Except for a
few “minor” problems, the Millstone nuclear power plant poses no cause for
alarm, and the check is in the mail
By Will Collette
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says all is well at our local nuke, the
Millstone power station in Waterford, CT, just 20 miles to the west of
Charlestown. But is it?
Marking the third anniversary of the devastating meltdown of three
reactors at the Fukushima power plant following Japan’s catastrophic earthquake
and tsunami, NBC News released a
remarkable report showing how the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) deliberately lied
to the American public about the severity of the Fukushima disaster and its
effects on health and safety.
One of the most damaging parts of NBC reporter Bill Dedman’s hair-raising
report contrasts NRC’s confident public statements that Fukushima was not
nearly as bad as it could have been with NRC interoffice messages where
officials told each other that the opposite was true.
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| REPEAT AFTER ME: "There's no cause for alarm. There's no cause for alarm. There's no cause for alarm...." |
I understand the NRC considers lying to the public to be justified by two
of its responsibilities – one is to prevent public panic and the second is to
protect the nuclear power industry. But if you look at these e-mails (click here to read them all; click here to read Dedman’s article),
it’s clear they stepped out the bounds. As NRC PR director Eliot Brenner put it
in an e-mail to his staff, “While we know
more than these [NRC public talking points] say, we’re sticking to this story for
now.”
The NRC did the same thing when the Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened
in the old Soviet Union. They did the same thing when the Three Mile Island
plant near Harrisburg, PA had its big nuclear release. They do the same thing
today when our local nuke, the Millstone Power Plant in Waterford, CT just 20
miles upwind from us, has a hiccup in its operations.
A nuclear power accident is unlike an accident at any other type of
energy generation station. Accidents not only have a long reach – as much as 50
miles in the case of severe effects from Fukushima – but last a long time.
Chernobyl is still uninhabitable and may be like that for centuries.
You can
clean up after a fossil fuel power station explodes. You can clean up the
busted turbine blades if a wind turbine breaks. And when solar panels have a “solar
spill,” you can just ignore it.
But nothing approaches the magnitude of a nuclear accident. Like nuclear
war, it is an event that cannot be allowed to happen. Yet we’ve gone to war
with nuclear weapons and we have had catastrophic nuclear power accidents.
On March 31, the NRC will conduct a public
briefing in the Waterford Town Hall (7 PM) on its recently completed annual
assessment of Millstone. Even though Millstone has had a series of unplanned
shut-downs (SCRAMs), most recently on February 28, and several safety
violations, the NRC report generally says everything
is fine and that Millstone “met all its health and safety objectives in 2013”
and the inspections and violations were really of “very low safety
significance.”
Re-read the NRC documents on Fukushima to put their
Millstone report in context.
Nonetheless, the NRC is going to conduct a mass distribution of
potassium iodide to local families in the 10-mile high risk zone. The NRC is sending the
state of Connecticut 1.3 million tablets of potassium iodide for this
distribution. Potassium iodide is a good precautionary drug to take in the
event of a nuclear release to help prevent thyroid cancer.
As for the other effects of a nuclear accident, I am reminded of an old
Cold War joke: “what do you do if you see a nuclear flash? Put your head
between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye.”
A recent survey shows that more than half the households in the immediate
danger zone either didn’t know where their potassium iodide tablets are, or
didn’t have enough for the whole family. The survey also showed the area is
woefully unprepared for a major accident, lacking shelter, means of
communication, personal escape plans and emergency supplies.
Despite the NRC’s positive findings in its annual review of Millstone,
they nonetheless prescribed five areas where
Millstone must improve its ability to survive severe weather. This assessment was based on
using lessons learned at Fukushima.
The NRC wants Millstone to check more closely for places where high water
could breach the site, more effectively seal and weatherproof critical areas,
reexamine its flood response protocol, its assumptions about flood height, and
better identify and fix areas with degraded flood protection.
The NRC said that each of these items are, technically, a violation, but
are only being recorded as “observations.” If you are a regulator, you
certainly don’t want to blemish the record of the industry you are regulating.
Next September, Millstone is under NRC
orders to conduct a “hostile action emergency drill” to prepare for what might
happen if the plant was attacked by terrorists either through a ground attack
or through a suicide aircraft strike. Amazingly, this will occur close to the
thirteenth anniversary of 9/11 and it
will be the first time they’ve ever done this drill!
Thirteen f**king years, and this is the first time they will address this
very plausible “what if?”
There
are 62 operating nuclear power plants around the United States. If you look at
the map accompanying this article, you will see that all of New England is
pretty much within either the 10-mile severe threat or 50-mile radiation zones.
In addition to the operating plants, there are also dozens of decommissioned
plants, each with its accompanying pile of high-level nuclear waste sitting
there in more or less permanent storage. The closest to us is the big waste
pile in Haddam, CT at the decommissioned Connecticut Yankee plant.
Nuclear
waste pretty much sits on site because there is really no place to put it. The
long-planned national repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada has never received
Congressional approval. A demonstration project to build support for Yucca
Mountain by showing that permanent storage was practical has since backfired.
The site is called “WIPP” (“Waste Isolation Pilot Plant”) and is operated
by the US Energy Department, of which the NRC is part. The site has operated
for 15 years, taking in some very nasty radioactive waste from the US military.
The site is supposed to be highly secure – in terms of containment
technology and protection from terror attack. But on February 5, an underground truck fire
not only caused injury to workers but apparently caused a radioactive leak that
exposed 17 other workers.
According
to a DOE report, safety systems didn’t work the way they were supposed to and the
private contractors running the site for the DOE failed to "adequately recognize and mitigate
the hazard regarding a fire in the underground". The report says the accidental and the
chaotic response “was preventable.”
Of
course, they applied a nice dose of sugar-coating – no one was killed, apparently
no permanent, serious injuries, it was a good learning experience, blah, blah,
blah.
Fukushima was also a
“good learning experience” and caused a serious adjustment about the distances
radiation from a nuclear accident can travel. We also learned a lot from the
Chernobyl melt-down that took place 27 years ago.
A surprising Chernobyl finding
came out of one
recent report. Though no humans live
in the exclusion zone, there are other living things to study – animals, trees,
insects and birds, etc. A potential problem at the Chernobyl site is a
dangerous accumulation of dead trees and brush and mountains of dried out but
undecayed leaves and branches that could catch fire and cause
another spread of radiation over a large area.
Researchers discovered
that insects, bacteria and fungi that would normally reduce dead foliage
through decay were also affected by radiation. Their numbers are reduced, their
growth rates are inhibited and the flammable dead wood and detritus remains
largely as it was when the Chernobyl accident destroyed so many living
organisms.