Their history as an oversight agency shows yet another case where the industry is allowed to determine the regulator's agenda. Now, in the glow of Fukushima, they suddenly start acting like they are doing something meaningful. The question is, what happens when the public's attention strays?
Nuclear Problems in the Rearview Mirror
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this week that in hindsight, a problem at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama last fall was quite serious. And its records indicate that there have been two reports in recent days of engineers’ flubbing a basic calculation of reactor operation at two other plants.
The math errors and the Browns Ferry problem are not related to each other but come at a moment of heightened concern about reactor safety after the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors in Japan.
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Fuel at the Oyster Creek nuclear plant would have gotten hotter than operators realized.
On Tuesday, the commission staff announced that a valve that got stuck last October at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant, near Athens, Ala., posed a safety threat that fell into the “red” category, the most serious on its four-color scale.
It is only the fifth time since the scale was established in 2001 that the commission has put a problem into that category.
“It took us a while ...
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/nuclear-problems-in-the-rearview-mirror/?partner=rss&emc=rssIn Dec last year Wald also wrote an excellent review of the state of the nuclear industry in TechReview.
Giant Holes in the Ground
November/December 2010
Giant Holes in the Ground
An expected nuclear renaissance has failed to materialize as plans for new plants are scrapped or delayed. What happened?
By Matthew L. Wald
At the edge of the massive excavation project that is a preliminary step to building America's biggest nuclear power plant, Joshua Elkins stands next to two holes that span 42 acres in the red Georgia clay. Elkins maintains the earth-moving equipment that dug these holes, each as big as 15 football fields, 90 feet down to bedrock and then painstakingly refilled them to about 50 feet with soil tested to maintain stability in an earthquake. In helping to lay the foundation for the two 1,100-megawatt reactors the Southern Company is building here, his machines will contour the earth to specifications meticulously measured by GPS.
The last time anybody in the United States did excavation work for a new nuclear reactor, Elkins, who turned 27 in October, had not been born. Indeed, the groundbreaking for these Westinghouse-designed reactors at the Vogtle nuclear plant, 35 miles south of Augusta, Georgia, represents the first new nuclear construction since the 1970s. (Two existing reactors at the plant began commercial operation in 1987 and 1989.) An unlikely coalition of large utility companies, government policy makers, and environmentalists worried about global warming hoped that it and several other large planned plants in the United States would mark the beginning of a nuclear renaissance, with scores of new reactors being built around the country and worldwide.
And at first glance, circumstances finally seem to favor an expansion of nuclear power. Some $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees was made available to cover as much as 80 percent of the cost of building a new plant, and the loan program may soon offer tens of billions more. (The new Vogtle reactors received $8.3 billion in loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy in February.) President Obama, members of his administration, and the Republican leadership have all called for increased use of nuclear power as part of a long-term strategy for reducing U.S. reliance on fossil fuels. Also on the bandwagon for nuclear power are such influential technologists as Microsoft founder Bill Gates (see Q&A, September/October 2010) and longtime environmentalist Stewart Brand, who have argued that expanding nuclear capacity is essential to meeting growing worldwide electricity demand with zero-carbon energy sources.
But now the renaissance is stalled--both in the United States and in many other parts of the world. Apart from the Vogtle plant, the only U.S. nuclear project on which site work has started is across the Savannah River, near Jenkinsville, South Carolina, where the South Carolina Electric & Gas Company and the South Carolina Public Service Authority are planning to add two reactors to the existing V. C. Summer plant. Although many other utilities have applied for approval of reactor sites or projects in the last few months, most of the plans, including some of the most high-profile examples, have met obstacles. The Chicago-based utility Exelon, which is the nation's largest nuclear operator, with 17 units, has postponed its decision on whether to build a twin-unit nuclear plant in Victoria County, Texas. Two other large nuclear suppliers, NRG Energy and UniStar Nuclear Energy, have put off building long-planned plants in south Texas and Calvert County, Maryland, respectively.
The problems are not confined ...
http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=26542
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