Report: S.C. nuclear reactors at risk from dam failure

[kristopher]

Report: S.C. nuclear reactors at risk from dam failure
Robert Behre
Posted: Monday, September 23, 2013 8:00 p.m.

Several U.S. nuclear power plants, including one in Oconee County, could face major problems, including public exposure, if a nearby dam were to fail, according to a newly released report.

The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility released documents Monday that it had received from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, including a July 2011 report on flooding at power plant sites after upstream dam failures.

The report looked at 32 reactors at 20 sites across the country and found the flooding danger largely ignored by federal regulators.

Another document that the NRC gave PEER was a Sept. 18, 2012 letter from NRC Reliability and Risk Engineer Lawrence Criscione to the Commission Chair outlining detailed concerns about the vulnerability of the three-reactor Oconee nuclear complex...

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20130923/PC1610/130929736/1009/report-sc-nuclear-reactors-at-risk-from-dam-failure&source=RSS

PDF of NRC's Dam failure screening analysis
http://www.postandcourier.com/assets/pdf/CP9615923.pdf

[FBaggins]

1. Why link to the redacted (and lousy quality) version

When a clean/color/unredacted copy was cited almost a year ago?

http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/flooding.pdf

[kristopher]

2. Because the link was included in the OP article.

Thanks for the contribution (even if the nature of your question was, to say the least, odd).

It would lead to the question of why the report was not immediately available for public distribution WITHOUT being redacted in any way, if we didn't understand the way security for nuclear plants necessitates a lack of public transparency/participation in the decision-making processes associated with its use.

[FBaggins]

3. The question is just as valid for the author

Why report something as a "newly released report" and provide such a poor copy when national news sources reported on it about a year earlier and included the unredacted report?

It would lead to the question of why the report was not immediately available for public distribution

What agencies provide internal staff analysis immediately upon a report being authored and before internal review? The report was a standard part of a multi-year process. Those do become open to public comment once they reach the policy-making stage.

[kristopher]

4. Your reading skills are slipping

The "newly released" obviously refers to the 2012 document. The 2011 paper was included to round out the information in the article.

ETA - Wanted to check my memory before responding to your claims about transparency -

...The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has known at least since 1996 that flooding danger from upstream dam failure was a more serious threat than the agency would publicly admit. The NRC failed from 1996 until 2011 to assess the threat even internally.

In July 2011, the NRC staff completed a report finding “that external flooding due to upstream dam failure poses a larger than expected risk to plants and public safety” [emphasis added] but the NRC did not make the 41-page report public.

Instead, the agency made much of another report, issued July 12, 2011 – “Recommendations for Enhancing Reactor Safety in the 21st Century,” sub-titled “The Near-Term Task Force Review of Insights from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Accident.”

Barely four months after the continuing accident began in Japan, the premature report had little to say about reactor flooding as a result of upstream dam failure, although an NRC news release in March 2012 would try to suggest otherwise.

That 2012 news release accompanied a highly redacted version of the July 2011 report ...

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/11/27/us-nuke-plants-flooding-risks/

[FBaggins]

5. Nope... but your imagination is still active.

The "newly released" obviously refers to the 2012 document.

"according to a newly released report"
"released documents Monday that it had received from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, including a July 2011 report "
"Screening Analysis Report" (the link)
"The report looked at 32 reactors "

The linked report is clearly the subject of the title and bulk of the article.

The 2012 document, OTOH, was "Another document that the NRC gave PEER was a Sept. 18, 2012 letter "

"The report" is mentioned several times in the article and in each and every case it's referring to the document that has been in the public view for almost a year.

[kristopher]

6. LAWSUIT TO VENTILATE REACTOR INUNDATION NIGHTMARE SCENARIOS

PEER Press release

For Immediate Release: Aug 15, 2013

LAWSUIT TO VENTILATE REACTOR INUNDATION NIGHTMARE SCENARIOS
NRC Withholding Documents Confirming Risks to One-Third of U.S. Nuclear Plants

Posted on Aug 15, 2013 | Tags: NRC

Washington, DC — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is wrongfully withholding reports about dam failure leading to inundation of reactors, as well as protests from its own engineers about its failure to address this risk facing nearly three dozen U.S. nuclear facilities, according to a federal lawsuit filed today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As with the 2011 nuclear disaster at Japan's Fukushima Dai-chi facility, flooding could cause core meltdowns with catastrophic consequences.

Many of the documents at issue concern South Carolina’s Oconee Nuclear Station, where the NRC has known for more than two decades that failure of a dam ten miles upriver from the plant would swamp the plant’s three reactors and their cooling equipment. In that event, the reactor would go to core damage in less than 10 hours. Within three days, the flooded reactor would release its fission products into the atmosphere. This is comparable to what took place at Fukushima when it was hit by an earthquake followed by a tsunami. The tsunami’s monster ocean waves duplicated the effect of a dam-break flood.

The risks at Oconee are not unique, however. Comparable flood threats from upstream dams exist at dozens of plants such as Watts Bar in Tennessee, Prairie Island in Minnesota and the Fort Calhoun Station in Nebraska. These flood-vulnerable facilities represent approximately one-third of the country’s entire reactor-based electric generation capacity.

In the middle of the last decade, the NRC began removing material on dam failure inundation from public circulation. Recently, some of the agency’s own engineers objected to this after-the-fact secrecy, as well as NRC’s lack of action in making utility operators undertake plant modifications or mitigation measures.

As its stated reason for cloaking its scientific reports on inundation risk and related documents, the NRC is invoking a law enforcement exemption in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) usually reserved for shielding the identity of confidential informants.

“We strongly disagree that the NRC has a plausible basis for withholding this material and will vigorously pursue full release,” stated PEER Counsel Kathryn Douglass who filed the complaint today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “This is not an academic point as these inundation accidents could make large swaths of the country uninhabitable for at least a century.”

According to NRC calculations, the odds of the dam near the Oconee plant failing at some point over the next 22 years are much higher than were the odds of an earthquake-induced tsunami causing a meltdown at the Fukushima plant. In fact, NRC assessments conclude “a Jocassee Dam failure is a credible event.”

The NRC has no direct control over the operations of these upstream dams. Ironically, the agencies which do have operational control over dams – the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Homeland Security – have all consented to the release of the material that NRC has chosen to keep hidden.

“It is no secret that water flows downhill,” Douglass added. “This case is about the NRC shielding its negligence from public view.”

###

Read the PEER lawsuit

View list of dam-vulnerable nuclear plants

Examine key redactions on Oconee/Jocassee Dam failure

See FERC, Corps and DHS permission to release


http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/2013/08/15/lawsuit-to-ventilate-reactor-inundation-nightmare-scenarios/

[Nihil]

7. Now *that* would be ironic ...

... a failure of renewable energy infrastructure causing widespread radioactive pollution!

[kristopher]

8. I had that same thought

It could potentially destroy the dynamics that power DUEE.

[madokie]

9. What it says to me is what I've been saying from the start here

is that the nuclear power industry and those who oversee them are not to be trusted to tell us the whole truth, nothing but the truth, rather we get obfuscations and out right lies. This clearly shows that we have another scenario where a nuclear power plant can get out of hand to worry about. We had the recent Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant flooded that luckily turned out so so, no big catastrophe but it easily could have been

Nuclear energy is simply too dangerous to continue using it as we do today. As long as man has made what ever their has never been something that was accident free. I don't see that possibly ever being either. In the mean time lets shut them down as fast as feasible. Before we have a serious mishap. Many of our nuclear power plants are sited near large metropolitan areas so the possibility of many lives lost and many people displaced it great.

[unhappycamper]

10. Chernobyl, Fukushima and a US site to be named later..

Perhaps we should rethink nuclear energy.

Or at least have plans to evacuate people around nuclear sites and PUBLICIZE them.

If our politicians had balls we could have a public debate about it.

[kristopher]

11. Standard emergency management planning

...dictates not only that planning be well known and understood in advance by all affected parties, but also that regular exercises are conducted to test the plans and find problems before they happen.

Public relations on behalf of the nuclear industry prohibits that happening for nuclear plants, of course. It would be a financial disaster for them if people were reminded annually of the potential consequences of living near a nuclear plant.

It should also be done for hydroelectric dams.