"Another One Bites the Dust!": Progress Energy may cancel two new risky AP1000s targeted at Levy, Florida!

Graphic courtesy of Fairewinds Associates

As reported by the Tampa Bay Times, Progess Energy has announced an indefinite suspension of the construction plans for two Toshiba-Westinghouse so-called "Advanced Passive 1000" (AP1000) atomic reactors targeted at the greenfield (no old reactors already there) site at Levy, Florida. That's the good news. The bad news is that Florida ratepayers are nonetheless locked into paying "advance" charges for the new reactors on their electricity bills month after month for years to come, even though the reactors may never get built. Such "Construction Work in Progress" charges are illegal in most states, although have been made legal in such states as Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia in an effort to grease the skids for new atomic reactor proposals, at ratepayer expense.

By the end of last year, Progress Energy's 1.6 million Florida ratepayers had already made $545 million in "advance" payments on their electricity bills toward the Levy new reactors, or an average of about $340 per person. Progress Energy fully intends to extract yet another $555 million from its ratepayers in the years ahead, or another $350 per person, whether or not the reactors actually get built and fired up.

The Levy new reactors have been a case study in cost overruns. As the article reports, Progress Energy first estimated in 2006 that a single AP1000 would cost as little as $4 billion. The very next year, the projected price tag had jumped to $10 billion per reactor. A year after that, Progress added a second new reactor to the proposal, and estimated the cost at a total of $17 billion. But last year, the price projection had reached $22 billion for the twin AP1000s.

The project has also been a case study in schedule delays. In 2006, Progress said its new reactor would fire up in 2016. By 2009, Progress admitted the opening date had slipped two years into the future, to 2018. By 2010, the opening date had retreated yet further, to 2021. Progress is now admitting that the project won't open till 2027, if at all.

Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates in Vermont and expert witness for an environmental coalition opposed to new AP1000s targeted throughout the Southeast, was quoted as saying "It's a dramatic strategy change (by Progress)...Now, it looks like they're retreating." Gundersen has identified a major safety flaw in the AP1000's supposedly "advanced, passive" design, which could actively pump hazardous radioactivity into the environment during an accident (see graphic, above).

Lake Michigan surrounded by radioactive risks

Satellite photo of Lake MichiganAs shown by the map in Beyond Nuclear's "Routine Radioactive Releases from Nuclear Power Plants in the United States: What Are the Dangers?", as well as by Nuclear Awareness Project's "Great Lakes Nuclear Hot Spots" map, Lake Michigan is surrounded by risky atomic reactors on its shores.

In Wisconsin, one reactor operates at Kewaunee, while two operate at Point Beach. Some years ago, Kewaunee alone had a majority of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) "yellow findings" (second highest level of safety violation) of the entire 103 (at the time) operating reactors in the entire U.S. fleet; Point Beach had a majority -- 3 of 5 -- of the "red findings" (highest level of safety violation) in the entire country. In Michigan, two reactors operate at Cook nuclear power plant, with one operating at Palisades. Cook was shut down for major safety violations from 1997 to 2000; Palisades suffered 5 un-planned shutdowns of varying severity in 2011 alone.  In addition, the largest decommissioning in U.S. history is underway at Zion -- at least a billion dollar price tag for dismantling two 1,000 megawatt-electric reactors -- just 30 miles north of Chicago. At Big Rock Point in Michigan, despite spending $366 million on decommissioning a tiny, experimental reactor, plutonium and other radioactive hazards were left behind in the soil, groundwater, and sediments of Lake Michigan.

Rory Keane at the Medill Journalism School of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois has just published an article entitled "Nuclear Worries Abound in Great Lakes Region,"  about such radioactive risks to Lake Michigan as tritium leaks from aging atomic reactors, as well as high-level radioactive wastes stored in indoor pools and outdoor dry casks that have nowhere to go. The article quotes Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps regarding the reactor and radioactive waste risks, as well as tritium leaks: “Lake Michigan alone faces some of the major safety violations in the country...the opinion of the NRC and company was…‘dilution is the solution.’ We call that delusional.”

Entergy Nuclear suffers black eyes at both its FitzPatrick, NY and Palisades, MI atomic reactors

Entergy's FitzPatrick GE BWR Mark 1 on the Lake Ontario shore of upstate NYOn the same day, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has lambasted Entergy Nuclear for violations at both its FitzPatrick atomic reactor in upstate New York on the Lake Ontario shoreline, as well as at its Palisades atomic reactor in southwest Michigan on the Lake Michigan shoreline.

In a media release entitled "NRC CONFIRMS ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN AT FITZPATRICK NUCLEAR PLANT TO ADDRESS VIOLATIONS INVOLVING RADIATION PROTECTION PROGRAM," NRC addressed "actions... intended to address multiple violations involving radiation protection technicians at the Scriba, N.Y., plant...[involving] failures by the technicians to perform or properly execute their duties." These included:

"Failure by technicians to perform required respirator fit testing on multiple occasions from 2006 to 2009; a failure to maintain accurate documentation of completed respirator fit tests during the same period; a failure to perform and/or accurately document independent verification of certain valve positions after the valves were manipulated between September 2007 and December 2009; a failure to document a personal contamination event on at least one occasion; a failure to perform a contamination survey, or check, prior to the removal of an item from the plant’s radiologically controlled area; and a failure to carry out daily radiological surveys, on multiple occasions from 2006 to 2009, of a reactor building airlock."

FitzPatrick is a 38 year old General Electric Boiling Water Reactor of the Mark 1 design, identical to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4. NRC has granted FitzPatrick a 20 year license extension, as well as a power uprate.

And, in a media release entitled "NRC ISSUES CONFIRMATORY ORDERS TO PALISADES POWER PLANT OWNER AND PLANT OPERATOR," NRC discussed a 2010 incident in which "A supervisor walks off the job in the control room without permission, apparently after an argument, which leads to a violation notice."

NRC has also granted Palisades a 20 year license extension, as well as a power uprate, despite its age related degradation and litany of mishaps.

"Just trust us!" wears thin at Davis-Besse

An NRC inspector examines recently revealed cracks at the Davis-Besse concrete shield buildingTom Henry, editorial writer and columnist at the Toledo Blade, has published commentary entitled "Safety of Davis-Besse comes down to a question of faith." Henry, a board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and reporter of record on the 2002 Davis-Besse hole-in-the-head fiasco -- the nearest miss to a major nuclear accident in the U.S. since the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown -- attended a standing room only January 5th U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) public meeting, successfully demanded by U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (Democrat-Ohio), about recently revealed cracks in Davis-Besse's radiological containment concrete shield building. Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps also testified at the NRC meeting, and then, on behalf of an environmental coalition, spearheaded a 60 page contention about the cracking in opposition to FirstEnergy's application for a 20 year license extension at the problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor.

Fox News Toledo's Jennifer Steck covered Beyond Nuclear's street theater skit at Davis-Besse atomic reactor before the Jan. 5th NRC meeting, as did Northwest Ohio's WNWO and the Toledo Blade. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on the NRC meeting, as did the Sandusky Register, Port Clinton News Herald, Cleveland Fox 8, NPR station WKSU, Toledo ABC, and WTOL.

On January 25th, NRC announced a major delay in the publication of its Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Davis-Besse license extension. This was due to FirstEnergy Nuclear revising its Severe Accident Mitigation Alternatives (SAMA) analyses in its 20 year license extension application. Beyond Nuclear and an environmental coalition including Citizens Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Don't Waste Michigan, and the Green Party of Ohio successfully intervened against the license extension by raising SAMA concerns over a year ago, and has defended its contentions ever since.

Palisades: "It's an accident waiting to happen"

In August 2000, at the Nuclear-Free Great Lakes Action Camp, Don't Waste Michigan board members Michael Keegan, Alice Hirt, and Kevin Kamps called for the permanent shut down of Palisades, with its cooling tower steam and Lake Michigan visible in the background.On January 15th, Tina Lam of the Detroit Free Press published an exposé on the long problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor in Covert, Michigan on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Owned by Entergy Nuclear (which operates such other controversial reactors as Vermont Yankee, and Indian Point near New York City), Palisades suffered 5 "un-planned shutdowns" in 2011 alone, the most serious of which involved a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) "Yellow finding" of "substantial safety significance" regarding an "electrical fault." Translated from euphemisticly misleading Nukespeak, this meant the near electrocution of a worker, and the loss of half of the control room's functions, figuratively leaving operators half-blinded, half-deaf, and half-paralyzed as they raced to adequately cool the hot reactor core. Both the pressurizer and the steam generators were a mere 9 minutes away from "going solid" -- filling completely with liquid water -- and thus losing their ability to cool the hot reactor core. One more mistake, or break down in systems, structures, or components, could have spelled disaster. Incredibly, as reported by the Freep, "It began with a light bulb...". Lam also broke the story on Palisades' five year overdue replacement of its severely corroded reactor lid.

The article quoted Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps, 20-year watchdog on Palisades, as saying: "If all these failings and accidents line up in just the right way, we could have a very bad day at Palisades," said Kevin Kamps, a Kalamazoo native and staff member at Beyond Nuclear near Washington, D.C. ...Kamps said opponents of the plant wanted it shut down instead of winning a 20-year extension. "It's an accident waiting to happen," he said.

A large coalition of Michigan and Great Lakes environmental groups, led by Don't Waste Michigan and Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), opposed the Palisades 20 year license extension. It was rubberstamped nonetheless by NRC in 2007, despite Palisades having the worst embrittled reactor pressure vessel in the United States, at risk of a pressurized thermal shock "hot glass under cold water" fracture and consequent loss of coolant accident.

In addition to the front page article, the Freep linked to a 101 page long NRC inspection report on the "electrical fault"; an NRC "White finding" of "low to moderate risk significance" involving "the improper greasing of a knife edge on the overspeed trip mechanism which contributed to a failure of the turbine driven auxiliary feedwater pump (pump P-8B) during surveillance testing on May 10, 2011"; yet another NRC "White finding" regarding the August 9, 2011 failure of "a safety-related service water pump (P-7C)," a repeat of a 2009 incident; a listing of "Recent problems at the Palisades nuclear plant," including one in which "A supervisor walks off the job in the control room without permission, apparently after an argument, which leads to a violation notice"; and finally, an article about new proposed reactors, including Fermi 3 in Michigan (Beyond Nuclear has helped lead an environmental coalition in opposition to that plan).