UCS: Nuclear Safety Project
by Union of Concerned Scientists on 10. 2.06
There are different ways to measuring the safety of a nuclear power plant. Counting only the number of accidents or meltdowns at nuclear plants would give you an incomplete picture of their overall safety. The Union of Concerned Scientists' Nuclear Safety Project took another route and analyzed the number of times nuclear reactors experienced extended shutdowns in the new report Walking a Nuclear Tightrope: Unlearned Lessons of Year-plus Reactor Outages. Their results were eye-opening.
Since the first commercial nuclear power plant opened 40 years ago, there have been 51 reactor shutdowns at nuclear power plants. Most of these shutdowns, 36 of them, were due to widespread safety problems in the plants that could no longer be ignored.
The root cause of these continued safety shutdowns is a combination of inadequate attention to safety by plant owners and lax oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
In the weeks and months leading up to the start of a year-plus outage, the people living nearby face an unnecessarily high risk of an accident that could release radiation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must undergo fundamental change or it will only be a matter of time before additional reactors will suffer through year-plus outages – or worse, a nuclear accident.
UCS is calling on the NRC to follow federal regulations to identify and fix problems in a timely manner. The NRC must also alert plant owners about non-hardware problems and expand its oversight efforts when programmatic breakdowns are identified.
You can visit our Web site to see a list of U.S. plants experiencing outages and the reasons behind their shutdowns. UCS is also asking people to write their members of Congress to demand these reforms.
It doesn't help that the nuclear reactors in this country are ancient technology. We haven't built a new plant since Three Mile Island, some 27 years ago. There is no reason, safety or otherwise, we shouldn't have a hundred heavy water CANDU reactors under construction, if not fully operational, right now. (CANDU reactors are a Canadian design that does't require an enrichment process -- thus no proliferation issues -- and extremely safe and efficient because of it's use of D2O, or heavy water, as the neutron moderator.) Canada, China, India, Korea, even Argentina, Romania and Pakistan all have operational nuclear power plants far better than the ones currently in the US today. Seriously, what ever happend to the idea of America leading the world forward with science?
~nepharis
I'll just repeat what the nuclear industry has said since this report was issued about two weeks ago: It's backward looking and the underlying data supports the exact opposite conclusion -- that safety and performance at American nuclear power plants is actually improving.
Currently, the industry-wide average capacity factor for nuclear power plants is 90% -- and that includes planned and unplanned shutdowns. If what UCS is claiming were true, the industry simply couldn't sustain that type of performance over any length of time.
For more, click here and here.
What's really happening here is that anti-nukes are growing every more shrill as it becomes increasingly apparent that nuclear energy can play a big role in mitigating carbon emissions while still generating the electricity we need. What folks like UCS are really doing is standing in the way of progress like the Luddites of old -- and I'm not the only one who thinks that way.
Being anti-nukes and being pro-safety is not quite the same thing.
"an outage at a nuclear power plant that lasts *more than a year*—has happened 51 times at 41 different reactors around the United States[...] Each such occurrence results from a violation of federal regulations"
What folks like UCS are really doing is standing in the way of progress like the Luddites of old
Hilarious - if people speak up against the insanity of nuclear power (which can't solve its waste and safety issues, in addition to its economics without subsidies) then they're "Luddites"?
A Luddite would be someone who hangs on to a failed technology which has been around for 60 or more years and neglects the other options that modern times present that don't have all the drawbacks that that old technology has.
Nuclear can solve it's waste and safety issues. Ask Senator Kerry, he axed a project that was trying to address those.
Jilted, if you're going to say something, please go ahead and say it, just don't vaguely allude to it. Give us some content...
I have before and on here and it's been ignored. Go google generation III and IV reactors. And IFR's Intergrated fast reactors.
Nuclear can solve it's waste and safety issues.
Really? When did all these magic inventions come into being? Please educate us as to how safety and waste issues have been "solved".
Ask Senator Kerry, he axed a project that was trying to address those.
Why would I ask him? Is he an expert on nuclear energy? Please support your position and prove that nuclear has completely solved the waste and safety issues (including risks of terrorist attacks and theft of radioactive material).
Thanks! Looking forward to all this news about these magic inventions.
To the Anonymous poster, this is the 2nd time I see you thowing out questions like this. I find it quite rude.
Using a breeder reactor design you can produce more fuel and end up with waste that is dangerous for hundreds of years. Hundreds sounds bad until you consider that the current waste is dangerous for tens of thousands.
Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_technology and answer your own questions.
Now can jilted please tell me more about John Kerry axing something. I checked his voting record and didn't see it. I see he has spoke about against storing waste in Nevada before the '04 election but that's politics.
Considering that there are over 100 nuke plants in the US. I'm not really disturbed by the 51 shutdowns in 41 plants. Keep in mind your talking about a 40 year plus time period.
Come on, JiltedCitizen, give us some examples. And not some wikipedia entries about theoritical reactors that might be built in the year 2067.
"Considering that there are over 100 nuke plants in the US. I'm not really disturbed by the 51 shutdowns in 41 plants. Keep in mind your talking about a 40 year plus time period."
It's not just 51 small shutdowns, read again:
"an outage at a nuclear power plant that lasts *more than a year*—has happened 51 times at 41 different reactors around the United States[...] Each such occurrence results from a violation of federal regulations"
CANDU Reactors?? This is old technology, developed in the 1950's and early 1960's.
They aren't anti-proliferation at all, in fact they produce trillium, the highly fissionable element that is used in nuclear bomb triggers, which makes it very desirable from a bomb making point of view. They generate just as much nuclear waste as any other reator which must be disposed of.
Heavy water has a few advantages, the principle one is the ability to use bomb grade material as fuel. But overall, the track record for these plants isn't any better than any other 1950's design.
6 of Canadas reactors are decommisioned and the sites abandoned; like all nuclear reactor sites they cannot be used for any purpose after plant closure due to contamination.
If we are to build new nuclear plants we need to build something WAY better that these old designs. And even the French and Japanese Gen IV (1966) designs have been problematic, the Japanese plant operating at 50% capacity and the French plants had to close last summer during heat waves.
Correction, should read 1996
"If we are to build new nuclear plants we need to build something WAY better that these old designs. And even the French and Japanese Gen IV (1996) designs have been problematic, the Japanese plant operating at 50% capacity and the French plants had to close last summer during heat waves."
Nathan Argent, a Greenpeace spokesman, said: “While the fourth generation of reactors produce less waste by volume, they produce more of the most radioactive and long-lived waste, and there is still no safe way of dealing with this. We argue that the better way to tackle climate change is to decentralise power generation and make it more efficient.”
Sorry Wikiepedia is a decent source of info in most cases. If you think it is wrong change it. Kerry canceled further research into IFR's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor#History
It's hard to get technology ready for general use when you can't even research it. The current nuclear situation is like saying electric vehicles are not viable because 1956 batteries suck.
Hm, no word yet about how nukes are now 100% safe and waste-free.
Trillium? What is that? Is this some top secret substance no one knows about?
Seriously, I think you mean Tritium. Tritium (an isotope of hydrogen) does not undergo fission, but can undergo fusion. It can be used as a booster for a bomb (make an atomic bomb into a hydrogen bomb), but is insufficient for the bomb itself. You still need highly enriched uranium-235/233 or decently pure plutonium-239 to make a bomb, period.
As far as the plant unreliability statistic, I believe all but one (Davis-Besse) shutdowns of over one year were over 10 years ago. This indicates safety/reliability has dramatically improved.
Fast reactor designs with reprocessing have the potential of decreasing the inventory dramatically in terms of volume produced per unit energy produced. The really long lived stuff is essentially reactor fuel and can be burned into much shorter lived fission products. These have lifetimes of a few hundred years, not several thousand.
UofCgradtudent I really wonder where the myth comes from that "the" generation IV. Plant in Japan has a capacity factor of 50%.
The newest japanese Plant has shika 2 has gone into commercial operation since march 2006! Dont you think it is absurd to say that a plant does not work 90% a year when the same plant was not in operation real operation for more than a 6-7 months!
You can check the capacity factors of japanes plants on this website:
http://www.iaea.org/programmes/a2/
There is however one new reactor in japan that has been in commercial operation for more than a year: HAMAOKA-5
And oh look last year the unit was working for 100% of the time.
And last but not least there is no generation IV plant working. These plants are all generation III+ plants.
The Hamaoka-5 plant had a construction cost of 200-300 billion yen (I called the utillity recently and asked - You can do that to, they speak english and the utillity is shown on the website above). Convert that into dollars and you have the price tag for new similiar plants in the usa.
And again: Check the Facts.
Nothing is 100% safe or waste free.
There are 118 nuclear power plants in permanent shut down and 6 more in log term shut down. The entire area of the plant can never be used for any purpose for thousands of years. There are 28 shut down plants in the US alone.
There are 443 nuclear plants operating in the world today. EACH plant creates 30 to 40 TONS of nulear waste that will be radio active for thousands of years. In other words, 13,290 to 17,720 tons per year.
This waste must be stored for thousands of years in a way that prevents contamination.
Some countries are less the vigilant about secure long term storage, with piles of radioactive power rods piling up in storage close to urban areas.
And even with a facility like the proposed Yucca mountain you have to transport the waste; any mishap along the way could cause an environmental disaster.
Nothing is 100% safe or waste free.
That's funny, because you said earlier that "nuclear can solve its waste and safety issues".
Guess not.
From the LA Times (last point in article):
Finally, nuclear power represents the kind of highly centralized, clunky technology of a bygone era. In an age when distributed technologies are undermining hierarchies, decentralizing power and giving rise to networks and open-source economic models, nuclear power seems strangely old-fashioned and obsolete. To a great extent, nuclear power was a Cold War creation. It represented massive concentration of power and reflected the geopolitics of a post-World War II era. Today, however, new technologies are giving people the tools they need to become active participants in an interconnected world. Nuclear power, by contrast, is elite power, controlled by the few. Its resurrection would be a step backward.
Instead, we should pursue an aggressive effort to bring the full range of decentralized renewable technologies online: solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and biomass. And we should establish a hydrogen storage infrastructure to ensure a steady, uninterrupted supply of power for our electricity needs and for transportation.
Our common energy future lies with the sun, not with uranium.
Last year's Energy Policy Act doesn't require a final decision on construction of the demonstration plant until 2014
Engineering design and construction 4 to 6 years
Evaluation period 2 to 5 years
Engineering design and construction of gen 2 Type IV for commercial production 6 to 10 years
First commercial operational type IV in 2028, at the earliest.
At $5 billion dollars each, nuclear power keeps the power production in the hands of big business, who can then set the prices.
This is the push behind the hydrogen economy. The only way to make hydrogen economically is to use nuclear power. Then hydrogen becomes the new petroleum, controlled by big business who can set the prices and control supply and demand as they please, for big profits. Why do you think companies like GM are so in love with hydogen? Big business and government loves big centralized systems that allows control over the masses.
Nuclear Power in Japan
(Uranium Information Centre, Austrailia)
Public support for nuclear power in Japan has been eroded in the last few years due to a series of accidents and scandals.
The accidents were the sodium leak at the Monju FBR, a fire at the JNC waste bituminisation facility connected with its reprocessing plant at Tokai, and the 1999 criticality accident at a small fuel fabrication plant at Tokai. The criticality accident, which claimed two lives, happened as a result of workers following an unauthorised procedures manual...
In 2002 a scandal erupted over the documentation of equipment inspections at Tepco's reactors, and extended to other plants. While the issues were not safety-related, the industry's reputation was sullied. Inspection of the shrouds and pumps around the core is the responsibility of the company, which in this case had contracted it out.
In May 2002 questions emerged about data falsification and the significance of cracks in reactor shrouds (used to direct water flow in BWRs) and whether faults were reported to senior management.
By May 2003 Tepco had shut down all its 17 reactors for inspections, and by the end of 2003 only seven had been restarted.
Hamaoka-5 Low Pressure Turbine Vane Takes Flight
Only the most hard boiled egg heads took much notice when on June 15 the Hamaoka-5 reactor (ABWR 1380 MW) shut down automatically due to "excessive turbine vibration", so it was quite a shock when Chubu Electric Power Company announced the reason for this excessive vibration. A vane on one of the wheels of low-pressure turbine B had broken completely off the turbine shaft and fallen into the lower part of the turbine (see diagram). Of course, when a turbine is rotating at 1,800 revolutions per minute, a broken vane does not simply fall, it flies. Not surprisingly, therefore, Chubu Electric found that "there was some scoring damage and denting on other vanes and parts in the surrounding area."
Fractures or cracking were found in connectors (forks) at the roots of the vanes in all three of the turbines. Cracking was also found in some of the vane connectors on the shaft. As at July 11th, besides the vane that flew, fractures or cracks had been discovered in 247 vanes (of 279) in low-pressure turbine B. Fractures or cracks had also been found in 185 (of 280) and 230 (of 280) vanes in low-pressure turbines A and C respectively.
Hamaoka-5 is the third last reactor to come on line in Japan. It commenced operations on 18 January 2005. It is one of four advanced boiling water reactors (ABWR) in Japan. The turbine was made by Hitachi and is the same design as Hokuriku Electric Power Company's Shika-2 (ABWR 1358 MW) reactor, which commenced operations on 15 March 2006. The Nuclear Industrial and Safety Agency ordered Hokuriku Electric to shut down Shika-2 for inspection and some cracks have already been found. (As reported in NIT 112, Shika-2 should by rights have been closed down after a March 24th verdict of the Kanazawa District Court, which concluded that it was unsafe to operate in the event of an earthquake.)
Hitachi has admitted that it believes the cracked and broken vanes are the result of a design problem and that it will probably take some time to resolve the problem. This is good news for earthquake safety, since it means two particularly unsafe reactors could be down for quite a long time. However, it is bad news for Japan's nuclear manufacturers. They are very proud of their ability to build ABWRs and are eager to market this type of reactor world-wide. As reported in NIT 101, Toshiba and Hitachi exported ABWR reactor pressure vessels for Taiwan's No. 4 Nuclear Power Plant. Also, Hitachi is lining up to sell ABWRs to a US utility (see News Watch).
Hamaoka-5, a problem with a steam turbine does not equal a problem with a reactor design, just a problem with the turbine design.
>That's funny, because you said >earlier that "nuclear can solve >its waste and safety issues".
>Guess not.
Do you have a real argument? Or are you just trolling? I never claimed nuclear would be 100% safe.
Solar is nuclear power, with the inefficient conversion to light and the more inefficient conversion back to electricity. I'm not against solar, I'm just not so naive to think it can solve all the energy needs. Hydro is worse than nuclear, talk about environmental damage and it's not decentralized.
Here is some data from PRIS
(http://www.iaea.org/programmes/a2/)
Japan NPPs 1990 till today:
GENKAI-4 Commercial Operation 1997/07/25
Cummulative Operating Factor: 76.3%
HAMAOKA-4 Commercial Operation 1993/09/03
Cummulative Operating Factor: 81.01%
HAMAOKA-5 Commercial Operation 2005/01/18
Cummulative Operating Factor: 73.92%
HIGASHI DORI 1 (TOHOKU)Commercial Operation 2005/12/08
Annual Time On Line 3536h
IKATA-3 Commercial Operation 1994/12/15
Cummulative Operating Factor: 82.75%
KASHIWAZAKI KARIWA-2 Commercial Operation 1990/09/28
Cummulative Operating Factor: 74.25%
KASHIWAZAKI KARIWA-3 Commercial Operation 1993/08/11
Cummulative Operating Factor: 68.72%
KASHIWAZAKI KARIWA-6 Commercial Operation 1996/11/07
Cummulative Operating Factor: 82.71%
KASHIWAZAKI KARIWA-7 Commercial Operation 1997/07/02
Cummulative Operating Factor: 70.68%
OHI-3 Commercial Operation 1991/12/18
Cummulative Operating Factor: 80.83%
OHI-4 Commercial Operation 1993/02/02
Cummulative Operating Factor: 82.44%
ONAGAWA-2 Commercial Operation 1995/07/28
Cummulative Operating Factor: 76.41%
ONAGAWA-3 Commercial Operation 2002/01/30
Cummulative Operating Factor: 78.15%
SHIKA-1 Commercial Operation 1993/07/30
Cummulative Operating Factor: 79.72%
SHIKA-2 Commercial Operation 2006/03/15
Annual Time On Line 2554
TOMARI-2 Commercial Operation 1991/04/12
Cummulative Operating Factor: 79.61%
Hitachi is paying a price for making this construction error. However
as you can see all the NPPs that went online in the 1990 up until now have a cumulative operating factor better than 50%.
Probably because of structural reasons Japan is not a shining example in terms of operating factor. Lets compare it with Korean NPPs that went into commercial operation in the 1990s up until now.
Korean NPPs 1990- till today:
ULCHIN-3 Commercial Operation 1998/08/11
Cummulative Operating Factor: 87.24%
ULCHIN-4 Commercial Operation 1999/12/31
Cummulative Operating Factor: 89.04%
ULCHIN-5 Commercial Operation 2004/07/29
Cummulative Operating Factor: 84.07%
ULCHIN-6 Commercial Operation 2005/06/01
Annual Time On Line 6041h
WOLSONG-2 Commercial Operation 1997/07/01
Cummulative Operating Factor: 86.48%
WOLSONG-3 Commercial Operation 1998/07/01
Cummulative Operating Factor: 90.78%
WOLSONG-4 Commercial Operation 1999/10/01
Cummulative Operating Factor: 93.06%
YONGGWANG-3 Commercial Operation 1995/03/31
Cummulative Operating Factor: 87.67%
YONGGWANG-4 Commercial Operation 1996/01/01
Cummulative Operating Factor: 89.14%
YONGGWANG-5 Commercial Operation 2002/05/21
Cummulative Operating Factor: 80.9%
YONGGWANG-6 Commercial Operation 2002/12/24
Cummulative Operating Factor: 83.95%
This is reflected in the Lifetime Unit Capability Factor per country:
JAPAN 53 reactors 73.8%
REPUBLIC OF KOREA 20 reactors 86.1%
Now if we compare those numbers with alternative energy we will find that wind energy plants have on average in Germany a operating (capacity) factor of about 20%. The ratio is even worse for photovoltaic panels!.
These have a operating (capacity) factor of about 10% in Germany.
The economics are quite clear: If a plant is not working 100% of the time you need to make up the difference with reserve plants. Japan needs 1.35 NPPs to get to the nominal energy output. Korea needs 1.16 NPPs to get to the nominal energy output.
Germany needs 5 wind energy plants to get the nominal energy output of 1 wind energy plant. Germany needs also 10 photovoltaic panels to get the nominal energy output of 1 photovoltaic panel. This in addition to building reserve storage facillities or natural gas plants that take over when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. The wind energy plants have the added problem that they have an expected livetime of 20 years. This is 1/2 - 1/3 of the life time of a NPP. Which adds to the costs of wind energy plants.
US nuclear power plants have been running at a capacity factor of 90% (i.e.,
In terms of safety, the environment, and public health, its a complete no-brainer. Fossil fuel plants cause 25,000 premature deaths every single year (according to EPA), and they are the leading single cause of global warming. Western nuclear plants have not had any measurable impact on public health (i.e., have killed noone) over their entire 40-year history. They also emit no CO2. Even a worst-case plant meltdown will have far less impact than the ANNUAL effects of fossil plants. If fossil plants were held to anywhere near the standards that nuclear is, they would be far more expensive, and no nuclear subsidies would be needed.
Nuclear's subsidies, on a per-kW-hr basis, are less than those given to renewables. The nuclear govt. research budget for nuclear is also smaller than that for renewables. In any event, renewables intermittantcy will limit them to a small fraction of power generation anyway, making nuclear necessary if fossil fuel use is to be reduced.
Flying an airplane into a nuclear reactor is an exercise in futility. A jumbo jet will not cause a release of radiation, as shown by reports by EPRI and NRC.
Nuclear is the only major energy source that HAS solved its waste problems. The waste is generated in tiny volumes, and it has all been completely contained, whereas fossil plants simply dump mass quantities of toxic material directly into the environment. Nuclear is divised, and will fully pay for, a plan to keep the waste contained for as long as it remains toxic. No other energy source or industry has even come close to doing this. Nuclear plants are fully decommissioned within a decade or so of their closure, and the entire site can then be used for any purpose. This is all fully paid for by the industry.
The notion that nuclear waste is unique in terms of longevity is a myth. All of our toxic chemical waste sites and ordinary garbage landfills will pose a far greater risk to overall public health, thousands to millions of years from now, than Yucca Mtn. ever will.