NEI Nuclear Notes

Bob Bement The following is a guest post by Bob Bement, Executive Vice President at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station (PVNGS). Learnings from the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March of 2011 are actually impacting U.S. nuclear industry operations today, making a safe fleet even safer . One of the most significant post-Fukushima initiatives was the implementation of Diverse and Flexible Coping Strategies (FLEX), which utilizes reliable portable equipment to provide operators with a powerful tool box for responding to the most extreme situations. The industry has made great strides in improving safety using the portable equipment to protect against events similar to the one at Fukushima, however there is still significant potential for increasing safety in other areas with this equipment. We’re doing just that at Palo Verde today and, with the support of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), it will be done industry-wide. Palo Verde achieved a green ris...

David Heacock This week is the fifth anniversary of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant . To mark the event, we'll be sharing observations from leaders around the nuclear energy industry all week long on how the U.S. has absorbed lessons learned from the accident to make safe nuclear plants even safer . Today's contribution comes on the industry's FLEX strategy from David Heacock , President and Chief Executive Officer of Dominion Nuclear. The U.S. nuclear industry is well on its way toward implementing a flexible mitigation approach for responding to any event that may exceed the robust design of the nation’s nuclear power plants. This FLEX strategy , the outcome of the U.S. industry’s response to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan, provides yet another layer of safety. This is in addition to the multiple back-up safety systems already available to protect the public and environment. In effect, this strategy was demonstrated to succes...

Bill Webster This week is the fifth anniversary of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant . To mark the event, we'll be sharing observations from leaders around the nuclear energy industry all week long on how the U.S. has absorbed lessons learned from the accident to make safe nuclear plants even safer . Today's contribution comes from Bill Webster, Executive Vice President, Industry Strategy for the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations . U.S. nuclear stations continue to perform at high levels of safety and reliability, as measured by internationally accepted measures of performance. Most notably, as we approached the end of 2015, industry median values for capability factor, forced loss rate, reactor scrams, collective radiation exposure and industrial safety reflect the best-ever performance of America’s nuclear energy industry and exceed the challenging five-year goals set for these indicators in 2010. Early in the response to the accident at Fukus...

Neil Wilmshurst This week is the fifth anniversary of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant . To mark the event, we'll be sharing observations from leaders around the nuclear energy industry all week long on how the U.S. has absorbed lessons learned from the accident to make safe nuclear plants even safer . Today's contribution comes from Neil Wilmshurst, Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Even as the events at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were unfolding, the U.S. industry began analyzing the situation and compiling data that would inform the industry’s lessons learned. The Electric Power Research Institute’s Modular Accident Analysis Program (MAAP) software analyzes the progression of events during an accident. It captures many possible outcomes in a short timeframe. Unlike other codes, MAAP runs faster than accidents progress so it can actually guide emergency responders. Now in its fi...

Jeff Archie This week is the fifth anniversary of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant . To mark the event, we'll be sharing observations from leaders around the nuclear energy industry all week long on how the U.S. has absorbed lessons learned from the accident to make safe nuclear plants even safer . Today's contribution comes from Jeff Archie, Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer of South Carolina Electric & Gas Company. Chief nuclear officers (CNO) representing U.S. energy companies have collaborated with their Japanese colleagues on leadership, safety and reactor operations during meetings in Japan and the United States and in personal interactions. Since 2013, more than 30 U.S. CNOs visited the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini nuclear power plants in Japan to obtain a greater understanding of the events at each facility after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. They met with Japanese CNOs to strengthen support and engagement between the two...

Michael Pacilio This week is the fifth anniversary of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant . To mark the event, we'll be sharing observations from leaders around the nuclear energy industry all week long on how the U.S. has absorbed lessons learned from the accident to make safe nuclear plants even safer . Today's contribution comes from Michael Pacilio, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Exelon Generation. After the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s acceptance of the industry’s FLEX strategy , the industry immediately began development of a three-phased approach to mitigating beyond-design-basis events . In phase one, companies would use permanently installed equipment as an initial means of responding to a serious event. The phase two concept drove the acquisition and storage of portable equipment at each nuclear plant site to enhance the station’s coping strategies. Finally, phase three drove the enhancement of existing inte...

Every once in a while NEI's media team has to call out a journalist for egregiously unbalanced coverage. Today is one such day. Jenner Deal, “reporting” for Business Insider , produced a wildly unbalanced video , replete with anti-nuclear activist views and horror-film ominous sound, in labeling the Diablo Canyon Power Plant a "Fukushima waiting to happen." The report wasn't entirely erroneous -- Deal got Diablo's acreage, location, and surrounding population correct. But thereafter her reporting lapses badly into anti-nuclear activism. "Many fear that a single earthquake could cause a repeat of the 2011 Fukushima disaster," Deal claims in the intro to her video. Actually, very few outside of California's anti-nuclear activist community do; scores of independent geologists and seismologists who've studied the site do not. Nor does the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission , which has the authority to shut down Diablo Canyon or any other nuclear...

Maria Korsnick The following is a guest post by Maria Korsnick, NEI’s Chief Operating Officer. During the five years that I was chief nuclear officer at Constellation Energy , my first priority was to ensure that our plants operated safely and reliably in order to protect public health and safety. On a day-to-day basis, I wanted to make sure that our operating crews and emergency personnel had multiple tools available to combat any situation that might arise. And when we identified gaps, we made sure to address them promptly. It’s this bias for action -- together with the oversight of a strong independent regulator, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission  -- that has helped the American nuclear energy industry become the safest and most reliable in the world. Following the tragic accident at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan on March 11, 2011, the U.S. nuclear industry followed that same bias for action to ensure that our plants would continue to protect the public should a simil...

Of course, our favorite fictional robot is the ED-209 from the original RoboCop (1987). It’s a slightly glitchy death machine that cannot be turned off reliably and has considerable difficulty managing stairs. It’s also one of the last great uses of stop motion animation before the arrival of CGI, but that’s another discussion. I was reminded of the ED-209 by this bit from a report from the DARPA Robotics Challenge: Before the games began, a DARPA representative said something pretty funny: He expected most or all of the robots to fall down at some point. And he was right. Which is only reinforced by the rules of contest: The rules are simple — each humanoid robot has one hour to score eight points for various tasks, which include driving a car, opening a door, pulling a lever and climbing some stairs. Climbing some stairs! The reverse of what foiled ED. Anyway, the DARPA challenge was motivated by the 2011 nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi. "Rob...

James Conca writes this in Forbes: But the real health and environmental impacts from the Fukushima reactors are nothing compared to the tsunami. Contrary to all the hype and fear, Fukushima is basically a large Superfund site. No one will die from Fukushima radiation, there will be no increased cancer rates, the food supply is not contaminated, the ocean nearby is not contaminated, most of the people can move back into their homes, and most of the other nuclear plants in Japan can start up just fine. It’s definitely true that the earthquake and tsunami, which killed 22,000 people, was a tremendous human disaster. But is Conca overstating the case on the nuclear accident? This would seem to suggest so : Unfortunately, a new monitoring system for thyroid cancer seemed to reveal an immediate and drastic effect. Hundreds of thousands of children in Fukushima prefecture underwent sensitive ultrasound scans after the accident. The results showed that 44 percent of them had t...

Tony Pietrangelo Later today, Tony Pietrangelo, NEI's Chief Nuclear Officer, will testify before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee concerning " NRC’s Implementation of the Fukushima Near-Term Task Force Recommendations and other Actions to Enhance and Maintain Nuclear Safety (click 'Live Hearing' at link beginning at 9:00 a.m. U.S. EST to watch webcast).”  The first panel will be comprised of the five current members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, including outgoing Chairman Allison Macfarlane. Pietrangelo will appear in the second panel in the afternoon, along with Daniel Hirsch of UC-Santa Cruz and Sam Blakeslee, a former California state senator who was once a member of the state's Seismic Safety Commission. A preview of Pietrangelo's oral testimony follows. America’s 100 nuclear power plants provide approximately 20 percent of our electricity and nearly two-thirds of our carbon-free electricity. They produce that electric...

Dale Klein The following is a post by Dale Klein, former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and now Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at The University of Texas System. All nations with nuclear energy programs share the same goals of protection of the public health and safety along with the efficient operation of their commercial reactors, implemented in accordance with their own policies, laws and regulations. Never more so than since the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi site three and a half years ago. Recent reports from both Bloomberg News and Reuters have shed new light on differences in approaches to enhancing safety at nuclear power plants in the international community. With that in mind, I’d like to take a closer look at the post-Fukushima actions the U.S. industry has taken to make plants that are already safe even safer. Each U.S. plant site is procuring additional equipment such as portable pumps and generators to perform key safety ...

Tom Kauffman Last night, Fox News picked up a report from Russia Today concerning  a leak in the spent fuel pool at Fukushima Daiichi Unit Five . Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was forced to switch off the cooling system at Reactor Unit 5, after engineers discovered it had been leaking water. If the system is not repaired within the next nine days, temperatures are expected to soar, Russian news site RT reported Sunday. As our readers might recall, our go to guy on Fukushima and spent fuel is Tom Kauffman, a former reactor operator from Three Mile Island. Here's what he wrote to me after I shared the Fox News link with him: The used fuel has cooled to the point that even if all the water was lost, radiation levels would increase due to a loss of shielding, but there’s no way the fuel produces enough heat to damage itself let alone incinerate. A good rule of thumb: Even in a densely packed fuel pool, 107 days after fresh used fuel is placed in the...

Charles Casto The latest addition to our understanding of the lessons in leadership from the Fukushima experience of 2011 comes from Charles Casto .  Mr. Casto spent almost a year as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's senior liaison in Japan after the Fukushima accident.  This role gave him an extraordinary opportunity to learn from the people involved in the accident response.  Mr. Casto recounts many of his insights in an article in the Harvard Business Review, July-August 2014 issue, and in an HBR podcast accompanying the article.  Naohiro Masuda The article focuses on the crisis leadership of  Naohiro Masuda , superintendent of the Fukushima Daini site, and his contribution to saving Daini from the reactor meltdowns that occurred at the sister plant, Fukushima Daiichi .  Mr. Casto and co-authors Ranjay Gulati and Charlotte Krontiris, highlight Masuda-san's technique for "sense-making" in the midst of uncertai...

The report by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation on the radiation impacts of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident came out a few weeks ago. A lot of it is a dense, heavy read, but the introduction – essentially the executive summary - is  much easier going. I wasn’t sure what to expect of the report, except that it was unlikely to be alarming or disturbing. The Japanese did a good job of keeping people out of harm’s way – more harm’s way, actually, as the earthquake and tsunami that precipitated the nuclear accident killed over 20,000 people - and the report more-or-less confirms that, if largely by implication. The best section to see this is Health Effects, starting on page 17. The doses to the general public, both those incurred during the first year and estimated for their lifetimes, are generally low or very low. No discernible increased incidence of radiation-related health effects are expected among exposed members of the publ...

The story in the April 2014 issue of Popular Mechanics that debunks Joe Mangano's anti-nuclear research has just been published online and has gotten some additional attention -- including a link from UT-Knoxville law professor Glenn Reynolds , better known as Instapundit . There are plenty of great quotes in the Popular Mechanics piece, but this passage really sticks out: The Mangano and Sherman paper is a prime example of a troubling new trend in which junk science is becoming harder to distinguish from rigorous research. It is an example of activists using the trappings of science to influence public opinion and policy. Today there are cottage industries that produce and disseminate skewed research in publications that masquerade as legitimate science journals. Celebrities and mainstream media outlets then tout the results, so that even retracted or clearly biased research can reach larger audiences than ever before. These studies cause real harm—for instance, by denoun...

On Friday, the Tokyo Electric Power Company released the following statement: After nearly two years of discussions, the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) have reached an important agreement that will allow implementation of a plan to allow clean groundwater to bypass the Fukushima Daiichi plant and flow in a controlled manner into the sea, subject to stringent safety and environmental controls. [...] Once in operation, the groundwater bypass system will divert the flow of naturally occurring groundwater between the hilltop and the contaminated building basements built on lower ground. This will reduce the amount flowing into the building basements by a maximum of 100 tons from the current amount of around 400 tons/day to 300 tons/day. Diverting this groundwater will reduce the volume of water that becomes contaminated and then needs to be cleaned and stored on site. This, in turn, is expected t...

60 Minutes will air a report on Fukushima Daiichi during its broadcast this Sunday, April 6 at 7:00 p.m. U.S. EDT. If you're watching on Sunday, we have a number of online resources you can consult for additional information about the accident , the clean up of the site and how the U.S. nuclear industry is applying lessons learned from Fukushima to improve safety at its own plant sites. Over the past three years, we've shared much of this coverage here at NEI Nuclear Notes: Earlier this week, NEI's Scott Peterson outlined how U.S. plants are applying the Fukushima experience to protecting nuclear plants from earthquakes ;  Just a few weeks ago, NEI's Senior Technical Advisor, Steven Kraft, shared his personal reflections on the 3rd anniversary of the accident ;  In October 2013, NEI's Tom Kauffman outlined the myriad ways that the U.S. industry differs from Japan when it comes to the way plants are operated and regulated ;  Last September, a de...

For years, we've been telling you about freelance anti-nuclear activist Joe Mangano and how he leverages flawed research to stoke fears about nuclear energy. Now, another serious science writer has taken a closer look at Mangano's studies and says it's part of a larger trend of agenda-driven science being peddled to the press. On newsstands now is the April 2014 issue of Popular Mechanics . There you'll find a feature (yet to be published online) titled, "Junk Science." In it, Science Editor Sarah Fecht investigates a claim that Mangano and Janette Sherman made in 2012 that 14,000 American deaths could be linked to fallout from Fukushima Daiichi . Interviewed for the piece is Dr. Robert Emery of the University of Texas at Houston : "I read the thing and was taken aback," says Emery, who has a doctorate in public health and is a licensed health physicist. The study implied fallout from Fukushima caused 484 deaths in Houston. If there had been...

The third anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi accident has attracted more attention than the second – from my news watching perspective, not through story counting – in part because the dire projections of nuclear energy’s end have definitely not come to pass. And reporters are either gobsmacked by this or find it a practical outcome. The Economist provides a particularly sour version of the former: Yet the disaster hasn’t stopped the global interest in nuclear power—especially in developing countries that have untested regulatory and crisis-management systems. After Fukushima, Germany shut all its nuclear reactors. Japan let all of its reactors go idle, and then slowly restarted a few. But the world has done little to establish standards for nuclear disaster-response that builds confidence for the public, or their nation’s neighbors. That last bit qualifies as a bald assertion that IAEA would probably find amusing, but you get the point. (The Economist also provides a ter...