November 2001 - VOLUME 22 - NUMBER 11
Corporations and National Security
Too Cheap to Deter?
The Nuclear Power Industry
Pushes Ahead Post-9-11
By Charlie Cray
With the election of George W. Bush as president, the U.S. nuclear power
lobby geared itself up for yet another attempt to revive a dying industry.
Arguing that nuclear is a clean power source without carbon
dioxide emissions, the industry sought to position itself as the remedy
for global warming. Vice President Dick Cheney and the Bush administration have warmly embraced
the industry. Cheneys National Energy Strategy contemplated the
construction of 400,000 megawatts of new electrical generating capacity
in the United States by 2020 a significant portion of which would
come from new nuclear power plants. The terror attack of September 11 has not shaken the administrations
ardent support for the industry. President Bush even suggested in a late
October speech that the case for nuclear was stronger after September
11, because it enhances U.S. energy self-reliance. It is in our nations national interest that we develop more
energy supplies at home, he told a group of business leaders at
an October 26 White House meeting. It is in our national interest
that we look at safe nuclear power. But while George Bush is putting on a brave face, the September 11 attacks
are subjecting the nuclear power industry to a new round of scrutiny.
The radiation released in an attack on a nuclear reactor could injure
tens of thousands and poison a large territory for hundreds or thousands
of years. Although the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has kept the countrys
103 operating nuclear reactors on the highest state of alert since the
September 11 attacks, longtime industry observers say thats not
enough to prevent a disaster should terrorists strike. Current NRC plant
security rules which nuke industry lobbyists have so far kept Congress
from revising fail to require the plants to be prepared for a major
attack. Industry watchdogs such as the Nuclear Control Institute accuse the NRC
of intolerable foot dragging on upgrading plant safety rules.
Before September, for example, the NRC was poised to hand the responsibility
for monitoring plant security preparedness over to the industry itself,
despite its dismal record on plant security. Even more worrisome, critics say, is that the NRC is taking preliminary
steps toward licensing a new generation of nuclear power plants that could
be even more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. September 11, they argue,
should have finally put to rest such proposals; but the industry and its
regulators appear intent on charging ahead nonetheless. Nevertheless, NRCs Executive Director for Operations William Travers
says there has been no general or specific credible threat
against any U.S. nuclear plant since they went on high alert in September.
Industry officials also downplay the terrorist threat, claiming that
U.S. nuclear plants are hardened targets that would be more
difficult to attack than other industrial facilities. The likelihood of a terrorist act against a nuclear facility is
low, because plants are equipped for, and prepared to defend against,
most type of attacks, the Nuclear Energy Institute asserts on its
web site. Nuclear power plants are structurally fortified to withstand
the impact of natural forces like hurricanes and tornadoes and airborne
objects up to a very substantial force. Were not saying that you can guarantee against any attack
theres no such thing as a foolproof structure or plant,
says Mitch Singer, spokesperson for the Washington, D.C.-based trade association.
However, due to the robust nature of the containment theyre
four feet thick, with a steel liner in addition to the fact that
the reactor vessel and the core are all reinforced
were fairly
confident that it could stand up to an attack like those on the
Pentagon and World Trade Center. Singer says a number of independent engineers have concluded that nuclear
power plants would do a better job withstanding that kind of attack than
the World Trade Center. But Dr. Edwin Lyman, a physicist with the Nuclear Control Institute,
says that after analyzing the forces involved in such an event, he is
convinced that a direct, high-speed hit by a large commercial passenger
jet would in fact have a high likelihood of penetrating the containment
building that houses a nuclear reactor, causing a meltdown. Industry reports going back at least 25 years support Lymans conclusion.
As early as 1974, General Electric estimated that a heavy
airliner (defined as over 6.25 tons the airliners involved in Septembers
attacks weighed over 150 tons) had a high likelihood of breaching a reactor
containment wall. And the GE study didnt account for the faster
speeds of todays airliners or the impact of a fuel explosion. Following such an assault, the possibility of an unmitigated loss-of-coolant
accident and significant release of radiation into the environment is
a very real one, says Lyman. The consequences of such a release
would dwarf the World Trade Center attacks. Back in 1982, Sandia National Laboratories calculated the consequences
of a major reactor accident for the NRC at each of the nations reactors,
estimating as many as 102,000 early deaths (not counting long-term radiation
cancer deaths) and as much as $314 billion in damages (in 1982 dollars)
from a single reactor accident. The NRC admitted a day later in a press statement that it did not
specifically contemplate attacks by aircraft such as Boeing 757s or 767s
when it established the standards for reactor containment design decades
ago, and nuclear power plants were not designed to withstand such
crashes. However chastened it was by having to make such an admission after numerous
industry and NRC spokespeople claimed otherwise in the immediate aftermath
of the attacks, the NRC is in no hurry make any changes to reactor containment
strength standards or other parts of the Design Basis Threat standards
established to protect against external assaults. Instead, industry and NRC spokespeople emphasize that plant security
has improved since the September attacks. U.S. nuke plants have increased
the number of security personnel (a few states including New York and
New Jersey have called out the National Guard), conducted new background
checks on employees and contractors, stopped conducting public plant tours,
installed additional hardened barriers and extended the perimeter for
plant security patrols. But these measures are not to be taken seriously by the kind of
adversary that may be at large in America today, Leventhal and Daniel
Hirsch of the Los Angeles-based Committee to Bridge the Gap wrote to NRC
chair Richard Meserve on September 14. We have tried to work quietly for a decade and a half in a largely
unsuccessful attempt to get the NRC to upgrade reactor security,
Leventhal says. Our principal success came in 1994 when the NRC
agreed to require nuclear plant operators to erect barriers and establish
setback distances to protect against truck-bomb attacks. But this reform
came only after the lesson of the bombing of the World Trade Center the
year before, and the NRC has refused our appeals to upgrade protection
to defend against the much larger bombs used by terrorists since.
Existing security regulations are intended to protect against damage
to the core from a small group of skilled and well-armed outsiders aided
by one insider, a single insider acting alone, or a 4-wheel drive land
vehicle bomb. But the regulations dont require plant managers to
be prepared for an aerial or water-based assault, or an assault from multiple
teams of land-based terrorists. Nor do current standards fully account for soft target scenarios
where terrorists might attack grid-supported safety equipment, backup
generators or spent fuel pools, some of which are housed outside the reactor
containment building. There really must be a bottom-line examination of whether these
plants can be effectively protected against the new terrorist threat that
we now recognize in this country, Leventhal says. If these
plants cannot be protected effectively, then they should be shut down. In the meantime, Leventhal and Hirsch have called upon the NRC to seek
prompt deployment of advanced anti-aircraft weapons to defeat suicidal
attacks from the air. The Czech Republic and France have taken similar
measures. NRC and industry officials say that while the decision to defend the
plants with military force is a decision best left to the military or
the new Office of Homeland Security, they havent ruled anything
out. [NRC Chairman Richard Meserve] has indicated that he wants the
staff to conduct a top-to-bottom thorough review of all of our regulations
and policies. That could include a review of the criteria used to
evaluate nuclear plants ability to resist terrorist attacks, says
NRC spokesperson Victor Dricks. This is a familiar refrain. We do not have the luxury of time to
allow the NRC and other federal agencies to engage in a prolonged bureaucratic
review process, Leventhal says. Members of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee apparently agree.
Within weeks of the attacks, a majority of the committee voted to attach
a measure requiring the NRC to upgrade its plant security standards to
an anti-terrorism package under consideration in the House. The bill would
have required the NRC and industry to plan for a coordinated suicide attack
by 20 individuals with a sophisticated knowledge of facility operations,
using modern explosives and weaponry. It would have given the NRC 60 days
to consult with other agencies and propose new Design Basis Threat rules.
But pressured by lobbyists from the Nuclear Energy Institute, House Republicans
blocked the bill when it moved out of committee. Markey and other co-sponsors
responded by attaching the measure to a bill that would reauthorize the
Price-Anderson Act, the law that limits the nuclear industrys liability
in the event of a major accident. The amendments would withhold coverage
from any new reactor that is not designed to withstand a terrorist attack
and would withhold coverage for plants not following stricter security
practices. Jeff Duncan, an aide to Markey, says nuke industry lobbyists are working
hard to strip the plant security standards before Price-Anderson is marked
up for a vote. He says the industry is being helped by the NRC. Until this fall, David Orrick, an ex-Navy SEAL, coordinated the attack
exercises. Despite receiving an advanced warning notifying them of the
exercises, 27 of 57 plants failed the test. Orrick says the failures mean that a real attack would have put
the nuclear reactor in jeopardy with the potential for core damage and
a radiological release. Although observers say the OSRE program succeeded in uncovering serious
physical protection inadequacies that have since been corrected, the program
was a major source of embarrassment to the industry. In 1998, the NRCs
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation unilaterally terminated it without
formal notice. A proposal was floated to replace OSRE with an industry-run
alternative known as the Safeguards Performance Assessment program (SPA
the industrys new name for the more impolitic Self-Assessment
Program). The resulting public outcry and Congressional reaction forced the NRC
to reinstate OSRE shortly after it was cancelled. Nevertheless, the industry
continues to advocate for SPA, which would essentially remove NRCs
oversight role replacing the seven-person OSRE assessment team
with one NRC observer. Despite the reduction in NRCs oversight role, industry officials
claim the SPA program would be more comprehensive. OSRE is basically
an inspection program, while the SPA involves testing, drilling and training,
says NEIs Mitch Singer. The tests would be done every three
years as opposed to every eight years under the OSRE. Jeff Duncan is not convinced. The SPA program has the industry
designing the tests and evaluating how their own forces performed in the
tests that they themselves designed. Its like telling students that
they get to write the questions for their final exam, take the test home,
and grade it themselves. Theyd all get As all the time.
The industry was scheduled to demonstrate the SPA as a pilot program
this fall with exercises at eight volunteer plants. But NRC officials
say they have not yet made a final decision about which program to stick
with and, since September, both programs have been put on hold. We
dont think right now is a good time to have mock terrorists trying
to break into plants that are on high alert guarding themselves against
real terrorists, says the NRCs Victor Dricks. Daniel Hirsch says the NRC should abandon the SPA and keep the OSRE because
it provides for more independent oversight. He says OSRE should be strengthened
by tripling the number and frequency of tests, using a credible
force involving large numbers of coordinated attack teams and targeting
the full range of potential targets within a plant (e.g. the spent fuel
storage facility). Hirsch adds that plants that fail the test should be
shut down until all the problems identified are fully rectified. Observers say the attempt to replace the NRCs OSRE program with
the SPA fits a larger deregulatory pattern whereby the NRC has responded
to successive budget cuts imposed by a hostile Congress (driven by industry
lobbyists) by scaling back its oversight of the industry. If enforcement
penalties are any indication, then the NRC is more poodle than watchdog.
In 2000, the NRC fined the industry less than half a million dollars,
down from over $5 million in 1998. PBMRs use tennis ball-sized fuel pellets each containing about
14,000 uranium dioxide microspheres, or particles coated in
ceramic and set in a graphite matrix which are constantly cycled
through the reactor. A mechanical system would inspect the pellets as
they exit the reactor, sending damaged fuel one way, spent fuel another,
and fuel with additional unused uranium back through for continued use.
The reactor would operate like a giant gumball machine that never has
to be shut down for refueling. This is in contrast to current reactors,
where fuel rods are inserted, used and then replaced while the reactor
is shut down. Meserves announcement is consistent with Vice President Cheneys
National Energy Strategy and accommodates the business strategy of Exelon
and other utilities that survived a recent industry shakeout that has
left fewer players, each with a greater number of nuclear plants. NRC spokesperson Victor Dricks says the commission has been meeting with
Exelon, other utilities and the Nuclear Energy Institute in what
we call a pre-application review, a process we expect will take a year
before they submit a formal application.
Were simply in the
discussion phase, since we havent licensed any plants for many years.
Were trying to establish what kinds of information wed want
to see if they came to us with an application. Although Dricks says the commission hasnt determined if the PBMR
would be able to withstand a terrorist assault since the industry has
not submitted a specific design, industry officials claim that the PBMRs
are inherently safe by design. Its flabbergasting that they can make any claims about reactor
safety without producing a design, says Paul Gunter of the Washington,
D.C.-based Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS). Gunter says its
unclear from preliminary descriptions of the PBMR if critical systems
would be vulnerable in the event of a terrorist attack. You would
think that the issue of terrorism and the lack of containment would have
come up in the initial discussions between the NRC and Exelon. It didnt
it had to be brought up by public interest groups. Gunter says that rather than using a thick concrete structure designed
to contain internal pressures generated by a water-based cooling system,
the PBMR is a gas-cooled reactor design that relies on a passive convection
cooling feature that works like a chimney and therefore requires
no thick containment to deal with sudden internal forces generated by
steam pressures. Before September, the industry touted the lack of a containment
as a cost-saving feature of PBMRs. Gunter says that having to add a containment
now could make PBMRs prohibitively expensive. He adds that PBMRs rely on the integrity of billions of tiny containments
the ceramic-and-graphite pellet cladding used to contain
the radioactivity of the fuel. No one knows how the fuel pellets would
behave if doused in jet fuel. In most forms, graphite (which would also
be used to line the reactor core) is flammable graphite components
played a key role in the Chernobyl disaster and a fire at the Windscale
reactor in the U.K. in 1957. Nuclear industry watchdogs say the bottom line is that the Bush Administrations
fundamental commitment to nuclear power articulated long before
September in its national energy strategy only adds to U.S. national
insecurity. While Dick Cheney hunkers down in a bunker ready to defend
the industry at all cost, countries such as Germany (which relies upon
nuclear energy for 10 percent more of its domestic power needs than the
U.S.) are taking the terrorist threat to nuclear plants seriously enough
to consider accelerating their current commitment to phasing out nuclear
power by 2030, even while maintaining a commitment to reducing the countrys
reliance on fossil fuels under the Kyoto Protocol. As the war drags on and the terrorist threat to U.S. nuclear plants persists,
the industrys critics believe nuclear power will be increasingly
hard to defend and political support for renewable energy will grow. No terrorist is going to fly a plane into a windmill or solar panel, Gunter concludes. |