Japanese Disaster Spawns Nuclear Safety Reviews Worldwide

While many feared radiation from a stricken Japanese nuclear facility would drift across the Pacific and settle on the United States, fallout of a different kind certainly has—deep concern about the safety of nuclear reactors.

The belated brouhaha follows a series of disasters at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, which lost power and experienced what’s thought to be a partial meltdown of two reactor cores after the country was struck by a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11.

In the days that followed the catastrophe, conflicting reports about the causes of explosions, the amount of radiation released, and the prospects of ending the threats helped fuel confusion and shine a spotlight on the issue of nuclear safety and preparedness. Americans and others worldwide began asking that age-old question, “Can it happen here?”

“Our nuclear power plants have undergone exhaustive study and have been declared safe for any number of extreme contingencies,” President Barak Obama said in a press conference last week. “But when we see a crisis like the one in Japan, we have a responsibility to learn from this event and to draw from those lessons to ensure the safety and security of our people.”

That will be happening on a number of fronts, including a presidentially mandated review of U.S. nuclear plants to be conducted by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The commission will consider lessons learned from the Japanese event before issuing a short-term report on U.S. facilities within 90 days, according to a statement. A full report will follow after that.

“This work will help determine if any additional NRC responses, such as orders requiring immediate action by U.S. plants, are called for, prior to completing an in-depth investigation of the information from events in Japan,” stated Bill Borchardt, NRC Executive Director for Operations.

The NRC won’t be alone in scrutinizing the safety of nuclear plants during disasters and normal operations. In fact, reviews are all the rage, ranging from California and Florida assessing nuclear safety response plans to examinations being undertaken by the European Union and the UN International Atomic Energy Agency. Industry leaders are also committed to learning from the circumstances that plague Daiichi, according to Anthony Pietrangelo, vice-president of a lobbying group called the Nuclear Energy Institute.

“We will learn from them,” he told the Associated Press, “we will get that operating experience, we will apply it and try to make our units even safer than they are today.”

Despite the forward-looking sentiment of almost every nation with a nuke, it’s easy to imagine how all this reviewing might be for naught. After all, Japan just wrapped up an extensive review of nuclear power plants in 2009, including a 14-month study of potential earthquake impacts on the Daiichi plant, according to the Washington Post.

In that review, the danger of a tsunami—the event that actually caused the Daiichi nuclear emergency by wiping out the backup generators sustaining the plant’s cooling system—was only voiced by one scientist and dismissed as an unlikely threat, according to the Post. The plant’s hazard mitigation measures, which included retaining walls that could withstand waves of up to 20 feet, were considered adequate.

The Post article points out that the disaster “highlights the government’s miscalculation in prioritizing one natural disaster over another,” as well as the laxity that stems from chummy relationships with the industry they monitor.

That issue has been seen in the United States as well, most recently between the former Minerals Management Service the oil industry it regulated. A report released this month by the Union of Concerned Scientists indicates the NRC could lean the same way, if not so dissolutely.

The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2010: A Brighter Spotlight Needed found the commission made some “outstanding catches” but could have stopped at least 14 “near misses” from happening at all.

“The chances of a disaster at a nuclear plant are low,” the report states. “When the NRC finds safety problems and ensures that owners address them—as happened last year at Oconee, Browns Ferry, and Kewaunee—it keeps the risk posed by nuclear power to workers and the public as low as practical. But when the NRC tolerates unresolved safety problems—as it did last year at Peach Bottom, Indian Point, and Vermont Yankee—this lax oversight allows that risk to rise.”

If the political will could be located, the physical obstacles could probably be overcome, Ken Brockman, former IAEA director of nuclear installation safety told the Post.

“The engineers will say, ‘You tell me what you want, we’ll protect it to that level,’” Brockman said. “It’s just an issue of raising the elevation, building the retainer walls. The engineering can be done. You just have to give them the criteria.”

Now someone just needs to engineer a system to overcome regulatory entropy.

http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/dr/currentdr.html