For all you 'Crazy' anti-nukers, this one is for you. We have company.

[RobertEarl]

Former Nuclear Chairman (NRC) Calls for phaseout of Nuke Power Plants in US

He must be crazy, right?

Jazcko was fired about a year ago when he tried to stop new permits until lessons from Fukushimna were better understood. Now that he's free to say whatever he wants, he says 'STFU' to Nukes!

Just 30 years late, but better late than never.

________________


http://www.energyintel.com/Pages/ArticleSummary/802941/Safety--Jaczko-Calls-for-Phaseout-in-US--Says-Plants-Aren-t-Safe



Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chairman Gregory Jaczko says that the current fleet of operating plants in the US should be phased out because regulators can’t guarantee against an accident causing widespread land contamination. In two key decisions last week Jaczko said the agency “damaged significantly” its international reputation for upholding safety and he accused the five commissioners of “just rolling the dice” in dealing with severe accidents.

[Control-Z]

1. Rec, rec, rec!!

Crazy anti-nuker, here, residing less than a half hour's drive from San Onofre power plant. I say we find the safest possible way to store/get rid of the current nuclear waste and stop making any more.

[daveMN]

2. Sure...

and in the meantime we'll just keep burning more coal, which is causing *actual* and widespread health consequences, and contributing to climate change...

[kristopher]

3. Jazcko on US fleet safety, "It is like a dike leaking everywhere"

In depth Japanese newspaper interview w/ Jazcko in midMarch:

Former U.S. nuke watchdog chair says regulators must stay independent

...The biggest problem with the NRC continues to be the heavy influence that the industry has in selecting the members of the commission. It is a very political process.

There are few commissioners who ever get onto the commission who are not endorsed by the industry, including myself and the current chairman.

There are many good people, who are very technologically sophisticated, but especially in the last few years that I was on the commission, there was very strong influence from the industry on the commission members. You need to have much more diversity in the views of the commissioners.

It would be virtually impossible for someone who is publicly skeptical of nuclear power to ever be confirmed as a commissioner on the NRC. That is fundamentally wrong.

If you look at the state of nuclear power in the United States, it is not very good.

....

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201303140050

Originally posted http://www.democraticunderground.com/112738667

I don't think this is the same interview since the quote from him in the OP isn't there. But you're right, as the ultimate insider he is speaking his mind in a refreshingly forthright manner we haven't seen since Peter Bradford.

[daveMN]

5. To clarify, If you read the article carefully,

you'll see he didn't mean that nuclear plants were literally leaking. He's talking about new safety features and fixes.

Here we are, 50 years since the first reactor ideas were born, or the first plants were built, and now we are talking about a significantly new safety feature in the United States.

This is not things that you would expect to be adding now, 50 years after this technology had been developed.

Every time there is something we did not expect, then we add on a new safety system to fix that hole. It is like a dike leaking everywhere.

And, to that, I would say, all technological systems undergo updates and fixes over time. Nuclear plants are not unique that way - I think that line of argument is awfully flawed.

However, if it's true that the NRC is controlled by the industry itself, yes, that is a big problem. Just not a problem with the technology itself.

[kristopher]

7. I'd say he's describing the negative learning curve associated with nuclear.

The complexity of the systems means that predicting all the follow-on effects of making changes is next to impossible in the real world where economic pressures are a fact of life. I don't think his reasoning is flawed at all, it goes straight to the heart of what ends up being a fatal (in more ways than one) weakness in the widescale application of this technology for energy.

[daveMN]

11. Negative learning curve?

Complexity is a thing you can't avoid with modern technologies. Whatever can be said about nuclear, you might say the same thing about any safety-critical system. Nothing is ever completely fool-proof.

A commercial airliner is more complex than a car, but airline travel is subject to a lot more safety scrutiny than highway travel - and, as we all must know by now, it's many times safer. The situation is analogous to nuclear and coal.

fatal (in more ways than one)

Ha. The safety record of the nuclear industry is actually very good compared to other technologies. How many people has nuclear killed in its entire lifetime compared to coal? It's not even close. (link)

Now, lest you accuse me of presenting a false dilemma, let me say this:
Currently, we use both coal and nuclear. They're our main sources of electricity. Coal provides about half, nuclear about 20%. Over the coming decades, we must transition to renewables to save our planet and prevent untold misery. As we do so, which are we going to phase out first? Coal or nuclear? Coal plants cause actual widespread health problems, emitting harmful substances like mercury and also emitting a significant (way more than nuclear plants) amount of radiation. (Nuclear plants' radiation is less than natural background radiation.) And, of course, they're the biggest culprit behind climate change. Nuclear, by comparison, has had a handful of serious accidents, but otherwise provides a steady supply of electricity with only a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions.

No energy technology is without any consequences - we have to weigh the benefits and risks and make the best decision we can. When I compare the risks of nuclear to the consequences of coal, nuclear is the better alternative. We need to use it as a bridge to a clean and sustainable energy supply.

I am in no way associated with the nuclear industry, so don't accuse me of trying to protect their image, or some other bull. I'm just a guy who cares about the environment and I came to that conclusion on my own. I can't understand why so many environmentalists insist on shooting themselves in the foot by hating on nuclear when it can help save us from global warming. It's like an irrational fear I would expect to find on the right side of the political spectrum.

[kristopher]

12. Yes, a negative learning curve.

That's what Jazcko is describing. You find a problem, fix it and it creates potential for string of unanticipated follow on problems that you didn't think of. The upshot being the technology becomes increasingly expensive instead of steadily less expensive.

I really don't give a fig how nuclear compares to coal, and neither should you. We can acknowledge the CO2 benefit exists, so it is automatically eligible to be considered as an alternative. That is as far as we need pursue the issue of coal.

What we now seek to know is how does nuclear stack up against the other low carbon alternatives. We need to examine issues of resource availability, life cycle costs - both direct and external, safety, and the way these technologies work together in delivering the final product to the user. That last item is far more critical than most realize.

When you evaluate them, here is what you get:


You can download the full study here:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/ReviewSolGW09.pdf

Here is the abstract:

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security
Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

What is most important to me, however, is the fact that renewables integrate differently than centralized generation. Economics are the tool that facilitates change - and nuclear doesn't alter the economic landscape that is built around coal. In fact, nuclear re-enforces the market position of coal by crowding out the types of generation that nibble away the market share of all centralized large scale thermal plants - renewables.

This thread shows how the market works to allow zero-energy cost renewables take market share away from all sources of generation with fuel costs.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=11729

The plans of the utilities in the US that are intent on building nuclear plants show that they have absolutely no intention of reducing their consumption of coal. See this summary of their plans:
Clinging to Dirty Energy in the South – a by-the-numbers look from the Institute of Southern Studies http://www.southernstudies.org/2011/10/institute-index-clinging-to-dirty-energy-in-the-south.html

The New Nuclear Power is Ruining Climate Protection Efforts and Harming Customers Report shows Southeast utilities plan not to replace coal-fired power, but to add nuclear capacity despite falling demand – while jacking up rates and blocking clean energy advances http://www.ncwarn.org/wp- content/uploads/2011/10/NCW-NuclearClimate_web.pdf

Can you explain the justification for nuclear if it does not have a market mechanism to shut down coal plants? I can't. Especially considering it has the risk of catastrophic failure lingering over every plant every day. We aren't going to be as lucky every time as we were with Fukushima; have you considered what would have happened if the winds had been steady out of the NNE instead of the W and SSE?

edited to fix links and formatting tags

[daveMN]

14. Whoa.

I wish I had time to review all that right now. If nothing else, I try to keep an open mind. I'll try to get around to it soon. Still, for now, I stick by my position - we should at least maintain the current proportion of generation from nuclear, as concerns about safety are overblown. (What we learned from Fukushima, I guess, is that they shouldn't put the emergency backup generators in a place where they could be flooded by a tsunami. If that hadn't been the case, nothing probably would have happened.) The transition to renewables isn't going to happen in a day. If nuclear is "crowding out" renewables, then giant centralized fossil fuel plants must also be doing that to an even greater extent. It's more a question of public policy, and also of technology. Currently, renewables can't provide baseload power. It will take a massive infastructure investment to change that. An investment, which, by the way, will also cause GHG emissions. Whichever way you figure it, we are creating a carbon "debt" that future generations will have to "pay off." Continuing to use nuclear for now will reduce that amount of CO2 we put up there during this transition.

[kristopher]

15. Nope.

You can't turn off coal without also turning off nuclear - the economic fundamentals of both are the same. Centralized largescale "baseload" generation is a product of those economic fundamentals. It isn't an unalterable law of nature that all energy delivery systems must duplicate. In fact, a distributed grid provides greater resilience, durability, and reliability. When it is made up of renewables, it eliminates fuel insecurity.

There are far more lessons from Fukushima than what you've noted, and the problem Jazcko is talking about with regulatory capture is at the top of the list. Nuclear ISN'T safe because human are not perfect and we do not design perfect systems.

If you think I'm advocating we shut all nuclear plants down now because they frighten me, you're mistaken. I want a massive buildout of renewables in as short a time frame as possible. I recognize that both coal and nuclear are going to be put out of business fairly early on as renewable penetration increases; and I'm fine with that. I don't mind losing low carbon capacity of nuclear if, as Germany is doing, it is a part of the process of changing to a distributed energy system because that is the only way we are going to get rid of carbon.

Additional reading:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378775312014759
Cost-minimized combinations of wind power, solar power and electrochemical storage, powering the grid up to 99.9% of the time

http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i13/Nuclear-Retirement-Anxiety.html
Nuclear Retirement Anxiety | April 1, 2013 Issue - Vol. 91 Issue 13 | Chemical & Engineering News

http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2013_03_26_2013_Asias_Accelerating_Energy_Revolution
Asia’s Accelerating Energy Revolution

[Throckmorton]

19. Those of us in the Business call it:

The law of unintended consequences.

Something as simple as switching to Switching Power Supplies from Linear Power Supplies has had a load of negative consequences for me personally.

And Digital Upgrades, the sky is the limit.

[BlueToTheBone]

4. We had a 10 ton generator drop in our nuke facility

last week with a force so great it cracked the walls 5 stories below. I'm watching to try and find any news of the accident aftermath. A volunteer fire fighter in Russellville told me the wall was cracked. No agencies are reporting anyting.

[kristopher]

8. Worker killed in accident at Russellville, Arkansas nuclear plant

Worker killed in accident at Russellville, Arkansas nuclear plant

RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. (AP) - Entergy Arkansas says a worker was killed and three others injured when a heavy piece of equipment fell at a nuclear plant.

The utility says the public is not a risk after the industrial accident Sunday morning at its Arkansas Nuclear One plant in Russellville, about 70 miles northwest of Little Rock.

Entergy says the workers were moving the equipment from the plant's turbine building.

Entergy and the Arkansas Department of Health say the accident did not affect the plant's reactors. They also say radiation wasn't involved.

The reactors have been shut down, and the company says they are stable....

http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/372679/28/Worker-killed-in-accident-at-Russellville-Arkansas-nuclear-plant

Nothing at all about structural damage, but if it was the generator it is unlikely to have impacted the reactor or its building.

NRC incident report:

NOTIFICATION OF UNUSUAL EVENT DECLARED DUE TO A BREAKER EXPLOSION IN THE PROTECTED AREA

"At 0750 [CDT] on 3/31/2013, during movement of the Unit 1 Main Turbine Generator Stator (~500 tons), the Unit 1 turbine temporary lift device failed. This caused a loss of all off site power on Unit 1. The ANO Unit 1 #1 and #2 EDG [Emergency Diesel Generator] have started and are supplying A-3 4160V switchgear and A-4 4160V switchgear. P-4A Service Water pump and P-4C Service Water pump has been verified running. Unit 1 has entered [procedures] 1202.007 - Degraded Power, 1203.028 - Loss of Decay Heat, and 1203.050 - Spent Fuel Emergencies. Unit 1 is in MODE 6.

"ANO-1 entered TS 3.8.2 A, 'One Required Offsite Circuit Inoperable'. All required actions are complete. The event caused a loss of decay heat removal on ANO Unit 1 which was restored in 3 minutes and 50 seconds.

"Unit 2 tripped and is in MODE 3. Emergency Feed Water was initiated on Unit 2 and Unit 2 was in [Technical Specification] 3.0.3 from 0817 [CDT] to 0848 [CDT] due to Emergency Feedwater. Unit 2 is being powered by off-site. Unit 2 Startup 3 [transformer] lock out at 0921 [CDT]. [Bus] 2A1 is on Start up 2 [transformer] and [bus] 2A3 is on #2 EDG.

"10CFR50.72 (b)(3)(iv)(A) - 4-hr. notification due to the ES [Engineered Safeguard Feature] actuation on both Unit 1 and Unit 2.
10CFR50 72 (b)(2)(iv)(B) - 4-hr. notification due to RPS [Reactor Protection System] actuation on Unit 2.
10CFR50.72 (b)(2)(xi) - 4-hr. notification due to Government Notification.
29CFR1904.39a - [OSHA] 8-hr. notification due to death on site.

"At 1033 [CDT] on 3/31/2013, Unit 2 entered a Notification of Unusual Event based on EAL HU4 due to damage in 2A1 switchgear. Notification of the NUE will be made lAW Emergency Plan requirements. Follow-up notifications will be made as appropriate."

At this time, the full extent of structural damage on Unit 1 is not known. There was one known fatality and 4 known serious injuries to workers. The local coroner is on site for the fatality and the injured personnel have been transported offsite to local hospitals. Investigation into the cause of the failure and extent of damage is ongoing.

On Unit 2, all rods inserted during the trip. The core is being cooled via natural circulation. Decay heat is being removed via steam dumps to atmosphere. There is no known primary to secondary leakage.

The licensee has notified the State of Arkansas, local authorities, OSHA and the NRC Resident Inspector.

Notified DHS SWO, DHS NICC, FEMA and Nuclear NSSA (via email).

* * * UPDATE FROM DAVID THOMPSON TO HOWIE CROUCH AT 1934 EDT ON 3/31/13 * * *

The licensee terminated the NOUE at 1821 CDT. The basis for termination was that the affected bus (2A2) is de-energized and no other equipment on Unit 2 was damaged.

The licensee has notified the state and local authorities and will be notifying the NRC Resident Inspector.

Notified R4DO (Pick), NRR EO (Howe), IRD (Gott), DHS SWO, DHS NICC, FEMA and Nuclear SSA (via email).

Towards the bottom of the page
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2013/20130401en.html

[BlueToTheBone]

9. yes, that

At this time, the full extent of structural damage on Unit 1 is not known. There was one known fatality and 4 known serious injuries to workers. The local coroner is on site for the fatality and the injured personnel have been transported offsite to local hospitals. Investigation into the cause of the failure and extent of damage is ongoing.


No further info available from recognized sources.

[FBaggins]

6. Lol! Jazcko has been anti-nuke from the start.

How do you think he got the job?

Jazcko was fired about a year ago when he tried to stop new permits until lessons from Fukushimna were better understood.

Do you seriously remember it that way? He was forced to resign because of abuse of authority he didn't have and abuse of subordinates and other commissioners (both Republican and Democrat) - and a complete inability to control his temper. All four of the other commissioners urged the White House to fire him.

An urging that took place months before Jazcko voted against the Vogtle/Summer permits.

[RobertEarl]

10. I could see that happening

That he, or anyone, could get mean and nasty with pro-nukers.

The pro-nukers I have run across will do or say anything to keep the image of the industry shiny.

Having to deal with pro-nukers, when everyone else KNOWS how dangerous and unstable and corrupt the nuke industry is, can make good honest folk lose their temper. I sure can relate.

[kristopher]

13. As I read Baggins' claim

It is the standard "if ya ain't with us, yer agin us" blovium that forms the basic patter of the nuclear set. Any criticism is intolerable and not allowed. No matter how firmly grounded in the data the criticisms might be, they are viciously and relentlessly attacked in the same type of smear campaign that is waged against climate scientists. It is a well known, tried-and-true scripted propaganda response that is unrelated to the merits of the issues at hand.

Jazcko wasn't a bad manager or a bad leader or a bad commissioner; dealing with those issues are a standard part of working in any bureaucracy. No, his only 'failing' was that he was critical of nuclear power - and that is something the industry which owns the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cannot abide.

[RobertEarl]

16. Like Fox news they are

Well, when their glorious nuke plants are melting down or being closed before they can melt, what else can they do or say?

[NickB79]

17. This news report certainly makes him sound like a bad manager

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/report-nuclear-safety-chief-bullied-workers

The report "confirms (that) Mr. Jaczko was undermining the agency and its mission of safety — and he was doing this at one of the NRC's most critical junctures: in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said. "Mr. Jaczko's abuse of his power was preventing" other NRC commissioners from doing their jobs."

Jaczko, 41, a Democrat, has led the nuclear safety agency for three years. He pushed for sweeping safety reforms but came under fire for an unyielding management style that some said veered into bullying.

In an extraordinary public rebuke, four fellow commissioners sat next to Jaczko in December and told Congress they had "grave concerns" about Jaczko's actions. The four commissioners — two Democrats and two Republicans — said women at the agency felt especially threatened.

Normally I'd dismiss this as bullshit for the simple fact that that jackass Inhofe was anywhere near it, but the fact that there appear to be so many other corroborating witnesses (four fellow commissioners, two of which were fellow Democrats) makes me wonder.

[kristopher]

18. Let's alter a couple of words to gain perspective

Let's call it the Petroleum Regulatory Commission and play out the same set of claims:
No Commissioner critical of the use of petroleum or the practices of the petroleum industry has been placed on the PRC since 1976.
A Commissioner who is placed on the Commission before the Deepwater Horizon Spill becomes critical of some of the practices of the Petroleum Industry and wants to ensure that corrective action is taken to address the problems revealed by the Deepwater Spill before the industry moves back into high gear with deepwater drilling.

In response, the industry attacks this Commissioner through the other members of the Commission with spurious charges such as those you cite.

Do you accept those charges at face value?