Seabrook: Open for Disaster

Capping on of the most contentious battles in nuclear regulatory history, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) decided on March 1, 1990 to license the Seabrook nuclear reactor in New Hampshire. The decision to grant Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH) a full-power operating license for Seabrook came amid fierce opposition by the State of Massachusetts and local residents, prompting lawsuits and a congressional hearing with witnesses including Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, Senator Edward Kennedy, D-MA, and consumer advocate Ralph Nader. Despite safety concerns and significant public opposition, however, a federal court refused on March 14 to block issuance of the license, clearing the way for Seabrook's start-up.

For nearly two decades local residents and public officials have attacked the Seabrook plant, calling it unsafe and unnecessary. In the 1980s, opponents of the plant focused on the difficulty in evacuating the area surrounding the plant in case of an emergency. Seabrook is located on the Atlantic Ocean, two miles north of the New Hamphire-Massachusetts border. The plant is near a beach which attracts up to 100,000 people a day during the summer and is accessible only by a 2-lane highway. On March 14, Governor Dukakis told a congressional committee that, in the event of an accident, it would be "simply impossible to protect the public health and safety of the people surrounding that plant."

Yet in granting the full-power license, NRC Chairman Kenneth Carr declared, "we see nothing at present that persuades us that Seabrook cannot be operated safely, [and] we believe that the emergency plans will provide adequate protection for the public in the event of an accident."

Seabrook is only able to go on line because of new NRC rules which allow nuclear reactors to start up even when local and state governments refuse to participate in emergency evacuation plans. The State of Massachusetts, which began legal action to stop Seabrook's licensing in 1983, has refused to participate in NRC-required evacuation plans. Subsequently, the NRC approved emergency plans drafted by Seabrook's owners for Massachusetts towns within a 10-mile radius of the plant. Later, then-President Ronald Reagan signed an executive order allowing the federal government to draft emergency plans for nuclear plants if state or local officials refuse.

The NRC originally implemented emergency planning rules following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, forbidding plants from operating unless surrounding communities within a 10-mile radius submitted workable evacuation plans. In 1988, however, in an attempt to overcome Massachusetts' opposition to Seabrook and New York State's refusal to submit plans for the Long Island Shoreham plant, the NRC substantially weakened its emergency planning requirements, allowing nuclear plant operators to develop the plans without state or local government cooperation.

Senator Kennedy called the NRC's decision to license Seabrook in the face of concerns about evacuation and other safety problems "the culmination of a long line of irresponsible 'public be damned' decisions by the NRC. This is a rogue agency that lives by its own set of pro-industry rules: When the safety regulations don't fit into the licensing scheme--change them; when local officials say that communities around the plant cannot be safely evacuated--ignore them; when workers at the plant say there are serious safety problems--dismiss them. The NRC is more concerned with the economic interests of nuclear utilities than the health and safety of the public."

On March 14, 1990, the day of the federal court decision allowing plant start-up, Ralph Nader, Robert Pollard of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Kennedy testified that the plant was plagued with significant and unresolved safety problems. Nader and Pollard presented the committee with internal documents from the Institute of Nuclear Power Operation (INPO), a nuclear industry trade association, which revealed a wide variety of serious safety deficiencies at Seabrook and plans by PSNH to initiate corrective actions. The schedules for completing a number of the corrective actions extend well past March 1, 1990, the date Seabrook's full power license was issued.

Nader and Pollard said the INPO documents reveal a long litany of problems at Seabrook. "The subjects of the safety deficiencies identified by INPO in late 1989 include the following: inadequate training of maintenance personnel and radioactive waste technicians; the continuing failure of plant personnel to follow procedures; the permanent installation of equipment not shown on plant drawings or included in plant procedures; the lack of staffing for the solid radioactive waste handling group; the lack of an effective check valve preventive maintenance program, despite numerous check valve failures; and a design review of check valves which is not scheduled to be completed until April 1991."

Utilities created INPO in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident. With a $50 million operating budget, INPO conducts periodic inspections of operating nuclear plants and plants under construction. INPO's stated goal is to assist member utilities in achieving the highest standards of excellence in nuclear plant operation.

But in an October 1988 Memorandum of Agreement (MOA), the NRC effectively transferred many of its regulatory investigation and inspection responsibilities to INPO. The NRC rationale was that it did not want to duplicate INPO's efforts. The NRC is allowing INPO inspections to substitute for its own, Nader and Pollard charge. They also claim that the NRC is ceding other regulatory functions to INPO. For example, they stated, "rather than promulgate its own requirements for the training and qualifications of nuclear power plant personnel, as Congress required in 1982, the Commission has simply rubber-stamped INPO's training program."

During the Subcommittee hearings, Representative Edward Markey, D-MA, reported that no insurance company will issue insurance to nuclear power facilities without first reviewing INPO reports. Yet when Markey asked NRC Chairman Kenneth Carr if he had reviewed the INPO documents pertinent to the safety of Seabrook, Carr responded, "I don't have any requirement to look at those reports."

Although INPO makes available its safety evaluations to the NRC as well as to every nuclear utility, INPO refuses to release any of its documents to Congress or the public. Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project has repeatedly sought to obtain access, under the Freedom of Information Act, to INPO safety reports that the NRC has used as a substitute for its own inspections. Because the documents remain in the possession of INPO, however, the NRC has successfully blocked these attempts.

An internal INPO memorandum indicated that public disclosure of INPO documents might force the NRC to tighten its regulatory procedures. If its documents were disclosed publicly, the INPO memo stated, "public and/or political pressure may be brought to bear on the NRC to follow-up on INPO evaluations for the purpose of regulatory action."

In sum, Nader and Pollard told the subcommittee, through its relationship with INPO, the NRC has delegated its regulatory responsibilities to a private, industry group and denied the public access to crucial information about governmental affairs. "The public is getting the short end of the stick in two different ways," they said. "First, because a self-interested industry group rather than a federal agency is entrusted with regulating the safety of nuclear power plants and, second, because the industry group is permitted to conduct its quasi- governmental functions in secrecy."

Kennedy also disclosed at the hearing that radiographs of safety-related welds at Seabrook dating back to 1983 showed defects, and that the utility concealed this evidence. According to Kennedy, in March 1984, Joseph D. Wampler, a radiograph technician employed by a Seabrook contractor, "claimed that in the course of his review of approximately 800-900 radiographs of safety-related welds, he had rejected about 20 percent, either because the X-ray itself was improperly taken and could not be read, or because a properly taken radiograph had shown a weld that did not meet the applicable standards." Kennedy and Subcommittee Chairman Peter Kostmayer, D-PA, have sent three separate letters to the NRC demanding answers to a number of questions raised by the weld issue, but the NRC has not yet fully responded.

Plant opponents are continuing litigation challenging Seabrook's licensing. Although the U.S. Court of Appeals denied the request for an immediate stay of the full-power license, the court did grant a request to expedite the briefing schedule. Opponents have also brought an enforcement action within the NRC rule- making system asking the agency to suspend Seabrook's license until the problems identified by INPO are resolved. If these actions prove unsuccessful, however, Public Service of New Hampshire expects to bring Seabrook to full power in May.

- Katherine Isaac

The Biodegradable Myth

For the beleaguered plasticsindustry, degradable plastics are hot because they help improve the industry's anti-environment image among consumers. According to "Breaking Down the Degradable Plastics Scam," a recently released report from Greenpeace, however, "biodegradable" plastic is all hype and no substance.

These findings indicate that the plastic industry's claims about their new product are merely rhetoric. Such inflated claims are not surprising given the industry's near-frantic attempts to reverse the public's negative image of plastic in the environment. The desperation is evident in a confidential letter written by the President of the Society of Plastics Industry, Larry Thomas, in which he argues that "the image of plastics among consumers is deteriorating at an alarmingly fast pace." He adds that the industry must act quickly to stop the damage caused by plastic's poor public image.

Plastic industry leaders hope that the so-called biodegradable plastics will save them and are rushing to promote the new environmental products. For example, Hefty is now packaging its trash bags in boxes decorated with eagles soaring over fresh pine forests. The goal of this public relations effort is to give the impression that plastic can now assume a neutral position in the earth's ecosystem.

And the marketing trick seems to be working. Magazines from Connoisseur to Scientific American wrap their publications in plastic wrapping which carries the label "biodegradable plastic." Some are even saying that this wonder substance may cut our reliance on imported oil and reduce federal farm subsidies for corn because cornstarch is a key component in causing the breakdown of "biodegradable plastics." But the Greenpeace report, written by Anita Glazer Sadun, Thomas F. Webster and Barry Commoner, states that there is no evidence to support industry claims that this new plastic is safer for the environment much less that it will aid corn growers. The authors of the Greenpeace report, in fact, refute both claims.

The report's central point is that plastic's strength and durability are also its curse: it does not go away. The marketing people would like consumers to believe that the chemists have changed this reality. But Greenpeace says such claims are supported only by false analogies and "bad science." The authors even quote a spokesman for Mobil, manufacturer of Hefty trash bags, who said that "Degradability is just a marketing tool.... It makes [consumers] feel good."

The report argues that degradable plastics were a good idea which went bad once taken out of context. In the spring of 1988, Congress passed a law requiring six-pack ring connectors to be photo-degradable (a process whereby they break down in the presence of sunlight) because marine birds were dying after getting their necks tangled in the plastic. Although photo- degradation met the needs of this particular case, all the new plastic did was break into smaller pieces which could not strangle birds; it did not decompose the way a banana peel does.

Greenpeace notes that consumers will continue to be misled as long as industry can capitalize with impunity on vague definitions of "degradability" and "biodegradability," which are two very different terms and cannot be used interchangeably. Biodegradation, says Greenpeace, is the "transformation of the substances that comprise living things ... by biological processes into similar compounds that are then assimilated back into living things". Only a fraction of "biodegrable plastics" actually biodegrade. The corn starch component does biodegrade, but the remaining 90 percent of the plastic bag just turns into little plastic bits which are not subject to true biodegradation.

Such degradation may, as far as it goes, offer limited aesthetic benefits. Unsightly plastic litter is less visible if it is in the form of hundreds of smaller pieces of litter. But because the plastic only changes in size and shape, not in composition, ultimately it is only an "out of sight, out of mind" gimmick. The quantity of plastic polluting the environment will keep rising. The report warns that one of the ironies of degradable plastics is that the results of using them could be more hazardous than the use of regular plastics. Plastics are often toxic, and the wide dispersal of such materials resulting from their fragmentation in the degradable form could poison animals which ingest the plastic particles. Greenpeace says that while there is not enough evidence to know just what will happen, "the potential for toxic effects [from degradable plastic] exists."

The manufacturers themselves agree with Greenpeace's conclusion that this is a gimmick designed to "cash in on the American public's desire for environmental improvement." Richard J. Ryan of United Plastic Films admitted to Greenpeace that "degradable plastic is of no positive benefit in improvement or protection of the environment."

Greenpeace says people worried about plastic pollution should simply use less plastic. Reducing consumption is the best remedy.

- Justin Castillo