Time to Abolish the NRC?
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants
by Karl Grossman,
advisor to the Nuclear-Free Future Award
For 10 years now, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been busily
extending the operating license of nuclear power plants – designed to run
for 40 years – another 20 years.
Imagine driving down a highway in a 60-year-old car.
But safety concerns are minimized by the NRC, a lapdog of the nuclear
industry. Just as the NRC has never denied a construction or operating
license for a nuclear plant anywhere, anytime in the U.S., it has
rubber-stamped every application for a 20-year extension for now 52 nuclear
plants.
That's half the 104 nuclear plants in the U.S. and, as the 40-year licenses
of the rest get set to expire, watch the NRC extend their licenses to run
for another 20 years, too.
And it may end up to be more than 20 years. The New York Times in a report
April 2 on the NRC extending the operating license to 60 years of the oldest
nuclear plant in the U.S., Oyster Creek in New Jersey, noted that "some
commission officials have even discussed the possibility of a second round
of extensions that would allow reactors to operate for up to 80 years."
Imagine driving down a highway in an 80-year-old car.
Consider how trustworthy that 1929 antique would be racing down the
interstate.
"This decision is radioactive. To keep open the nation's oldest nuclear
power plant for another 20 years is just going to lead to a disaster," said
Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club. "We could easily replace the plant with 200
windmills that will not pose a danger."
At the NRC hearings on the re-licensing of Oyster Creek, evidence was
presented that the critical drywell linerthe shell that encases the reactor
and is supposed to suppress radioactive steam during an accidentis too
corroded to deal with a mishap. Major deterioration was also found in other
areas of the plant 60 miles south of New York City.
Even an avid nuclear power booster, William Tucker, who recently published a
pro-nuclear book, is calling for no operating license extensions for Oyster
Creek and the Indian Point nuclear plants, 28 miles north of New York City
which the NRC is also soon to rule on re-licensing. "Veterans of the nuclear
industry I talk to say they are very concerned that relying on aging
reactors like Oyster Creek and Indian Point is eventually going to lead to
an accident which will kill nuclear power in this country forever," said
Tucker in a statement last week.
But many, many people would be killed, too.
The NRC working with Sandia National Laboratories did an analysis in the
1980s on the consequences of a meltdown with breach of containment at every
nuclear plant in the United Statesincluding Oyster Creek and the two
operating Indian Point plants.
Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences for U.S. Nuclear Plants
(acronymed CRAC-2) projected, for Oyster Creek: 16,000 "peak early
fatalities;" 10,000 "peak early injuries;" 23,000 "peak cancer deaths;" and
$79.8 billion in "scaled costs" in terms of property damageand that was in
1980 dollars. For Indian Point 2, in a more densely populated area with more
valuable real estate that would be rendered uninhabitable for millennia, it
would be: 46,000 "peak early fatalities;" 141,000 "peak early injuries;"
13,000 "peak cancer deaths" and $274 billion in "scaled costs." And for the
slightly larger Indian Point 3 plant, it would be 50,000 "peak early
fatalities;" 167,000 "peak early injuries;" 14,000 "peak cancer deaths;" and
$314 billion in "scaled costs." Again, those are 1980 dollars; it would be
triple that today.
The World Nuclear Organization notes how "most of today's nuclear
plants.were originally designed for 30 or 40-year operating lives.Some
components simply wear out, corrode or degrade to a low efficiency.The
properties of materials may degrade with age, particularly with heat and
neutron irradiation."
But operators of nuclear power plants want to wring out as much from their
investments as they can and not only do they want them to operate beyond
their expected lifetimes, they are seeking to run them hotter and harder in
order to generate more power. And the NRC has been obliging the industry on
this, too.
The first nuclear facilities the NRC gave permission to operate another 20
years were the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plants in Maryland 45 miles southeast
of Washington, D.C. That was in 1999.
"The public has been closed out of the process," said Paul Gunter, then with
the Nuclear Information & Resource Service. He added: "The whole term
'nuclear safety' is an oxymoron. It's an inherently dangerous process and an
inherently dangerous industry that has been aging."
Last week Gunter, now director of the Reactor Oversight Program of the
organization Beyond Nuclear, said the NRC re-licensing program is "blind to
how these machines are breaking apart at the molecular level.they embrittle,
crack and corrode." The agency in its "rigged game" is driving the nation
toward a nuclear disaster, he said.
Can the NRC be stopped before disaster occurs?
The U.S. Congress finally became so disgusted with the Atomic Energy
Commission and its nuclear boosterismit, too, never denied a construction
or operating license for a nuclear plant anywhere, anytime in the U.S..that
it abolished the AEC in 1974. Congress then created the NRC to ostensibly
properly regulate the nuclear industry.
That has never happened.
It's time that the NRC be abolished, too, along with the toxic technology
that it promotesnuclear powerbefore it is too late. Safe, clean renewable
energy technologies are here today making dangerous nuclear power
unnecessary.
Meanwhile, by extending the licenses of nuclear plants by 20 and now perhaps
40 years, the NRC has gone beyond tempting fate. It is asking for it, the it
being an atomic catastrophe which would kill tens of thousands and render a
part of the United States a dead zone.
Nuclear-Free Future Award advisor Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New
York/College at Old Westbury and author of books involving NASA including
"The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat To Our Planet" and writer
and narrator of television programs among them "Nukes In Space: The
Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens"
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