Editor’s note: This is an installment of our Audit Arbiter series, which looks into complaints about business news stories. If there’s something we should take a look at, write dean@deanstarkman.com.
The Associated Press didn’t pick a soft target when it decided to examine potential safety risks associated with the aging of America’s nuclear power plants.
Because of longstanding public anxiety about nuclear accident coupled with limited public knowledge of the science and technology underpinning safety, the nuclear power industry maintains a robust public relations operation, headquartered at the Nuclear Energy Institute, in Washington, DC. The mainstays are community meetings, mailings, lobbying and press interviews. But the PR team is equally adept at pouncing on critical stories with the potential to stoke private unease into public outcry.
The AP got a dose of both—reassuring interviews over the course of the investigation and outraged denunciations of critical findings via press and teleconferences, even a YouTube smackdown by the industry’s chief safety officer.
The NEI’s heavy-handed response was overkill. I suppose, in a way, we’re part of that since the NEI asked us to look into it, and we agreed. Such is the life of the Arbiter.
But the 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. Great investigative reporting requires great investigative writing. The challenge in this case was to get past the rhetorical skirmishing between old antagonists—industry, government, watchdog and citizen groups— and provide readers with the context necessary to understand what’s at stake for all of us as nuclear plants reach their shelf life. In this, the AP did not wholly succeed.
The series—four parts plus sidebars and graphics (not readily searchable online but a version is available via these MSNBC.com links)—ran in late June. It generated calls for investigations by three Democratic senators, Barbara Boxer of California, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and has been part of a spate of recent probes into U.S. nuclear-industry safety by other news organizations, particularly after the tsunami-related disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March.
Reading it was, for me, a hugely frustrating experience.
Yes, the series provides lots of examples of worrisome wear and tear at nuclear power plants, many of which have passed the forty-year lifespan for which they originally were designed. Reporter Jeff Donn, whose byline appears over the series, and the AP National Investigative team (which is referred to throughout the series) culled these examples from “tens of thousands of pages of government and industry studies….along with test results, inspection reports and regulatory policy statements filed over four decades,” according to Part 1, “Safety Rules Loosened for Aging Nuclear Reactors.”
This is laudable thoroughness. Yet, time and again, the cited leaks of radioactive material and instances of “failed cables, busted seals, broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete,” etc. (from Part 1) lead nowhere conclusive.
As a citizen reader with no particular background in nuclear power generation but residing less than 50 miles (the preferred safety margin, according to the AP report) from one of these old clunkers, I felt throughout like I was clinging to a pendulum, swinging wildly between “Uh oh” and “Phew, false alarm.”
For example, Part 2, “Radioactive Tritium Leaks Found at 48 US Nuke Sites,” provides plenty of detail about specific leaks at some of the nation’s 104 reactors, but little expository context by which to judge their significance. Meanwhile, the facts aren’t always logically arrayed. The point is made in paragraph five, for instance, that no leaks from any nuclear plant were found to have reached public water supplies, but it isn’t until paragraph sixteen that the reader learns that tritium’s main risk is, in fact, through drinking water. Another paragraph seems to debunk tritium concerns entirely: “Tritium is relatively short-lived and penetrates the body weakly through the air compared to other radioactive contaminants. Each of the known releases has been less radioactive than a single x-ray.”
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 plant! This is especially true when large parts of the plant are replaced over time.
#1 Posted by Martin Burkle, CJR on Wed 28 Sep 2011 at 05:09 PM
Ah, but Martin, that's quite a time differential don't you think. Safety may not be based on the age of a plant, but it is most certainly a big element. And this isn't even taking in to account the inherent, increased safety of new reactor models.
I would assume that the U.S. nuclear industry is well aware that it can't afford, or perhaps survive, even a moderate accident. But the stupidity and short-sightedness of men chasing a buck can never be overlooked.
#2 Posted by gerry, CJR on Wed 28 Sep 2011 at 07:23 PM
@ Gerry
Ah, but Martin, that's quite a time differential don't you think. Safety may not be based on the age of a plant, but it is most certainly a big element.
Age has nothing to do with safety, as Martin pointed out, its all about condition.
Jeff Donn did what many reporters do in similar situations. He presented material without context and relied on “experts” friendly to his point of view to make the material seem far more devastating than it actually is. The nuclear industry was right to go for the throat in this instance. They learned the hard way during the 70’s that if they don’t hit back at reporting like this it will over time do irreparable damage to the industry.
The reason safety standards have been changed over the past 40 years is because when they were originally written we had no experience operating commercial nuclear reactors. As utilities and regulators gained knowledge a number of design standards and operation/maintenance standards were modified to account for these experiences. Most, not all, of these standards were loosened based on these observations. Programs like the MSPI (mitigating systems performance index), are the culmination of this experience.
Since you asked for some more context on the tritium release, I will break down one semi-hypothetical contamination cases Donn referred to. Donn is pretty crafty here, for all the cases he mentions he gives either the quantity of coolant that leaked OR the concentration of tritium, never both. The only way to assess the public health risk is to calculate some sort of dosage, and in order to do that, you need both figures. You will see why he didn’t do this in a moment.
The Oyster Creek case, 3000 gallons at up to 10.8 million picocuries. To be on the safe side, we will assume for the sake of this excercise that the 3000 gallons was just what was observed and the actual amount was 100 times that, 3 million gallons. 3 million gallons of water at 10.8 million picocuries of yields about 30 milligrams of tritium. 30 milligrams of tritium is about one and one half the amount that’s found in an self illuminating emergency exit sign. With this in mind, I eagerly await Donn’s follow up on the radiological dangers posed by self illuminating emergency exit signs.
How this translates into dosage for the general public is another matter, but suffice it to say, by the time this particular release is dilluted into the local water table its of no significant consequence.
#3 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Wed 28 Sep 2011 at 07:53 PM
There is nothing that is "closed-loop" about nuclear energy. You do not have to be born into any kind of particular family in order to go to school to learn about the technology. There are a large number of paths to entering the field from joining the Navy to attending a technical community college to going through a technically based undergraduate program with follow on education at the masters or even PhD level.
Nukes are welcoming people - as long as you are hard working, remain drug free, and display a high degree of personal integrity. We have to trust the people we work with to tell the unvarnished truth, even if that truth means admitting an error. We operate large, complex, very expensive equipment. Trying to cover a mistake with a lie is the quickest way to be drummed out of the field.
Interestingly enough, at least one of the "experts" quoted by the AP story and this review of it is a disgruntled ex nuke who was pushed out of the industry when his employer discovered that he was padding his expense account and purposely arranging "meetings" in locations that happen to be located close to exceptional golf courses.
Understanding how carefully nuclear power plants are maintained requires more than a cursory look at some of the countless pages of documents that the industry produces every year. It is not news to any engineer that pipes made of steel occasionally rust or develop thinning walls, that electrical cable insulation becomes brittle in certain situations, or that valves develop leaking seals. We have inspection routines and planned maintenance systems that are designed to identify these situations and correct them before they cause major risks.
A tour through a nuclear plant followed immediately by a tour through a coal or gas plant will highlight the vast differences in the standards applied, even though all energy production facilities share similar risks of handling high energy fluids and potentially harmful chemicals.
As Mike H pointed out, the whole tritium issue can be better understood by simple math - amount released times the concentration in the released fluid - and then a comparison against a reasonable standard, like the amount of tritium inside an illuminated exit sign.
With regard to making INPO reports public, it must be remembered that the nuclear industry has some very rich and powerful enemies that have displayed their intention to do everything they can to destroy their competitor. Every day that a large nuclear plant operates, it represents a lost opportunity for the hydrocarbon industry to sell more of its product. Replacing the output of one large plant requires burning about $1 million per day worth of natural gas, so the fleet of 104 reactors represents a lost sales opportunity of about $100 million per day or nearly $40 billion per year.
Just think what those numbers would look like if we had simply kept building new nuclear plants with the infrastructure that was fully developed by the end of 1980. The whole coal industry would have been out of business by 2000 and there would be plenty of gas for vehicles and home heating because we would not be burning any of it in power plants.
If you want to ask why "the media" as represented by the AP would run a multi-article hit job on the nuclear industry and not even start a similar investigation about our nation's aging natural gas pipelines, whose failures have already killed people in their homes and destroyed entire neighborhoods (San Bruno, for example), just remember how many times you see ads for Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Citgo and how rarely you see ads from GE about nuclear energy or from Dominion, Exelon, or Entergy.
Ads provide the bread and butter for commercial media. Journalists might be willing to bite the hands that feed them, but publishers and editors rarely support attacking major contributors to their bottom lines.
#4 Posted by Rod Adams, CJR on Thu 29 Sep 2011 at 02:57 AM
I did not notice until after hitting the submit button that there was a 600 word comment limit or that the system would truncate the comment at that number. I apologize. However, here is the remainder of my comment starting after the last full paragraph - so there is some overlap:
....
If you want to ask why "the media" as represented by the AP would run a multi-article hit job on the nuclear industry and not even start a similar investigation about our nation's aging natural gas pipelines, whose failures have already killed people in their homes and destroyed entire neighborhoods (San Bruno, for example), just remember how many times you see ads for Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Citgo and how rarely you see ads from GE about nuclear energy or from Dominion, Exelon, or Entergy.
Ads provide the bread and butter for commercial media. Journalists might be willing to bite the hands that feed them, but publishers and editors rarely support attacking major contributors to their bottom lines.
Just in case you think it is not fair of me to point out the media's money motive, think about how nuclear professionals feel every time they are accused of being shills just because they happen to have a good job in an industry that produces a product that Americans value so much that it makes the headlines if the supply is interrupted for a few hours.
Rod Adams -
Publisher, Atomic Insights
#5 Posted by Rod Adams, CJR on Thu 29 Sep 2011 at 03:16 AM
I would feel a whole lot better aboutthis essay if I felt that the writer knew something about nuclear safety issues. While she has some knowledge of radiation issues faced by health care providers, this does not qualify her to assess nuclear safety problems. Why do journalists who are functionally illiterate in matters such as nuclear safety believe that they are qualified to make pronuncements on the subject?
#6 Posted by Charles Barton, CJR on Thu 29 Sep 2011 at 11:19 AM
When it comes to the big issues, like the ones that have plagued Japan in recent months, the spent fuel pools are what need to be discussed:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2011/03/23/us-nuclear-storage-sites-filled-to-the-brim.html
I have read reports that American spent fuel pools are overflowing and, in the years before the Fukushima disaster, Japan was a model proprietor in comparison. The fact is if the pipes are 40 years old and at the end of their designed lifecycle, they will not be able to withstain a "black swan" critical event when (not if) it arises. Spent fuel rods and reactors need to have coolant process which is powered by the heat produced from those items. Relying on an external generator to cycle water, when a condensation pool would allow the reactor to recycle its coolant, is highly dangerous. Pipes need to have high integrity, not 40 year old degraded integrity, in order not to fail when the time they are truly required comes.
I repeat, in the past, Japan's nuclear industry was looked at enviably in comparison to America's and it wholly failed the test when the time came. Are we going to play around with the nuclear industry, as regulators and the press did with the deep water oil industry, until something blows out and all the failsafes the industry told us were in place blow over like paper cerberuses? Why do we need to have a global disaster every time before people start to act with a little vigilance?
The stakes we're playing with are way too high to be f'in around.
#7 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 29 Sep 2011 at 12:26 PM
"With regard to making INPO reports public, it must be remembered that the nuclear industry has some very rich and powerful enemies that have displayed their intention to do everything they can to destroy their competitor."
Sorry, that's as ridiculous an argument as the one made by INPO.
#8 Posted by gerry, CJR on Thu 29 Sep 2011 at 12:52 PM
When it comes to the big issues, like the ones that have plagued Japan in recent months, the spent fuel pools are what need to be discussed:
Nuclear waste has been and always will be a political problem rather than a technical one. The US, under the wisdom of non-nuclear engineer, Jimmy Carter put a moratorium on spent fuel reprocessing, the environmentalists have fought on site dry cask storage tooth and nail, Obama closes Yucca Mt for purely political reasons and its no wonder we have a spent fuel issue.
The fact is if the pipes are 40 years old and at the end of their designed lifecycle, they will not be able to withstain a "black swan" critical event when (not if) it arises. Spent fuel rods and reactors need to have coolant process which is powered by the heat produced from those items. Relying on an external generator to cycle water, when a condensation pool would allow the reactor to recycle its coolant, is highly dangerous. Pipes need to have high integrity, not 40 year old degraded integrity, in order not to fail when the time they are truly required comes.
You would be correct if any of that were true. Both PWR’s and BWR’s have passive and active safety systems that don’t rely on external grid power, backup generators, main steam condensers or any of what you mentioned above.
I repeat, in the past, Japan's nuclear industry was looked at enviably in comparison to America's and it wholly failed the test when the time came.
According to who and based on what? This statement certainly wasn’t reflected in the relative safety records of the US and Japanese commercial fleets.
#9 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Thu 29 Sep 2011 at 01:04 PM
Two comments. 1) The reason the nuclear industry doesn't share INPO reports is the same reason you wouldn't post your Tax return or your medical records online. INPO is a hired contractor to the nuclear industry. Their reports are confidential for that reason. The NRC is government and their reports are available online.
2) Spent fuel pools overflowing and piping old. Spent fuel pools are getting full because the government won't take their fuel like they committed to and were required by law to in the 1990's. Plants are now forced to move spent fuel to dry storage systems on their sites. Piping is fine because it is tested every 5 years and replaced if design criteria are not met.
#10 Posted by Brian Stanfield, CJR on Thu 29 Sep 2011 at 10:01 PM
"You would be correct if any of that were true. Both PWR’s and BWR’s have passive and active safety systems that don’t rely on external grid power, backup generators, main steam condensers or any of what you mentioned above."
According to here:
http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/13/6256121-general-electric-designed-reactors-in-fukushima-have-23-sisters-in-us
the reactors used in Fukushima have the same containment design as 23 others in the US. Do they have differing coolant systems which do not rely on externally generated energy? How do they work? Please cite.
"According to who and based on what? This statement certainly wasn’t reflected in the relative safety records of the US and Japanese commercial fleets."
In the problems I listed above, the fact that Japan reprocesses its spent fuel, unlike the US because of Jimmy Carter and the years of republican leadership following, meant that less of a load was stored in spent fuel pools. In spite of this, the tepco fuel pools had too much material in their pools, though much less than what is kept in the US equivalents.
As far as safety goes, unless you were familiar with the nuclear critique community in Japan and the whistleblower reports:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/world/asia/27collusion.html
the safety record was exemplary in Japan up until 1999 when an accident at a Tokaimura reprocessing plant made news. People were upset at the positioning of nuclear plants on or around fault lines and tsunami zones but official reports claimed that superior Japanese designs and inspections would ensure public safety.
Furthermore, Japan had the monopoly on reactor design and forging since the only steel foundry big enough to forge a reactor in one piece was based in Hokkaido. The Japanese industry was looked at as the adopters and innovators of the Nuclear age.
The American reactors, on the other hand, were seen as decrepit museum pieces from the 1970's plagued with problems and waiting for decommission, The regulators were bought and the inspections were weak. Plans to protect facilities against terrorist and natural events were seen as insufficient compared to the modern nuclear industries in Europe and Asia. It's not that the perception of Nuclear in America is wrong, the perception of Europe and Asia wasn't right.
And with the global impacts that nuclear has over geologic time, not the lifetime and generational time human beings are accustomed to measuring things in, we can not afford to f'around with the integrity and safety of this technology. In the worst case scenarios times two, human societies depend on these failsafes ability to hold. Less than that, as Fukushima demonstrated, is not near good enough.
#11 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 30 Sep 2011 at 12:11 PM
"Piping is fine because it is tested every 5 years and replaced if design criteria are not met."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/business/energy-environment/08nrc.html
"In the fall of 2007, workers at the Byron nuclear power plant in Illinois were using a wire brush to clean a badly corroded steel pipe — one in a series that circulate cooling water to essential emergency equipment — when something unexpected happened: the brush poked through.
The resulting leak caused a 12-day shutdown of the two reactors for repairs.
The plant’s owner, the Exelon Corporation, had long known that corrosion was thinning most of these pipes. But rather than fix them, it repeatedly lowered the minimum thickness it deemed safe. By the time the pipe broke, Exelon had declared that pipe walls just three-hundredths of an inch thick — less than one-tenth the original minimum thickness — would be good enough.
Though no radioactive material was released, safety experts say that if enough pipes had ruptured during a reactor accident, the result could easily have been a nuclear catastrophe at a plant just 100 miles west of Chicago."
Tell me more about the pipes.
#12 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 30 Sep 2011 at 12:15 PM
Thimbles: "... Are we going to play around with the nuclear industry, as regulators and the press did with the deep water oil industry, until something blows out and all the failsafes the industry told us were in place blow over like paper cerberuses? ..."
You must have missed the post-BP oil blowout recommendation that the O&G industry set up an organization like INPO.
#13 Posted by Paul Lindsey, CJR on Fri 30 Sep 2011 at 01:15 PM
The point brought out in this article is the AP's bad reporting. Basically fear mongering reporting with zero regard for the facts. Proposing a conclusion without plausible evidence on how to properly reach the conclusion. As American readers become more dumbed down by TV and false internet rumors (facebook is now charging) the media can be less accurate because its too difficult to fact check. The AP should be have their heads on the block for this series of articles and be very ashamed of their lack of integrity.
#14 Posted by Frankly, CJR on Fri 30 Sep 2011 at 01:23 PM
the reactors used in Fukushima have the same containment design as 23 others in the US. Do they have differing coolant systems which do not rely on externally generated energy? How do they work? Please cite.
Its called a turbine drive pump and is a standard design feature in all RCIC systems. Decay heat turns water into steam which drives a small steam turbine coupled to a pump sized to provide reactor cooling. It aint rocket science.
the safety record was exemplary in Japan up until 1999 when an accident at a Tokaimura reprocessing plant made news.
“Exemplary” huh … I guess that’s true unless you include the incidents like Monju and the documented cases of falsifying inspection reports.
Furthermore, Japan had the monopoly on reactor design and forging since the only steel foundry big enough to forge a reactor in one piece was based in Hokkaido.
A monopoly on reactor design … that must come as quite a surprise to B&W, GE, Areva, and the Russians. The foundry anecdote is only true of the GenIV reactors, not any of their predecessors or of the small modular reactor designs, and within 4 years, there will be a half a dozen foundries that will have the same forging capacity as JSW.
Tell me more about the pipes.
Sure, what do you want to know? Did you want to know that the service water system referred to at Byron, a plant I have worked at although not on its ESWS system, is low pressure piping and that’s why they were able to lower the accepted pipe wall thickness? Did you want to know that even if the entire ESWS system on unit one failed, Unit 2’s ESWS system is sized to provide service water for both units? Did you want to know that the ESWS capacity for each unit is 1500 gallons a minute and the leak was 10 gallons a minute? What else did you want to know?
#15 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Fri 30 Sep 2011 at 01:41 PM
"Its called a turbine drive pump and is a standard design feature in all RCIC systems. Decay heat turns water into steam which drives a small steam turbine coupled to a pump sized to provide reactor cooling. It aint rocket science."
I know, which is why I am incredibly pissed off at the Japanese power companies for short changing on this feature which I hope is a standard feature for all nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools in the US and elsewhere.
"“Exemplary” huh … I guess that’s true unless you include the incidents like Monju and the documented cases of falsifying inspection reports."
We're not arguing. Yes, the record was exemplary while it was secretly being falsified. The perception of the press and the pro-nuke industry was that nukes were safe and Japan was used as an example of that.
"A monopoly on reactor design … that must come as quite a surprise to B&W, GE, Areva, and the Russians."
The modern one piece design. This is another reason why the Fukushima plant is disastrous, since it was a Japanese plant that failed, the Japanese products are distrusted unfairly.
"Sure, what do you want to know?"
I want to know how you can poke a brush thorough a pipe that is "tested every 5 years and replaced if design criteria are not met." I want to be assured that no other pipe within that plant is in similar condition in spite of exceeding its designed lifetime of 40 years use.
I don't want to have to rely on reactor two to pick up after reactor one's failures since we've seen what happens when we let one failsafe degrade since others are stacked on top of it. We assume redundancy will cover catastrophe until it doesn't and then we're screwed.
Let's not do that with nuclear. Unreasonable?
In the literal wake of Fukushima and the potential unstable global climate events to come, still unreasonable?
#16 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 30 Sep 2011 at 02:26 PM
Eventually we will awake to the fact that 4th Generation Integral Reactors will be built. When that happens the nuclear waste problem will become the nuclear waste treasure. These reactors coupled with pyroprcessing will use our present wastes to produce America's electricity for 500 years. Yes, there are still wastes, but they will need to be stored for 300-500 years as their 1/2 life of these fission fragments is much less than the actinides including plutonium.
A2008 DOE Report on sustainable energy that was signed by all National Laboratory Directors, including Dr Chu, came to similar conclusions.
One interesting candidate is GE/ Hitachi's PRISM Reactor.
We must awaken and solve these problems.
#17 Posted by Allan Salzberg MD PhD, CJR on Fri 30 Sep 2011 at 02:35 PM
"The reason the nuclear industry doesn't share INPO reports is the same reason you wouldn't post your Tax return or your medical records online. "
Sorry, I'm not following the logic at all. This is apples and oranges.
The point was, if the industry really wants to win over the public, they should make this information available. If, as is constantly stated, the plants are completely safe and there is no threat, what's the harm in releasing the reports? The example given in the article is spot on.
#18 Posted by gerry, CJR on Fri 30 Sep 2011 at 05:18 PM
Over the last 20 years the Nuclear Power Industry has been the continued race to concentrate its control in the hands of a few technically incompetent Wall Street managers. This should scare the pants off of anyone, when you see the lack of moral integrity and reckless pursuit of profit that these managers pursue
http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-hancock-exelon-constellation-merger-20111008,0,6446727.column
We are luck the damage at Crystal Spring is evident, but it shows how bad the bald-faced pursuit of profit and to hell with safety has become in the nuclear power industry.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/article1195782.ece
That the NRC would have allowed unqualified people to carry out a patently risky job on the final barrier to protect the public from uncontrolled release of radioactive material shows how badly the NRC's safety regime works. Not only that, The NRC uses the same "honour" reporting system that the SEC used to keep watch on Bernie Madoff and his kind. And with the same fault with the SEC of having its staff jump back and forth between industry and the regulator, so that these "guardians of the public" can collect their legal (but immoral) delayed benefit for helping plants avoid spending money to fix real safety risks.
The 99% in New York are in the wrong town and on the wrong street. Our government is not run from Wall Street nor from Pennsylvania Avenue or even Capitol Hill. It is run from K-street (for the unwashed, that is were the big lobbyist firms have their offices in Washington).
#19 Posted by J M Hatch, CJR on Fri 14 Oct 2011 at 11:20 AM