NRC Commissioners vote down their staff recommendation for filtered vent on unreliable Mark I and II containment

NEWS FROM BEYOND NUCLEAR

For Immediate Release:  March 19, 2013

Contact: Paul Gunter, 301-523-0201 (mobile)

Nuclear Regulator Majority Vote Disregards Agency Staff Safety Recommendation on Unreliable Mark I and II Containment.    Decision requires hardened vent without filter

Takoma Park, MD — The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has voted to disregard a recommendation from its own Japan Lessons Learned Task Force and professional staff that nuclear reactor operators should be ordered to install high-capacity radiation filters at 23 Mark I and 8 Mark II nuclear power reactors in the United States.

“These are inherently dangerous and flawed reactors but radiation filters installed on more robust vent lines would at least provide a significant additional layer to the defense-in-depth,” said Paul Gunter, Director of Reactor Oversight Project for Beyond Nuclear, based in Takoma Park, MD.

“This is fundamentally a Fukushima lesson unlearned,” Gunter added. “We all watched the Fukushima accident in horror as Japanese operators were unable to manage one containment failure after another. This was in large part because TEPCO was not prepared to manage the release of pressure, heat, hydrogen gas and high levels of radioactivity from the damaged fuel cores,” he said.

The NRC staff had recommended the agency issue an Order to require high capacity filters be installed on severe accident capable vents on the Fukushima-design unreliable reactor containment systems by December 31, 2017.

The Commission vote allows for upgrading accident capable vents on the Mark I and II reactors but falls seriously short of the staff recommendation to restore a significant measure of containment integrity by requiring radiation filtration systems as have been installed for many years on most European reactors.

The NRC Commissioners voted 4-1 against installing the filters by Order. Chairwoman Macfarlane supported the filter installation by Order. Commissioners Ostendorf, Magwood, Apostolakis voted in favor of the filter strategy but by a lengthy process of rulemaking that portends years more delay with an uncertain future. Commissioner Svinicki voted against the Order for a filtered vent.

“The Commission’s majority vote potentially ties reactor operators’ hands behind their backs if an accident were to occur in the coming years,” Gunter said. “Venting an accident without a filter will mean fire-hosing downwind communities with massive amounts of radiation.

“While the NRC and industry are spinning the outcome of this vote as a ‘delay’ on a decision on the filtered vent, in fact, it is a flat out denial of public safety in the interest of saving the nuclear industry some money,” Gunter continued.

"The nuclear industry will score financial gains from this decision but the cost should be paid by the loss of NRC's regulatory integrity,” he concluded.

In voting for the filtered vent, NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane was the only Commissioner supporting her technical staff’s judgment and recommendation to move forward with an ORDER to industry. She concluded that “all of the available data suggests that the installation of hardened vents is a prudent and appropriate safety enhancement that is within the NRC’s current regulatory framework.” The Commission vote and notation sheet can be read at:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/cvr/2012/2012-0157vtr.pdf

There are 23 Mark I boiling water reactors in the US and 8 Mark II boiling water reactors that are subject of this Commission vote.

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Beyond Nuclear works to end nuclear power and nuclear weapons. With a strongly rooted commitment to citizen action - and in the wake of the devastating Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan - Beyond Nuclear is empowering grassroots communities around the country to shut US nuclear reactors. This summer, through our campaign to “Freeze our Fukushimas,” we will organize town hall meetings, media campaign, actions, petitions and protests to ensure that the 23 US reactors identical in design to those at Fukushima are closed. More at www.beyondnuclear.org.

UK government plunges into EPR nuclear quagmire

The UK has chosen to throw itself into the French nuclear quagmire masterminded by EDF. The UK government has given planning permission to EDF to build two boondoggle EPR reactors in Somerset. The Hinkley site has been given planning permission when no long-term solution exists for the radioactive waste these new nuclear reactors will generate - which contradicts the UK position on new reactor build. Beyond Nuclear's Linda and Paul Gunter will be in Somerset with the Stop Hinkley coalition at the beginning of April for strategy meetings and public presentations. We will also be in Suffolk where two more EPRs are in the pipeline for the Sizewell nuclear site.

Update on March 19, 2013 by admin

Stop Hinkley campaigners decry the scandalous decision:

Local campaigners say that today's decision to grant planning permission for EDF's Hinkley C project is no surprise, but does nothing to answer the serious questions which now hang over the project.

"I don't think anyone in West Somerset believed that the public consultation last year was anything more than an elaborate, undemocratic sham, and that in itself is a political scandal." said Theo Simon of the Stop Hinkley campaign. "Today's decision is a rubber-stamping exercise, but it doesn't change the facts on the ground. EDF don't know what they will do with the radioactive waste Hinkley C would produce, they don't have the investment they need now that Centrica have pulled out and they have threatened to walk away unless the government underwrite their costs and fix the nuclear electricity price artificially high for consumers."

"No other business in this country would get planning permission without a waste management plan and this industry produces the most hazardous waste known to humankind. David Cameron promised there would be no new nuclear without a solution to the waste issue, but today Ed Davey has granted EDF permission regardless. Cameron also promised there would be no public subsidy, but now his government is negotiating precisely that and apparently willing to lock us all into paying double the original price quoted for nuclear, for the next 35 years!"

"If the billions the government are prepared to commit to keeping EDF in profit were spent on creating jobs in renewables, energy efficiency and home insulation, we could cut our energy bills AND create thousands of sustainable jobs. Off-shore wind is now set to deliver power cheaper than nuclear by 2020, when the government say we will have the "energy gap" that justifies new nuclear. But with the best will in the world, Hinkley C could not now start generating till the mid 20s. EDF's other new reactors in Europe are now many years over schedule and many billions over budget."

"It's becoming apparent to everyone but the government that the nuclear emperor has no clothes. It makes no sense financially, environmentally or in terms of our energy needs. It's time to put it out of it's misery and save the government any further embarrassment. We need clean, green 21st century solutions to 21st century problems, not a toxic white elephant only kept alive by government bailouts and inflated electricity bills."

Blackout at Fukushima - continued peril at stricken nuclear plant

The Associated Press reports: "The operator of Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant says a power failure has left three fuel storage pools without fresh cooling water for hours. Tokyo Electric Power Co. says the blackout Monday night at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant was brief at its command centre but continued for hours at three of the seven fuel storage pools and a few other facilities. TEPCO says the reactors were unaffected, and it plans to restore power to the pool cooling systems as soon as it determines the cause. It says the nuclear fuel stored in the pools will remain safe for at least four days without fresh cooling water. The March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant's power and cooling systems, causing three reactor cores to melt and fuel storage pools to overheat. The plant is now using makeshift systems."

Update on March 18, 2013 by admin

Japan Times reports that electrical power was lost to Units 1, 3 and 4 as well as to the nuclear waste cooling pool for the common storage to all six (6) units containing more than 6000 irradiated fuel assemblies.

Update on March 19, 2013 by admin

Associated Press is reporting that TEPCO says that power is restored to cooling the four (4) irradiated fuel storage pools at Fukushima Daiichi Units 1, 3 and 4 and the gigantic common storage pond holding more than 6000 nuclear waste assemblies.

The power failure of the make-shift systems demonstrates that the ongoing management strategy for the castrophe remains extremely tenuous and haphazard, where a breakdown or another severe earthquake could trigger potentially larger radioactive releases than have occured to date.

US solar installations grew by 76% in 2012

Solar panel installations last year rose by 76 percent in the United States compared with 2011, and the cost of the associated equipment continued to drop, according to an annual report by a solar trade group.

The panels installed last year are capable of generating 3,313 megawatts of peak electricity, according to the report from the Solar Energy Industries Association. That electricity is about the same amount produced by a medium-sized coal plant and is enough to supply 400,000 U.S. homes.

Abundant financing programs and a 27 percent drop last year in the average cost of solar panel systems helped spur the growth.

The solar industry expects installations will continue rising in 2013, but at a slower pace. SEIA and GTM Research predict installations will rise 29 percent to 4,300 MW this year.

Solar energy accounts for 0.1 percent of the nation's total electric power generation, according to the Energy Department (Jonathan Fahey, AP/Albany Times Union, March 14)

Kaori Izumi: an unforgettable force and a tragic loss

We have lost one of the precious ones. We learned today of the passing of Kaori Izumi. Kaori came to the US in September 2011 on a speaking tour. We were with her in Washington, DC, New York City and at Indian Point. Her courage, energy and passion inspired us all. She led the campaign to Shut the Tomari nuclear plant in Hokkaido, but she did so much more. She was determined to tell the world the truth about Fukushima and to urge the world to stop the nuclear madness right away and to shut down nuclear plants. We will miss her. But we must carry on her work. (Pictured below: Kaori speaks at a press conference at Indian Point; gathers with Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition activists; and protests outside the UN in New York).