Yucca Mountain is dead. Long live Yucca Mountain!

Last October, during the Republican primaries, I made a prediction regarding the future of Yucca Mountain - namely, don't bet on it. Not, of course, because it's particularly deficient on a technical level (it's not perfect, but you can judge the science that went into it for yourself.) But rather, the battle for Yucca mountain left its opponents holding the political high ground - particularly when even none of the Republican hopefuls would defend the site at risk of angering Nevada voters.

Skip forward to today. Mitt Romney (last seen saying anything to the residents of Nevada that he think would lead to his election) has lost, meaning any possibility of a reversal of fortune for Yucca Mountain is pretty much dead in the water for the next four years (and likely now for all time).

Politically, not much has changed. Harry Reid still wields an inexplicable* position of influence over the Senate, and Obama still holds the presidency. Absent a surprise intervention by the Supreme Court on the Yucca licensing issue or a sudden change of heart by the residents of Nevada outside of Nye county (the potential host of Yucca Mountain, and generally more supportive overall of the project, namely because of the perceived benefits in terms of high-paying jobs and local investment which generally balance out perceived risks), it is unlikely anything much is going to happen.
 
(*One of my students in my Nuclear Waste Management class asked me how Harry Reid managed to ascend to such a position of influence from what is otherwise an inconsequential state - to which I had to answer, "I don't know, it is beyond the scope of this class." I really don't have a good answer for this one.)

As an aside, relevant to this discussion is an interview in this month's Nuclear News with Chairwoman Allison MacFarlane:

Q: Do you have technical concerns about a repository at Yucca Mountain, such as the rock form or the possibility of contact with an aquifer?

Let me explain. The technical analysis that I did on Yucca Mountain was in the pre-2002 time frame. Since then, in 2008, the Department of Energy submitted a license application. Then the NRC did some technical analysis. I haven’t looked at either of those. So I haven’t updated myself on the technical situation or on any new information that’s come in within the last 10 years. And so, as a careful scientist, I would hold off on making any judgment.

(Emphasis mine.)

On one hand, as a fellow scientist, I appreciate Dr. MacFarlane's reticence toward commenting on a technical issue which she herself recognizes that she is not current on. On the other hand, it is somewhat distressing that the chairwoman of the NRC would not deign to familiarize herself with those very same findings.  (I realize that Dr. MacFarlane obviously has a very full agenda, but nonetheless given that her specialty with geologic disposal of nuclear wastes was one of her core competencies given for her nomination to head the agency, the fact that she has been an extremely outspoken critic of Yucca Mountain, and the fact that this is a timely and controversial topic facing her agency, one would think that she might find the time for a bit of... "light weekend reading...")

Process matters

By this point, your response is probably something along the lines of, "Thanks for the update on News of the Obvious." But to be honest, it seems like a great many people haven't seemed to get the memo yet. Following a discussion on Jim Conca's recent Forbes piece featuring WIPP (the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in Carlsbad, NM, which is responsible for handling military-origin transuranic wastes to be buried deep in salt bed caverns), the question was inevitably asked - "If WIPP is working, why can't Yucca Mountain?"

Herein lies the problem. Debates over the technical details of Yucca aside (details which have been exhaustively studied for nearly two decades), it was never about technical feasibility. One of the most salient arguments I have tried to convey upon my students (and anyone else unfortunate enough to be caught within earshot) is that process matters. Again and again this has been emphasized - by myself and by the findings of the Blue Ribbon Commission themselves. (As well as by social science experts - see for example, this decent op-ed by Chris Mooney on science communication right around the time Yucca faced the axe.)

WIPP worked namely because WIPP made sure to do the process right. From the start, WIPP focused on public engagement and local consent - trying to build understanding and consensus before they broke ground. And to that end, they've been remarkably successful. WIPP enjoys extremely high levels of support from the local Carlsbad community, largely in part due to the influx of high-paying jobs it has brought an otherwise very rural economy. And by committing to transparency and public oversight from the start, the WIPP project managed to soften much of the opposition which may have otherwise doomed such a project - namely because the public felt like both they had a say and that the process was fair and trustworthy. (Mind you, it is unlikely one will ever gain complete consensus - namely because there are some who persist in asserting that nuclear waste is an "unsolvable" problem and frankly have no interest in solving it...)

But far too often in the technical community, there is an attitude that this process can be circumvented. "Who cares what the unwashed masses think? We're right and they're not" - a fine ethos for a dictatorship run by scientists and engineers, a recipe for repeated and painful failure in a democracy. This is the attitude that I see prevailing each and every time I hear someone hammer on why we need to keep pushing on Yucca Mountain - either by forcing a showdown on the licensing process or some other means. And let me reiterate - on a technical basis, I think Yucca Mountain is a sufficient (not ideal, namely because it consigns otherwise recoverable resources to waste, but sufficient) solution.


Here's the problem - it's off the table. There is about a snowball's chance in hell of any of the following factors aligning to rescue Yucca Mountain right now: Chairwoman MacFarlane rescuing the Yucca Mountain license (previously withdrawn with prejudice by Secretary Chu), a sudden reversal in position by President Obama, an intervention by the Supreme Court to finish the Yucca Mountain licensing evaluation, a marked shift of opinion in the state of Nevada, or the sudden departure of Sen. Harry Reid.

Like it or not, the political deck has been stacked against Yucca. Perhaps why it's so hard for technical folks to accept is because of this - it's a victory of politics over science - and unabashedly so. But even assuming Yucca were never to have been derailed by an opportunistic president looking to make a deal with an influential senator, the problems at the core still remain - a process built on a foundation of rolling over state-level consent. It is hardly believable that the opposition which has escalated through the courts up until the 2010 would suddenly evaporate upon Yucca's grand opening. Instead, it is far more likely that another decade of contentious (and expensive) lawsuits would have followed, bankrolled (in somewhat ironic fashion) by the same funds legally obligated to the state of Nevada for hosting the repository by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

$8 billion and all I got was this lousy blog post

Hence my point of emphasis to folks still pushing Yucca Mountain: he's dead, Jim. Let this one go and start thinking about what to do right now while we begin the process again, this time hopefully learning something from our $8 billion lesson.

The sunk cost is perhaps what is hard for most to accept, particularly in the nuclear community. $8 billion is a high price to pay for learning to respect the process of siting a repository in equal measure to the level of technical effort that went into it. But again, this is where the hard-nosed realism of technical folks must prevail - what do you hope to do now? Wishing for a more favorable political situation won't bring back your $8 billion or put a single fuel assembly into the ground. Instead, it's going to require a hard gut check and some long thinking about where we go from here.

So what now?

Let me quote now from wisdom of the Bard Jagger:

You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, you just might find
You get what you need

In the short term, what is needed is some means of storing spent fuel, particularly from already-decommissioned sites (i.e., "orphaned fuel") in a consolidated interim storage facility. Such a facility would be inherently temporary by nature, something which can be enforced by contractual penalties as a means of making such a site more attractive to the host community. Fuel would be kept in concrete storage casks, where it is currently safely licensed to be kept for periods of up to 60 years, and may potentially be safely stored for up to 100-200 years, following further study.

Meanwhile, the main upshot of such a move to interim storage is that it provides a workable solution for the time being until the process of siting a repository can be restarted (which it inevitably must be). This something both recommended by the BRC and is now being proposed by outgoing Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). Whether it or not it goes anywhere in Congress is anyone's guess (although it will likely and unfortunately be eclipsed by much of the talk of the coming "fiscal cliff.")

My own feelings on interim storage have evolved somewhat over the years; it was not long ago that I was critical of such a strategy, namely because it felt like "kicking the can down the road" to future generations. But here's the rub - as much as I generally favor strategies like reprocessing on the grounds of energy recovery, as far as economics go, it simply can't compete with the cost of mining new uranium, even with the repository cost tacked on - and the requisite technologies like fast-spectrum reactors which can effectively transmute and fission long-lived actinides (thermal spectrum, "light water" reactors like those we run now aren't particularly efficient at this) - simply aren't here yet. In that sense, absent the infrastructure to reprocess and effectively burn all of the long-lived constituents of used fuel (not just plutonium), it may just make sense to let it sit around for awhile under well-monitored conditions. Even assuming technology never progresses forward, the end result is a cooler, less radioactive fuel that is less expensive to dispose of. (It is one of the few problems in life that manages to get cheaper the longer you wait.)

Such a position doesn't necessarily sit perfectly with me - as a technical person, I have a bias toward action. (Which of course would be why my research focuses on advanced waste management and recovery strategies). But such a solution is certainly better than a complete failure of the federal government to meet its obligations to ratepayers (i.e., consumers of nuclear electricity) who have paid $30 billion over the last two decades to handle this problem, only to be met with nothing to show for it.

Siting even an interim storage for used fuel won't be trivial - it will likely run into some of the same political challenges Yucca Mountain has faced, if the fate of the proposed Private Fuel Storage facility in Utah is any indication. (PFS has negotiated with a Native American tribe - the Skull Valley Band of the Goshute Tribe - to host such a facility. Despite the fact that the facility is on tribal lands, the state of Utah has attempted to do everything in its power to block the proposed facility - namely by denying rail and road access.) But it may serve as a useful trial run for getting the process right when it comes to the "real thing," i.e., siting a permanent geologic repository.

On a final note, I will be supervising my students' end of semester projects this evening. The task I assigned them was to propose an amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, taking into account the failures of U.S. high-level waste management policy (including a technical analysis of their proposed alternatives compared to the "baseline" scenario). It should be interesting to see what they come up with.

A cost-free way to open up nuclear investment

Late last week, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) rejected a license application for the proposed Calvert Cliffs Unit 3 (an AREVA EPR) build in Southern Maryland. The reason? It was against the law.

Specifically, when the build was originally proposed, it was to be a 50/50 joint ownership stake by Constellation Energy and Electricite de France (EDF, the state-owned French utility giant). However, in November 2010, Constellation sold its 50% stake in the reactor to EDF, making it the sole potential owner of the unit.

According to Federal law (10 CFR 50.38), foreign investors are ineligible to apply for a license to operate a nuclear facility in the U.S. While Unistar was still the nominal applicant, the ASLB determined that the venture was solely owned by EDF and thus EDF was the effective applicant - and thus, ineligible. (The lawsuit, incidentally, was filed by the anti-nuclear activist group NIRS, indicating that anti-nuclear groups will not hesitate use every tool at their disposal to block or shut down any nuclear power facility - and to hell with the cost to the environment as a result.)

If this seems entirely backward in a world of global production and investment, that's because it is. The current regulation is an artifact of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which first authorized private ownership of nuclear facilities. (Prior to this - per the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, all nuclear technology was considered a state secret, during the short time in which the U.S. enjoyed a monopoly on the technology.)

Is there any real compelling reason for restrictions on foreign ownership and investment in nuclear facilities to exist at a time when the U.S. holding a monopoly on the technology has long since passed? Issues of safety here of course are irrelevant - the facilities would be licensed and regulated by the NRC, just as any other nuclear facility is now. About the only salient objection is the political one - i.e., the implications of a foreign entity maintaining controlling ownership in key infrastructure. (Although it's hard to see anyone getting particularly upset about the reverse - U.S. entities owning a controlling stake in infrastructure in other nations.)

For those who have a bit of a longer memory, the controversy should ring familiar - i.e., it's the same arguments which were played out during the Dubai Ports World deal, in which DP World, a UAE-based company, would take over management contracts for six U.S. ports already under foreign management.

Meanwhile, an issue to consider is the fact that bringing together capital to complete a construction bid like Calvert Cliffs 3 is no mean feat (particularly in an economy where investors seem all too skittish about long-term investments in energy infrastructure). Given the difficulty then, it seems positively insane for any political leadership to turn away large investments in long-term energy infrastructure (especially non-emitting baseload like nuclear, which has a long expected operational lifetime).

Setting aside the politics of free trade for a moment, if Republicans have any seriousness behind their twin rhetoric of advocating for expanded use of nuclear energy and in relying on the free market to sort out our energy mix, then this one should be a no-brainer: let companies like EDF put up the investment and apply for a license. The same is true for Democrats as well - if they're serious about both jobs (nuclear construction has them in spades) and especially about creating clean energy sources for the future, investors like EDF should be welcomed with open arms, not turned away at the door.

Again, the best part of this? This costs nothing. Investors like EDF wish to voluntarily invest their money in a vital public good (carbon-free electricity) - all that needs to happen is for leaders to be willing to say, "Oui."

Questions for MacFarlane

Dr. MacFarlane (Image: George Mason University)

The nomination of Allison MacFarlane has drawn a considerably mixed reaction among the nuclear community, ranging from NEI's rather speedy endorsement and Rod Adams' similarly rapid denouncement. Others (including myself) have chosen to withhold judgment for the time being, although I do recomend Margaret Harding's list of desirable qualities in a potential NRC chair.

Given that MacFarlane's hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works committee is scheduled for tomorrow, here are some questions which I believe would better inform the discussion both of whether MacFarlane is a good candidate to lead the NRC and what her leadership might entail.

NRC & Leadership

1. Given the size and relative impact of the NRC, it is not an agency known for its amenability to on-the-job leadership training. A particular concern is in your lack of organizational leadership experience on your resume. Why do you believe you are qualified to lead the NRC, and what leadership qualities do you believe you bring to the table?
2. Describe what you feel are the key challenges currently facing the NRC. What areas would you focus on as chair, and how would you work to overcome them?
3. Your attitudes appear to have evolved from being a self-described "nuclear agnostic" to indicating that "we absolutely need" nuclear energy with respect to climate change. What provoked this evolution?
4. A prominent concern regarding your appointment to the chairmanship of the NRC is that your background has generally not focused on nuclear fuel cycle technology per se. How do you believe you can overcome this experience gap?
5. Much of the NRC's policy comes down to producing an appropriate balance of safety with economic considerations in regulation. Please describe your thinking on what constitutes socially acceptable risks. Should the safety threshold for nuclear energy systems be higher than other commonly accepted risks, such as air travel? What about in comparison to other energy sources?
   
6. A decision which has been roundly criticized by many nuclear experts was outgoing Chairman Jazcko's unilateral decision to establish a 50-mile evacuation zone for U.S. residents in Japan, contrary to both existing U.S. evacuation guidelines and the Japanese evacuation guidelines. Do you agree with this decision? If so, upon what basis? If not, where did the Chairman err and how would you handle the situation differently?

Nuclear Waste Management

1. As an outspoken critic of Yucca Mountain, both on technical and procedural grounds, how do you view the decision by your predecessor Gregory Jazcko, along with President Obama and Secretary Chu to terminate the licensing review process in light of amendments to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act which legally mandate Yucca Mountain as the nation's sole geologic repository? Would you allow the licensing process to move forward? If not, how then do you square this under existing federal law?
2. One of your significant contributions to the Blue Ribbon Commission was a strong focus upon a more consent-based process of involving communities in the repository licesing process. What do you view as the NRC's role the siting process for a potential repository (if any)?
3. What immediate actions (if any) do you believe the federal government should take with respect to spent fuel management?

Nonproliferation

1. Your academic background includes several publications on the topic of nuclear nonproliferation policy. In particular, you have publicly stated your opposition to spent fuel reprocessing on nonproliferation grounds. Do you believe President Carter's decision to suspend civil reprocessing in the United States was ultimately effective in achieving its stated nonproliferation goals?
2. How do these nonproliferation concerns relate to the NRC's recent license to GE to construct a laser enrichment test facility, given similar nonproliferation concerns?
3. Please describe why you believe reprocessing of reactor-grade plutonium to be a viable proliferation concern, particularly in nuclear weapons states.
4. What role (if any) do you see for the NRC in establishing U.S. nonproliferation policy?

Licensing and new construction

1. A particular challenge to the development of novel reactor concepts such as small modular reactors as well as entirely new reactor concepts such as TerraPower's traveling wave reactor has been the difficulty in getting such designs through the NRC licesning process. In particular, this has been described as a "chicken-and-egg" problem, with the NRC refusing to prioritize designs with no present commercial interest, while utilities are generally only interested in designs that are expected to receive NRC review. As a result, some designers - such as TerraPower - plan on circumventing the U.S. market entirely. What do you believe the NRC should do to address this issue?
2. Nuclear experts such as Rod Adams have pointed out that the existing COL process relies on the assumption that no amendments to the design will need to be made after construction begins. Does this process need to be improved? If so, how would you propose improving it?
3. Departing chairman Jazcko was frequently the lone dissenter on several recent votes for involving reactor licensing and construction, including the construction licenses for Vogtle and VC Sumner reactors as well as the recent 20-year license extension for the Pilgrim nuclear facility. Do you believe Jazcko's dissenting votes were justified? If so, on what grounds? If not, how would you approach the situation differently?

What questions would you ask MacFarlane, given the chance?

Update: Margaret Harding presents her own list of questions, and Rod Adams posts a transcript of his 2007 interview with Dr. MacFarlane in which she declares herself as an "atomic agnostic."

Update II: Jack Spencer at Heritage's blog similarly poses his questions. Some substantial overlap in themes arises - particularly over issues such as Yucca Mountain and new reactor licensing.

A closer look at Jazcko's replacement

Dr. MacFarlane

Earlier this week, embattled NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko announced he would be stepping down from his position contingent upon the confirmation of his replacement. Wasting no time, the Obama administration announced their nominee today, a mere three days after Jaczko's announcement. Their candidate? Dr. Allison MacFarlane, an associate professor of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University.

MacFarlane is not without technical credentials - she holds a Ph.D. in geology from MIT and has written extensively on nuclear waste management issues - in particular, serving on the recent Blue Ribbon Commission. And, unlike the departing Chairman, MacFarlane at least has an academic career to point to, rather than solely being employed as a political aide for entire career. Ideologically however, she is relatively aligned with the departing Chariman however - thus, while not quite Gregory Jaczko II: Electric Boogaloo, she is likely close enough for government work.

A mixed bag

Suffice it to say, MacFarlane's ideological interests represent a mixed bag, to say the least. In many of her writings concerning the siting process for a nuclear waste repository, MacFarlane has repeatedly pointed to the need for a consent-based process (like that used for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant [WIPP] in New Mexico) for locating a disposal facility, something which has been repeatedly stressed by other nuclear professionals (including myself). Thus, her influence over the Blue Ribbon Commission's final report is quite obvious.

On the other hand, MacFarlane has been extremely critical of spent fuel reprocessing along with being a tenacious opponent of Yucca Mountain itself; she, along with Frank Von Hippel of Princeton have repeatedly advocated plutonium immobilization of surplus stocks of reactor-grade plutonium from civil reprocessing programs, as well as for weapons-grade plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads. Needless to say, this is an incredibly wasteful and inefficient waste management solution. (It is thus perhaps unsurprising then, given her influence, that the BRC final report also declined to endorse reprocessing as a policy solution for spent nuclear fuel.)

MacFarlane couches her objections chiefly in terms of nonproliferation concerns (something which I have an academic specialty in); what is not clearly demonstrated in any of her analysis is how reactor-grade plutonium (itself not suitable for direct use in weapons, due to heat-producing impurities such as Pu-240 and Pu-242 which make for sub-optimal weapons materials - more on this in a moment) represents a viable proliferation concern, particularly in nuclear weapons states such as the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and the United States.

The exception here to this trend is of course Japan, which currently reprocesses fuel and ultimately aspires to achieve a fully "closed" fuel cycle for reasons of resource independence. However, even absent a reprocessing program, their world-class leadership in nuclear technology means that they are hardly constrained on a technical basis from developing a weapons program. (Japan is quintessentially a "screwdriver's turn" from nuclear weapons capability.) Yet given their deep cultural aversion to nuclear weapons, Japan is in fact a leading figure in the international nonproliferation community.

All of this said, MacFarlane herself has gone on the record of indicating the she personally does not oppose nuclear energy itself, arguing that in the face of climate change, we "absolutely need nuclear power." Again, very much a mixed bag, so to speak.

The two faces of the nonproliferation community

Much of MacFarlane's background has been associated with what I term the "political" wing of the nonproliferation community - the other being the "technical" side (where my background is from). Her affiliations include the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard (not exactly a hotbed of pro-nuclear activity or solid technical analysis at that), home of well-known academic nuclear critic Matthew Bunn, as well as being a regular co-author with Frank Von Hippel (someone also not known for his warm feelings for nuclear energy - although a perfectly pleasant person in real life.)

Nonproliferation tends to get a poor reputation among nuclear professionals and advocates, precisely due to the "political" wing, who tend to focus on opposing any nuclear technology seen as "proliferant," which in turn lends itself to the anti-nuclear strategy of "bottle-necking" - in other words, "constipate" the nuclear fuel cycle and then complain loudly of the "lack of solutions" for nuclear waste (despite the plethora of available technical options).

Conversely, the "technical" nonproliferation community tends to focus on aspects such as how to improve aspects of verification and measurement within fuel cycle facilities - in other words, ensuring that declarations of sensitive facilities are complete and accurate and that material is fully accounted for. An example of this includes projects like those I am currently working on, which seek to use radiation detectors to better characterize the isotopic contents of spent nuclear fuel in order to provide for a superior accounting of materials such as plutonium. The difference in focus thus could not be more stark - one side complaining of the potential problems and the other seeking solutions to improve facilities such to eliminate said problems.

Ultimately, these kinds of debates come back to the question I frequently ask: "So what's your alternative?" To her credit, MacFarlane at least does offer an alternative solution - one I find to be highly flawed, but it is nonetheless out there. And again, likewise to her credit, MacFarlane does not declare herself to be outright opposed to nuclear energy. Thus, the problem is simply a matter of coming to an agreement on a better solution for nuclear waste management.

A small background on "weapons-usable"

So-called "weapons-grade" plutonium contains more than 90% Pu-239 - the isotope most suitable for weapons use (given its low spontaneous fission rate and low heat generation rate). Even-numbered plutonium isotopes - Pu-238, Pu-240, and Pu-242 - tend to have a high heat generation rate (Pu-238 has such a high heat generation rate from alpha decay that it is frequently used as a power source for space missions such as the Cassini-Hugyens probe which took spectacular images of Saturn and the New Horizons probe currently en route to Pluto). Pu-240 and Pu-242 also have a high level of spontaneous fission, which means in addition to producing large amounts of heat they produce high levels of neutrons - in a weapon, this leads to unpredictable yield, or "fizzle." Thus, generally speaking, "reactor grade" plutonium, while usable in the strictest sense (i.e., one can construct a fission chain reaction using the materials), they are far from optimal for a national weapons effort - any nation with the capability of reprocessing would easily choose a more dedicated route (i.e., with separate plutonium-production reactors to produce high-purity Pu-239 and separate reprocessing facilities) before resorting to diverting civilian stocks.

Political calculations - the "twofer"

So why did Obama tap MacFarlane? Two reasons are likely in play. The first of course is that given her prior criticisms of Yucca Mountain, her nomination has been bolstered by the support of Senate Majority Leader and infamous Yucca Mountain opponent Senator Harry Reid (D-NV). Second, her nomination comes on the heels of President Obama's renomination of current Commissioner Kristine Svinicki. Thus it is likely the Obama Administration is seeking a "twofer," seeking to align the confirmation of Svinicki with that of MacFarlane as a "package deal." Senate Republicans are unlikely to object to Svinicki, who has enjoyed the support of the nuclear community given her extensive expertise in nuclear issues. (And indeed, even NEI has been pushing this strategy of jointly confirming the two nominees.)

The nomination of MacFarlane as chair may also be a concession to Reid and other anti-nuclear Senate Democrats in another sense - Senator Reid has complained (without substantial basis) of Svinicki's record on the NRC - a rather questionable position, given Svinicki has generally voted with her three other commissioners on many important issues (in other words, it would seem that Reid's criticism, and in particular singling out Svinicki, is mostly upon the grounds of several prominent 4-1 votes in which Chairman Jaczko stood alone).

However, his grumbling appears to be muted in a press release similar to that of NEI, stating:

I continue to have grave concerns about Kristine Svinicki’s record on the Commission. But I believe the best interests of the public would be served by moving the nominations of Dr. Macfarlane and Ms. Svinicki together before Ms. Svinicki’s term expires at the end of June, to ensure that we have a fully functioning NRC. Republicans claim to share that goal, and I hope they will work with us to make it a reality.

The smart money will thus likely be on a joint appointment deal hammered out sometime this summer.

And as for Yucca Mountain? I still wouldn't bet on it.

Small modular reactors meet "Iowa stubborn"

The land of Iowa - home of hogs, corn, windmills, and... SMRs (i.e., small modular reactors). Or at the least, that last part may be true pending a proposal before the Iowa Legislature (HF 561) is passed, allowing for among other things, recovery of costs while construction is in progress on nuclear projects (known as "CWIP" or "construction work in progress" financing). Iowa's electricity market is a regulated market - which means rates are ultimately set by the Iowa Utilities Board.

As a former long-term resident of Iowa and still self-identified Midwesterner-in-exile, I have a keen interest in seeing where this one goes. Despite the characterization of the bill's opponents (which, by sheer coincidence, also seem to be almost identical to those who oppose nuclear energy writ large), Iowa's "abundant energy alternatives" generally consist of coal (about three-quarters of Iowa's electricity capacity), followed by wind (about 16%) and nuclear (about 8%, from the state's lone nuclear unit, Duane Arnold, north of Cedar Rapids), per 2010 EIA statistics, shown on the right.

Given the highly-touted wind resources of the Iowa (i.e., from the hundreds of windmills which dot the rolling plains of Iowa), wind makes up a significant share of Iowa's energy. However, given the sheer enormity of coal's share of Iowa's energy portfolio, it is difficult imagine wind displacing Iowa's heavy reliance upon coal for electricity, particularly when one looks at penetrations beyond 20%, where wind's intermittency begins impact grid stability (thus requiring changes to grid infrastructure in order to accommodate further wind generation). Instead, wind is appears serving the role of taking required load away from "peaking" sources like natural gas - one notices that contra the national trend, natural gas makes up a tiny share of Iowa's energy mix. Ultimately however, if Iowa is to become in any way serious about doing its part on carbon emissions, weaning itself off its dependence of coal (specifically, anthracite low-sulfur bituminous coal shipped by the trainload directly from Wyoming) is of paramount priority. Given its inherent intermittency, doing this with wind seems highly improbable, while few other sources appear ready to fill the gap here.

Enter the small modular reactor - in an attempt to obviate the issues of high up-front capital cost and large "step-wise" investments (i.e., traditional nuclear units start around 1 GWe), small modular reactors miniaturize nuclear reactors into a relatively small, self-contained unit - one which is manufactured off-site and produces power at a lower scale (typically on the order of 1/10 to 1/3 of a traditional unit). To wit - the concept of the "small modular" part of the SMR is that in many cases, such as in more conventional designs, the same fundamental designs as their larger cousins are employed (e.g., uranium fuel cooled by ordinary water) - simply scaled down into a smaller package which can be manufactured in a factory and shipped by truck or rail to the installation site. As a result, SMRs avoid the uncertainties due to construction delays while scaling down a nuclear investment into a more tractable size, one which allows for a more granular addition of nuclear capacity than the traditional gigawatt-scale traditional reactor.

Indeed, one of the reasons SMRs are appropriate for unique energy markets like Iowa is in their ability to be "right-sized" for the kinds of municipal utilities and electricity cooperatives that make up the Iowa market. Unlike large, multi-state utilities, most electricity retailers in Iowa are unlikely to be willing or able to support the large investment for a traditional unit, nor do they have the need for such large generating capacity. In as much, smaller, scalable units provide an alternative which affords the capacity of carbon-free baseload generation at low operating costs. Outside of the jaundiced view of nuclear which seems to color this discussion, this would seem to be boon to Iowa's energy producers an consumers.

Given these factors, the introduction of SMRs to Iowa as an alternative to coal should seem to be a no-brainer. Of course, as usual with anti-nuclear politics, it doesn't always seem to work this way; in a way of cutting off their nose to spite their face, many nuclear opponents will cast aside the issue of carbon constraints aside to attack nuclear on any and all fronts. Take this example from a left-wing community blog, "Blog for Iowa," where author Paul Deaton criticizes the CWIP proposal on the grounds that it might indeed do just what it's slated to do - attract the development of small modular reactors to serve Iowa's largely rural electricity markets. Deaton brings up many of the usual anti-nuclear arguments, however he turns his attention specifically to several criticisms of SMRs which on the face of it simply don't make much sense.

For example, Deaton argues that the modularity of SMRs are self-defating in nature:

When proponents of SMR technology talk about it in public, what they say doesn’t make sense. On the one hand they talk about the efficiency and flexibility of modular reactor technology. On the other hand, they talk about the need for centrally located “baseload” power where economies of scale are important to keeping the cost per kilowatt hour low. What this means to consumers is that while a single town or large-scale user may be able to have their own nuclear reactor on-site, if this were done, the cost of the ancillary charges would be much higher per kilowatt hour because efficiencies of scale would be lost. Installing SMRs only makes sense, from a cost standpoint, if they are constructed in clusters as the Nu-Scale and Babcock and Wilcox designs are intended.

Unfortunately, much of this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues at hand. For one, part of the cost advantages of SMRs is that so-called "energy parks" can be developed in staged fashion - in other words, installing one or two units at first in order to allow cost recovery, then installing more units later, "scaling up" the energy production without having to attempt to swallow the entire capital cost in one fell bite, thus avoiding both the high borrowing cost and financial risk of the large, single-unit traditional equivalents. Further, each SMR is still generally on the order of 100-300 MWe - again, about 1/10 to 1/3 the size of a traditional nuclear facility. For comparison - the average wind turbine puts out less than 10 MWe at rated capacity - so how precisely is it that SMRs fail the same test which one can infer our author has no problem with when it comes to other energy sources?

Finally, this argument ignores one of the chief advantages of SMRs, in that they can be manufactured almost entirely along an industrial process line within a single facility - eliminating the need to build on-site with its attendant construction costs and delays while affording efficiencies of scale at the actual manufacturing process (along with the respective enhancements to quality control that can come with it). Thus, where SMRs push on nuclear's chief weaknesses - high up-front capital costs and financial risk due to construction - are factors entirely unconnected to the points Deaton brings up.

Deaton goes further, arguing in several places that SMRs are too "under-developed" to make them viable for energy markets, arguing:

While the paradigm of SMRs fits into the hyperbole of the recent discussion, the reality is that no SMR design has been approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nor is approval imminent, with talk of the earliest likely approval of SMR design being ten years from now.

The purpose of a TVA SMR would be to further the NRC design approval process and develop field data about SMR design efficacy. Without government subsidy of this kind, the SMRs seem unlikely to move forward in the United States in the near future.

Of course, this argument ignores the inherent problem - the issue is not that SMRs aren't ready for primetime, but rather that the NRC lacks the will or capacity to make such regulatory analysis. How this is the fault of the industry or specifically SMR manufacturers remains to be seen. Absent the NRC's dithering, it remains to be seen why such a "subsidy" as he terms it would even be necessary. Again, the problem here is not that the so-called "subsidy" is necessary but that some degree of expedience on the part of the NRC (one Deaton is silent on) is warranted. Assigning the blame to the technology for bureaucratic inaction is thus a non-sequitur.

Finally, Deaton assails nuclear as a non-starter in a free market for energy, arguing that it should succeed or fail on its own financial merits. All fine, again - although somewhat odd, given both that Iowa is a regulated electricity market and other sources like wind are given particularly favorable treatment in said energy market. Given the leftist orientation of the blog, one is left to doubt we'll be hearing calls for a deregulated Iowa electricity market or an elimination of similar subsidies for wind and other politically favored sources, so one is left to question the sincerity of this particular rhetorical strategy. Indeed, nuclear seems to be the unique case in which your average nuclear opponent begins to act as if they would fit in at a Tea Party rally - with such situational preference for laissez-faire disappearing once the topic changes to energy mandates and subsidies writ large.

Likewise, when it comes to anti-nuclear politics, some rather specious claims tend to be made. For example, this one - that CWIP financing would mean, "An average ratepayer who paid $67 a month in 2009 would pay an estimated $135 a month" - are repeated entirely uncritically. Going to the data, Iowans pay an average of 10.34 cents/kWh - comfortably below the average of 11.88 cents/kWh. For a monthly bill to jump from $67 to $135 per month would require a rise of the cost of electricity to 20.83 cents/kWh - a rather difficult claim to sustain in the absence of compelling evidence.

None of this of course is to say that Iowa's specific legislation is perfect - a legitimate criticism can be made that processes such as CWIP financing should be carefully balanced to avoid totally offloading risk onto consumers and undercutting incentives to avoid cost and schedule overruns. Ultimately, these kinds of discussions only go on in regulated electricity markets - where producers are generally guaranteed a fixed rate of return on investment, becoming moot in deregulated ("merchant") electricity markets, where in fact electricity prices are set by the market. The key point to take away however is that in regulated markets at least, it's a matter of pay now or pay more later when it comes to energy investments. Carefully structured, allowing for cost recovery mechanisms while construction is in progress can ultimately lower the total amount  retail electricity customers ultimately pay.

*For those who don't get the title, a viewing of "The Music Man" is highly recommended - if only to give you a feel for an Iowa which is not about corn, livestock, or hyped-up fabulism of Iowa as a methamphetamine-fueled wasteland. Really, it's quite nice.


Updated 2/28: An anonymous commenter noticed the statistics I'd had were for total U.S. production, rather than Iowa - a tremendous goof which has now been fixed.

Cultural bias and nuclear

I was recently perusing the comments on an NPR article on nuclear waste disposal, ("How to find a nuclear waste site? Woo a town."). In perfectly foolish measure, I perused the comments - a bad idea for anyone with an IQ north of room temperature and a level of patience south of Mahatma Gandhi. I found myself taken aback with, to put it bluntly, the level of gross ignorance of nuclear opponents. A couple of examples:

[...]The truth of the matter is that, to prevent dangerous overheating of nuclear waste, the rail cars used to ship the waste would allow air to move freely which also meant radiation could move freely. While it would just be small amounts of radiation, this could add up for families living next to railways and cause a multitude of health problems.[...]

So, we don't UNDERSTAND nuclear and our little waste problem. This condescending, ridiculous bantor from the industry nver ceases to amaze me. The industry's problem is that more people are beginning to understand the dangers of nuclear. The lifespan and inability to rid ourselves of it was reason enough to have never began this horrid mess. Indeed, I DO understand and, therefore,I want this needless perpetuation of nuclear to end! 

 My reaction to the first of the above was almost to say aloud in Morbo fashion (from Futurama, to the uninitiated), "Windmills do not work that way!" In other words, it conveys a serious lack of understanding about just how radiation works.

Image credit: NRC

To explain it briefly - ionizing radiation (i.e., the kind that can cause health problems) doesn't just blow around like dust in the wind - it comes from a source: like the atoms decaying inside nuclear fuel, or the sun for instance. (Yes, the sun - ever wonder why you get a sunburn from staying out in the sun too long? You just got a very mild radiation burn.) For gamma radiation, (i.e., energy emitted from nuclear transitions, ranging from ultraviolet rays to x-rays to gamma rays), this travels in a straight line, just like visible light - because it is light; it doesn't simply scatter to the wind. Further, it attenuates strongly as a function of both distance and shielding; fuel transport casks are designed such that a person standing directly next to the cask would have to stand there for any awfully long time to get anything approaching a dangerous level of radiation exposure, but further, gamma radiation attenuates as the square of the distance. In other words, for every factor of 10 one moves away from a radiation source, the exposure drops by a factor of 100.

A standard rail shipping cask (courtesy Wikipedia)

But getting back to the issue at hand - yes, casks are air-cooled, but so what? For radiation to "move freely" as the commenter describes, this would require radioactive material to move freely. Yet the transportation casks are clearly designed such that heat from the fuel is conducted to the outside of the cask, where it is carried away by convection. In no way does the fuel get exposed to air, the only plausible way in which this event could happen (i.e., particles of the fuel itself allowed to be picked up into the air and carried away). To further put this myth to rest, these same casks have to be tested against all kinds of conceivable accident scenarios - drops, fires, punctures, crushes - anything that the fuel container could possibly experience in an accident condition.

Below is a video released by Sandia National Laboratories demonstrating the types of tests performed on an older design of the transportation casks:

Basically, any cask which is certified to transport used nuclear fuel must go through a battery of punishing tests before it is ever licensed to transport fuel.

Getting back to the main point here - namely, that the information on safety is out there and widely available, how is it that such gross misinformation still manages to persist? The second comment seems to point to a a particular phenomenon - cultural bias which ultimately leads to mistrust of the (accurate) information being given by experts. If you will forgive the (slight) hyperbole:

1. Nuclear energy is an industry run by giant, evil corporations with no regard for human life
2. Information conveyed by nuclear experts and supporters is chiefly in service to the above
3. Therefore, technical experts in nuclear are untrustworthy.

Hence we get have people resorting to "folk science" (in other words, lies) peddled by hucksters with their own agendas - be they political or economic in nature. (One can already begin to see the irony forming here.) Or you get the "proud ignorance" - "I don't need to know anything to know this is dangerous and you're lying to me!"

How do we get around this? I confess that I'm not an expert in this realm (I mean, after all, my first thought reading the above comments was to simply apply palm to face and mutter, "Windmills do not work that way!") But it does seem like there is a strong need to present a human element to this, conveying above all else that we, too share their (valid) concerns over the health and safety of our respective loved ones, and as such we have the utmost interest in obtaining and conveying accurate information.

Of course, a lot of us do this already - sometimes on a daily basis. A large part of the problem seems like an inability to penetrate "hardened" ideological structures where such ideas are formed and reinforced. And certainly, this applies far more broadly than just nuclear technology - think global warming, for example - a near-mirror image of this same phenomenon can be observed (accusations of science being manipulated for economic and political interests, etc.) If anything then, this seems to speak of a larger societal problem in conveying scientific and technical information about risk to the public.

Vermont Yankee lives to power another day

The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, supplier of 73% of Vermont's emission-free electricity (and approximately one-third of the state's total electricity), won its day in federal court today, thus granting it the right to keep the doors open and the lights on (for the rest of the state). Vermont resident Meredith Angwin has been tirelessly championing Vermont Yankee's cause, both in person and through her blog, "Yes Vermont Yankee."

Entergy's Vermont Yankee plant had been under siege by a nuclear-hostile governor (Pete Shumlin) and in particular targeted by anti-nuclear groups hoping to seize upon a legislative window to shut down the plant for good. To give some background: when the plant changed ownership to Entergy in 2002, a condition of the deal  (signed in a memorandum of understanding with the legislature) was that Entergy agreed to submit an application with the Vermont Public Service Board (VPSB) for a "Certificate of Public Good" - in essence, a license required of all power operators. Vermont Yankee's current CPG expires on March 12, 2012.

Pray that Vermont does not alter

the deal any further.

Fast foward to the present. Entergy recently received an approval with its application to the NRC to re-license Vermont Yankee for another 20 years of operation (ending in 2032). (Side note: It cannot be over-emphasized that the original licensing period for reactors - 40 years - is one governed historically by anti-trust and economic considerations, rather than any scientific basis. Relicensing appliations are handled by the NRC on a case-by-case basis, wherein operators must prove the plant is physically capable of safely operating to NRC specifications over the extended time period.)

Then, in perfect keeping with Darth Vader's preferred negotiating style, the Vermont Senate passed a law blocking the VPSB from issuing such a certificate, thus attempting to circumvent the NRC and block the plant from operating. Again, this all is in spite of the fact that the NRC (staffed by trained engineering professionals) evaluated Vermont Yankee and determined it safe to operate; instead, this judgement was over-ruled by the governor and legislature of Vermont, distinctly lacking in such engineering credentials.

The full ruling turned essentially on how binding the MOU Entergy signed with the Vermont legislature was; in essence, the court's ruling was that this agreement bound Entergy to the jurisdiction and decision of the VPSB (i.e., obligating them to seek a certificate of public good), however such an agreement did not grant the legislature the right to pre-empt the decision process from the board. Thus, the legislature's move to circumvent the VPSB's process amounted to a change in the implicit contract with Entergy after the fact. (Such shenanigans were not limited to altering the deal after the fact - as has been covered in depth by Angwin, the legislature attempted in mafioso style to impose other conditions for receiving the certificate, such as requiring Entergy to sell electricity to the state at below-market rates.)

So what does this mean in the end for Vermont Yankee? Ultimately, the fate of the plant still rests in the hands of the VPSB, where Entergy must make the case to the board that Vermont Yankee provides an adequate balance of safety, environmental, and economic concerns relative to other sources in its continued operation.  However, today's ruling now grants Entergy that opportunity, the same one afforded to all other energy producers in the state. Finally, unlike the Legislature, such a case in one judged by findings of fact rather than political arm-twisting.

Dissecting the BRC report, Part I: Where they got it right

Earlier this week, I gave a summary of the findings of the draft report of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Energy Future. Several experts have already made their responses to the BRC's recommendations known - both at Brave New Climate and Atomic Insights. While as a relatively new nuclear professional, I lack some of the gravitas of much more established folks, the issue of nuclear waste management and associated policy is of primary interest to me, and thus I wanted to add my thoughts. 

To start things on a positive note, there were many helpful observations made in the report about the over geologic repository siting process (as well as the overall process of waste management policy) which should be highlighted. (To emphasize: even under advanced recycle scenarios, where long-lived actinides are recycled as fuel, some geologic repository will be necessary to handle fission product wastes; however, the engineering requirements would be substantially relaxed, given the shorter time periods for decay.) Thus, this post will focus on some of the highlights where the commission hit upon important, constructive ideas for waste management policy. Future posts in this series will look at where the report fell short.

As an additional aside: ANS is actively soliciting public comments on the entire BRC report for compilation.

A consent-based process 

One place where I am happy to eat (some of) my prior criticisms is in the report's overall emphasis upon a consent-based process for locating a permanent repository site. In fact, much of the analysis in revising the repository siting process focused on a means of engineering a consent-based process, similar to that achieved in Sweeden with the SKB repository; the report also repeatedly emphasized the success of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP, a salt-dome repository for defense waste in southern New Mexico). In particular, the BRC report identifies the importance of state-level cooperation in the waste management process.

The peculiar case of "Salt Vault"

An instructive historical example mentioned in the report is the case of "Project Salt Vault" in Lyons, Kansas in the 1960's. Much of the report's analysis points to the ultimate failure of Salt Vault, due to broad state opposition. However, focusing merely upon the terminal failure misses the greater part of the lesson, namely that community consent is not simply a random force of nature to be contended with, but rather something which can be cultivated with careful work and planning - and very quickly destroyed.

Initially, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was tasked to investigate disposal options for used nuclear fuel. Salt domes offer an attractive geologic disposal option because the existence of salt domes typically belies an area which has been relatively impermeable to water for long periods of time on a geologic scale (e.g., otherwise the salt would simply dissolve into brine). In addition, the heat of spent fuel causes salt to "plastically deform" around the spent fuel casks - in other words, the caverns "heal" around the shape of the container, thus sealing the chamber naturally. Ergo, burying fuel in salt dome formations offers a promising pathway for permanent disposal of intact fuel and long-lived nuclear wastes, as there is reasonable evidence that the formation will be isolated from groundwater, thus securely immobilizing and isolating nuclear waste from the environment.

The story of Salt Vault can be roughly be summed up in two stages. In the initial test phases, the AEC placed great emphasis upon public engagement and consent, contacting local leaders and emphasizing transparency and openness in its operations. During the spent fuel storage test, local citizens were invited to inspect the process and ask questions. Further, and perhaps most importantly, the nature of the test was inherently time-limited. When the experiment was concluded, the AEC removed all nuclear materials from the site, as promised.

The second part of the story picks up in 1970, after fire at the Rocky Flats plutonium facility in Colorado, which set about a chain of events which required the rapid development of a permanent repository for defense waste materials from the nuclear weapons complex. In 1970, the AEC announced - much to the surprise of local leaders - that pending further geological surveys, the Lyons site would be selected as a permanent repository. Unlike the earlier process, local residents and political leaders dug in their heels, and eventually the site was declared to be unfeasible on technical grounds.

What is unmistakable in this example is the impact an open, consent-based process can make. Projects such as SKB and WIPP have been successful precisely because they occurred in a manner which is predicated upon the consent of the local population. In this sense, the BRC report offers helpful analysis for a matter which unfortunately should have been obvious long before now.

Under new management

Likewise, the BRC's recommendations for a federally-chartered corporation (similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority) with dedicated access to the Nuclear Waste Fund also promises to solve other inherent problems which have stymied waste management policy in the U.S. Namely, as of now, waste management operations are a line item in the annual budget; in other words, despite the fact that nuclear operators (and thus ultimately you, the consumer) pay for the cost of disposal in the form of a $0.001/kWh tax on production, the DOE must specifically request funds to manage operations from Congress each year. Which of course means that waste management operations are subject to the whims of politicians, each and every year - including stunts like "defunding" projects mandated by law such as Yucca Mountain and attempting to hijack the repository licensing process through attrition. (Whether one approves of Yucca Mountain as a geologic repository or not - and I think there are better options available - it is still the existing law of the land, per the 1987 amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and thus what the administration has done is clearly illegal.) 

The net result has three decades wasted for a $13 billion hole in the ground, in addition to the approximately $20 billion (with interest) that has been collected by Congress but not allocated. Thus, a clear case can be made for a greater degree of overall independence in nuclear waste management operations.

Flexibility in the process

A particular point of emphasis throughout the BRC report is in maintaining a flexible, staged process which easily lends itself to adaptations due to unforeseen circumstances, in marked contrast to the current policy which committed to Yucca Mountain as the nation's sole geologic repository site early on (for reasons of perceived political expediency). A blistering criticism of the current Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) in the report is in the inflexibility and relative prescriptiveness of the current policy, "locking in" a single solution to nuclear waste management with little flexibility to adapt to new technologies and developments (including both political developments - such as widespread local opposition - and technical developments, such as unexpected revelations in site characteristics). Specifically, the report criticizes the 1987 amendments to the NWPA for failing to account for the contingency that Yucca Mountain should prove untenable.

By contrast, the report's conclusions emphasize the need for a process which avoids "lock-in" - both in terms of policy and technology. Rather, they highlight the need for a phased process which affords maximum flexibility. It should thus come as no surprise, given this perspective, that the report focuses chiefly upon centralized interim storage for fuel (i.e., storing spent fuel in concrete casks in a centralized location) as a medium-term solution for waste management, while options for a geologic repository or other alternatives (such as reprocessing) are evaluated.

Such a strategy bears remarkable similarity to the original NWPA framework (prior to the 1987 amendments), where a second site was to be designated for "monitored retrievable storage" (MRS). The goal of MRS was to provide a medium-term storage location for fuel where it could later be easily retrieved, either for purposes of recovery or for final treatment and disposal elsewhere. In the original framework, an MRS site was not scheduled to be opened until a permanent repository had been located, as to avoid the perception that an MRS site could become a "de facto" permanent repository.

Likewise, the original provisions for the geologic repository prescribed a fixed period of retrievability. However, these provisions were less for purposes of alternative strategies (e.g., reprocessing) as much as the ability to respond to unforeseen technical problems, i.e., should the repository not perform as expected.

Summing it up

Much of the BRC's focus on the process of waste management is important, echoing many of the criticisms waste management experts have made for some time. In particular, nuclear waste management has long been a political problem more than a technical one in the United States (which is not to understate the gravity of the technical challenge). In this sense, the BRC report offers a useful blueprint for the repository process for any future geologic repository process.

Unfortunately, as will be laid out in following posts, this provides little in the means of immediate solutions for nuclear waste management. In particular, the Commission was extremely reluctant to endorse any of the plethora of technical options available for waste management and disposal, instead preferring to outline a strategy for starting over while buying breathing room for the federal government. Most of the practical, immediate solutions for managing spent fuel in the U.S. rely on the concept of centralized interim storage - which while perhaps better than the status quo, is not without its own problems, as will be discussed in the following posts. 

Ultimately, a credible strategy for the entire fuel cycle is necessary for the continued overall acceptance of nuclear energy. While considerations such as economics and safety will always be at the forefront, it is my belief that a credible and technically sound solution for managing spent fuel remains as the last true barrier to widespread public acceptance of nuclear energy, namely because of its current perceive intractability (unlike safety and economics). 

Hence there is a need not only to establish a sound process (which the BRC does a reasonably good job with), but also to begin a process of laying out a commitment to credible solutions - something both the BRC and the federal government have been less forthcoming with.

Hitting the "reset button" on nuclear waste management

In the first of many in a series of posts on "We Read It So You Don't Have To™," I recently reviewed the draft report of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Energy Future - i.e., the committee tasked by President Obama to devise an alternative path forward in light of the administration's decision to zero-fund the Yucca Mountain geologic repository.

Several nuclear bloggers offered (including yours truly) their thoughts on the draft summary of the BRC recommendations when they were posted back in May. Since that time, the release of the full draft report expands upon earlier BRC recommendations, which largely focused upon centralized interim storage for spent nuclear fuel until a new permanent geological repository can be sited.While centralized interim storage remains at the heart of its recommendations, a major focus of the full report has been on the process of nuclear waste management policy, including issues of site selection, regulations, and access to funding. Concerns over spent fuel in light of Fukushima also permeate the full report, underscoring the need for an integrated fuel management strategy.

However, in particular, much of the report promotes hitting the "reset button" on nuclear waste management policy, turning the clock back to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, prior to the 1987 amendments which designated Yucca Mountain as the nation's sole geologic repository and the decades of scientific and engineering study which followed.

Read the whole summary exclusively at the ANS Nuclear Cafe.

ANS to host blogger conference call with NRC Chairman Jaczko

From the ANS...

The American Nuclear Society (ANS), in coordination with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), announces a live online webinar for nuclear bloggers on Tuesday, October 4, 2011, from 11 AM - 12 Noon Eastern Time.  The webinar will be an unscripted question and answer session with NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko. NRC Chairman Jaczko is participating in the session in order to broaden NRC outreach with the nuclear social media community.  A similar one-hour session will be held October 6 with representatives of organizations who are critical of and/or oppose nuclear energy. Participants in the October 4 session will be able to submit questions ahead of time using a designated NRC email address:BlogMtg1.Resource@nrc.gov . While Chairman Jaczko will likely be unable to answer all of the questions submitted in the time available, Eliot Brenner, Chief of NRC Public Affairs, said, "The agency will endeavor to address them online after the webinar via its blog at:http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/.   Time will also be allocated to answering questions submitted by participants via an online form on the webinar website.  Those without web access will be able to dial in to listen to the webinar via a toll free telephone line, but will not be able to submit questions by phone. The focus of the session will be on policy issues and the broad regulatory and safety objectives of the NRC. Questions which are most likely to be selected for the live session will be those that have broad public interest in terms of the NRC's mission.   "The NRC will answer any detailed technical questions about specific nuclear plant systems on its blog.  Also, if we see a similar question submitted by several participants, we’ll ask a composite question," Brenner said. Laura Scheele, ANS Manager for Communications & Policy, said that the NRC session will be facilitated by Dan Yurman, a nuclear blogger, on behalf of ANS.  He is a member of the American Nuclear Society and serves on the organization's Public Information Committee. Yurman will be on site at NRC headquarters for the session.  

Got a burning question for Chairman Jaczko? E-mail the above or leave it in the comments (and we'll make sure it gets passed on...)

An IAEA perspective on Fukushima

I recently had the pleasure to attend a lecture by Randy Beatty (who has been affiliated with the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] for some time), focusing upon the IAEA's perspective on Fukushima, particularly in terms of our current understanding of the sequence of events (which is still evolving) as well as the IAEA's interactions with the government of Japan and TEPCO (the owner of the Fukushima reactors).

Below is a summary of some of the major topics covered, including a more detailed reconstruction of the accident sequence (and particular, both the relatively small timeframe in which most of the damage occurred) as well as a better understanding of how other, secondary complications such as the hydrogen explosions came about. Finally, more precise estimates of the quantities of radiation released and the direction of its spread shed some light on how many were affected and the relative appropriateness of certain evacuation precautions.

Accident sequence

The "main" narrative of the Fukushima incident is relatively understood, summarized as follows:

• Following the 9.0 earthquake, each of the reactors was shut down, halting the fission reaction
• Backup power from diesel generators came online to operate coolant pumps to remove decay heat from the reactor until these were wiped out by the incoming tsunami; 
• Battery backup power came online to operate these pumps until such power was depleted
• Water inside the reactors began to boil away as it heated up.
• As water boiled away, the fuel rods heated up.
• Water interacted with the extremely hot zirconium cladding, producing free hydrogen (which lead to the hydrogen explosions)
• As the fuel rods heated up, the cladding failed, releasing radioactive fission product gasses. The fuel is also believed to have partially melted when it became uncovered by water, releasing more radioactive materials from the core.
• Cooling was restored by injecting seawater into the reactors to quench the decay heat from the rods and prevent further melting.

What has been perhaps less well-understood are issues such as how much fuel melted, how long the core was not covered by water, and the extent of the radioactive release. A great deal of research work is being conducted at the national laboratories presently to reconstruct what was going on inside the reactors in the first few hours (immediately after the rectors were shut down) in order to characterize what exactly happened; thus our understanding on this point will continue to evolve over the next several years.

One of the key issues that seems relevant in much of the accident sequence is the relative speed at which events progressed. While most of the world witnessed the event as a long, drawn-out drama, much of the damage had already occurred in the first few days (and in particular, the several hours the reactors were without power before seawater injection was applied). 

Courtesy of Randy's presentation, here is a good timeline of what occurred at each reactor.

Unit 1

• March 11, 2:46 PM: External power lost, emergency diesel generators begin to supply power
• March 11, 2:52 PM: Emergency cooling systems (isolation condenser) started
• March 11, 3:37 PM: All AC power lost
• March 11, around 5:00 PM: Fuel exposed, core melt begins
• March 12, 5:46 A.M.: Begin of freshwater injection from fire extinguishing line

The fuel was estimated to have been uncovered for about 2.5 hours. Water injection was estimated to have stopped (due to the loss of power) for 14 hours and 9 minutes. 

Unit 2

• March 11, 2:47 PM: External power lost, backup diesel generators start up
• March 11, 2:50 PM: Emergency cooling system (Reactor Core Isolation Cooling system - RCIC) starts up
• March 11, 3:11 PM: All AC power lost
• March 14, 1:25 PM: RCIC operation stops
• March 14, around 6:00 PM: Fuel exposed, core melt begins.
• March 14, 7:54 PM: Seawater injection from a fire extinguishing line begins

Approximately 30% of the core of Unit 2 was estimated to have been exposed in the 6 hours and 29 minutes in which cooling was unavailable.

Unit 3

• March 11, 2:47 PM: Loss of external power, start-up of emergency diesel generators
• March 11, 3:05 PM: Startup of emergency cooling system (RCIC)
• March 11, 3:41 PM: Loss of all AC power
• March 12, 11:36 AM: RCIC stops due to loss of power
• March 12, 12:35 PM: Startup of HPCI (high pressure core injection) system as a backup cooling measure
• March 13, 2:42 AM: Stop of HPCI
• March 13, around 8:00 AM: Fuel exposed, core melt begins
• March 13, 9:25 AM: Startup of freshwater injection into core from a fire extinguisher line

The fuel thus appears to have been exposed from approximately 1.5 hours, with water injection having been unavailable for about 7 hours.

What this means

Several issues are clear from this timeline of events. First, despite an earthquake beyond the design basis for the reactors, emergency systems largely functioned as intended. Were the backup power systems not destroyed by the following tsunami, it is likely the incident would have largely been contained without incident; indeed, it was the "total station blackout" condition which was the root cause of the radioactive releases (i.e., by allowing the fuel to overheat). In this sense, one criticism made of the Japanese government was in its initial reluctance to accept assistance from outside agents such as the United States, which had offered to airlift in replacement generators when the tsunami destroyed the initial generators. Whether this initial refusal was a face-saving measure or something else remains to be seen, but quite clearly this exacerbated the issue.

The loss of emergency diesel power systems was near-total due to the tsunami; a total of twelve diesel generator units were present at Units 1-6, of which all but one at Unit 6 were wiped out. (This remaining unit was elevated above the tsunami.)

Backup systems such as battery backups appear to have mitigated some of the damage, particularly in the case of Unit 3, where Japanese officials report that the battery backups appear to have lasted approximately 50% longer than their design life (around 18 hours, compared to a design life of 12).

Most stark here is the relatively short time period in which most of the damage occurred - in most cases, the fuel was exposed for only a few hours (up to about 6.5 hours for Unit 2, which experienced the most severe fuel damage). Likewise, following the complete loss of power, it took only a few hours for the core to become uncovered due to water boiling from the core.

Complicating the situation at Unit 2 may have been the hydrogen explosion which occurred in the suppression pool (the donut-shaped cavity at the bottom of the reactor, designed to condense steam from the reactor to recirculate coolant and draw off heat). This appears to have accelerated the damage at Unit 2, explaining the extent of damage seen there.

Finally, most of the radioactive release appears to have occurred within the first three days, following the uncovering of the fuel in the cores of Units 1-3. Due to extremely difficult conditions at the reactors from the earthquake and tsunami (i.e., extreme devastation and an overall lack of electricity, with no instrumentation information from inside the reactor buildings), the overall extent and significance of radioactive releases would not be ascertained until later.

Spent fuel pools at Unit 4

Condition of spent fuel in the pool

Unlike Units 1-3, Unit 4 was in a scheduled outage for refueling and maintenance prior to the earthquake. Rather, Unit 4's spent fuel pool contained a mixture of older and newer, more recently-ejected fuel (which is hotter, due to a greater amount of short-lived fission products remaining in the fuel).

The loss of power to Unit 4 produced a similar situation to Units 1-3; even though the fission reaction is "off" in the fuel, short-lived radioactive materials in the fuel continues to decay, generating heat. This heat must be removed from the fuel, thus fuel is stored in deep pools of water, generally kept around room temperature and pressure. (In other words, spent fuel pools are quite similar to very deep swimming pools for spent fuel rods). The water serves a dual purpose; first, the water "wicks" away heat from the rods, keeping them cool, and second the water provides an effective shield from radiation emitted by the spent fuel. 

Heat in the cooling pool must be removed, just as is the case of reactors - thus cooling pumps exist to circulate the cooling water in order to maintain the temperature of the pool (and thus the spent fuel). Thus, should these pumps be disabled (due to a loss of power), this water will begin to heat up as well, eventually boiling. However, spent fuel in the pools is generally much cooler than that from fuel in reactors which have just shut down - recall that decay heat falls off exponentially with time, meaning that after a few weeks, the heat emitted by spent fuel rods is much, much lower than that of a reactor which was just shut down. Thus, the loss of coolant would be much slower than that of Units 1-3.

During the crisis, some speculated based upon limited data (little to no actual instrument data from the pool was available due to the lack of power) that the water levels have precipitously dropped; NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko even (now infamously) speculated that the pools had gone "completely dry."

However, recent images taken of the spent fuel in Unit 4 by the IAEA indicate that the fuel appears to be intact and undamaged; thus an uncovering of the fuel in Unit 4 appears to be extremely unlikely.

Fuel stored in the spent fuel pool at Fukushima Dai-ichi Unit 4. (Image credit: IAEA) 

In addition, the IAEA has tested for radioactive isotope concentrations in the water within Unit 4's spent fuel pool; in the event that the fuel became uncovered or fuel melted, telltale isotopes would be present to indicate this. Current analysis has failed to find these, further indicating that it is unlikely fuel was damaged at Unit 4. Finally, experts familiar with fuel chemistry indicate that radioactive ruthenium (a chemical in the lanthanide family and a common fission product which tends to travel with water) would have been present outside Unit 4 had fuel melt occurred, which has not been found.

However, the drop in the water level which occurred in Unit 4 is still an unknown (due to the lack of instrument measurements inside the building from the power outage) and difficult to determine; experts are currently attempting to perform back-calculations to estimate this.

Source of the hydrogen explosion

One source of speculation and debate was the hydrogen explosion which occurred at Unit 4, in particular how a hydrogen buildup could have occurred in the outer containment building around the Unit 4 spent fuel cooling pool. The presence of hydrogen is a clearly worrisome sign, implying that a sufficient amount of water has either boiled off or leaked to allow the fuel to become uncovered and grow hot enough to enable the hydrogen production reaction. (Fuel which is covered by water cannot get hot enough to allow the reaction between water and the zirconium clad to occur; therefore, the production of massive amounts of hydrogen would imply an uncovering of the fuel.)

Thus, the hydrogen explosion at Unit 4 lead some (such as Jaczko) to speculate that the spent fuel pool had gone "completely dry." However, no signs of fuel damage were observed, indicating that zirconium hydriding from spent fuel rods in Unit 4's pools was extremely unlikely.

Therefore, where did the hydrogen in Unit 4 come from? The IAEA believes that hydrogen may have been vented from Unit 3 to Unit 4 through a "standby gas treatment system" exhaust pipe; this exhaust tube had joint inputs from Units 3 and 4, thus conceivably allowing hydrogen to travel from Unit 3 (where it was being produced following the core becoming uncovered) to Unit 4 (where it subsequently ignited and exploded).

(Left): Standby pipe from Units 3 and 4; (right) Enlarged view of junction (Image credit: IAEA)

Releases of radioactive materials

Thanks to my colleague Alan's ability to read and speak Japanese, this blog has been following dose data around the plant and surrounding area from early on after the accident. However, the IAEA has helpfully compiled a map of further measurements which were taken by ground stations and measurements by aircraft.

Map of air dose plume release from Fukushima. Red: 9-91 microSv/hr,  Orange: 9.5-19 microSv/hr, Yellow: 3.8-9.5 microSv/hr, Green: 1.9-3.8 microSv/hr, Blue: 1.0-1.9 microSv/hr, Indigo: < 1.0 microSv/hr (Image credit: IAEA)

Air measurements conducted around the area of the plants indicate that much of the plume containing radioactive materials traveled northwest (i.e., due to wind); doses outside the main plume spread to the northwest were found to be relatively negligible. Likewise, with the exception of the plume "tail" in the northwest, nearly all of the elevated dose rates in air were concentrated within a radius of 30 km from the plant, calling into question the logic of NRC Chairman Jazcko's order for Americans within 50 miles (around 80 km) to evacuate.

Evacuation areas around Fukushima. (Image credit: IAEA)

As is clear from the evacuation zone map, the Japanese evacuation order of 20 km with a deliberate evacuation of Iidate and Katsurao prefectures appears to be based upon a sound evaluation of the measured exposure rates. Additional precautions in place (e.g., staying indoors and prophylactic measures such as distributing potassium iodine tablets) were implemented in areas within the 30 km radius.   

Approximately 78,000 people were evacuated from the evacuation area (20 km), with an additional 10,000 evacuated from the "deliberate evacuation area" to the northwest (a smaller number due to the relatively low population density in these areas). Residents in the "Evacuation prepared areas" were informed to stay indoors and prepare for a potential evacuation order in the event of further emergencies (e.g., large measured increases in the exposure rate).

Preventative measures

As a precautionary measure, potassium iodine (KI) tablets were distributed to residents within 50 km of Fukushima prefecture; 1.51 million potassium iodine pills were distributed to approximately 750,000 residents , while 6,100 grams of KI powder was distributed to 120,000-180,000 individuals. 

Potassium iodine is an effective preventative measure for exposure to radioactive iodine (I-129 and I-131) if taken prior to exposure. Iodine is readily taken up by the thyroid; thus, by flooding the body with stable iodine, any radioactive iodine ingested (due to groundwater and air transport) would be excreted out of the body before being absorbed. (Conversely, radioactive iodine is frequently used for the treatment of thyroid disorders, given that the radioactive dose can be easily targeted specifically to the thyroid.)

Evacuations and relative risk 

A point which must be emphasized again in evacuation decisions such as this is in the relative risk averted through evacuation versus the human costs imposed, particularly in light of an epic natural disaster such as this, with tens of thousands dead or missing and over a hundred thousand displaced. Overly conservative evacuations based upon marginal risks (i.e., outside 20-30 km) place an additional burden upon already strained emergency resources (shelters, medical facilities, etc.) while giving little additional benefit. Even under the best of circumstances (which clearly was far from the case here), broad evacuation orders can result in tremendous hardship; the gains from evacuation must therefore be balanced against the additional burdens imposed.

Relative amount of radioactivity released

Based upon calculations made of the measured activity outside the reactors, the IAEA made an estimate of the relative fraction of material released from each core. Nearly all noble fission product gasses (such as xenon and krypton) were released; however, these are of negligible concern, given the fact that they are chemically inert. Approximately 1% of radioactive iodine was released from Unit 1, with about 0.4 to 0.7% of the iodine released from Units 2 and 3. Finally, for other species (including cesium), less than 1% was determined to have been released into the environment; for Units 2 and 3, this was determined to be around 0.3 to 0.6% of the activity in the core.

Estimates as to the total activity released to the atmosphere put the activity of I-131 released around 1.5 to 1.6x10^17 Bq (one becquerel is one atomic decay per second), and around 1.2 to 1.7x10^16 Bq of Cs-137. (Note that not all of this activity was spread inward; large amounts of this release were likely dispersed over the ocean, where they are greatly diluted.)

Presence of transuranic elements 

One rather persistent rumor among media outlets and particular blogs was reports of transuranic elements (i.e., plutonium and other elements above uranium on the periodic table) being found in soil samples outside the plant, indicating a "blowout" of materials from the core similar to Chernobyl. (in the case of Chernobyl, the resulting fire lofted much of the fuel materials into the air, scattering them much farther than they would have otherwise traveled and allowing heavier species, such as plutonium, to escape).

The IAEA did find reports of small amounts of transuranic materials found near the plants from ground monitoring stations and groundwater samples, however these measurements were found to be inconsistent, with little sustained evidence. One difficulty is establishing a source for these materials, which are not necessarily from the plant itself, given the widespread dispersal of radioactive elements around the globe during the time of above-ground atomic testing. Testing for aspects such as the relative abundance of different isotopic species may help to determine the source (i.e., whether the material is older, such as from bomb testing, or newer), however given the relatively scarce amounts found, it has been difficult to establish a source for these materials, given that they conceivably may have precipitated from anywhere in the area.

Worker and resident doses received

Estimating doses for workers was found to be extremely challenging, due both to the lack of instruments at the facility (from the power outage) as well as the flooding, which either swept away or ruined many of the personal dosimetry meters worn by workers or stored at the plants. Of 7800 workers measured, the average worker dose was about 7.7 microSv (well short of the yearly dose limit); 30 were found to have doses greater than 100 milliSv, while 2 workers were found to have equivalent doses to the skin of about 2-3 Sv (due to contact with radioactive water in flooded buildings, causing minor skin burns similar to a sunburn).

Estimation of doses received by the public was measured primarily by the level of surface contamination (i.e., number of radioactive counts per minute). Most of the 195,354 individuals screened were found to be below the 100,000 counts per minute limit; of those who were found to be above this limit, most of these individuals had residual contamination on clothing only and were cleared after changing clothes and vigorously washing their skin.

Accident classification

One question which came up was in the choice (and chronology) of the accident classification of the Fukushima incident, initially placed as a "3" on the INES scale and moved to a "4," then a "5" (similar to Three Mile Island) and then finally upgraded to a "7" (similar to Chernobyl).

INES accident classification scale (Image courtesy of IAEA) 

With respect to the accident classification, the choice of a classification of "7" (the most severe accident category classification) seems somewhat confusing in light of the limited consequences of Fukushima compared to Chernobyl (whose overall total radioactive releases were nearly ten times that of Fukushima). However, the accident classification itself was based upon the total activity of materials released (e.g., very short-lived materials, while quickly going away, will have a higher relative activity rate), including those released into the ocean (where the effect would be relatively dilute). Thus, the application of a "7" rating was a strictly mathematical decision, based on the threshold value for total release.

On the other hand, the sequence of classifications was a more delicate political matter. As evidence surfaced of the situation growing more severe, TEPCO and the Japanese government were continually required to update the accident classifications. (Likewise, there appeared to be a certain reluctance on the part of TEPCO and others to disclose the full significance of the incident). As the situation progressed, it was clear that TEPCO and others would simply need to concede the severity of the conditions, re-classifying the accident as a "7" in order to "get ahead" of the situation, rather than being seen as continually dissembling[?] and delaying. In as much, while the final classification itself was based upon total measurements, in the IAEA's view the chronology of how these ratings were assigned as the accident unfolded were influenced by concerns over public perception.

Plans for improvements

Much of what will occur in the aftermath of Fukushima will be to determine how nuclear operators can plan for and respond better to similar circumstances in the future. Much of the problems encountered at Fukushima came from the total loss of power at the facilities, followed by the destruction of the backup diesel generator units in the tsunami (a condition known as "station blackout," the worst possible circumstance which can occur at a plant).


Thus, many of the IAEA's recommendations fall under these categories. In addition to recommending that operators and plant designers harden facilities against earthquakes and floods, a key area of focus will be in ensuring that reliable backup supplies of power can be maintained in order to operate cooling pumps following an unexpected plant shutdown. This includes hardening backup generators (placing them out of reach of flood waters) and making dedicate contingency plans such as mobile power vehicles to supply power in the case of a generator failure.


Other factors include features such as means to mitigate hydrogen production in circumstances such as this, through the installation of hydrogen "recombiners" (which steadily burn hydrogen rather than allow it to accumulate) and dedicated "blow-out" panels to allow for emergency venting of hydrogen from the outer containment buildings. It was noted that over 300 metric tons of hydrogen was produced in the three reactor units (in other words, over 300,000 kilograms), thus leading to the rather dramatic hydrogen explosions witnessed.


Other recommendations focus upon measures for emergency response, such as procedures for handling nuclear emergencies. A particular complication in the case of Japan was in the widespread devastation beyond the scope of the plants themselves; many workers at the plant were uncertain about the safety of their homes and families, leading to confusion and initial difficulties in maintaining sufficient staff levels to respond to the emergency at the plants.

Proposed safety systems upgrades (click for larger version; image credit: IAEA)

Finally, the IAEA recommends regulatory reforms such as instilling a more thorough safety culture and reinforcing the regulatory safety infrastructure by fostering a greater separation of regulators and utilities, which have been frequently criticized for enjoying too cozy of a relationship in Japan. An additional criticism made was in that preservation of economic assets (e.g., the reactors) was potentially prioritized above safety in the early stages of the response, delaying such measures such as seawater injection (an emergency measure to cool the core which almost certainly would mean a total economic loss for the reactor unit).

Final thoughts

Nuclear safety is a constantly-evolving process; the events at Fukushima will undoubtedly be studied by engineers and scientists for years to come in order to develop better safety features and response techniques to ensure maximum possible safety to the public. To some degree however, there comes a point where one plans against the essentially unpredictable (for example, a record earthquake and tsunami); thus, not every measure can simply be preventative in nature, but rather in how to respond to and mitigate such events. (Examples of this include hardening backup generators and designing robust containment buildings to prevent radioactive releases.)


It likewise is useful to place events like this in context; while it is clear that Fukushima was an extremely serious event in hindsight (it would now appear to be far more serious than Three Mile Island, although less serious than Chernobyl), the consequences must be compared to the risks encountered by the available alternatives. For example, one consequence of the earthquake was the destruction of a hydroelectric dam, destroying over a thousand homes. Liquefied natural gas facilities were also destroyed in the earthquake, leading to further casualties. By comparison, the only person who has died as a result of the Fukushima disaster was not even killed by a radioactive release, but rather was killed by a falling crane.


Risk is an unfortunate fact of life, and in particular of energy production. This applies to all forms of energy production, not just nuclear - each form of energy production comes with equivalent risks and trade-offs, including economics, pollution (for example, the radioactive releases from coal plants in smokestacks are far higher than that of nuclear plants), land utilization (diffuse energy sources such as solar and wind consume enormous land footprints), etc. There is, alas, no "free lunch" when it comes to energy. The best that we can hope for is to understand and minimize risks by constantly striving for better and safer designs and better ways of responding to accidents.


In particular, it is worth noting that the Fukushima plants were of a prior vintage - built in the 1960's and nearing retirement. Newer plants built at Fukushima Dai-ini did not suffer nearly the same consequences as those at Dai-ichi, in part due to enhanced safety features within the designs. Likewise, plant designs being proposed today take advantage of decades of engineering experience, including advances in technology (particularly in advanced computing - perhaps the most amazing thing about much of the existing nuclear fleet is that it was designed with pencils and slide-rules...). New designs such as small modular reactors promise further enhancements in safety.


Ultimately, safety will be an ongoing challenge, one not entirely technical in nature. After Three Mile Island, one of the most radical changes to the U.S. nuclear industry was a focus on human factors - particularly looking at aspects such as instruments in the control room, operator training, and instilling a safety culture. Similar lessons may ultimately have to be internalized in the case of Japan.


It has often been said, "Experience is the harshest teacher, and her lessons the most expensive." For the Japanese, no doubt this case is little different.


A special thanks to Randy Beatty and the IAEA for both presenting and making these resources available to me.