News > April 6, 2004

Meltdown Madness

Easing regulations on an apocalyptic industry

By Heather Wokusch

Who’s minding the plant?

President Bush has always been a good friend to the nuclear industry, but his recent overtures should sound alarm bells.

The White House has begun pushing to replace governmental safety standards at federal nuclear facilities with requirements penned by contractors. As Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio) quipped, “It’s like the fox guarding the hen house.”

What prompted the Bush administration’s move? Congress insisted the government start fining contractors for violations.

The proposed weakening of safety standards would affect more than 100,000 nuclear plant workers and comes at an especially lousy time to lower their morale.

A strike by 276 operations and maintenance workers was narrowly averted in January at the Indian Point 3 plant, 35 miles north of midtown Manhattan. When the plant’s owner proposed substituting managers for striking workers, union spokesman Steve Mangione observed, “Anyone would want the people who work there every day—not managers who take a crash course—to be the ones running the plant.”

Happy, well-trainded workers are key to nuclear safety: When problems occur, they often result from worker error. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reported 728 worker-caused mishaps during a recent two-year period, an average of more than three mistakes per year at each plant.

Even worse, government security contractors have apparently been lax in monitoring worker effectiveness. The Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee, for example, made headlines recently when it reported missing 200 keys to protected areas. Then news surfaced that security personnel guarding the nation’s nuclear stockpiles, including tons of enriched uranium at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., had been cheating on their antiterrorism drills.

An Energy Department investigation discovered that contract security guards at the Y-12 plant had been given access to computer models of antiterrorism drill strikes in advance, rendering the tests useless. A representative from Wackenhut, the longtime government contractor charged with securing the facility, claimed security at Y-12 was “better than it’s ever been” but few are convinced. A January 2002 study found only 19 percent of Wackenhut guards at Indian Point reported feeling able to “adequately defend the plant.”

Almost 25 years ago, the reactor core meltdown at Three Mile Island struck fear into the nation, but consequences could have been much worse. A 1982 study by the Sandia National Laboratory predicted an accident at the Limerick nuclear plant outside Philadelphia could result in 74,000 people killed within the first year and a further 610,000 afflicted with radiation-related illnesses. Add to that $200 billion in relocation and clean-up costs.

By all appearances, however, stateside nuclear facilities are functioning well. Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna nuclear plant just announced an electricity-generation record for 2003, which it attributes to “maintaining the highest safety and reliability standards,” and Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant (CCNPP) is hard at work assuring the public it’s a friendly neighbor; the CCNPP Web site includes references to its “forest management and wildlife protection.”

But the CCNPP site also lists protective measures to be taken in case of an accident, such as “put uncovered food into the refrigerator” and “washing yourself and your clothes removes radioactive material you may have picked up.”

How effective these steps would be in a meltdown is debatable—perhaps similar to clasping seatbelts tight when an airplane is nose-diving. One factor is clear: CCNPP’s location (60 miles from Baltimore and 50 miles from Washington, D.C.) might make it a target for terror. Other reactors across the country could be similarly at risk.

Regardless, the Bush administration has been pumping money into the nuclear industry, including a fresh $35 million infusion last year to build 50 new U.S. reactors by 2020. Given each reactor costs more than $1.5 billion to produce, and the public assumes liability in case of an accident or attack, U.S. taxpayers should be forewarned.

The White House also is leaning on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to weaken regulations regarding nuclear waste transport and storage.

How ironic that alternative energy sources receive relatively little in government subsidies, especially in light of new satellite mapping techniques showing that the Great Plains region could generate three times as much energy in wind-power as the United States consumes.

What then explains our government’s obsession with nuclear power?

Follow the money. Nuclear plant PACs invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, and almost half a million dollars in the 23 members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in 2002 alone.

That’s no excuse for poor energy policy. The risks of nuclear plants must be considered before dumping any more money into this losing game. And as long as the nation’s 100-plus nuclear plants continue to operate, the toughest of safety standards must be enforced.

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• Reader Comments

  Hear no evil. See no evil. It worked for the asbestos industry so why not the American nuclear industry? To all the partiotic citizens of America, good luck.

  Posted by Doug on Apr 8, 2004 at 12:09 PM

  Articles like this betray a fundamental ignorance of the nuclear power industry.

  1) The regulatory barriers to building new nuclear power facilities are nearly insurmountable.  The large amount of money spent by the nuclear industry PACs is lobby money intended to protect their existing investments from over-regulation.

  2) The lethality of a nuclear power accident is nowhere near what this article implies . . . and even in a worst case scenario, emergency action measures mentioned (covering food, washing exposed persons and clothing) would in fact mitigate much of the hazard in even a worst-case scenario.  Are the authors trying to suggest that nuclear power plants shouldn’t make emergency information available?

  3) High pressure to fine companies for errors creates a “no-tolerance” workplace where errors are swept under the rug by middle management.  As I recall this kind of thinking cost NASA two space shuttles.  As for the large number of errors reported, this is because in the current regulatory requirement, even minor errors _are_ reported, because there is no threat of punitive fines to drive them under the rug.  And detecting minor errors is the way to prevent serious errors.

  4) The security issues at nuclear power facilities are entirely due to a lack of funding from the client (nuclear power companies).  If they were willing to pay for enough guards to provide security, there would be no problem defending against the potential threats.  The money from more fines would probably come directly out of security budgets . . .

  Intelligent government and public oversight and regulation of the nuclear power industry is essential.  Fear-mongering of the type in this article is pointless.
  

  Posted by Andrew on Apr 11, 2004 at 10:01 PM

  It’s amazing that Bush likes to talk about “evil” and “family values” while promoting policies that poison and sicken children.

  Arguably, poisoning children is an “evil” enterprise that should be fought with every available resource. Dumping toxic shit in the ground that has a half-life of 5,000 years [or roughly twice the amount of time since Jesus walked the earth] is definitely not supportive of family values.

  Of all the atrocious things that this administration has done, it’s energy policy is perhaps the worst. However, the fault also lies with 40 years of cronysim and $40 billion of sunsidies for the nuclear industry because of some phantom “national security” imperative, when solar research gets a paltry few millions for year.

  If we had invested even 20 years ago the resources in renewble energy that we do for nuclear, we would not need a drop of oil from the middle east today. That is national security! and family values rolled into one.

  Unfortunately our congress has been just as tacitly corrupt as the executive branch, which enables the current of list of truly egregious assholes to continue posiong our children for profit. It’s madness, with the morally crippled leading the intellectually blind. . .

  Great article, keep up the good work.

  Posted by Ed Mellon on Apr 14, 2004 at 4:52 PM

  Regardless of nuclear power industry regulations, one has to wonder why this country is NOT focused on alternative energy. Solar, Wind, and Biofuel would provide an avenue of new prosperity and should be the main pillar of a national energy policy. We have the technology to rebuild him (energy industry). Better, cleaner, and a gradual weaning from our dependency on fossil fuel, not to mention the jobs that would be created. Ah… There’s nothing quite like our leaders putting the American people first.

  Posted by DKB on Apr 16, 2004 at 6:10 PM

  Andrew, no need for ‘Fear-mongering’ when the truth will suffice.  I submit for your examination:

  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/04/21/nat tional1844EDT0802.DTL
  Vermont nuclear plant searching for missing fuel rods
  April 21, 2004
  Two pieces of a highly radioactive fuel rod are missing from a Vermont nuclear plant, and engineers planned to search onsite for the nuclear material, officials said Wednesday.
  The fuel rod was removed in 1979 from the Vermont Yankee reactor, which is currently shut down for refueling and maintenance. Remote-control cameras will be used to search a spent fuel pool on the property, officials said.
  “We do not think there is a threat to the public at this point. The great probability is this material is still somewhere in the pool,” said Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan.
  But Sheehan said it was possible the spent fuel was mixed in with a shipment of low-level nuclear waste and ended up at a repository in South Carolina, or a facility in Washington state. He said it was also possible it was taken to a nuclear testing facility run by General Electric, which designed the plant.
  The material would be fatal to anyone who came in contact with it without being properly shielded, Sheehan said. Spent nuclear fuel also could be used by terrorists to construct so-called dirty bombs that would spread deadly radiation with conventional explosives.
  The NRC is helping plant officials in the search. The rod was part of the fuel assembly used to power the reactor. One of the missing pieces is about the size of a pencil. The other piece is about the thickness of a pencil and 17 inches long.
  “It would be very difficult to remove this material from the site without somebody knowing about it,” Sheehan said. “It would set off radiation monitors.”
  Sheehan cited the heightened awareness of the need to control nuclear material that followed the Sept. 11 terror attacks. “We don’t want this falling into the wrong hands,” he said. “This is something we would never take lightly.”
  Gov. James Douglas, after speaking Wednesday afternoon with the head of the NRC, said he was “very concerned” about the missing fuel at the plant, run by Entergy Nuclear.
  “This situation is intolerable,” he said in a statement.
  In 2002 a Connecticut nuclear plant was fined $288,000 after a similar loss. That fuel was never accounted for.
  

  Posted by J Hoover Bushwah on Apr 22, 2004 at 12:51 AM

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Also by Heather Wokusch

• Meltdown Madness
  Easing regulations on an apocalyptic industry