Shearon Harris nuclear plant in New Hill, N.C.
Image: Jim R. Bounds Bloomberg via Getty Images
In Brief
- Utilities have proposed 22 new U.S. reactors. The designs are under renewed scrutiny to determine whether they would survive extreme threats.
- Safety features in the new designs kick in during accidents even when all electricity is lost and without the need for human intervention.
- Questions about the lead contender, the Westinghouse AP1000, could complicate its final approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
- Even if advanced designs can withstand huge earthquakes and tsunamis or a plane strike, utilities must still balance design costs against safety gains.
More In This Article
Editor's note: This article appears in print with the title "In Search of the Black Swan."
Half a world away from Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, deep in the pine forests of Georgia, hundreds of workers are prepping the ground for an American nuclear renaissance they still believe is on the way. Bulldozers rumble across sunken plateaus of fresh, hard-packed backfill that covers miles of recently buried piping and storm drains. If plans stay on track, sometime next year two new nuclear reactors will begin to rise from the ground—the first reactors to be approved in the U.S. in more than 25 years.
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20 Comments
Add CommentThe article “Planning for the Black Swan” posed the question: are the new generation of reactors Safe Enough?” In answering that question a place to start is to examine the consequences of the accidents at Fukushima and Three Mile Island. Both reactors were older designs and do not include the passive safety features of the latest generation of reactor designs. In the case of Fukushima the overall financial losses and costs of cleanup will be very large as well as the impact on the people who will be displaced temporarily and those who will be relocated out of an exclusion area. In a location where 26,000 people are dead or missing in the wake of a class nine earthquake and tsunami, I have yet to read about any member of the public sustaining an injury or significant exposure from the released radiation. Studies after the TMI accident determined that no member of the public received a radiation exposure of any consequence. While vulnerabilities of each of the plants were exposed (particularly at the Fukushima site) the multiple levels of defense in depth worked in protecting the public.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisImmediately after Three Mile Island accident Westinghouse formed the Strategic Operations Division to review the design of its plants seeking to identify vulnerabilities and identify and implement safety features which might lower the accident risk even further. I was assigned the General Manager responsibility for the Division. Probabilistic risk assessment was a key tool in this effort. Among the changes to the nuclear plants resulting from these efforts, two come to mind that would have mitigated the accident at Fukushima and TMI. One was improvements in the man-machine interface to assist the operators in diagnosing the event(s) that were occurring. The other was adding an igniter system to burn any hydrogen present so that its concentration would never reach an explosive level. There were some other observations that emerged from these studies. A key one was that there would not be a serious exposure of the public to radiation as long as there was not a catastrophic failure of the containment. The containment system will provide significant reduction in radiation release even if partially compromised.
In addition to identifying retrofits to the existing plants, the studies also defined features which might form the design basis for the next generation of plants to reduce the risk of severe accidents by at least an order of magnitude. A number of the engineers in these efforts had been involved in the nuclear navy reactor design program. They noted the benefits from the relative simplicity of the navy reactor plants and that characteristic became a consideration in the design process. The key consideration was the incorporation of passive safety features such as natural circulation, gravity and condensation rather than total dependence on active systems requiring power. The first design to emerge from this process was the AP600, a relatively small reactor. The natural next step was determine what was the plant power level at which the passive system benefits would diminish. That turned out to be about 1100 MWe, leading to the AP1000.
A specific reaction to containment system comments by Edwin Lyman, a perpetual gadfly from the antinuclear group Union of Concerned Scientists, is that the ratio of a reactor's thermal power to its containment volume is not a measure of its ability to withstand a rise in pressure. The ratio is a simplistic parameter which may or may not have relevancy, the containment’s integrity is a structural design issue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith respect to the comments by John Ma, not knowing what his particular detailed issue was, I have two comments: first mild steel does not fail by brittle fracture and second that local damage to the containment shell does not imply damage to the reactor primary or secondary coolant systems. This is not a damaging critique.
There are real issues that do impact the future of nuclear power. Capital costs are a key factor. Since time is money in a capital intensive project, I pose the following: The advanced designs being licensed by the NRC have been undergoing reviews by the commission for two decades and have been certified. The sites they will be located on have other operating reactors, which mean that the seismology, hydrology meteorology, etc. have been reviewed extensively. Why does the length of time the current review of the license application (streamlined process) takes as much as constructing a plant in Korea? I fear the bureaucracy has taken over.
The handling of the spent fuel is a national disgrace. From a public safety standpoint sequestering the spent nuclear fuel in a bunker deep underground eliminates the cost and vulnerability of storing it at 131 sites. Building a repository is not a technical issue. For example, the WIPP repository for sequestering the high level nuclear waste generated in the nuclear weapons program is in operation deep in a 3000 foot thick salt bed in Carlsbad New Mexico. In contrast, the Yucca Mountain repository for spent fuel has been abandoned by the administration after twenty two years and spending, by my accounting, twelve billion of the twenty two billion dollars collected from electricity rate payers. When questioned as to the reason for walking away from the project Secretary of Energy Chu responded: “We can find a better way”. I think that says it all about the Energy Department and its leadership. When the Administration plays politics at the expense of public safety and blowing huge amounts of money in the process it distinguishes itself as being corrupt.
When I saw the photo of San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant ("Coming Clean about Nuclear Power", June, 2011), peacefully sitting on the Pacific Ocean, two words immediately came to me: Cascadia and Fukushima.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAccording to SA's May issue, there's a 30 percent chance of the southern part of that fault to let go in the next fifty years. What's going to happen to plants like this one when that disaster finally occurs?
I would like to hear from someone who knows, "What is wrong with dropping spent fuel rods like lawn darts into the deepest subduction zone trenches in the ocean?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf small pools of water are adequate to shield and cool these used parts on site at current power plants, surely 5 miles of deep, dark, cold ocean will entomb these problematic items forever.
In another place I asked the question " would a nuclear sub , at periscope depth in deep water, be seriously affected by an on coming tsunami". So far nobody has said it would be any problem at all. The US has long experience of building nuclear plant for warships.One would think it reasonable that mobile nuclear power stations could be built in shipyards and then towed by tugs to be moored offshore near large cities with the power brought to shore by high voltage D.C cable.A lot of the time involved in building a new power station is in getting the various permits and dealing with affected local interests.If several facilities can be constructed, refurbished, maintained, and decommisioned at one site, the scale economies could be large. Longer term what we now refer to as waste may be seen as a resource if new ways are found to convert radioactivity into useful energy and lightweight sheilding developed. In this regard one aspect of superconductors is their ability to exclude a magnetic field. Could this mean they could also exclude electromagnetic radiation? If so the development of high temperature super conductors could have a very beneficial secondary use.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe concept of a floating nuclear plant turned into an activity in the 1970's. Look up Westinghouse Offshore Power on Wikipedia. I think you will find it interesting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are at least 2 problems with dropping spent fuel rods into subduction zones.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. We don't know how quickly material subducted is ejected back to the surface by volcanic action. If this is considerably less than the half life of the radioactive materials, we will end up contaminating our environment worse than sequestering in other locations.
2. Spent nuclear fuel rods are a valuable resource. The fission products can be extracted for industry, medicine, manufacturing and construction. I for one could easily use 300 kg of Palladium 107 right now. It's not very radioactive and it would be extremely useful in testing some advanced propulsion theories; as well as constructing drives if those theories are proven true. And if those rods come from a breeder reactor, the new fissionables (thorium or plutonium for instance) can be extracted and used to produce more energy.
"What is wrong with dropping spent fuel rods like lawn darts into the deepest subduction zone trenches in the ocean?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've been asking about that since I was in 7th grade. Seemed to me then, you could just encase them in insulated ingots so they don't collectively poison the whole ocean while they wait to get drawn under.
Still in all this time, I've never bothered to look up any numbers, but realistically, I'll bet they'd be totally depleted before they made it 20 feet under or something... & at that point, it's just an out of the way storage locker.
On your first point, if you believe what geologists tell us, you are looking at millions of years before anything gets to go very far. In the mean time, all would be safe and sound, well shielded and well cooled.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour second point sounds very interesting if one could be sure to prevent such used fuel rods from being used for evil purposes by unscrupulous characters.
They won't be needed. Rooftop solar will take its place. The solar ink solution (using printing press) will allow a tremendous rise in millions of very inexpensive installations. People will find that it is unnecessary to purchase their power from a monopoly utility. Sad to see them (nuclear plants) go the way of the dinosaur....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course they will do their fair share of kicking and screaming as they go...
What we should be examining his recent evidence that radiation is much less harmful than has been assumed. If this is new evidence is accepted–and I do not see why it should not be–then virtually all the public concerns about nuclear power are answered.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA recent paper points out that, although 2.5 mSv is regarded as “safe", people in France are living with a natural background radiation of 200 mSv and in Iran, with something like 800 mSv. There is no evidence of adverse effects on health.
Here is information on the recent book on the subject.
RADIATION AND REASON:The impact of science on a culture of fear
By Professor Wade Allison, MA DPhil
For more than half a century the view that radiation represents an extreme hazard has been accepted. This book challenges that view by facing the question How dangerous is ionising radiation? Briefly the answer is that radiation is about a thousand times less hazardous than suggested by current safety standards.
For many this will come as a surprise and then quickly raise a second question Why are people so worried about radiation? This is the out-of-date result of Cold War politics combined with a concern about radiation that was appropriate in an earlier age when the scientific understanding was limited.
In the book these answers are explained in accessible language and related directly to modern scientific evidence and understanding, for instance the high levels of radiation used to the benefit of health in every major hospital.
Adam Piori: Of course not! No nuclear power can be morE safe as long as we have no safe way to dispose of used power souRces once they have been exhumed from the graves God put them in to protect the fools evolving on earth who lack the self-control and sense to keep them safeLY BURIED. Only once our rocket acience3 is capable of safely, without fail, sending the depleted power source back into the gravity of, and into, the sun, do we dare expose and use high radiation fuels. Until we can send that "spent" fuel to "hell," we have to guard it 24/7. If we could drill sisposal holes a mile deep, to bury it under half a mile deep rocks a mile down, It might be safe awhile. Of course, it w2ould probably use more power to dispose of the ores safely than the power we got from it was worth!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBesides, with dirt cheap solar,wind , and water power, we have no need for any fueled power. Only fools misled by those who seek to make money by using finite supplies of fuels that they can make money on by keeping it in their own control for their own profits, would want to use some infinitely dangerous fuel. aDAM:YOU APPEAR TO HAVE BENT OVER SWO FAR FOR THE FINITE FUEL LOBBY THAT YOU CAN'T SEE OUT AROUND YOUR SHOULDERS. wHAT YOU NEED ISN A GOOD STIFF KICK IN THE REAR END TO FREE YOUR EYES TO SEE THE SIMPLE TRUTH: wE WOULD HAVE NO NEED FOR NUCLEAR FUELS EVEN IF THEY WERE SAFE!WHICH THEY CAQN NEVER BE!
That is the thrust of my "Dirt Cheap Power Party's Preside3ntial platform: a federal program to install on every homeowner's roof,enough silica solar panels to tprovide all the electrical power they will need for their home snd charging their automobiles, with wind turbines on every rooftop and gable to generate power during wind and storms to give a constantly adequate source of electricity,with all deficits to be made up from the federal power grid at low prices and all excesses to be sold back through the federal power grid to be available to all who have not produced enough for their own needs(if the homeowner wants to participate. This way, the wind can make up for the sun during bad wether!So there will be no need for dangerous power!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps we are judging our early efforts with nuclear technology too harshly. I anticipate a nuclear technology in the future that is no more dangerous than a DVD player. For now it does seem foolish to toy with nuclear technology that is extremely hazardous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA comparison with the thousands of years history of our "mastery" of fire illustrates this view:
"The early matches, including the noiseless match, were dangerous to both end users and the workers that made them.
An agreement, the Berne Convention, was reached at Bern, Switzerland, in 1906 to prohibit the use of white phosphorus in matches. This required each country to pass laws prohibiting the use of white phosphorus in matches. Great Britain passed a law in 1908 prohibiting its use in matches after 31 December 1910."
Only a few years earlier Marie Curie undertook work for which she was awarded 2 Nobel Prizes:
"Marie drew the conclusion that the ability to radiate did not depend on the arrangement of the atoms in a molecule, it must be linked to the interior of the atom itself. This discovery was absolutely revolutionary."
And:
"For the first time in history it could be shown that an element could be transmuted into another element, revolutionizing chemistry and signifying a new epoch."
The minimum criteria for nuclear technology that is safe should read something like this:
"Driven Nuclear Reactors; these do not rely on spontaneous fission, they produce no radioactive waste, and they do not create any weapons capability."
(This paper gives an example of what is required to satisfy these criteria: http://issuu.com/colingd/docs/aus-govt-driven-nuclear-reactors )
The world cannot risk the chance of another Chernobyl or the tragic events still unfolding on Japan. Trying to build a safe nuclear power plant is like building a gun that only shoots bad people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPreventing used fuel rods from being used for evil purposes by unscrupulous characters doesn't seem to be a problem. We have had tons of spent rods stored all over the U.S. for several decades without any known thefts or misuses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's a telling quote from http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-367298.html
QUOTE
Tapioca Dextrin
04-14-2006, 06:33 AM
There's subduction zones like you see in your Geology 101 textbook and there's subduction zones that occur in real life. They're not the same thing. The biggest problem you're going to have to overcome is that you don't have two nice neat slabs of rock gently slipping over one another. There's a whole big smoosh* of sediment getting in the way.
AFAIK (speaking as a geologist who used to work in nuclear seimic hazard assessment) what you need for disposal is 1) stability and 2 predictability. Even if you place your drum of radioactive goo at the deepest point of a tranch, how are you going to predict what is going to happen in the next hundred or thousand years? Will there be some plate movement? Yes. Will it be nice and steady, or might there be a big earthquake? Will your drum just sit in the sediment while the plate moves beneath it? No way to tell.
It might sound like a great idea on paper, but a piece of paper is a poor substitue for the real world.
* that's the technical term :p
UNQUOTE
NUKES & Black Swans
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe base load wedge we may lose will make that much more low-carbon energy work for the remaining wedges. My hopes lye that "Walk away Safe" designs will allow a big come back.
Short a nano/PV/thermoelectrical/ultracapasitating Black swan, What we can do NOW, what I suggested at the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, to the top three EPA officials of north America, A Biochar Black Swan
Bellow the opening & closing text. A Report on my talk at CEC, and complete text & links are here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biochar-policy/message/3233
The Establishment of Soil Carbon as the Universal Measure of Sustainability
The Paleoclimate Record shows agricultural-geo-engineering is responsible for 2/3rds of our excess greenhouse gases. The unintended consequence, the flowering of our civilization. Our science has now realized these consequences and has developed a more encompassing wisdom. Wise land management, afforestation and the thermal conversion of biomass can build back our soil carbon. Pyrolysis, Gasification and Hydro-Thermal Carbonization are known biofuel technologies, What is new are the concomitant benefits of biochars for Soil Carbon Sequestration; building soil biodiversity & nitrogen efficiency, for in situ remediation of toxic agents, and, as a feed supplement cutting the carbon foot print of livestock. Modern systems are closed-loop with no significant emissions. The general life cycle analysis is: every 1 ton of biomass yields 1/3 ton Biochar equal to 1 ton CO2e, plus biofuels equal to 1MWh exported electricity, so each energy cycle is 1/3 carbon negative.
Beyond Rectifying the Carbon Cycle;
Biochar systems Integrate nutrient management, serving the same healing function for the Nitrogen and Phosphorous Cycles.
The Agricultural Soil Carbon Sequestration Standards are the royal road for the GHG Mitigation;
The Bio-Refining Technologies to Harvest Carbon.
The photosynthetic "capture" collectors are up and running all around us, the "storage" sink is in operation just under our feet, conversion reactor are the only infrastructure we need to build out. Carbon, as the center of life, has high value to recapitalize our soils. Yielding nutrient dense foods and Biofuels, Paying Premiums of pollution abatement and toxic remediation and the growing Dividend created by the increasing biomass of a thriving soil community.
Since we have filled the air,
filling the seas to full,
soil is the only beneficial place left.
Carbon to the Soil, the only ubiquitous and economic place to put it.
The base load wedge we may lose will make that much more low-carbon energy work for the remaining wedges. My hopes lye that "Walk away Safe" designs will allow a big come back.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShort a nano/PV/thermoelectrical/ultracapasitating Black swan, What we can do NOW, what I suggested at the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, to the top three EPA officials of north America, A Biochar Black Swan
Bellow the opening & closing text. A Report on my talk at CEC, and complete text & links are here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biochar-policy/message/3233
The Establishment of Soil Carbon as the Universal Measure of Sustainability
The Paleoclimate Record shows agricultural-geo-engineering is responsible for 2/3rds of our excess greenhouse gases. The unintended consequence, the flowering of our civilization. Our science has now realized these consequences and has developed a more encompassing wisdom. Wise land management, afforestation and the thermal conversion of biomass can build back our soil carbon. Pyrolysis, Gasification and Hydro-Thermal Carbonization are known biofuel technologies, What is new are the concomitant benefits of biochars for Soil Carbon Sequestration; building soil biodiversity & nitrogen efficiency, for in situ remediation of toxic agents, and, as a feed supplement cutting the carbon foot print of livestock. Modern systems are closed-loop with no significant emissions. The general life cycle analysis is: every 1 ton of biomass yields 1/3 ton Biochar equal to 1 ton CO2e, plus biofuels equal to 1MWh exported electricity, so each energy cycle is 1/3 carbon negative.
Beyond Rectifying the Carbon Cycle;
Biochar systems Integrate nutrient management, serving the same healing function for the Nitrogen and Phosphorous Cycles.
The Agricultural Soil Carbon Sequestration Standards are the royal road for the GHG Mitigation;
The Bio-Refining Technologies to Harvest Carbon.
The photosynthetic "capture" collectors are up and running all around us, the "storage" sink is in operation just under our feet, conversion reactor are the only infrastructure we need to build out. Carbon, as the center of life, has high value to recapitalize our soils. Yielding nutrient dense foods and Biofuels, Paying Premiums of pollution abatement and toxic remediation and the growing Dividend created by the increasing biomass of a thriving soil community.
Since we have filled the air,
filling the seas to full,
soil is the only beneficial place left.
Carbon to the Soil, the only ubiquitous and economic place to put it.
If every country in the world would dedicate 1% of their national budget to research in fusion energy, then YES, "Future Nuclear Power Reactors" would be safe and their energy free, safe and clean. Of course no government (read "ignorant politicians bribed and lobbied by energy companies") is going to invest in something like that. ENERGY, FOOD and DEBT MAFIAS & CARTELS are definitely not interested in citizens free of terror, hunger, debts and enslavery. It would mean their very own dismise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRooftop solar manufactured by printing press is a GREAT idea. I just checked with NanoSolar website & after 10 years of development they have a 1MW facility in the desert in California [at a no cost to then DoD site]. The facility uses 4992 panels [at 32 square feet each] to achieve the 1000 watts. So lets put that type panel on my houses 2000 sf roof. I can 12.5 watts! Just enough to power one 50 lumen light bulb. But only in the daytime!
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