USA

Eight AP1000 reactors are under construction around the world: four in China and four in the US. All of them, in both China and the US, are about three years behind schedule.

A Chinese nuclear engineer told nuclear lobbyist Michael Shellenberger in 2015: "People felt we paid full price for a half-completed design." The result, Shellenberger writes, was three years of delay, higher costs, and a deteriorating relationship between China and Westinghouse.¹ Likewise, the 2016 World Nuclear Industry Status Report noted that the AP1000 projects in China have suffered construction delays and cost overruns, design changes and equipment failure.²

Nonetheless, the four AP1000 reactors in China will very likely be completed.

Whether the four AP1000 reactors in Georgia and South Carolina will be completed is now subject to a 30-day "assessment period" according to Westinghouse.³ Work is continuing during the assessment period.

Costs to complete the four reactors could amount to approximately US$8.5 billion.⁴ The combined cost overruns for the four reactors amount to about US$11.2 billion and counting.⁵

Stephen Byrd from Morgan Stanley anticipates that the total costs of the plants in Georgia and South Carolina, if completed, will be about twice Westinghouse's original estimate.⁶

An April 2 article from the World Nuclear Industry Status Report website summarizes the situation:⁷

"The outcome for the U.S. AP1000 projects is more dire, and abandonment is an explicit option. In the case of the Vogtle project in Georgia, Stan Wise, chairman of the state's Public Service Commission, pointed out that it is "possible ... that Plant Vogtle just doesn't get finished at all. It's a real hit and a real blow to something that we felt like was going to be the very best possible energy choice for Georgia maybe even into the next century". But he also went on to talking about the changes in the energy landscape since the Vogtle plan was initially approved, "with natural gas getting very cheap, and technologies like solar power and batteries improving" and declaring: "If I'd known any of this a decade ago we would have gone a different way".

"[South Carolina's] SCANA chief executive Kevin Marsh, on the other hand, was more bullish: "Our commitment is still to try to finish these plants. That would be my preferred option. The least preferred option, I think realistically, is abandonment". But he has also said that SCANA will evaluate various options during the coming 30 days, including:

• continuing with the construction of both new units;
• focusing on the construction of one unit, and delaying the construction of the other;
• continuing with the construction of one and abandoning the other; and
• abandoning both units.

"Independent analysts have pointed out that not abandoning the project right away could result in "the chaos of bankruptcy and reorganization [leading] to a long period of project restructuring uncertainly and more spiraling costs".

"If either of those projects are abandoned, they would join the ranks of the forty nuclear new-build projects ‒ including 12 Westinghouse reactors ‒ that were abandoned in the United States between 1977 and 1989 at various stages of construction (see Global Nuclear Power Database for details⁸). At the time, several utilities went bankrupt."

No other reactors are under construction in the US and there is no likelihood of any new reactors in the foreseeable future. The US reactor fleet is one of the oldest in the world ‒ 44 out of 99 reactors have been operating for 40 years or more ‒ so nuclear decline is certain.

Will any other AP1000 reactors be built around the world?

In 2015, then Westinghouse chair Danny Roderick said he was "pretty confident" in achieving Westinghouse's goal of winning orders to construct 64 AP1000 reactors worldwide over the next 15 years.⁹ As recently as November 2016, Westinghouse said it had plans to build 30 AP1000 reactors around the world, and Roderick said the company was "very much in the running ... to get up near 50 units over the next 15 to 20 years in China."¹⁰

Those expectations have gone up in smoke.

China

An April 2 article from the World Nuclear Industry Status Report website states: "The idea that Westinghouse might get any more contracts to build nuclear reactors in China seems doubtful, to say the least. As Lin Boqiang, director at the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University told Bloomberg News: "The only way Westinghouse can win contracts in China is to demonstrate they can build reactors quicker and cheaper than anyone else in China's market and win hearts with actions, not words. Westinghouse so far hasn't demonstrated such abilities.""¹¹

UK

Toshiba received notice from French company Engie on April 3 that it had exercized its right under a joint agreement to require Toshiba to purchase Engie's 40% stake in the NuGeneration (NuGen) consortium that planned to build three AP1000 reactors at Moorside in the UK.¹² NuGen is "facing some significant challenges", Engie said. Engie anticipates payment of approximately ¥15.3 billion (US$137.5 million) from Toshiba for its stake in NuGen.¹²

Once the transaction is completed, Toshiba will be left with a 100% stake in NuGen. Toshiba noted that Westinghouse's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing met the definition of an 'event of default' under the terms of its agreement with Engie. That gave Engie the option to sell its stake in NuGen to Toshiba, or to acquire Toshiba's stake, and Engie chose the first option.¹²

Toshiba was hoping to sell its 60% stake in NuGen and is now seeking to sell its 100% stake.

Ironically, just as the Moorside project took a giant leap towards being abandoned, UK regulators announced on March 30 that the AP1000 had successfully completed the Generic Design Assessment process.¹²

Engie is the seventh international energy utility to give up on UK new nuclear build over the past decade, the others being Toshiba, E-on (Wylfa), RWE Npower (Wylfa), Iberdrola (Moorside), SSE (Moorside), and Centrica (Hinkley Point).¹³

While South Korea's Kepco has shown no interest in acquiring a stake in Westinghouse, the utility is interested in acquiring a stake in NuGen.¹⁴ Whether that interest is affected by Engie's withdrawal remains to be seen. Kepco might seek to deploy its APR1400 reactor technology instead of AP1000 reactors, in which case development would be delayed by a further 4‒5 years while the APR1400 is put through a Generic Design Assessment by UK regulators.

In 2015, Toshiba estimated a total cost of ¥1.5 trillion yen (US$13.6bn) for the NuGen project but analysts now believe the cost could be roughly double that amount due to higher labor costs and revised safety standards.⁵

Of course, the cost could be brought down by weakening safety standards and one way to do that would be to abandon AP1000 technology in favour of South Korea's APR1400 design. The APR1400 lacks safety features of AP1000 and EPR designs such as aircraft crash protection.¹⁵

India

Danny Roderick from Westinghouse said in November 2016 that the company was on track to build six AP1000 reactors in India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh and expected a final engineering, procurement, and construction agreement before the end of 2017.¹⁰

But funding had not been secured, India's nuclear liability law remained an obstacle, and the project faced stiff public opposition ... and that was all before the Toshiba / Westinghouse financial crisis began to surface late last year. The project is unlikely to proceed ‒ it is almost impossible according to three industry sources contacted by Reuters in early February.¹⁶ Likewise, a separate, less-developed plan for an additional six AP1000 reactors in India has little chance of progressing.

Toshiba said in mid-February that India's liability legislation ‒ which provides some recourse to sue vendors in the event of an accident ‒ would have to be changed to promote reactor projects in India.¹⁷

Former World Nuclear Association executive Steve Kidd noted in an April 7 article: "India is clearly not set to follow China into a rapid nuclear growth phase. Its targets announced for nuclear generation in the early 2030s look even more unachievable than before, and the Indian industry is becoming inward-looking once again. Its tie-up with Russia on reactors appears sound, but proposed cooperation with Areva, Westinghouse and GE now looks dead in the water after their recent financial disasters."¹⁸

A senior Indian government official reportedly said in early April that the "atomic meltdown" of Toshiba and Westinghouse "is a blessing in disguise", and the Economic Times of India reported that "many in the Indian atomic establishment are silently celebrating this premature death of suitors who were wooing to put tens of atomic plants in India".¹⁹ The argument is that the 'Indian atomic establishment' can take up the slack with new reactors in India and the atomic meltdown "could also provide an opportunity to the country to become a hub for low cost suppliers of nuclear technology".

But in all likelihood, despite the opportunities afforded by the meltdown of its competitors, the Indian atomic establishment will probably continue doing what it does best: building bombs, taking an axe to the global non-proliferation and safeguards regime, and failing to meet its nuclear power targets by orders of magnitude.

References:

1. Michael Shellenberger, 13 Feb 2017, 'Why its Big Bet on Westinghouse Nuclear is Bankrupting Toshiba', www.environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/13/why-its-big-bet-on-west...

2. World Nuclear Industry Status Report, 2016, www.worldnuclearreport.org/The-World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2016...

3. Westinghouse, 29 March 2017, Westinghouse Announces Strategic Restructuring, http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/About/News/View/WESTINGHOUSE-ANNOUNCE...

4. Samantha Cheh, 3 April 2017, 'Never-ending misfortunes: Toshiba stuck in the news cycle from hell', http://techwireasia.com/2017/04/toshiba-stuck-newscycle-hell/

5. World Nuclear Industry Status Report, 2 Feb 2017, 'Toshiba-Westinghouse: The End of New-build for the Largest Historic Nuclear Builder', www.worldnuclearreport.org/Toshiba-Westinghouse-The-End-of-New-build-for...

6. 1 April 2017, 'Westinghouse files for bankruptcy', www.economist.com/news/business/21719836-global-nuclear-power-industry-b...

7. World Nuclear Industry Status Report, 2 April 2017, 'Westinghouse: Origins and Effects of the Downfall of a Nuclear Giant', www.worldnuclearreport.org/Westinghouse-Origins-and-Effects-of-the-Downf...

8. http://thebulletin.org/global-nuclear-power-database

9. Reuters, 5 April 2017, 'Toshiba fired Westinghouse chairman two days before bankruptcy filing', www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-westinghouse-idUSKBN1770O6

10. Nikkei Asian Review, 29 Nov 2016, 'Toshiba aims to nail down multiple nuclear orders in China, India', http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Toshiba-aims-to-nail-down-mult...

11. World Nuclear Industry Status Report, 2 April 2017, 'Westinghouse: Origins and Effects of the Downfall of a Nuclear Giant', www.worldnuclearreport.org/Westinghouse-Origins-and-Effects-of-the-Downf...

12. World Nuclear News, 5 April 2017, 'Engie gives notice to sell NuGen stake', www.world-nuclear-news.org/C-Engie-gives-notice-to-sell-NuGen-stake-0504...

13. Nuclear Free Local Authorities, 4 April 2017, www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/as-engie-becomes-the-seventh-internationalen...

14. Song Jung-a in, 22 March 2017, 'Kepco rules out buying Westinghouse stake', www.ft.com/content/cd70d392-0ec8-11e7-b030-768954394623

15. Steve Thomas, July 2014, 'Nuclear technology options for South Africa', http://earthlife.org.za/www/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/nuclear-cost_repo...

16. Geert De Clercq and Kentaro Hamada, 3 Feb 2017, 'Battered Toshiba seeks exit from UK, India in nuclear retreat: sources', www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-idUSKBN15I0VG

17. World Nuclear News, 14 Feb 2017, 'NuGen confirms Toshiba commitment to Moorside', www.world-nuclear-news.org/C-NuGen-confirms-Toshiba-commitment-to-Moorsi...

18. Steve Kidd, 7 April 2017, 'The future of the nuclear sector – is innovation the answer?', www.neimagazine.com/opinion/opinionthe-future-of-the-nuclear-sector-is-i...

19. 9 April 2017, 'Global nuclear giants go bust, should India celebrate?', http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/58091514.cms

On March 29, the day that Westinghouse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York, Bloomberg noted: "Westinghouse Electric Co., once synonymous with America's industrial might, wagered its future on nuclear power ‒ and lost."¹

Whether Westinghouse will survive is an open question. Toshiba said on March 29 that Westinghouse has debts totalling US$9.8 billion and the bankruptcy filing is a clear indication that the company's viability is in doubt.²

Toshiba would sell Westinghouse if it could find a buyer, but it can't. Toshiba has tried but failed to sell Westinghouse several times already.³ Incredibly, Toshiba chief executive Satoshi Tsunakawa said in mid-March that Toshiba might have to pay a buyer to take Westinghouse off its hands.⁴ Presumably a utility or company willing to accept Westinghouse (along with a payment) would also be taking on a debt load as well as future risks associated with Westinghouse's nuclear business.

The Financial Times reported on March 5: "Mitsubishi this month ruled out rescuing the US company, citing its partnership with Areva, the troubled French reactor designer. Hitachi, which makes reactors with GE, also said it would not invest in Westinghouse, highlighting technology differences. GE is also thought to be highly unlikely to have any interest in Westinghouse. GE declined to comment. EDF, the French power company that is planning to buy a controlling stake in Areva's reactor business, is not expected to pursue Westinghouse. An EDF spokesperson said buying Westinghouse was "not in our plan"."³

South Korea's Kepco is seen as a possible buyer of Westinghouse, or parts of Westinghouse, and Kepco is also seen as a possible saviour of Toshiba's NuGen reactor project at Moorside in the UK. George Borovas from law firm Shearman & Sterling said: "It is therefore possible that some kind of 'package deal' could be structured for a strategic Korean investment into Westinghouse and NuGen at the same time."³

But Suh Kyun-ryul, professor of atomic engineering at Seoul National University, asked: "Why should [Kepco] take such big financial risks by taking over a troubled business amid the gloomy industry outlook?"³ And Kepco president Cho Hwan-eik was unequivocal in his comments on March 22: "We have no plan to acquire Toshiba's stake [in Westinghouse] ... there is no role for us there".⁵

There is speculation that Chinese utilities might be interested in buying Westinghouse ... if only because just about every other possibility has been ruled out.⁶ None of the speculation about a Chinese buy-out addresses the point that Chinese interests are no more likely to be interested in a bankrupt company than anyone else. Speculation about a Chinese buy-out has been laced with warnings about the 'need' to keep Westinghouse out of Chinese hands for various non-descript 'national interest' and 'national security' reasons.⁷

Bloomberg reports that Westinghouse has been a repeated target of Chinese espionage.⁷ Five Chinese military officials were indicted in absentia in 2014 for allegedly stealing trade secrets from Westinghouse through computer hacks, and China General Nuclear Power Corp. was indicted in 2016 for conspiring to steal restricted nuclear technology from Westinghouse.⁷

US officials are reportedly examining three options to keep Westinghouse out of Chinese hands: blocking a sale to a Chinese buyer (assuming there is a Chinese buyer ... which seems to be the elephant in the room ... at the moment there isn't a buyer); encouraging a bid from US investors or US-allied foreign investors; or direct US government investment in Westinghouse in return for an equity stake.⁷

A carve-up of Westinghouse is possible with profitable operations sold off to lessen existing debts. Jose Emeterio Gutierrez, interim president and CEO of Westinghouse, said in early April: "It's a reality that we have this problem with the construction of the US AP1000 projects, but it's also true that the rest of the company is in good shape. It's a healthy business. We don't have significant problems."⁸

But Westinghouse may have to sell profitable operations to stave off bankruptcy and may be left with little or nothing other than the high-risk, heavily-indebted AP1000 reactor projects in the US. George Borovas from law firm Shearman & Sterling said: "Any sale would likely be preceded by a restructuring of Westinghouse so that the 'new Westinghouse' being sold would be free of any liabilities arising from the current new build projects that Westinghouse is constructing."⁶

Toshiba itself is already in precisely that situation: reluctantly selling profitable parts of its business to stave off bankruptcy and being left holding an unwanted atomic bomb.

Currently, Toshiba is being forced to increase its 87% stake in Westinghouse. Japanese company IHI Corporation is exercizing its put option to sell its 3% stake of Westinghouse to Toshiba for US$157 million.⁹ KazAtomProm owns the remaining 10% of Westinghouse and may also exercize its right to sell its stake to Toshiba on or after 1 October 2017.¹⁰

On a brighter note, Jose Emeterio Gutierrez, interim president and CEO of Westinghouse, recently told staff that the company's decommissioning business currently brings in almost US$100 million a year and could easily double or triple in the next few years.⁸ He pointed to plants at risk of early closure in the US and fleets in countries like Germany that are phasing out nuclear power altogether after the Fukushima disaster. "The market is huge. Also, it's not a market that is short term," he said.⁸

Will Toshiba survive?

Toshiba said in February that it expects to book a US$6.3 billion writedown on Westinghouse¹¹, on top of a US$2.3 billion writedown in April 2016.¹² The losses exceed the US$5.4 billion Toshiba paid when it bought a majority stake in Westinghouse in 2006.¹¹

Now Toshiba says there is "substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern".¹³

Toshiba's demise is a crushing blow to Japan's nuclear industry ... which was already crushed by the Fukushima disaster. Nikkei Asian Review commented on April 10:¹⁴

"Japan's nuclear power industry is at the most critical juncture in its history. Demand for new reactors has dried up at home following the Fukushima nuclear disaster and dismal prospects for export are dual menaces threatening the fate of the country's nuclear technology. No domestic construction on a new reactor has begun for the past eight years. The catastrophic accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011 blew a hole in the industry's plans. The picture for exports of Japanese nuclear power technology looks just as gloomy. Japanese reactor manufacturers and suppliers of key components are now facing the possible loss of their technological viability."

Toshiba's decision to have its subsidiary Westinghouse file for bankruptcy protection may put some boundaries around future liabilities and losses, particularly those associated with the US AP1000 projects. But Toshiba will still be responsible for guaranteeing roughly ¥650 billion (US$5.9bn) worth of Westinghouse debt if the nuclear projects are delayed due to the bankruptcy filing, and Toshiba also needs to set aside about ¥170 billion (US$1.54bn) in loan-loss provisions in case loans to Westinghouse prove unrecoverable.¹⁵

The US government is also on the hook due to its US$8.3 billion loan guarantee for the two AP1000 reactors under construction in Georgia.¹⁶ A Department of Energy spokesperson said the agency is "keenly interested" in Westinghouse's bankruptcy proceedings and that the administration expects all companies to "honor their commitments" to finish the project.¹⁶ If Westinghouse cannot complete the reactors, repayment of the loans will likely be delayed, in which case the government would take on the debt. Nikkei Asian Review reported on March 11: "It remains unclear how Washington and Toshiba would split the costs in this case. But the possibility that American taxpayers could bear some of the burden has spurred negotiations involving the U.S. and Japanese governments to settle the matter."¹⁷

The BBC noted on March 29 that Toshiba's share-price has been in freefall, losing more than 60% since the company first unveiled the massive cost overruns with US reactor projects in December 2016.¹⁸

Standard & Poor's cut its credit rating on Toshiba on March 17, down two notches to CCC-, pushing it further into junk status after previous downgrades in December and January.¹⁹

Toshiba is selling profitable businesses to stave off bankruptcy, including its highly-profitable memory chip business. Toshiba will need to earn about ¥1 trillion (US$9.1bn) from the sale to bring its net worth out of the red.¹⁵

Toshiba, Hitachi and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries were planning an integration of their nuclear fuel operations due to the protracted weakness of Japan's nuclear industry ‒ but that has stalled due to Toshiba's current crisis.²⁰

A broader integration between the three companies would make sense according to Tom O'Sullivan from energy consultancy Mathyos Japan. "It would make sense. There's no point in having three companies chasing a dying market in Japan," he said.²¹ But Mitsubishi president and chief executive Shunichi Miyanaga ruled out a merger in mid-February²² and a Hitachi spokesperson said there are no discussions on merging the companies' overall nuclear operations.²¹ Nevertheless, the Japanese government might use whatever leverage it has to force a tie-up between the three companies.

There are conflicting reports as to whether Tokyo might use government funds to rescue Toshiba. Most of the statements from the government suggest that there will not be a government bail-out.²³ But Nikkei Asian Review reported on March 18 that the Toshiba/Westinghouse crisis was discussed at a meeting between Japan's minister of economy, trade and industry and the US commerce secretary and energy secretary, and speculated that the two governments "seem to be softening on their previous stance that the company's restructuring is a private-sector matter."²⁴

In February, Toshiba said it plans to exit the reactor construction business and focus its nuclear business on design, equipment supply and engineering services.²⁵ That probably remains the plan, but comments by Toshiba chief executive Satoshi Tsunakawa on March 29 suggest a more complete withdrawal from the nuclear industry outside of Japan. "This is a de facto withdrawal from the overseas nuclear business for us. Therefore, we don't see any more risk," he said.

Whatever Toshiba does, it is still on the hook for multi-billion dollar liabilities associated with the AP1000 projects in the US.

References:

1. Chris Martin and Chris Cooper, 29 March 2017, 'How an American Tech Icon Bet on Nuclear ‒ and Lost its Way', www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-29/how-an-american-tech-icon-bet...

2. Diane Cardwell and Jonathan Soble, 29 March 2017, 'Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power', www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/westinghouse-toshiba-nuclear-bankrup...

3. Kana Inagaki and Song Jung-a, 5 March 2017, 'Kepco seen as potential buyer for Toshiba's ailing nuclear unit', www.ft.com/content/32f14d76-f8e6-11e6-9516-2d969e0d3b65
4. Makiko Yamazaki and Taiga Uranaka, 14 March 2017, 'Toshiba pushes sale of nuclear unit Westinghouse as crisis deepens', www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-idUSKBN16L02X

5. Song Jung-a in, 22 March 2017, 'Kepco rules out buying Westinghouse stake', www.ft.com/content/cd70d392-0ec8-11e7-b030-768954394623

6. Stephen Stapczynski, 13 March 2017, 'Troubled Nuclear Builder Seen Best Fit for Asian Ambitions', www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-13/troubled-nuclear-builder-seen...

7. Jennifer Jacobs, Saleha Mohsin, and Jennifer A Dlouhy, 5 April 2017, 'Trump Team Takes Steps to Keep Chinese From Westinghouse', www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-04/trump-officials-alarmed-c...

8. Anya Litva, 11 April 2017, 'Westinghouse CEO tries to spread optimism despite bankruptcy', http://powersource.post-gazette.com/powersource/companies/2017/04/11/Wes...

9. Tom Hals and Jessica DiNapoli, 27 March 2017, 'Factbox: Toshiba's options in U.S. nuclear bankruptcy', www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-westinghouse-factbox-idUSKBN16Y2QP?il=0

10. World Nuclear News, 29 March 2017, 'Westinghouse files for US bankruptcy protection', www.world-nuclear-news.org/C-Westinghouse-files-for-US-bankruptcy-protec...

11. BBC, 14 Feb 2017, 'Toshiba chairman quits over nuclear loss', www.bbc.com/news/business-38965380

12. Reuters, 26 April 2016, 'Toshiba Takes $2.3 Billion Writedown on U.S. Nuclear Unit Westinghouse', http://fortune.com/2016/04/26/toshiba-writedown-westinghouse-nuclear/

13. Toshiba Corporation, 11 April 2017, 'Toshiba Announces Consolidated Results for the First Nine Months and the Third Quarter for Fiscal Year 2016, Ending March 2017', www.toshiba.co.jp/about/ir/en/finance/er/er2016/q3/ter2016q3e.pdf

14. Nikkei Asian Review, 10 April 2017, 'Japan's nuclear technology faces extinction', http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/Japan-s-nuclear-technology-faces-...

15. Nikkei Asian Review, 6 April 2017, 'Cutting Westinghouse loose puts Toshiba in a deeper hole', http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20170406/Business/Cutting-Westinghouse-l...

16. Peter Maloney, 3 April 2017, 'Westinghouse bankruptcy puts $8.3B in federal loan guarantees for Vogtle plant at risk', www.utilitydive.com/news/westinghouse-bankruptcy-puts-83b-in-federal-loa...

17. Nikkei Asian Review, 11 March 2017, 'Toshiba scrambles to stem further bleeding from Westinghouse', http://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Toshiba-in-Turmoil/Toshiba-scrambles-to...

18. BBC, 29 March 2017, 'Toshiba's Westinghouse files for US bankruptcy', www.bbc.com/news/business-39424634

19. AFP, 17 March 2017, 'S&P cuts troubled Toshiba's credit rating', www.businesstimes.com.sg/consumer/sp-cuts-troubled-toshibas-credit-rating

20. Japan Times, 23 Feb 2017, www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/02/23/business/hitachi-toshiba-mitsubishi...

21. Aaron Sheldrick, 31 March 2017, 'Big in Japan? Hope at home for Toshiba's nuclear arm after U.S. debacle', www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-nuclear-idUSKBN17211S

22. Financial Times, 16 Feb 2017, 'Mitsubishi Heavy rules out Toshiba nuclear rescue', www.ft.com/content/0238df8c-f44f-11e6-8758-6876151821a6

23. Samantha Cheh, 3 April 2017, 'Never-ending misfortunes: Toshiba stuck in the news cycle from hell', http://techwireasia.com/2017/04/toshiba-stuck-newscycle-hell/

24. Nikkei Asian Review, 18 March 2017, 'Toshiba's trials entangle Tokyo, Washington', http://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Toshiba-in-Turmoil/Toshiba-s-trials-ent...

25. Makiko Yamazaki, 14 Feb 2017, 'Delays, confusion as Toshiba reports $6 billion nuclear hit and slides to loss', http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-idUKKBN15T033

26. Russell Gold and Mayumi Negishi, 31 March 2017, 'Ire at Toshiba's nuclear backdown', www.wsj.com/articles/toshibas-westinghouse-electric-files-for-bankruptcy...

The mPower small modular reactor (SMR) project in the USA just got much smaller: it has been abandoned.

mPower was conceived in 2008 and announced to the world in June 2009. In July 2010, Babcock & Wilcox announced an alliance with Bechtel called Generation mPower. At the same time, Babcock & Wilcox announced that it would build an mPower test facility in Virginia, part-funded by a US$5 million grant from the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalisation Commission.¹

Generation mPower planned to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for design certification by 2013.¹ The company aimed for NRC certification and a reactor construction permit in 2018, and commercial operation of the first two units in 2022.²

The idea was to produce scaled-down (195 MWe) pressurized light water reactors (PWR), drawing on decades of worldwide experience with (larger) PWRs and thus making NRC licensing simpler and quicker.³

Experienced, cashed-up companies ... a conventional reactor design ... R&D funding support from Virginia and from the federal Department of Energy ... what could go wrong?

It didn't take long for the project to fall apart. In 2013 Babcock & Wilcox said it intended to sell a majority stake in the mPower joint venture, but in February 2014 announced it was unable to find a buyer. In April 2014, Babcock & Wilcox announced it was sharply reducing investment in mPower to US$15 million annually, citing the inability "to secure significant additional investors or customer engineering, procurement and construction contracts to provide the financial support necessary to develop and deploy mPower reactors".¹

More than 200 engineers, project managers, administrators, and sales-people were sacked in 2014.⁴

The Tennessee Valley Authority had been named as a lead customer and plans were developed to build up to six mPower reactors at TVA's Clinch River site at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.⁵ But in 2014, TVA ended the agreement to share design and licensing costs.

In November 2012, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it would subsidize mPower development in a five-year cost-share agreement. The DOE's contribution would be capped at US$226 million, of which US$111 million was subsequently paid. That funding tap was switched off after Generation mPower downsized the project in 2014, but the company was not required to repay any of the DOE funding.²

The Generation mPower companies spent more than US$375 million on mPower to February 2016.² Add that to the DOE's US$111 million contribution, and overall expenditure was nudging US$500 million.

In March 2016, Babcock & Wilcox and Bechtel came to an arrangement whereby Bechtel would attempt to secure further funding from third parties, including the DOE.² However those efforts have been abandoned. On 3 March 2017, Bechtel notified Babcock & Wilcox that it was unable to secure sufficient funding and was invoking a settlement provision to terminate the joint agreement. Generation mPower will terminate the program in the next few months.³

Bechtel spokesperson Fred deSousa said: "Bringing a new reactor program through the design, engineering and regulatory process is a very complex and expensive proposition. It needed a plant owner with an identified location and an investor willing to wait a significant period of time for a return, and these were not available."⁶

Rod Adams ‒ who worked for B&W mPower as the Process and Procedure Development Lead from 2010 to 2013 ‒ gives some reasons for the demise of mPower:³

• The financial crisis of 2008.
• The continuing reduction in natural gas prices.
• Management challenges associated with a fundamentally unequal partnership between two large, established companies, each with their own culture.
• "The aggressive effort to market the Fukushima events as a nuclear catastrophe in order to suppress a growing interest in nuclear energy development".
• "The entry of activist investors that purchased a large portion of B&W's stock and forced a major reevaluation of the project and the overall corporate structure".

Adams' statement about aggressive efforts to market Fukushima as a nuclear catastrophe is a cheap shot at environmentalists and other nuclear critics. His statement about "activist investors" is more intriguing. That's a story he discussed in a 2014 article.⁴ He notes that the February 2014 announcement to sharply reduce investment in mPower followed the purchase of Babcock & Wilcox shares by Wall Street investment funds. Those investment funds purchased enough stock to impose a restructuring plan that directed spending away from mPower. Their motives, according to Adams, were to prioritize short-term profits over medium-term investments, and to protect their investments in fossil fuels by killing off a potential competitor. And their statements about a lack of customer and investor interest were a concocted cover story.

So mPower was wedged between aggressive anti-nuclear marketeers and fossil-fueled corporate interests. Perhaps. Adams also offers a tendentious conspiracy theory about a "sabotage effort from within the nuclear industry".⁴

A future for SMRs?

SMRs continue to be the subject of endless hype. There's quite a bit of R&D ‒ in the US, the UK, South Korea, China and elsewhere. But only a few SMRs are under construction: one in Argentina, a twin-reactor floating nuclear power plant in Russia, and three SMRs in China (including two high-temperature gas-cooled reactors).²

The broad picture for SMRs is much the same as that for fast neutron reactors: lots of hot air, some R&D, but few concrete plans and even fewer concrete pours.⁷ Michael McGough from NuScale, a US SMR company, said: "It's one thing to talk about it. It's another thing to actually build it and do it."⁸

A February 2017 Lloyd's Register report surveyed almost 600 energy industry professionals and experts and the dominant view was that SMRs have a "low likelihood of eventual take-up, and will have a minimal impact when they do arrive".^9,10 Likewise, a 2014 Nuclear Energy Insider report, drawing on interviews with more than 50 "leading specialists and decision makers", pointed to a "pervasive sense of pessimism" resulting from abandoned and scaled-back SMR programs.¹¹

No company or country is seriously considering building the massive supply chain that is at the very essence of the concept of SMRs ‒ mass, modular construction. Yet without that supply chain, SMRs will be expensive curiosities. As pro-nuclear commentator Dan Yurman noted in January 2016, "the real challenge will be to book enough orders to bring investors to the table to build factories to turn out SMRs on a cost effective production line basis."¹²

Thomas W. Overton, associate editor of POWER magazine, wrote in a September 2014 article: "At the graveyard wherein resides the "nuclear renaissance" of the 2000s, a new occupant appears to be moving in: the small modular reactor (SMR). ... The SMR concept disdains ... economies of scale in favor of others: large-scale standardized manufacturing that will churn out dozens, if not hundreds, of identical plants, each of which would ultimately produce cheaper kilowatt-hours than large one-off designs. It's an attractive idea. But it's also one that depends on someone building that massive supply chain, since none of it currently exists. ... That money would presumably come from customer orders − if there were any."¹³

So how many orders would a manufacturer need to go the financial markets to get funding to build a supply chain to make lots of SMRs? Dan Yurman writes: "The answer, according to David Orr, head of nuclear business development for Rolls-Royce in the UK, ... is a minimum of about four dozen units and six dozen would be better. Those are high numbers which make some proponents of SMRs unhappy. The reason is this estimate means that turning out the first 50 or so SMRs for any firm in the business could be a high wire act."¹²

A recent article from two pro-nuclear lobby groups, Third Way and Breakthrough Institute, argues that with small reactor concepts, "there is ample opportunity for learning by doing and economies of multiples for several reactor classes and designs".¹⁴ But the mPower project cost close to US$500 million. That sort of expensive failure can't be repeated indefinitely.

NuScale has progressed further than mPower ‒ it recently submitted an application to the NRC for design certification. To get to this point has cost US$500 million and taken two million labor-hours over eight years.¹⁵ NRC certification will likely take an additional three years.¹⁵ NuScale estimates that by the time it gets through the NRC licensing process, it will have spent US$1 billion overall (including a significant DOE contribution for R&D).¹⁶

And then NuScale will face the problem that there is a long way from NRC certification to the completion of its first SMR, and further still from the first reactor to mass production for a mass market.

NuScale says the aim is to replace "economy-of-scale with economy-of-the-assembly-line".¹⁷ But the risk is that SMR developers will end up with neither. In the absence of a mass supply chain, costs will be exorbitant. The construction cost of Argentina's 25 MWe CAREM reactor is estimated at US$446 million, which equates to a whopping US$17.8 billion / gigawatt (GW).¹⁸ Estimated construction costs for the Russian floating SMR have increased more than four-fold and now equate to over US$10 billion / GW.¹⁹ For comparison, the estimated cost of the planned Hinkley Point EPR reactors in the UK is US$7 billion / GW or US$9.5 billion / GW including finance.

References:

1. B&W mPower, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%26W_mPower

2. World Nuclear Association, March 2017, 'Small Nuclear Power Reactors', www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-pow...

3. Rod Adams, 13 March 2017, 'Bechtel And BWXT Quietly Terminate mPower Reactor Project', www.forbes.com/sites/rodadams/2017/03/13/bechtel-and-bwxt-quietly-termin...

4. Rod Adams, 9 May 2014, 'B&W mPower cover story about lack of interest is bogus',  https://atomicinsights.com/bw-mpower-cover-story-lack-interest-bogus/

5. World Nuclear News, 14 April 2014, 'Funding for mPower reduced', www.world-nuclear-news.org/C-Funding-for-mPower-reduced-1404141.html

6. Margaret Carmel, 15 March 2017, 'BWXT, Bechtel shelve mPower program', www.roanoke.com/news/bwxt-bechtel-shelve-mpower-program/article_9d2f050a...

7. Nuclear Monitor #831, 5 Oct 2016, 'The slow death of fast reactors', www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/831/slow-death-fast-reactors

8. John Fialka, 7 March 2017, 'In nuclear poker, who's betting on small reactors?', www.eenews.net/stories/1060051025

9. Lloyd's Register, February 2017, 'Technology Radar – A Nuclear Perspective: Executive summary', http://info.lr.org/techradarlowcarbon

10. World Nuclear News, 9 Feb 2017, Nuclear more competitive than fossil fuels: report', www.world-nuclear-news.org/EE-Nuclear-more-competitive-than-fossil-fuels...

11. Nuclear Energy Insider, 2014, "Small Modular Reactors: An industry in terminal decline or on the brink of a comeback?", http://bit.ly/smrscomeback

12. Dan Yurman, 21 Jan 2016, 'The UK plans to become a global center for small nuclear reactors. Can it succeed?', https://neutronbytes.com/2016/01/21/the-uk-plans-to-become-a-global-cent...

13. Thomas W. Overton, 1 Sept 2014, 'What Went Wrong with SMRs?', www.powermag.com/what-went-wrong-with-smrs/

14. Josh Freed, Todd Allen, Ted Nordhaus, and Jessica Lovering, 28 Feb 2017, 'Do We Need An Airbus for Nuclear?', https://medium.com/third-way/do-we-need-an-airbus-for-nuclear-7f1d2afcea8b

15. Andrew Follett, 17 March 2017, 'After Years Of Delays, Gov't Finally To Review 1st Advanced Nuclear Reactor', http://dailycaller.com/2017/03/17/after-years-of-delays-govt-finally-to-...

16. 4 May 2016, 'NuScale announces roadmap for SMR operation at Idaho site by 2024', https://neutronbytes.com/2016/05/04/nuscale-announces-roadmap-to-smr-ope...

17. NuScale, 'Construction Cost for a NuScale Nuclear Power Plant', www.nuscalepower.com/smr-benefits/economical/construction-cost

18. World Nuclear News, 10 Feb 2014, 'Construction of CAREM underway', www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Construction-of-CAREM-underway-1002144.html

19. Charles Digges, 25 May 2015, 'New documents show cost of Russian floating nuclear power plant skyrockets', http://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2015-05-new-documents-show-cost-r...

Michael Shellenberger from the US-based Breakthrough Institute (and sundry other pro-nuclear lobby groups) offers the following explanation for the "crisis that threatens the death of nuclear energy in the West":¹

• Lack of standardization and scaling: The constant switching of designs deprives the people who build, operate and regulate nuclear plants of the experience they need to become more efficient.
• The "war" on nuclear power by the environmental movement ... "a powerful, $500 million annual lobby that does everything it can to deliberately make nuclear expensive."
• Too much focus on machines, too little on human beings: "Areva, Toshiba-Westinghouse and others claimed their new designs would be safer and thus, at least eventually, cheaper, but there were always strong reasons to doubt such claims. First, what is proven to make nuclear plants safer is experience, not new designs. Human factors swamp design. ... In fact, new designs risk depriving managers and workers the experience they need to operate plants more safely, just as it deprives construction companies the experience they need to build plants more rapidly."

Shellenberger has a three-point rescue plan:¹

• 'Consolidate or Die': "If nuclear is going to survive in the West, it needs a single, large firm ‒ the equivalent of a Boeing or Airbus ‒ to compete against the Koreans, Chinese and Russians."
• 'Standardize or Die': He draws attention to the "astonishing" heterogeneity of planned reactors in the UK and says the UK "should scrap all existing plans and start from a blank piece of paper", that all new plants should be of the same design and "the criteria for choosing the design should emphasize experience in construction and operation, since that is the key factor for lowering costs."
• 'Scale or Die': Nations "must work together to develop a long-term plan for new nuclear plant construction to achieve economies of scale", and governments "should invest directly or provide low-cost loans."

Josh Freed and Todd Allen from pro-nuclear lobby group Third Way, and Ted Nordhaus and Jessica Lovering from the Breakthrough Institute, argue that Shellenberger draws the wrong lessons from Toshiba's recent losses and from nuclear power's "longer-term struggles" in developed economies.²

They argue that "too little innovation, not too much, is the reason that the industry is on life support in the United States and other developed economies":²

• The Westinghouse AP1000 represents a fairly straightforward evolution in light-water reactor design, not a radical departure as Shellenberger claims. Rather, it represents "just the sort of incremental innovation in design and operation that Shellenberger argues elsewhere holds the key to reducing nuclear costs."
• Standardization is important but it is not a panacea. Standardization and building multiple reactors on the same site has limited cost escalation, not brought costs down. "France, the poster child for standardization and economies of multiples in light-water reactor design and deployment, has seen modest cost escalation over time, not cost declines."
• Most of the causes of rising cost and construction delays associated with new nuclear builds in the US are attributable to the 30-year hiatus in US nuclear construction, not the novelty of the AP1000 design. The AP1000 projects in Georgia and South Carolina are "for most practical purposes ... a first-of-kind-build" and the same challenges would have been faced even if a Generation II plant had been chosen instead of the AP1000.
• Reasonable regulatory reform will not dramatically reduce the cost of new light-water reactors, as Shellenberger suggests. Not even the most zealous reformers would advocate dispensing with expensive items such as containment domes or multiple redundant back up cooling systems.

They write this obituary for large light-water reactors:²

"If there is one central lesson to be learned from the delays and cost overruns that have plagued recent builds in the US and Europe, it is that the era of building large fleets of light-water reactors is over in much of the developed world. From a climate and clean energy perspective, it is essential that we keep existing reactors online as long as possible. But slow demand growth in developed world markets makes ten billion dollar, sixty-year investments in future electricity demand a poor bet for utilities, investors, and ratepayers.

"Liberalized electricity markets only further exacerbate the risk associated with these investments. Conventional light-water reactors are capital intensive, long-lived infrastructure that require central planning, cheap capital, and long operating lifetimes to pay off, none of which exist in liberalized markets. Neither standardized conventional light-water designs nor regulatory reform address any of these challenges, which are in fact the central challenges that investment in new nuclear capacity faces. ..."

"Standardization and learning by doing are key requirements for sustainable nuclear economics. But those criteria alone will be insufficient to make new nuclear an economically rational option so long as they are coupled to large light-water technology. Whether Gen II or Gen III, learning by doing and economies of multiples require sufficient replication to bring declining costs. That replication is unlikely so long as the reactor in question is a 1GW, multi-billion dollar proposition, at least in the United States and Western Europe."

A radical break

The four Third Way / Breakthrough Institute authors conclude that "a radical break from the present light-water regime ... will be necessary to revive the nuclear industry". Exactly what that means, the authors said, would be the subject of a follow-up article. So readers were left hanging ‒ will nuclear power be saved by failed fast-reactor technology³, or failed high-temperature gas-cooled reactors^4-6 including failed pebble-bed reactors⁷, or by thorium pipe-dreams⁸ or fusion pipe-dreams⁹ or molten salt reactor pipe-dreams¹⁰ or small modular reactor pipe-dreams?^11,12 Perhaps we've been too quick to write off cold fusion?

The answers came in a follow-up article on February 28.¹³ They want a thousand flowers to bloom, a bottom-up R&D-led nuclear recovery as opposed to Shellenberger's approach, which they characterize as "a massive, state-directed consolidation of the nuclear sector in developed economies" and a "single state-sponsored nuclear behemoth [that] would deploy a single standardized light-water reactor design".

They argue against top-down, state-led innovation: "State-led development of advanced designs, bringing together large incumbent firms and scientists from national laboratories failed in United States, France, Britain, Japan, and Germany in the 60's and 70's. It will likely fail as well in Korea, China, France, and Russia today."

The authors don't just want a new reactor type (or types), they have much greater ambitions for innovation in "nuclear technology, business models, and the underlying structure of the sector" and they note that "a radical break from the light water regime that would enable this sort of innovation is not a small undertaking and will require a major reorganization of the nuclear sector."

Beyond that, the authors offer Silicon Valley-inspired gobbledegook and flapdoodle rather than anything meaningful: "[R]adical nuclear innovation must be informed by markets, end users, and modern fabrication and manufacturing methods. This is centrally a job for entrepreneurial engineers, not scientists at national laboratories, technocrats at the Department of Energy, or division heads at Westinghouse or General Electric. Public policy that empowers nuclear innovation and entrepreneurship will need to support engineers and start-ups, not direct them."

To the extent that the four authors want to tear down the existing nuclear industry and replace it with a new one, they share some common ground with nuclear critics who want to tear down the existing nuclear industry and not replace it with a new one. Shellenberger also shares some common ground with nuclear critics: he thinks the UK should scrap all existing plans for new reactors and "start from a blank piece of paper"¹ whereas nuclear critics think the UK should scrap all existing plans for new reactors and not start from a blank piece of paper.

Small reactors

The four Third Way / Breakthrough Institute authors argue that nuclear power must become substantially cheaper ‒ thus ruling out large conventional reactors "operated at high atmospheric pressures, requiring enormous containment structures, multiply redundant back-up cooling systems, and water cooling towers and ponds, which account for much of the cost associated with building light-water reactors."¹³

Substantial cost reductions will not be possible "so long as nuclear reactors must be constructed on site one gigawatt at a time. ... At 10 MW or 100 MW, by contrast, there is ample opportunity for learning by doing and economies of multiples for several reactor classes and designs, even in the absence of rapid demand growth or geopolitical imperatives."

Other than their promotion of small reactors and their rejection of large ones, the four authors are non-specific about their preferred reactor types. Any number of small-reactor concepts have been proposed.¹¹

We've discussed small modular reactors (SMRs) frequently in Nuclear Monitor.¹⁴ The bottom line is that there isn't the slightest chance that they will fulfil the ambition of making nuclear power "substantially cheaper" unless and until a manufacturing supply chain is established at vast expense ... and even then it's far from certain that the power would be cheaper and unlikely that it would be substantially cheaper.

As things stand, no country, company or utility has any intention of betting billions on building an SMR supply chain. The prevailing skepticism is evident in a February 2017 Lloyd's Register report based on "insights and opinions of leaders across the sector" and the views of almost 600 professionals and experts from utilities, distributors, operators and equipment manufacturers. The report states that the potential contribution of SMRs "is unclear at this stage, although its impact will most likely apply to smaller grids and isolated markets."¹⁵ Respondents predicted that SMRs have a "low likelihood of eventual take-up, and will have a minimal impact when they do arrive".¹⁶

An analysis of SMRs in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists sums up the problems:¹⁷

"Without a clear-cut case for their advantages, it seems that small nuclear modular reactors are a solution looking for a problem. Of course in the world of digital innovation, this kind of upside-down relationship between solution and problem is pretty normal. Smart phones, Twitter, and high-definition television all began as solutions looking for problems. In the realm of nuclear technology, however, the enormous expense required to launch a new model as well as the built-in dangers of nuclear fission require a more straightforward relationship between problem and solution. Small modular nuclear reactors may be attractive, but they will not, in themselves, offer satisfactory solutions to the most pressing problems of nuclear energy: high cost, safety, and weapons proliferation."

References:

1. Michael Shellenberger, 17 Feb 2017, 'Nuclear Industry Must Change ‒ Or Die', www.environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/16/nuclear-must-change-or-die

2. Josh Freed, Todd Allen, Ted Nordhaus, and Jessica Lovering, 24 Feb 2017, 'Is Nuclear Too Innovative?', https://medium.com/third-way/is-nuclear-too-innovative-a14fb4fef41a

3. Nuclear Monitor #831, 5 Oct 2016, 'The slow death of fast reactors', www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/831/slow-death-fast-reactors

4. Nuclear Monitor #823, 4 May 2016, 'The checkered history of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors', www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/823/nuclear-news-nuclear-monit...

5. M. V. Ramana, April 2016, 'The checkered operational history of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2016.1170395

6. Matthias Englert, Friederike Frieß and M. V. Ramana, Feb 2017, 'Accident Scenarios Involving Pebble Bed High Temperature Reactors', Science & Global Security, Vol.25 Iss.1, pp.42-55, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08929882.2017.1275320

7. Steve Thomas, 22 June 2009, 'The demise of the pebble bed modular reactor', http://thebulletin.org/demise-pebble-bed-modular-reactor

8. Nuclear Monitor #801, 9 April 2015, 'Thor-bores and uro-sceptics: thorium's friendly fire', www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/801/thor-bores-and-uro-sceptic...

9. Fabian Schmidt, 18 Dec 2015, 'The rocky road to nuclear fusion power', www.dw.com/en/the-rocky-road-to-nuclear-fusion-power/a-18927630

10. James Temple, 24 Feb 2017, 'Nuclear Energy Startup Transatomic Backtracks on Key Promises', www.technologyreview.com/s/603731/nuclear-energy-startup-transatomic-bac...

11. M.V. Ramana and Zia Mian, 4 Sept 2014, 'Too much to ask: why small modular reactors may not be able to solve the problems confronting nuclear power', Nuclear Monitor #790, www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/790/too-much-ask-why-small-mod...

12. Nuclear Monitor #800, 19 March 2015, 'Small modular reactors: a chicken-and-egg situation', www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/800/small-modular-reactors-chi...

13. Josh Freed, Todd Allen, Ted Nordhaus, and Jessica Lovering, 28 Feb 2017, 'Do We Need An Airbus for Nuclear?', https://medium.com/third-way/do-we-need-an-airbus-for-nuclear-7f1d2afcea8b

14. https://wiseinternational.org/search/node/%22small%20modular%20reactor%22

15. Lloyd's Register, February 2017, 'Technology Radar – A Nuclear Perspective: Executive summary', http://info.lr.org/techradarlowcarbon

16. World Nuclear News, 9 Feb 2017, Nuclear more competitive than fossil fuels: report', www.world-nuclear-news.org/EE-Nuclear-more-competitive-than-fossil-fuels...

17. Kennette Benedict, 29 Jan 2014, 'Are small nuclear reactors the answer?', http://thebulletin.org/are-small-nuclear-reactors-answer

A new report by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) finds that a national bailout of nuclear energy patterned on the model advanced this year in New York State would cost ratepayers and taxpayers more than US$280 billion (€254 bn) by 2030.

Based on an independent analysis that over half of existing nuclear power in the US will be unprofitable by 2020, a narrower bailout would still cost US$160 billion by 2030. In addition to the enormous expense, NIRS found that one major side-effect of bailing out nuclear power on a large-scale basis would be the starving of renewable energy of needed capital.

Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Commissioner Peter Bradford, currently adjunct professor at Vermont Law School, said: "This report illustrates that the subsidies now being sought for nuclear units that are already massively subsidized may pay far too much for relatively little climate benefit. Worse still, they may slow the evolution of the electric industry to a less concentrated and more customer friendly form."

The report notes that from 2002‒2012, average operating costs for nuclear power plants rose by 50%. A significant factor in rising operating costs is the aging of the reactor fleet. The US now has the oldest fleet in the world, averaging 35.6 years, with 37% older than their original licensed lifespan of 40 years; another 37% are between 31 and 40 years old.

The report debunks claims that nuclear plants are unsubsidized or "under subsidized", listing a wide range of existing subsidies.

The report recommends, among other things, creating "proactive plans to replace or phase out nuclear, in concert with emissions reduction and renewable energy goals, and grid modernization initiatives."

NIRS has launched a petition to the next President urging the new administration to say no to a national nuclear bailout, and to end subsidies for nuclear and fossil fuels. To sign the petition please visit www.tinyurl.com/nirs-petition

The report is posted online: Tim Judson / Nuclear Information and Resource Service, November 2016, "Too Big to Bail Out: The Economic Costs of a National Nuclear Power Subsidy", http://bit.ly/too-big-to-bail-out-nuclear

A summary of the report is posted at: www.tinyurl.com/nirs-nov-2016

Ken Bossong puts the start-up of the first U.S. nuclear reactor in 20 years in perspective. To say that renewables are growing faster than nuclear is an understatement. Yet the nuclear industry is likely to trumpet Watts Bar 2 coming online as a big triumph. That is, once the reactor gets past the series of equipment failures that has repeatedly delayed the start-up since June. The Tennessee Valley Authority has spent nine years and more than US$4 billion to bring a 43-year old nuclear construction project to completion, when it could have used that time and money more productively on developing renewables and energy efficiency.

As it nears commercial operation, Watts Bar 2, the first "new" nuclear power plant in the United States in more than a generation, is proof that nuclear power has lost the race with safer, cleaner, and more economical renewable energy sources ‒ particularly solar and wind.

New electrical generation expected to be provided to the nation's grid by Watts Bar 2 during its first year of operating at full capacity has already been eclipsed several times over by new electrical generation provided by renewables.

For example, in just one year's time (i.e., July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016) as Watts Bar 2 prepared for commercial operation, solar and wind alone increased their contribution to the nation's total electrical generation by an amount three to five times greater than that expected from a year's worth of Watts Bar 2 generation (detailed supporting calculations are posted on the GreenWorld website¹).

If one adds in the net increase in generation from other renewable energy sources (i.e., hydropower, geothermal, and biomass) during the past year, the ratio of new renewables generation to that of Watts Bar 2 is even greater.

Looking ahead, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is projecting 9.5% growth in electrical consumption from renewable sources during 2016 with further increases in the years to follow.² Thus, the ratio of new renewable electricity capacity and generation vs. that from Watts Bar is likely to be even greater in the coming year and beyond.

Additionally, the very limited contribution to be made by Watts Bar-2 to the nation's electrical generating capacity hardly seems to have been worth the wait. Construction of Watts Bar-2 originally began in 1973, but was halted in 1985. The project was restarted in October 2007 and finally completed in summer 2016. Thus, not including the period while the plant construction was suspended, it took roughly 22 years to bring Watts Bar 2 online.³

During the eight-year period (2007-2015) required to build Watts Bar 2 following the resumption of construction, the reactor obviously produced no electricity. At the same time, however, new wind and solar plants ‒ which typically require only one or two years to construct and often less⁴ ‒ were coming online at an increasing pace and contributing to the nation's electricity supply. In fact, during the 2007‒2015 period, wind and solar produced about 15 times more electricity than is projected to come from Watts Bar 2 in the coming year.¹

Moreover, since the resumption of construction of Watts Bar 2 in 2007, actual annual electrical generation by wind and solar has mushroomed. Today, those renewable sources are providing over 21 times more electricity each year than that expected annually from Watts Bar-2 ... and growing rapidly.¹

Finally, when construction resumed on Watts Bar Unit 2 in 2007, TVA assumed the cost would be US$2.5 billion to complete. Upon completion, though, the actual costs totaled US$4.7 billion. This translates into a cost of approximately US$4.1 million per MW of capacity.⁵

While nuclear construction costs ‒ as represented by those for Watts Bar 2 ‒ have risen dramatically, those for solar and wind have plunged by 60‒70% over the same time period.

For example, in a November 2015 study, the New York investment bank Lazard reported current electricity production costs of nuclear power to be US$97‒136 per MWh. In comparison, the best large-scale photovoltaic power plants can now produce electricity at US$50 per MWh while onshore wind turbines can do so for US$32‒77 per MWh.⁶

Thus, as illustrated by Watts Bar 2, the pace at which new renewable capacity and actual electrical generation ‒ particularly wind and solar ‒ are exceeding that of nuclear, the long construction times to bring new nuclear reactors on line, and nuclear power's rapidly rising costs (compared to the dramatically declining costs for renewable sources) all underscore that the nuclear era is over. Watts Bar 2 is proof that nuclear power has lost the race against renewable energy.

References:

1. http://safeenergy.org/2016/10/05/watts-bar-2-winning-a-battle-while-losi...

2. www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/renew_co2.cfm

3. https://morningconsult.com/alert/first-new-nuclear-reactor-almost-two-de...

4. See, for example, www.ewea.org/wind-energy-basics/faq

5. https://morningconsult.com/alert/first-new-nuclear-reactor-almost-two-de...

6. www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-analysis-90

See also:

www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm

www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=19&t=3

www.renewable-energysources.com/

www.nrel.gov/analysis/tech_lcoe.html

The Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS) has covered the unfolding story of the US nuclear power industry's clamor for new subsidies and bailouts since it started in 2014. Purely as a spectator sport, it might have been entertaining to watch the country's largest utilities go from proclaiming a "Nuclear Renaissance" a decade ago to peddling the message that "Nuclear Matters".¹

But there is just too much at stake to treat it like a game. The utility industry's ramped-up efforts to block renewable energy and horde billions of our clean energy dollars to prop up old nukes risks both climate and nuclear disaster.² Most of these proposals have been failing, thanks to the dogged persistence of grassroots activists and clean energy groups – and the outrageous sticker price of subsidies the industry needs. In fact, earlier this month, the two-year saga of FirstEnergy's US$8 billion nuclear-plus-coal bailout plan seems to have ended, with what amounts to a consolation gift to a couple FirstEnergy utility companies.³ Still an outrageous corporate giveaway, but no subsidies for nuclear or coal, even after it seemed like a done deal a few months ago.

But New York Governor Cuomo's decision in August to award a 12-year, US$7.6 billion subsidy package to four aging reactors ‒ including reversing Entergy's decision to close the FitzPatrick reactor in January 2017 ‒ has put wind into the industry's sails.⁴ Even that chapter isn't over, with lawsuits already being filed and several more expected.⁵ And environmental groups last week launched a new campaign to get Governor Cuomo to smell the coffee and cancel what will not only be the largest corporate give-away in the state's history, but relegate clean energy to second-class status behind old nukes.⁶

The lingering uncertainty hasn't stopped the industry PR and lobbying machines, though ‒ after all, billions of dollars in free money is at stake! Exelon, FirstEnergy, and other companies touted New York as a national model, and began urging states from Connecticut to Illinois to follow suit. Having to get each state to line up is going to be a tall order. In addition to FirstEnergy's failed Ohio bailout, Exelon hasn't been able to sell a much smaller five-year, US$1.5 billion subsidy in Illinois. And nukes in Connecticut and New Jersey are still making millions in profits each year, without heaping billions more in subsidies onto ratepayers' utility bills.⁷

So the industry has started pushing for a national bailout.⁸ NIRS thought we should take a look at what that might cost. Later this month, we will publish a report showing that a federal nuclear subsidy based on the EPA's estimate of the social cost of carbon would be massively expensive: up to US$280 billion (€255bn) by 2030. Even if it were only applied to reactors that are already becoming unprofitable ‒ more than half of the nukes in the country, according to a recent report⁹ ‒ it would total at least US$160 billion.

Please sign the NIRS petition

NIRS is launching a petition to the next President urging the new administration to say no to a national nuclear bailout, and to end subsidies for nuclear and fossil fuels. We hope you'll sign the petition and help us get to our goal of 100,000 signatures. Whoever wins the election in November needs to know that another nuclear bailout isn't going to fly with the American people. To sign the petition please visit www.tinyurl.com/nirs-petition

References:

1. https://safeenergy.org/2014/10/14/why-nuclear-matters-doesnt-matter/

2. https://safeenergy.org/2016/03/17/the-nuclear-industrys-game-plan-2/

3. www.utilitydive.com/news/updated-ohio-regulators-scale-back-firstenergy-...

4. https://safeenergy.org/2016/08/02/new-york-just-proved-why-bailing-out-n...

5. www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016/10/national-advoca...

6. www.stopthecuomotax.org/

7. www.njspotlight.com/stories/16/08/04/new-jersey-unlikely-to-follow-new-y...

8. https://gain.inl.gov/SitePages/DOE%20Congressional%20Event.aspx

9. www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/business/energy-environment/how-renewable-ene...

US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz was recently called to testify before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Energy and Natural Resources, now chaired by Lamar Alexander (Republican ‒ Tennessee) and ranking minority member Diane Feinstein (Democrat ‒ California).¹ These two have participated in rare bi-partisanship on Capitol Hill in their effort to support their mutual friends: corporations that generate nuclear waste.

Alexander is even getting good at promoting nuclear energy as the prime solution to the climate crisis and labeling anyone opposed to moving the irradiated fuel rods from the reactor sites as "climate deniers." He has learned to speak of "signals" and that Congress and the Department of Energy (DOE) must signal that it will take the waste in order for corporations to decide to build more reactors, which he says are the only climate solution.

In answer to a series of questions from Feinstein, Moniz basically affirmed his DOE's charade: that it can, unilaterally, move ahead on creating "consent-based" consolidated storage sites (what we call a Parking Lot Dump) identical to the technology in use for dry storage at reactor sites ... but out in the middle of the "nowhere" of Texas, New Mexico and South Carolina.

These areas have inhabitants, who have not been asked at all if they "consent" to taking the nation's worst waste at sites that are designed for decades, at best, with no plan for how the waste will ever move again. It is the nuclear contractors who have "consented"! The people of the communities of Hobbs / New Mexico, Aiken / South Carolina, August / Georgia and Andrews County / Texas all have what Moniz does not: a future. Moniz and the entire Obama Administration gang will be exiting 1000 Independence Avenue by January 20, 2017.

So, not too much store should be given to the pronouncements in the hearing, nonetheless Moniz tipped his hand on a startling new theory: that the DOE can use its procurement authority to move ahead on contracting with private contractors to provide storage for commercial waste. While it may be true that the DOE has the ability to set up a contract, it remains unclear that it has the authority to take ownership of the waste and move it. One can congratulate Moniz on his slippery answers to the good Senator from California since he said DOE would need more work on "transportation of the waste" without sending the signal (per Alexander) in public that a change in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act is needed.

Given the coming Lame Duck Congress it is entirely possible that the DOE intends, as has happened repeatedly in the past, to sneak some small wording to make this change into another bill. US readers living in major urban transport are encouraged to call your congress members and warn them of this possibility ‒ and remind them that moving the waste would be a local Main Street issue.

"We all live in Nevada" was a cry of the 1990s; now we all live in the nuclear zones of Texas, New Mexico, South Carolina, or any other area at risk for consolidated storage, and also at all the closed reactor sites. We are one community. This is a value that we have built over the last four decades.

2017 is bringing other changes too: Harry Reid (Democrat ‒ Nevada) is retiring. Harry has been a one-man "Yucca Mountain-Protector" who, I think, has made Corbin Harney, the spiritual leader of the Western Shoshone Nation (who passed in 2007), proud. Reid has done more than any other person to stop Yucca Mountain. Yucca is a site that would fail the mission of waste isolation and thanks to Harry and many of us, and so many others, including Presidents Obama and Clinton, thankfully no waste there. Reid retires when Congress adjourns and we encourage you to send a thank-you card! Senator Harry Reid, 600 East William Street #304, Carson City, NV 89701 USA.

We as a community must keep these commitments! There is a lot of work ahead. In June the Nuclear Information and Resource Service convened a group of "planners" for a radwaste summit. This event is not outreach ‒ it is "in-reach" for activists who are committed (recently and long-term both) to finding ways to work together to prevent really bad waste plans. The event will be Dec. 2‒4 in Chicago. For more information, contact the author (maryo@nirs.org, ph. 828-252-8409).

1. Sept. 14 hearing of Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Natural Resources, video and posted written testimony: www.appropriations.senate.gov/hearings/hearing-titled-the-future-of-nucl...

An analysis by the Los Angeles Times finds that costs associated with the February 2014 explosion in the world's only deep underground repository for nuclear waste ‒ the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in the U.S. state of New Mexico ‒ could total US$2 billion (€1.8b).¹

The direct cost of the clean-up is now estimated at US$640 million (€573m), based on a contract modification made in July with contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership. The cost-plus contract leaves open the possibility of even higher costs as the clean-up continues and, as the LA Times notes, it does not include the complete replacement of the contaminated ventilation system (which failed after the February 2014 explosion) or any future costs of operating the repository longer than originally planned.

The lengthy closure following the explosion could result in operations extending for an additional seven years, at an additional cost of US$200 million (€180m) per year or US$1.4 billion (€1.25b) in total. Thus direct (clean-up) costs and indirect costs could exceed US$2 billion. And further costs are being incurred storing waste at other nuclear sites pending the re-opening of WIPP. Federal officials hope to resume limited operations at the WIPP repository by the end of this year, but full operations cannot resume until a new ventilation system is completed in about 2021.¹

The US$2 billion figure is similar to the costs associated with the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster. The clean-up of Three Mile Island was estimated to cost US$1 billion by 1993, or US$1.7 billion adjusted for inflation today.¹

Yet another cost for the federal government was a US$74 million (€66m) settlement paid to the state of New Mexico in January 2016.^2,3 The negotiated agreement relates to the 14 February 2014 explosion and a truck fire that took place nine days earlier. It sets out corrective actions that Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL ‒ the source of the waste drum that exploded) and WIPP must take to resolve permit violations.

The US$74 million settlement will be in lieu of fines imposed on the federal government by the state of New Mexico for the two incidents. The money will be used to improve roads in south-eastern New Mexico and around Los Alamos; to repair and improve water infrastructure in Los Alamos and improve regional water quality; to enhance training and capabilities of local emergency responders; to construct an offsite emergency operations center near WIPP; and to pay for independent, external triennial reviews of environmental regulatory compliance and operations at LANL and WIPP.^2,3

Government Accountability Office report

Given that the February 2014 fire and explosion exposed multiple levels of mismanagement and slack regulation, it was no surprise that the immediate response to the incidents was problematic. Everything that was supposed to happen, didn't ‒ and everything that wasn't supposed to happen, did.⁴

And in light of the systemic problems with management and regulation, it is no surprise that clean-up operations over the past 2.5 years have been problematic. An August 2016 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the federal Department of Energy (DOE) did not meet its initial cost and schedule estimates for restarting nuclear waste disposal operations at WIPP, resulting in a cost increase of about US$64 million (€57m) and a delay of nine months.⁵

Worse still, mismanagement of the clean-up has involved poor safety practices. The GAO report states:⁵

"In May 2015, a DOE assessment found that pressure to achieve the March 2016 deadline contributed to poor safety practices in WIPP recovery efforts.⁶ In July 2015, DOE announced that it experienced delays in implementing the project baseline, including delays related to procuring equipment and delays related to correcting deficiencies in safety practices. As a result of these delays, the department announced that it would revise the WIPP project management baseline with the goal of developing a more realistic schedule. ...

"Nonetheless, the department still faces challenges in completing the recovery. For example, in March 2016, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which oversees DOE's nuclear facilities such as WIPP, reported⁷ that DOE had made progress in revising its nuclear safety plans at WIPP but additional work remained to address safety concerns to prevent a recurrence of the February 2014 radiological accident."

Independent Office of Enterprise Assessments report

Last year, the DOE's Independent Office of Enterprise Assessments released a report that found that WIPP clean-up operations were being rushed to meet the scheduled reopening date and this pressure was contributing to poor safety practices.⁶

The report states: "The EA analysis considered operational events and reviews conducted during May 2014 through May 2015 and identified a significant negative trend in performance of work. During this period, strong and unrealistic schedule pressures on the workforce contributed to poor safety performance and incidents during that time are indicators of the potential for a future serious safety incident."

The report points to "serious issues in conduct of operations, job hazard analysis, and safety basis."

Specific problems identified in the report include:

• workers incorrectly changing filters resulting in five safety violations;
• waste oil left underground for an extended period despite a renewed emphasis on combustible load reduction;
• fire water lines inadequately protected against freezing;
• inadequate processes leading a small fire underground, followed by the failure of workers and their supervisor to report the fire;
• an operator improperly leaving a trainee to operate a waste hoist, the hoist being improperly used, tripping a safety relay and shutting down the hoist for hours;
• an engineer violating two safety postings to remove a waste hoist safety guard;
• workers removing a grating to an underground tank and not posting a barricade, causing a fall hazard;
• a backlog of hundreds of preventive maintenance items; and
• failing to properly track overtime such that "personnel may be working past the point of safety".

The Office of Enterprise Assessments' report concludes: "The issues discussed above could be leading indicators of a potentially serious incident in the future. Many more issues involving conduct of operations, maintenance, and inadequate controls also raise concerns about the possibility of a serious incident."

Earlier this year, clean-up work in two underground areas was suspended for one month due to poor air quality. Work was stopped on February 22 after equipment detected elevated levels of carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds.⁸

Radioactive contamination of the underground remains a problem, albeit the case that the size of the restricted area has been significantly reduced. "The facility was never designed to operate in a contaminated state," said Don Hancock from the Southwest Research and Information Center. "It was supposed to open clean and stay clean, but now it will have to operate dirty. Nobody at the Energy Department wants to consider the potential that it isn't fixable."¹

Los Alamos National Laboratory at fault as well

While a number of reports have exposed problems at WIPP, others have exposed serious problems at LANL. An April 2015 report by DOE's Accident Investigation Board (AIB) concluded that a culture of lax oversight and inadequate safety protocols and training at LANL led to the February 2014 explosion at WIPP.⁹

"If LANL had adequately developed and implemented repackaging and treatment procedures that incorporated suitable hazard controls and included a rigorous review and approval process, the [February 2014] release would have been preventable," the AIB report states.

"The ineffectiveness and weaknesses in the oversight activities were at all levels," said Ted Wyka, the DOE safety expert who led the investigation.¹⁰

The AIB report points to the failure of LANL to effectively review and control waste packaging, train contractors and identify weaknesses in waste handling. The board also found that LANL, contractor EnergySolutions and the National Nuclear Security Administration office at LANL failed to ensure that a strong safety culture existed at the lab.

The AIB found that workers did not feel comfortable raising safety issues and felt pressured to "get it done at all costs." LANL employees also raised concerns that workers were brought in with little or no experience and rushed through an inadequate training program. "As a result," the AIB report states, "there was a failure to adequately resolve employee concerns which could have identified the generation of non compliant waste prior to shipment" to WIPP.

The immediate cause of the 14 February 2014 explosion ‒ mixing nitrate wastes with an organic absorbent (kitty litter) ‒ was recognized as a potential problem in 2012, if not before. One worker told the AIB that when concerns were raised over the use of organic kitty litter as an absorbent, the employee was told to "focus on their area of expertise and not to worry about the other areas of the procedure."

Workers noticed foaming chemicals and orange smoke rising from containers of nuclear waste at LANL, but supervisors told them to "simply wait out the reaction and return to work once the foaming ceased and the smoke subsided," the AIB report states.

"Lessons were not learned," the report states.

No doubt some lessons have been learned as a result of the underground explosion at WIPP. But Greg Mello from the Los Alamos Study Group points to a problem that is likely to recur. LANL receives bonuses from the DOE for meeting goals such as removing nuclear waste by a certain deadline. That deadline pressure was very much in evidence at LANL in the lead-up to the WIPP accident and it will likely weaken safety practices in future. "You can't just say everyone has to try harder," Mello said. "Mixing profit, deadlines and dangerous radioactive waste is incompatible."¹¹

A February 2016 report from the DOE's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) was equally scathing of LANL.¹² "Overall, we found LANL's corrective action program did not always adequately address issues, did not effectively prevent their recurrence, and did not consistently identify systemic problems," the report said. OIG auditors reviewed 460 issues cited between January 2009 and February 2014, and found "significant weaknesses" in the lab's ability to analyze and document the root causes of problems ‒ some of them significant health and safety issues ‒ and find solutions.

LANL managers said they agreed with the OIG findings and were working to resolve problems. "The Laboratory is working closely with National Nuclear Safety Administration to address the findings of the audit report," LANL said in a statement.¹³

But the National Nuclear Safety Administration ‒ a semi-autonomous agency within the DOE ‒ is itself a big part of the problem of systemic mismanagement of nuclear sites.

National Nuclear Security Administration

A June 2015 Government Accountability Office report strongly criticized the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) oversight of contractors who manage the nation's nuclear weapons facilities.¹⁴ The report points to a litany of ongoing failures to properly oversee private contractors at eight nuclear sites, including those managing LANL. The report found that the NNSA lacked enough qualified staff members to oversee contractors, and it lacked guidelines for evaluating its contractors.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reported:¹⁵

"The GAO, which investigates federal agencies as requested by Congress, said the NNSA shortcomings stem from a 4-year-old experiment in reducing "overly prescriptive and burdensome" federal oversight of contractors by letting the private companies self-report their problems. NNSA staff told the GAO, however, that contractors aren't always as self-critical as they need to be in assessing their own performance.

"The so-called "contractor assurance system" isn't convincing the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee that the management of the nation's nuclear facilities is improving. Committee leaders from both major political parties pointed to a leaking container of radioactive waste from Los Alamos that shut down a nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad last year as one of the incidents that prove the NNSA and the Department of Energy have a long way to go in improving oversight of private contractors.

""For nearly two decades, this committee has uncovered management challenges facing the DOE complex involving contractor oversight. For the past five years, DOE has experimented with a new approach to contractor oversight that is not ready for prime time," committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and ranking member Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., said in a statement. "We saw the results of this experiment at the Y-12 security breach in Tennessee three years ago and more recently in oversight failures that led to a costly incident at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant site.""

Greg Mello from the Los Alamos Study Group was blunt in his criticism of the NNSA: "An agency that is more than 90 percent privatized, with barely enough federal employees to sign the checks and answer the phones, is never going to be able to properly oversee billion-dollar nuclear facilities of vast complexity and danger."¹⁵

References:

1. Ralph Vartabedian, 24 Aug 2016, 'Nuclear accident in New Mexico ranks among the costliest in U.S. history', www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-mexico-nuclear-dump-20160819-snap-story...

2. Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board, 29 Jan 2016, 'Editorial: WIPP deal puts feds on notice, cash in NM', www.abqjournal.com/714227/opinion/wipp-deal-puts-feds-on-notice-cash-in-...

3. WNN, 1 May 2015, 'Settlement agreed for WIPP incidents', www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Settlement-agreed-for-WIPP-incidents-01051...

4. 20 Nov 2014, 'WIPP waste accident a 'horrific comedy of errors'', Nuclear Monitor #794, www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/794/wipp-waste-accident-horrif...

5. Government Accountability Office, Aug 2016, 'Nuclear Waste: Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Recovery Demonstrates Cost and Schedule Requirements Needed for DOE Cleanup Operations', www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-608

6. Department of Energy, Independent Office of Enterprise Assessments, 2015, 'Office of Enterprise Assessments Operational Analysis of Safety Trends at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, May 2014 ‒ May 2015', www.wipp.energy.gov/Special/EA_memo_10152015.pdf

7. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, March 2016, 'Staff Issue Report: Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Documented Safety Analysis'.

8. 28 March 2016, 'Officials resume work at nuclear dump after safety pause', www.therepublic.com/2016/03/28/nm-nuke-repository-air-quality/

9. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, April 2015, 'Accident Investigation Report Phase 2: Radiological Release Event at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, February 14, 2014', http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/04/f21/WIPP%20Rad%20Event%20Repo...

10. Patrick Malone, 23 April 2015, 'WIPP investigator can't rule out more leaks', www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/wipp-investigator-can-t-rule-o...

11. Staci Matlock, 16 April 2015, 'Federal probe blames WIPP leak on LANL practices, bad chemical mix', www.santafenewmexican.com/special_reports/from_lanl_to_leak/federal-prob...

12. Department of Energy, Office of the Inspector General, Feb. 2016, 'Audit Report: Issues Management at the Los Alamos National Laboratory',

http://energy.gov/ig/downloads/audit-report-doe-oig-16-07

http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/03/f30/DOE-OIG-16-07.pdf

13. Staci Matlock, 1 March 2016, 'Federal audit finds more management problems at LANL', www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/federal-audit-finds-more-manag...

14. Government Accountability Office, June 2015, 'National Nuclear Security Administration: Actions Needed to Clarify Use of Contractor Assurance Systems for Oversight and Performance Evaluation', www.gao.gov/assets/680/670721.pdf

15. Staci Matlock, 10 June 2015, 'Report blasts oversight of nuke lab contractors', www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/report-blasts-oversight-of-nuk...

In March 2012, a panel was put together for a study by the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) to examine the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident. The study, entitled “Project on Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident for Improving Safety and Security of U.S. Nuclear Plants,” was recommended by the Blue Ribbon Commission, mandated by the United States Congress, and sponsored by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. As of December 2012, three meetings have been held to discuss and examine the causes of the Fukushima disaster, with a particular emphasis on safety systems and regulations.

The first meeting, held on July 18th and 19th 2012, introduced the provisional panel, which was challenged almost immediately given that many members of the panel had a pronounced pronuclear bias and would be unable to provide accurate assessments of the current safety culture. On July 17th, 2012, 15 national organizations including NIRS, 25 state organizations, and 47 individuals submitted a letter (1) to the NAS expressing these concerns. One reason these concerns were so pressing was due to a report filed issued by the Japanese Diet in Mid-July 2012 on the Fukushima accident. (2) 
Within this report from the Japanese Diet much of the blame for the accident was placed on a “collusive relationship” between the industry and regulators. This relationship ultimately led to a betrayal of the public’s right to be safe. The NAS panel selection appeared to be replicating the same disastrous Japanese pattern of collusion. 

The letter added that a major problem with the panel’s conflict and bias would be revealed when they would be unable to provide an accurate self-assessment of agency conduct and actions. Involved in this assessment would be the key players in the nuclear industry. Those players are the federal agencies, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy; the industry and other advocacy groups such as Institute on Nuclear Power Operations, Nuclear Energy Institute, the American Nuclear Society, and the Health Physics Society. In the U.S., as in Japan, there is a very symbiotic relationship between federal agencies and nuclear industry advocacy groups. Several members of the panel were directly involved with or associated with the entities mentioned above, causing the concerns about self-assessment, bias and conflict. The groups writing the letter were also concerned that the panel was completely devoid of nuclear critics, which would lead to an unbalanced view on safety issues and concerns. 
This meeting, as with the others that followed, provided very little in the way of ensuring that bias and conflict would not be an issue. This panel is yet another example that the nuclear industry has a powerful and dangerous stranglehold on the National Academy of Sciences, and can impede crucial safety improvements by packing a panel with pro-nuclear enthusiasts, rather than with individuals and scientists who can make changes for public good and protection. 

Sources: 
(1) http://www.nirs.org/fukushima/nasfu-kushimaltr%207-18-12.pdf
(2) http://www.nirs.org/fukushima/naiic_report.pdf

A new sacrifice area in West Texas on the New Mexico border opened up to commercial nuclear waste on 27 April 2012. It is the first “full service” dump in US since the 1980 Low Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act passed seeking new sites, and the first since the Barnwell, South Carolina dump opened in 1971. After decades of searching, cajoling, maneuvering, and a billion dollars or more spent in 18 or more states, the nuclear industry has managed to find a new hole in the ground to bury its waste.  Waste Control Specialists (WCS) joins the original 6 “low-level” waste dumps in the US that opened in the 1960s and 70s and the Utah EnergySolutions site.

Four of these sites are closed. The EnergySolutions (formerly Envirocare) dump in Utah, started taking abandoned radioactive waste in 1988 and kept expanding to take more kinds of nuclear and hazardous waste. But the Utah legislature has never let it accept the more concentrated Classes B and C “low-level” radioactive waste (some of which can give a lethal dose if exposed without shielding). WCS can take Classes A, B and C, commercial and weapons waste, mixed radioactive and hazardous, and hopes to expand to take even more.

Waste Control Specialists (WCS) is a subsidiary of Valhi, owned by multibil-lionaire Harold Simmons, one of the 50 wealthiest people in the U.S. and a major political donor in Texas and nationally. Simmons, who was a key funder of the “swiftboat” ads against former Presidential candidate John Kerry, and gave millions to Mitt Romney Super PACs, has used his influence from the start--first getting the state to change the law to allow a private company to own and run a nuclear waste site, then in getting a state license even though the full technical review team unanimously rejected it for not protecting the water. Three members of that team quit in disgust when the license was granted by the political appointees that head the agency. It was granted with over 90 “conditions” that it had not met.

Interestingly, while the application was under review by one state agency, the Texas Water Development Board chan-ged the location of the Ogallala Aquifer, moving the mapped boundary from the WCS site to miles away, at least partly based on information provided by WCS geologists. WCS sued a critic who charged the site threatens the aquifer and he has since become silent on the issue. The Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world’s largest fresh water aquifers, extends from Texas and New Mexico through the farm belt of the U.S. up to the Dakotas. Local residents who ques-tioned or challenged WCS have been harassed.

The Lone Star Sierra Club is still fighting for a hearing on the licensing. The court ruled that a contested case hearing should be held but the state and WCS have appealed. Waste is being buried even though the appeal is pending. Ironically the first waste to be buried was from a company outside the Texas-Vermont Compact. The dump had been touted to be exclusively for waste from the two Compact states only and its licensed capacity is less than the amount needed by generators in those two states. Regardless, the Texas and Vermont governors’-appointed Compact Commission approved taking 
“out-of-compact” waste, at the behest of WCS. 

Prior to this, intensely radioactive nuclear weapons waste from the Depart-ment of Energy (DOE)’s Fernald site (K-65 ore from the Belgian Congo) was buried there under a different license. Under the Texas law passed specifically to enable this private dump, commercial compact waste had to begin being disposed before more DOE weapons waste can be buried. 

This translates into billions of dollars in contracts from weapons sites across the country in addition to the commercial waste from TX, VT and generators from all the other states which the compact commission is approving with a rubber stamp. Simmons and WCS will make big bucks. Andrews Country gets 5%. The nuclear industry has the illusion of a solution to its waste problem. The water, air, environment and the species that depend on them pay the price.

In October 2012, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission directed the National Academy of Sciences to implement the first large-scale study of health impacts in U.S. communities near nuclear facilities since 1980.

Communities near selected nuclear facilities licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (six reactors and one nuclear fuel factory) have been designated as part of a pilot study of cancer: San Onofre, in CA; Mill-stone and Haddam Neck in CT; Dresden in IL; Oyster Creek in NJ; Big Rock Point in MI and Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin, TN. Big Rock Point and Haddam Neck are both permanently closed.

This study is billed as an "update" of a 1990 National Cancer Institute effort to look at cancer deaths reported in the U.S. counties where nuclear reactors are located. This work was deeply flawed in its design and construction, was conducted twenty years earlier in the period of release of radioactivity from the reactors and did not include any local data, only published information that was very incomplete. In a refreshing break from business-as-usual, several years ago Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and numerous concerned citizens (many of whom have suffered health consequences while living near reactors) managed to jettison NRC's original plan in which it would have conducted this study itself--the basic equivalent of a primary school child filling in their own reportcard. It is NRC's regulations (enforced or not) and NRC's licensing of these facilities that create the question of whether atomic fission and routine and non-routine releases of radioactivity have increased cancer in these communities. 

While many U.S. activists groaned when Rep. Markey suggested the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to conduct the study, the NRC accepted  the idea, since it would still allow a supervisory role for the Commission. Those who rejected the idea of the Academy cite its typical bias toward industry; they advocated for NRC to make a grant to an institution like the National Institute for Environmental Health where it would be administered with complete independence to fund proposals from qualified researchers competing in an open forum with peer review.

Nonetheless, many observers and citizen advocates who have been personally impacted are heartened by aspects of the recommendations that the NAS made in what is known as "Phase 1" of the cancer study. Of particular note is that two different studies will be performed in each pilot community and one of these will be "case-controlled" and focus specifically on pediatric cancer. 

"This is a break-through moment for the NAS and NRC" said Mary Olson, Director of the Southeast Office of Nuclear Information and Resource Service, "Case-control is what distinguishes a detailed study from broad correlations or associations based on published data, like health department tallies, which provide no real basis to assert causality; case-control means that details about each individual are gathered, providing  a finer grain or higher resolution in the data. If there are health impacts in these communities, and the study is done well, this type of study can deliver a statistically significant causation. The choice to focus the case-control work on children is also stunning since children are far more susceptible to radiation exposure than adults. The pitfall always comes when the numbers studied are too small."

Strange Bedfellows Sometimes Agree
The potential for this work to deliver non-information remains great, and this view is shared by both the nuclear industry's advocacy arm, Nuclear Energy Institute, and one of the very few active epidemiologists to look at nuclear communities in the U.S., Dr. Steve Wing. In 2010 the NEI Blog stated: "Studies of...occupationally and environmentally exposed populations...are useful in ad-dressing allegations of adverse health effects in the population and in demonstrating a concern for the health of the exposed people. However, unless they are sufficiently powerful, they do not add to the scientific knowledge of low dose effects."

From his very different perspective, Steve Wing has contributed to this issue a side bar "Perils and Promises of Studying Health Impacts of Low-Level Radiation" (see page 12) which expresses much the same view.

People are prone to drawing comparisons between radiation and tobacco. If there had been a twenty year lapse in studies of the impact of tobacco AFTER it was already publicly known that tobacco is damaging to health, how would people have reported on that? We cannot with any sense of conscience oppose any study of this issue- but we certainly expect vigilance on the part of this community to ensure that if it is shown to be poorly conducted, or worse-yet, designed to fail, it becomes an inexcusable tarnish on all associated with it.

A step that NAS could and should take to ensure that a real peer review of its work is possible would be to publish both the details of the study protocols, and also the raw data used in their work. Today web publication makes this an easily viable option. Only this level of disclosure will allow a real assessment of the integrity and value of the study. 

The view from the nuclear study sites:
The Nuclear Monitor reached out to people in the impacted communities, and the overwhelming response was essentially "it is too soon to know what to think of this." There is a guarded optimism and hope summed up by Gene Stone of ROSE (Residents Organized for a Safe Environment) near San Onofre on the Pacific coast between Los Angeles and San Diego California: "We worked really hard to bring our health concerns forward and to get the attention that has led to this study -and are also very concerned that it be done right. We want to see independent over-sight of the NAS team- so that every single procedure and decision down to the finest points is subject to peer review. We are really excited about this study, if it is done credibly." 

This view was echoed by people near Dresden (IL), Nuclear Fuel Services (TN) and Big Rock Point (MI) and Oyster Creek (NJ). 

Let us hope that the NAS has the honor and the decency to work for these communities, rather than the source of the money for the study: the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission which licenses each and every one of these sites...and dozens more in the U.S.

"CAN believes that the study 
of communities leaving in the contamination pathway of nuclear reactors is vital. However we are concerned that any finding will be used to justify the continued operation of this generation of nukes. Studies have already occur-red in Germany as well as in this country that have demonstrated an increase in cancer and other diseases. It could be more pro-ductive to study the similarities in the diseases found in communities living in proximity to nukes such as cancer, birth defects, miscarri-age, Down syndrome and learning disabilities." 

--Deb Katz, executive director Citizens Awareness Network.

Thumbnail Portraits of the Facilities
San Onofre, Southern California Edison. Originally three PWR reactor units, Unit 1 opened in 1967 about 15 years ahead of the other two, and in 1992 was closed permanently. Units 2 and 3 are currently down due to dramatically quick failure of replacement steam generators due to a design flaw that led to vibrations that cause systematic thinning of the tube walls which leads to increased chance of rupture and catastrophic radiation release. San Onofre is located in a densely populated area -- 8.4 million people live inside a 50 mile radius of the site, and a 100 mile radius includes 18 million people. More info on the steam generator problems of San Onofre can be found at http://fairewinds.com

Dresden, Exelon Corp. Like San Onofre, Dresden was three reactor units, and Unit 1, one of the first in the U.S.A (1959) is now closed. All three units are BWRs (the two remaining are GE Mark I’s) that came on-line in the early 1970's. Located in Morris IL, the Dresden site has a population of 67,000 within a 10 mile radius and is 60 miles from "The Loop" of downtown Chicago. Dresden, like many of the selected sites has a history of contaminated ground water, likely from failure of underground pipes on the reactor site.

Big Rock Point, a GE BWR reactor owned by Consumers Energy (formerly Consumers Power) is another old, small reactor (75 MWe) that came on-line in 1964 and closed in 1997. Big Rock was experimental, and it was also used to test experimental nuclear fuels, many of which ruptured during use resulting in astronomically high radiation releases to air, water and solid waste. There is circumstantial evidence that open incine-ration took place on the site, including of "low-level" radioactive waste, which in addition to spills, leaks, and floods have made this section of Lake Michi-gan shore line (the "fourth finger" is the peninsula on which the site is located, west of Traverse City in Charlevoix) a very contaminated place. 

Haddam Neck (Connecticut Yankee) operated from 1976 to 1994 and was a single unit 582 MW PWR. It was operated by Yankee Atomic and closed for economic reasons stemming in part from safety concerns. The site has groundwater contamination and Haddam/Meriden CT is an area with diffuse but significant population. 

Millstone.  Another site that has three reactor units, the oldest shut and two remaining in operation. Millstone, owned by Dominion Generation, is on the Long Island Sound in Connecticut. Unit 1 is a BWR (GE) that operated from 1970--1998, Units 2 and 3 are PWRs. Both are plagued by leaks, many repairs, a lax safety culture and near-misses. Inside the 10 mile radius there are 140,000 people.

Oyster Creek, owned by Illinois-based Exelon Corporation, is a Fukushima –clone (GE Mark 1 BWR) sitting for the past 43 years on a New Jersey bay where the 6.5 foot surge of SuperStorm Sandy exceeded the level of the cooling water intake pumps. As luck would have it the reactor was down for refueling, however another 6 inches would have forced a Fukushima-style use of a firehose to keep the fuel pool coolant full and moving. This dinosaur is plagued with many safety issues inspiring a constant shut-down battle from local folks for the past 20 years. Instead, NRC approved a license extension which has been renegotiated to 2019; 140,000 people live within 10 miles.

Nuclear Fuel Services, Erwin, TN. Unlike the others, NFS is a fuel factory- -compounded in the last decade by the addition of a "low-level" radioactive waste heat treatment facility that cooks the hottest of this type of waste: filters and resins from the primary coolant loop of reactors. This site is tucked into a "holler" off a valley in the Appalachian Mountains where "company town" is an understatement. NFS has only recently returned to making commercial reactor fuel, having primarily supplied plutonium fuel for the propulsion reactors of the U.S. Nuclear Navy. The intimacy of the position of this industrial site with the small town it is planted in is, one hopes, rare. Backyards and jungle gyms abut the site, the local elementary school is a block away, and the river into which some wastes have been "straight piped" for decades has tested positive for highly enriched uranium and plutonium as far as 90 miles downstream.

Since the 1950s, U.S. nuclear power has commanded immense taxpayer and customer subsidy based on promises of economic and environmental benefits. Many of these promises are unfulfilled, but new ones take their place. More subsidies follow. Today the nuclear industry claims that keeping all operating reactors running for many years, no matter how uneconomic they become, is essential in order to reach U.S. climate change targets.

Economics have always challenged U.S. reactors. After more than 100 construction cancellations and cost overruns costing up to US$5 billion apiece, Forbes Magazine in 1985 called nuclear power "the greatest managerial disaster in business history ... only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money [$265 billion by 1990] has been well spent."¹ U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chair Lewis Strauss' 1954 promise that electric power would be "too cheap to meter"² is today used to mock nuclear economics, not commend them.

As late as 1972 the AEC forecast that the United States would have 1,000 power reactors by the year 2000. Today we have 100 operating power reactors, down from a peak of 112 in 1990.³ Since 2012 U.S. power plant owners have retired five units and announced plans to close nine more. Four new reactors are likely to come on line. Without strenuous government intervention, almost all of the rest will close by mid-century.⁴ Because these recent closures have been abrupt and unplanned, the replacement power has come in substantial part from natural gas, causing a dismaying uptick in greenhouse gas emissions.

The nuclear industry, led by the forlornly named lobbying group Nuclear Matters⁵, still obtains large subsidies for new reactor designs that cannot possibly compete at today's prices. But its main function now is to save operating reactors from closure brought on by their own rising costs, by the absence of a U.S. policy on greenhouse gas emissions and by competition from less expensive natural gas, carbon-free renewables and more efficient energy use.

Only billions more dollars in subsidies and the retarding of rapid deployment of cheaper technologies can save these reactors. Only fresh claims of unique social benefit can justify such steps.

When I served on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from 1977 through 1982, the NRC issued more licenses than in any comparable period since. Arguments that the U.S. couldn't avoid dependence on Middle Eastern oil and keep the lights on without a vast increase in nuclear power were standard fare then and throughout my 20 years chairing the New York and Maine utility regulatory commissions. In fact, we attained these goals without the additional reactors, a lesson to remember in the face of claims that all of today's nuclear plants are needed to ward off climate change.

Nuclear power in competitive electricity markets

During nuclear power's growth years in the 1960s and 1970s, almost all electric utility rate regulation was based on recovering the money necessary to build and run power plants and the accompanying infrastructure. But in the 1990s many states broke up the electric utility monopoly model.⁶

Now a majority of U.S. power generation is sold in competitive markets. Companies profit by producing the cheapest electricity or providing services that avoid the need for electricity.

To justify their current subsidy demands, nuclear advocates assert three propositions. First, they contend that power markets undervalue nuclear plants because they do not compensate reactors for avoiding carbon emissions, or for other attributes such as diversifying the fuel supply or running more than 90 percent of the time.⁷

Second, they assert that other low-carbon sources cannot fill the gap because the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine.⁸ So power grids will use fossil-fired generators for more hours if nuclear plants close.

Finally, nuclear power supporters argue that these intermittent sources receive substantial subsidies while nuclear energy does not, thereby enabling renewables to underbid nuclear even if their costs are higher.⁹

Nuclear power producers want government-mandated long-term contracts or other mechanisms that require customers to buy power from their troubled units at prices far higher than they would pay otherwise.

Providing such open-ended support will negate several major energy trends that currently benefit customers and the environment. First, power markets have been working reliably and effectively. A large variety of cheaper, more efficient technologies for producing and saving energy, as well as managing the grid more cheaply and cleanly, have been developed. Energy storage, which can enhance the round-the-clock capability of some renewables is progressing faster¹⁰ than had been expected¹¹, and is now being bid into several power markets – notably the market serving Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland.

Long-term subsidies for uneconomic nuclear plants also will crowd out penetration of these markets by energy efficiency and renewables. This is the path New York state has taken by committing at least US$7.6 billion in above-market payments to three of its six plants to assure that they operate through 2029.¹²

Nuclear power vs. other carbon-free fuels

While power markets do indeed undervalue low-carbon fuels, all of the other premises underlying the nuclear industry approach are flawed. In California¹³ and in Nebraska, utilities plan to replace nuclear plants that are closing early for economic reasons almost entirely with electricity from carbon-free sources.¹⁴ Such transitions are achievable in most systems as long as the shutdowns are planned in advance to be carbon-free.

In California these replacement resources, which include renewables, storage, transmission enhancements and energy efficiency measures, will for the most part be procured through competitive processes. Indeed, any state where a utility threatens to close a plant can run an auction to ascertain whether there are sufficient low-carbon resources available to replace the unit within a particular time frame. Only then will regulators know whether, how much and for how long they should support the nuclear units.

If New York had taken this approach, each of the struggling nuclear units could have bid to provide power in such an auction. They might well have succeeded for the immediate future, but some or all would probably not have won after that.

Closing the noncompetitive plants would be a clear benefit to the New York economy. This is why a large coalition of big customers, alternative energy providers and environmental groups opposed the long-term subsidy plan.¹⁵

The industry's final argument – that renewables are subsidized and nuclear is not – ignores overwhelming history. All carbon-free energy sources together have not received remotely as much government support as has flowed to nuclear power.¹⁶

Nuclear energy's essential components – reactors and enriched uranium fuel – were developed at taxpayer expense. Private utilities were paid to build nuclear reactors in the 1950s and early ‘60's, and received subsidized fuel. According to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, total subsidies paid and offered to nuclear plants between 1960 and 2024 generally exceed the value of the power that they produced.¹⁷

The U.S. government has also pledged to dispose of nuclear power's most hazardous wastes – a promise that has never been made to any other industry.¹⁸ By 2020 taxpayers will have paid some US$21 billion to store those wastes at power plant sites.¹⁹

Furthermore, under the 1957 Price-Anderson Act²⁰, each plant owner's accident liability is limited to some US$300 million per year, even though the Fukushima disaster showed that nuclear accident costs can exceed US$100 billion. If private companies that own U.S. nuclear power plants had been responsible for accident liability, they would not have built reactors.²¹ The same is almost certainly true of responsibility for spent fuel disposal.

Finally, as part of the transition to competition in the 1990s, state governments were persuaded to make customers pay off some US$70 billion in excessive nuclear costs.²² Today the same nuclear power providers are asking to be rescued from the same market forces for a second time.

Christopher Crane²³, the president and CEO of Exelon, which owns the nation's largest nuclear fleet, preaches temperance from a bar stool when he disparages renewable energy subsidies by asserting, "I've talked for years about the unintended consequences of policies that incentivize technologies versus outcomes."²⁴ However, he's right about unintended and unfortunate consequences. We should not rely further on the unfulfilled prophesies that nuclear lobbyists have deployed so expensively for so long. It's time to take Crane at his word by using our power markets, adjusted to price greenhouse gas emissions, to prioritize our low carbon outcome over his technology.

Reprinted from The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/compete-or-suckle-should-troubled-nuclear-re...

References:

1. http://cookslogblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/nuclear-follies.html

2. https://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2016/06/03/too-cheap-to-meter-a-hist...

3. www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec9_3.pdf

4. http://thebulletin.org/2013/march/how-close-us-nuclear-industry-do-nothing

5. www.nuclearmatters.com/

6. www.eia.gov/electricity/policies/restructuring/restructure_elect.html

7. www.nei.org/CorporateSite/media/filefolder/Backgrounders/Policy-Briefs/E...

8. www.nei.org/Master-Document-Folder/Backgrounders/Fact-Sheets/The-Value-o...

9. www.fortnightly.com/fortnightly/2016/05/how-environmental-movement-chang...

10. www.worldenergy.org/publications/2016/e-storage-shifting-from-cost-to-va...

11. www.utilitydive.com/news/blackouts-looming-california-speeds-battery-dep...

12. www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/nyregion/new-york-state-aiding-nuclear-plants...

13. https://theconversation.com/as-nuclear-power-plants-close-states-need-to...

14. www.oppdlistens.com/files/9014/6307/5823/May_Board_Presentation-final_SE...

15. www.oppdlistens.com/files/9014/6307/5823/May_Board_Presentation-final_SE...

16. http://i.bnet.com/blogs/dbl_energy_subsidies_paper.pdf

17. www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nuclear_power...

18. www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-nuclear-waste-policy-act

19. www.gao.gov/assets/600/593745.pdf

20. www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/nuclear-insurance.pdf

21. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/438/59.html

22. www.aier.org/sites/default/files/Files/Documents/Research/3784/EEB199706...

23. www.exeloncorp.com/leadership-and-governance/executives/christopher-m-crane

24. www.powermag.com/exelon-americas-leading-nuclear-generator-keeps-the-fai...

Too cheap to meter, or too expensive to matter?

Bloomberg reported on August 9:

"U.S. electricity consumers could end up paying more than US$2.5 billion for nuclear plants that never get built. Money collected from ratepayers so far has gone for items including federal licensing, permitting, land purchases, financing and equipment. Utilities including Duke Energy Corp., Dominion Resources Inc. and NextEra Energy Inc. are being allowed by regulators to charge US$1.7 billion for reactors that exist only on paper, according to company disclosures and regulatory filings. Duke and Dominion could seek approval to have ratepayers pony up at least another US$839 million, the filings show. ...

"Critics of policies that allow utilities to bill for planned reactors say they're likely unneeded, and the practice shifts upfront financial risks from shareholders to customers. "The rich get richer and the ratepayers get poorer," said Mark Cooper, a research fellow at Vermont Law School ...

"At least seven states including Florida allow utilities to collect nuclear licensing and planning costs from customers before any construction begins. In Virginia and Florida, utilities are seeing increased scrutiny of their plans. The Virginia attorney general has raised concerns about the rising expense of Dominion's proposed new reactor at its North Anna facility, estimating the total cost at US$19 billion. ...

"In February, a federal lawsuit was filed on behalf of consumers that seeks to overturn the Florida statute and recover fees charged by Duke and NextEra for nuclear power plants that might not be completed. The suit alleges the companies overcharged customers for projects including Duke's proposal for two reactors in Levy County and NextEra's plan for two units at Turkey Point. ...

"Customers can get stuck with the bill long before a single kilowatt of power is produced and may never recoup anything if the nuclear project is later abandoned," said Jeremiah Lambert, an energy attorney and author of The Power Brokers, a history of the electric power industry."

Mark Chediak, 9 Aug 2016, 'Customers Could Pay $2.5 Billion for Nuclear Plants That Never Get Built', www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-08/customers-could-pay-2-5-billi...

Members of the public and scientists have been concerned about environmental contamination from nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation for a long time.  The National Academy of Sciences is currently working on a request from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to design an epidemiologic study of cancer around nuclear facilities in the USA.

People living near nuclear facilities may see an epidemiologic study as a way to shed light on their health concerns. An epidemiologic study could do that. However, if epidemiologic studies are not well-designed, they can be used to dismiss the public’s concerns and avoid implementation of public health protections.

There are many perils of epidemiologic studies, especially ones focused on low-level exposures. It’s easier to detect the effect of larger exposures, for example of nuclear workers, than the effects of smaller exposures, for example of people living near nuclear facilities. Furthermore, radiation exposures of most nuclear workers are monitored, whereas exposures of residents are not. This presents a big challenge, because an epidemiologic study that cannot sort people correctly into exposed and unexposed groups cannot detect an effect of exposure.

Several epidemiologic studies in Europe have found excess childhood leukemia among children living near nuclear power plants. These studies compared children living close to nuclear plants – within 5 km (3 miles) – to children living further away. No similar studies have been conducted in the USA, in part because we don’t have a national medical program that counts cancer cases, and in part because most of our health data are only reported for large geographic areas like counties.

The National Academy of Sciences study could be designed to improve on the European studies. However, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has asked for a study that includes adults, who are less sensitive to radiation exposure than children. Furthermore, adult cancers may appear decades after exposure, increasing the opportunity for people to move between exposed and unexposed areas. Studies of adults, of large areas like counties, and of cancer death instead of cancer diagnosis, would not advance scientific knowledge about health effects of living near nuclear facilities, but such a study could become grounds for dismissing concerns about radiation releases. Another problem is that epidemiologic studies may be conducted under the assumption that radiation exposure is too low to affect cancer. Then, if an excess is found among people living near nuclear facilities, scientists must attribute it to some other unknown cause. This circular logic – evidence of the effect is dismissed because it is already believed there can be no effect – is unscientific but is dressed in the trappings of science to make it appear reasonable.

Members of the public concerned about radiation exposures from nuclear facilities should critically consider any proposed study to decide whether to give it their trust and support.
– Steve Wing, University of North Carolina

For further reading: Wing S, Richardson DB, Hoffmann W. Cancer risks near nuclear facilities: The importance of research design and explicit study hypotheses.Environmental Health Perspectives, 119:417-21, 2011.

The nuclear establishment clearly has no real appreciation of the dangers of ionizing radiation, yet it is once again planning to disperse radioactive metal into commercial metal recycling to make items with which we and our children come into close, daily contact--be it Christmas toys, zippers on our pants, belt buckles, silverware, pots and pans, jewelry, cars---or maybe doggie bowls, tissue holders and bicycle baskets.

The last three items were recently found to be so radioactive they had to be tracked down and recalled. This has happened in past years as well—a cheese grater (after years of use in a home kitchen), fences, La-Z-Boy recliner chairs and table legs were found to be radioactive. One Christmas in the UK a kids’ Santa-land was found to be radioactive. Whether from deliberate release of nuclear metal into recycling or accidental melting of radioactive material into the mix, the goal needs to be prevention. But government agencies around the world are moving in the other direction.

The US Department of Energy (DOE)’s mission is to promote nuclear technology. With over a dozen weapons complex sites to manage, DOE and its sister agency National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) handle enormous amounts radioactive materials and wastes constantly. Their clean-up plans appear much cheaper if they can sell radioactive metal into recycling instead of pay for trying to isolate it from the environment for the decades to millennia it will remain radioactive. 

In 2000, public attention was focused on several nuclear industry and regulatory to make it legal to let nuclear waste out of control and into everyday commercial recycling. Public opposition was loud and clear in the U.S. and resulted in a victory for the public, but to DOE and NNSA it was apparently just a long set-back on the unrelenting desire to not take proper care of nuclear waste. Then-Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson blocked the release of thousands of tons of volumetrically radioactive contaminated metal into everyday ecycling. It was a further success for the public and metal industry when he suspended the release of all scrap metal from radioactive areas of the US nuclear weapons complex from going into commercial recycling.

The DOE moratorium and suspension on release of radioactive metal into recycling for the past 13 years has prevented exposure to transport workers, metal workers, the public and the environment that cannot be quantified. But NNSA and DOE, tired of managing the waste and not wanting to pay the costs of disposal, are now moving to do away with the bans and resume dispersing radioactive metal into our lives.

The agencies expect to release an Environmental Assessment (EA 1919) for public comment before the end of 2012. It is expected to try to provide the authority to the DOE to approve the release of radioactive scrap metal into commercial recycling using either site specific or preapproved “authorized” limits, as if DOE and NNSA have the moral authority to contaminate the metal supply for the sake of costs. When the Secretary Richardson suspended recycling of scrap metal, he cited poor record keeping, unverifiable detection procedures, incomplete historical knowledge and inadequate or nonexistent documentation. Research carried out by NIRS in 2003 to 2007 confirmed these problems. Some are inherent and cannot be solved.

The fact that radiation is more harmful to women cannot be remedied by any amount of record keeping. The fact that kids are even more at risk makes this the radiation fight of our lives.

The Metal Industries Recycling Coalition, comprised of most metal industries’ trade associations (except aluminum), has opposed the release of radioactive metal into the recycling stream due to public concerns, worker concerns and enormous costs to decontaminate their facilities. They have worked hard to recycle as much as possible and persuade the public of the positive value of recycling, so don’t want to mix in any radioactive waste. Will DOE be able to convince them and the public that the metal from contamination areas is actually clean? Are we back to the conflict of interest inherent in the owners/managers of the waste being trusted to detect and isolate or release some detectable level of radioactivity? Will they choose some allowable contamination level or set the detectors so nothing detectable can get out. Neither is full prevention when there is no safe level of exposure.

The nuclear interests in the European Union demanded that all member states adopt, by 2004, “clearance” levels from the 1996 European Commission Directive 96/29/Euratom. The industry selected 10 microSieverts (or 1 millirem)/year as a clearance level but allowed an unlimited number of waste streams or truckloads--each of which could be released, making these unenforceable and unverifiable exposures.

In the U.S., efforts by the DOE, NRC and EPA were repeatedly stopped so, at the advice of the National Academy of Sciences, these efforts were moved to decentralized deregulation of wastes. Thus Tennessee became a major center taking nuclear waste for processing.” Without public knowledge, increasing amounts of nuclear waste have been going to regular trash landfills, some already leaking. Numerous radioactive incinerators operate in the state. Another has started in Washington near Hanford and there is one for medical research waste in Florida. In 2012, another processor opened shop on Lake Erie in Ohio, NewGreen. The owner is inviting the Bruce Steam generators to Ohio for processing. It is not clear whether New Green can send metal to commercial recycling, but it is also unclear how to prove they and the Tennessee processors are not doing so.

Following a series of setbacks due to public opposition, and under the guise of “harmonization,” U.S. agencies joined forces with the International Atomic Energy Agency and other international industry groups to use their industry recommendations as justification for weakening U.S. standards. The NRC sought the authority of the National Academy of Sciences, hiring them to study how to let the waste out of regulatory control. 

In 1988 without public knowledge, DOE adopted Internal Order 5400.5 and referred to Order 5820.2A which directed that some radioactivity could be considered “Below Regulatory Concern” (BRC), consistent with the BRC policy of the NRC. But Congress revoked NRC’s BRC policies in 1992 because of public, state and other industry opposition. DOE continued to use Chapters 2 and 4 of 5400.5 to release radioactively contaminated materials and property other than metal from DOE controls at higher levels than NRC had attempted (some at up to 100 millirems/year, or 1 milliSievert/year) if there were no other sources of exposure and in some cases for limited number of years, 500 millirems/year or 5 mSv/year. In 2011 DOE replaced 5400.5 with DOE Order 458.1 clarifying allowable releases. The new DOE Order is allegedly the justification for overturning the DOE bans. 

A Sample Resolution is available against radioactive transport and melting into commercial metal. It started as an effort to stop steam generators from the Bruce Nuclear Power reactors in Canada being shipped through the Great Lakes, St Lawrence Seaway, Atlantic Ocean, and treacherous passages to the Baltic Sea for alleged cleaning and melting into metal for the everyday metal supply. Hundreds of organizations, individuals and many local governments came out against releasing nuclear waste into regular trash and recycling. It is time to reactivate and expand the knowledge about this unacceptable threat.

Source: Out of Control — On Purpose http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/outofcontrol/outofcontrolreport.pdf pp, 23-27.)