It’s only
“minor,” but keep your potassium iodide handy
By Will
Collette
To view this video on YouTube, click here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60
The Millstone
Nuclear Power Plant, just around 20 miles to the west of Charlestown, had to SCRAM
(shut-down unexpectedly) its Unit 2 reactor on Sunday at 9:30 AM due to a power failure and leakage
that was “slightly radioactive.” Using the jargon of the nuclear industry, the
accident was classified as an “unusual event.”
NASA Manned Space Flight Director
Jerome Lederer famously said, “Every accident, no matter how minor, is a
failure of the organization.” The same can be said about nuclear power plants.
With the
Millstone power plant, accidents involving their cooling system are a regular
occurrence, and if you follow Lederer’s thinking, a failure of organization,
especially when you factor in how critical the coolant systems are to
preventing a catastrophic melt-down.
Millstone is monitored by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), an agency that has long been criticized for being a captive of the industry it is supposed to be regulating. Millstone stands out as a prime example of the unwillingness of the NRC to put public health and safety ahead of power generation and the profits of Millstone’s Virginia-based owners, Dominion Energy.
Millstone
was built with three nuclear reactors, colorfully named Units 1, 2 and 3. Unit
1 was shut-down in 1998 when it reached the end of its useful life and started
having serious problems.
Unit 2 where
this and most other accidents now occur, turned
40 years old at the end of September, reaching the point in its life where it
is subject to what are called “Age management” actions. Perhaps this is similar to an
elderly person going into an assisted living arrangement. Except a nuclear reactor melt-down is slightly more alarming than an older person's melt-down.
According to
the New London Day, “age management” includes “additional checks
for corrosion, deterioration of buried pipes and hidden concrete surfaces and
other signs of wear on equipment and systems not checked in routine
inspections.”
David Lochbaum, director of nuclear safety projects
for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said “Just like humans as infants and
senior citizens need more medical care, a nuclear power plant also needs more
care and attention to maintenance.”
One problem unique to nuclear power plants is that
their long-term radioactive waste is stored on-site, perhaps forever. There is
no licensed facility where that waste can be sent. Spent fuel rods sit in
water-filled pools until they cool and eventually, they are sealed in “dry
casks” that, in theory, can safely hold them indefinitely.
But that is an unproven concept. When the
Connecticut Yankee nuclear plant shut down completely and permanently, its site
became a de facto dump for one million pounds of high-level radioactive waste. That site, near Middletown, CT, is about
40 miles from Charlestown.
I wish I could say I trust Millstone and its
Virginia owners, or the federal regulators, to keep us safe, but the record
indicates otherwise.
Millstone is a chronic violator. This summer, they
completed negotiations with the NRC over violations
they had been caught committing. The NRC
settled for Dominion’s promise to merely change some of its practices,
which it didn’t actually admit doing. There was no fine or penalty.
Finally, after two years into what was supposed to
be a five-year
study of cancer risks to residents near nuclear power plants (Millstone was
one of six plants chosen to the project), the NRC has pulled the plug,
cancelling the study.
They said it would take too long (duh, they knew it
was a five year project when they started it) and would cost too much money to finish the study.
How much is too much for the NRC? Eight million dollars!
When I worked with communities dealing with toxic
hazards (work that started in 1981), I was not a big fan of health studies.
Even when there was a pronounced “cancer cluster” near a leaking hazardous
waste site, the studies rarely provided conclusive results.
That’s why I advised the neighbors of the notorious
local Copar Quarry not to push for a health study on silica dust exposure.
Given the short time Copar has been spewing dust into the neighborhood, and
environmental factors, it seemed unlikely to me that the study would show
anything. And, sure enough, the study showed no evident health problems.
Yes, I know a number of people in the neighborhood
who have been harmed, but health studies look for statistical trends and there
just aren’t any. Yet.
However, a study of communities near nuclear power
plants strikes me as more valuable. Most of the power plants have been in
operation for 20 years or more, the normal “latency period” between the time of
exposure and appearance of cancer, and all have had some releases of radiation
into the environment.
It’s ridiculous not to spend $8 million (million,
not billion) to finish the study to see what it shows.
Millstone went on line 45 years ago in 1970. Unit 1, now shut-down, had lots of problems. Unit 2 has lots of problems. Unit 3 has had some problems. Millstone has NRC approval to store 3.6 million pounds of high-level nuclear waste on the property, more or less permanently.
Even though the odds of this study producing any
dramatic results are slim, the cancellation of the study – and the lame excuse
given, the $8 million – go to the heart of the NRC’s credibility as an honest
enforcer of the law and protector of public health and safety.
That’s why the New
London Day editors called on the NRC to “Complete nuclear plant radiation
study.”
One last thing about Charlestown. We live
down-wind. While we are not within the 10-mile critical zone, we are well
within the 50-mile cone that would probably be subjected to dangerous levels of
radiation if this plant suffered a major accident.
Our Town Council has seen fit to comment on lots of
things it either has no power over or that has little relevance to the town.
Within the Charlestown Citizens Alliance which totally controls town
government, there is a sizeable NIMBY factor that is stridently afraid of many
things, such as green energy, and ready to throw town resources in to block
those scary things.
Where are they on Millstone?
