked vital context. NEI’s Chief Nuclear Officer Tony Pietrangelo pulled no punches in assessing the merits of the AP series in a video posted to our YouTube channel . Most recently, this Boingboing.net post – AP: US nuclear power plant safety isn’t being tightly regulated – directs readers to the AP articles. While the Boingboing.net post contains some perspective that highlights how nuclear energy can be beneficial in the economic and environm...

It’s reasonable for journalists to beaver around the nuclear energy industry to find evidence that the industry is a nest of vipers plotting disaster and misery. That’s what journalists do. And I guess one can always find something that can be ratcheted into a breathless story. But the nuclear energy industry in context is not very, um, viperous and thus such stories tend to point at wicked seeming details that are pretty benign – in context. The Al-Jazeera story below doesn’t really qualify here because the story has a suspicion of American motivation underlying it that makes it vulnerable to conspiracy theories and bluntly unproveable – one might even say false - assertions. But the Associated Press, in a long story published yesterday, tries a different approach, trawling through Nuclear Regulatory Commission records to try to show a coziness between the industry and its regulators that make the party animals at the Mine Safety and Health Administration look like shrinking violets. ...