https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-nuclear-power-plants-climate-change/
[images in online article]
U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Weren’t Built for Climate Change
By Christopher Flavelle and Jeremy C.F. Lin
April 18, 2019, 4:00 AM EDT
In 2011, after an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at Japan’s
Fukushima-Daiichi power plant, Gregory Jaczko, then the chairman of the
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, had to worry about two things:
whether radioactive fallout would harm the U.S. and whether a similar
accident could befall an American plant. The answer to the first
question turned out to be no. The second question preoccupies him still.
The NRC directed the operators of the 60 or so working U.S. nuclear
power plants to evaluate their current flood risk, using the latest
weather modeling technology and accounting for the effects of climate
change. Companies were told to compare those risks with what their
plants, many almost a half-century old, were built to withstand, and,
where there was a gap, to explain how they would close it.
That process has revealed a lot of gaps. But Jaczko and others say that
the commission’s new leadership, appointed by President Donald Trump,
hasn’t done enough to require owners of nuclear power plants to take
preventative measures—and that the risks are increasing as climate
change worsens.
According to a Bloomberg review of correspondence between the commission
and plant owners, 54 of the nuclear plants operating in the U.S. weren’t
designed to handle the flood risk they face. Fifty-three weren’t built
to withstand their current risk from intense precipitation; 25 didn’t
account for current flood projections from streams and rivers; 19
weren’t designed for their expected maximum storm surge. Nineteen face
three or more threats that they weren’t designed to handle.
The industry argues that rather than redesign facilities to address
increased flood risk, which Jaczko advocates, it’s enough to focus
mainly on storing emergency generators, pumps, and other equipment in
on-site concrete bunkers, a system they call Flex, for Flexible
Mitigation Capability. Not only did the NRC agree with that view, it
ruled on Jan. 24 that nuclear plants wouldn’t have to update that
equipment to deal with new, higher levels of expected flooding. It also
eliminated a requirement that plants run Flex drills.
Matthew Wald, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear
trade group, calls the odds of a Fukushima-style nuclear meltdown that
affects people outside a power plant’s walls “vanishingly small.” He
says those risks got smaller once plants installed Flex emergency
equipment after Fukushima. “There is a perennial problem in any
high-tech industry deciding how safe is safe enough,” he says. “The
civilian nuclear power industry exceeds the NRC-required safety margin
by a substantial amount.” He also notes that nuclear power produces more
than half the carbon-free electricity in the U.S.
The commission’s three members appointed by President Trump wrote that
existing regulations were sufficient to protect the country’s nuclear
reactors. Jaczko disagrees. “Any work that was done following Fukushima
is for naught because the commission rejected any binding requirement to
use that work,” he says. “It’s like studying the safety of seat belts
and then not making automakers put them in a car.”
The commission “is carrying out the Trump deregulatory philosophy,” says
Edwin Lyman, head of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of
Concerned Scientists. “The NRC basically did everything the industry
wanted.” The two Democratic appointees objected to the NRC’s ruling.
“The majority of the commission has decided that licensees can ignore
these reevaluated hazards,” commissioner Jeff Baran wrote in dissent.
His colleague Stephen Burns called the decision “baffling.” Through a
spokesman, the Republican appointees declined to comment.
“Nuclear power is weird—it exists to produce electricity, and at the
same time it can’t exist without electricity,” says Allison Macfarlane,
who chaired the NRC from 2012 through 2014. Plants need constant power
to pump cool water into a reactor’s core; if flooding interrupts that
power supply for long enough, as happened in Fukushima, the core can
overheat, melting through its container and releasing deadly levels of
radiation.
The true risk to U.S. nuclear facilities may be even greater than what
the documents from the nuclear commission show. The commission allowed
nuclear plant operators not only to perform their own estimates of
current flood risk but also to decide what assumptions to make—for
example, the maximum likely hurricane speed or how much rain would fall
in an extreme storm. (The commission reviews that work.) The commission
also rejected a recommendation by their own staff that would require
nuclear power plants to update their risk assessments periodically to
reflect the advancing threat of climate change.
While plant owners weren’t required to project their future storm surge
risk, the Union of Concerned Scientists has done its own estimates for
some of those regions. The images included here show that projected
increase.
Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station, 35 miles south of Miami, was
designed to withstand a storm surge of 16 feet, according to documents
submitted to regulators by its owner, Florida Power & Light Co. But the
updated storm surge is expected to range from 17.4 feet to 19.1 feet at
different parts of the plant. Last year, Florida Power & Light sought
permission from regulators to extend Turkey Point’s operating license
until 2053.
“Sea level rise is a phenomenon that will occur over several decades,
and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and FPL continuously monitor
scientific information and can readily adapt, as needed,” says Bianca
Soriano, a spokeswoman for Florida Power & Light. She says the
commission has evaluated Turkey Point’s protections against flooding and
found those protections to be adequate.
The Waterford power plant, a half-hour drive up the Mississippi River
from New Orleans, was designed to withstand a maximum storm surge of
23.7 feet above sea level, according to documents provided to the NRC by
Entergy Corp., which owns the plant. The company told regulators that a
combination of storm surge and river flooding would create a maximum
surge of 31.8 feet.
The structure of the plant “provides adequate flooding protection for
any potential effects from beyond design basis storm surge to maintain
key safety functions,” says Neal Kirby, an Entergy spokesman. “Entergy
will continue to coordinate with regulators and industry partners to
ensure our plants are safe from flooding beyond levels to which the
sites were licensed.”
One of the largest gaps in storm surge protection is at Dominion Energy
Inc.’s Surry Power Station, whose two reactors sit on a peninsula
jutting into the James River just north of Norfolk, Va. The plant’s east
side, which is most exposed to a potential storm surge, was designed to
withstand a wall of water as high as 28.6 feet above sea level, Dominion
told regulators. The company found that under current conditions, a
storm surge combined with river flooding would bring a surge of as much
as 38.8 feet. “We have been working with the NRC to close these issues
and, in the unlikely event of such an occurrence, would use a
Flex-strategies approach to maintain the station in a safe condition,”
says Dominion spokesman Richard Zuercher. “In addition, we are further
evaluating adding enhancements.” He declined to say what those
enhancements might include. Last fall, Dominion asked the NRC to extend
its license for Surry to 2053. The commission has yet to rule on that
request.
On a blustery morning in February, a nuclear power executive named
Patrick Navin led a tour of shivering reporters into a concrete bunker
50 miles west of Philadelphia. Navin is in charge of Peach Bottom Atomic
Power Station, on the shore of the Susquehanna River; inside the bunker,
he gestured toward tightly packed rows of generators, pumps, lights, and
debris removal equipment, along with tractors ready to haul that
machinery to whatever part of the plant might be inundated if the
Susquehanna ever jumped its banks.
According to documents provided to the commission by Exelon Corp., which
owns Peach Bottom, the plant wasn’t designed for its current flood risk
from heavy precipitation, storm surge, ice-induced flooding, or a
standing wave called a seiche. Navin said those risks were unlikely. “I
think we’ve got a very robust design here,” he said.
The fight over regulation and climate change comes when the nuclear
industry, under pressure from cheap natural gas and still viewed with
suspicion by many environmentalists, can least afford it, according to
Peter Bradford, a former commissioner. “Anything that increases their
costs now threatens their existence,” he says.
Whatever the likelihood of a Fukushima-style disaster, the aftermath
offers a glimpse of the costs of failure. Eight years later, much of the
adjacent city of Okuma remains uninhabitable; in 2016 the Japanese
government estimated total cleanup and compensation costs would approach
$200 billion.
Macfarlane, the former NRC chairman, says the lesson of Fukushima is
that the nuclear industry, including regulators, needs to prepare for
seemingly unlikely threats. “Boy, did we misjudge natural hazards,” she
says. “If something happens and you don’t learn from it, woe unto you.”
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