Nuclear regulator puts public in danger by not fixing potentially fatal reactor flaw
Group files enforcement petition urging agency to address key safety problem in 19 US “Fukushima” reactors
Takoma Park, MD, October 20, 2020 – The 19 US nuclear reactors of the same boiling water design as those that melted down in Fukushima, Japan, should immediately cease operation until a potentially fatal flaw is fixed, Beyond Nuclear and its technical advisor warned today.
In a federal enforcement petition submitted on October 16 to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Beyond Nuclear and co-petitioner, Mark Leyse, requested that the agency immediately suspend the operating licenses of the country’s 19 operational General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) units until their currently deficient hardened containment vents are replaced.
The 19 reactors are sited in 10 US states: Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.
The hardened vents are an added safety feature intended to prevent the rupture of the containment structure and an uncontrolled release of radioactive material in the event of a severe accident.
But the science presented in the petition demonstrates unequivocally that the hardened containment vents in the 19 BWR Mark I units are far from adequate to cope with the vast amounts of thermal energy, steam, and explosive hydrogen gas produced during a partial or complete meltdown accident.
The Beyond Nuclear petition asks for the inadequate vents to be replaced with vents that could mitigate a serious accident, an upgrade that could prevent catastrophic explosions of the kind that occurred at the three Fukushima-Daiichi reactors that were operating at full power at the time of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
“It’s clear that the NRC does not intend to plan for a severe accident,” said Paul Gunter, Director of the Reactor Oversight Project at Beyond Nuclear. “Instead, the regulator and the operators downplay the likelihood of a catastrophe to justify their decision not to install a hardened vent that would be effective during such an eventuality.
“This is unacceptable, given the NRC has known for decades that the Mark I containment is volumetrically too small to contain the dynamic force of a severe accident, not to mention the evidence the world witnessed when the Fukushima reactors exploded,” Gunter added.
“Under the current NRC stipulations, if an accident happened at a US Mark I, it would be like attempting to depressurize a pressure cooker through a soda straw,” Gunter said.