This week’s post was written by Dr. Ken Ferguson, an independent consultant evaluating project risk and risk mitigation related to new nuclear reactor projects. He has a PhD in Nuclear Science and Engineering from Carnegie – Mellon University and a B.S. in Physics from the University of Michigan.

The recent events in Japan underscore the role that natural events, site selection, and site suitability have on the safety of nuclear power reactors. The developed world addresses the concept of nuclear safety as an integrated effect of the specific design proposed for power generation coupled with the specific site for which the nuclear reactor is being deployed. Many years ago, as a young engineer with nuclear engineering degrees, I made a decision to get the full view of nuclear power projects by accepting my first nuclear position as part of a licensing organization. I soon became involved in a rapid learning curve, appreciation, and incorporation of the “…ologies” into my safety and regulatory interfacing duties. Site characterizations regarding hydrology, geology, seismology, and meteorology are examples of critical information that is collected and transmitted in documents to regulatory reviewers. This information also provides key inputs to the duty cycles imposed on nuclear plant systems and components, as well as the related engineering and safety analyses and evaluations that are performed by nuclear design companies and independently by regulatory staff. In the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) creates a series of regulatory guides for power plant applicants to utilize in generating and utilizing site suitability and related plant evaluations. Regulations are promulgated regarding acceptance parameters such as radiological exposure limits for the public and workers for normal operations as well as accident scenarios.

Regulators are the referees, not the champions of the nuclear technologies in which they are involved. One key value performed is determining the safety of the reactor designs proposed by others for deployment. An historical, coincident question and challenge is “how safe is safe enough?”  For nuclear accidents, keeping the reactor sufficiently cooled to prevent fuel damage is an overriding concern. Operating plants utilize electrical powered pumps to deliver such cooling.

The recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan is expected to have compliance and regulatory implications for nuclear power plants world wide. The United States NRC, for example, has already become involved in an action for additional seismic risk evaluations of nuclear plants currently in operation. Other related actions can be expected to occur; including updates to the regulatory process and details to assure that a proper level of safety risk is involved in utilizing specific reactor designs at selected locations. Ramifications could involve rulemaking, public hearings, regulatory guide development and reviews, calls for additional analyses and testing, etc. aimed to assess current adequacy or to establish effective enhancement.

Some of the characteristics of the progression of these reviews and implications for the nuclear regulatory process may include the following:

1. Expect the United States NRC and its staff to be out in front regarding such actions and to be a standard for actions and attentions taken globally.
2. There has been recent attention in “Regulatory Harmonizing” globally regarding coordination and effective and proper consistency among countries. Expect future regulatory enhancement directions to ultimately reflect such harmony to an increasing degree.
3. Expect the attention to be focused on operating units (over one hundred in the US, over 400 globally), followed by new large reactors not constructed (perhaps 60 worldwide) and finally new concepts for small reactors, expected to be applied for next year in the United States.
4. Expect this action to include a necessary involvement of the dozens of emerging nations having a serious interest in nuclear power but not yet ordering plants. Many are working through the establishment of a nuclear regulatory structure as part of a supportive national nuclear infrastructure.
5. An interactive involvement of nuclear design companies, utilities, and regulatory staff as changes are drafted and reviewed internally and externally.
6. Effective implementation of finalized changes to any regulatory process must involve an “early and often” interfacing with regulators to assure that the body of work undertaken and documentation delivered achieves the compliance that the regulations and regulators require.

Do you think that these industry and regulatory actions make a nuclear plant “safe enough?” Tell us your thoughts on this matter.

I was at breakfast last Thursday perusing USA Today.  Of course the headlines were all about the aftermath of the earthquake, then the tsunami, and finally the nuclear power plant problems.  One of the articles included a poll taken after the disaster that indicated that 70% of Americans have more concern about the safety of nuclear energy since Japan’s crisis began.  Now, that is not surprising.  But the article went on to say that  “a plurality of Americans now oppose building more nuclear plants, a  significant change from the 57% that supported nuclear energy when Gallup asked a similar question less than two weeks before.”

In situations like this we know that emotions sometime overrule rational thought and can cloud decision making.  I began thinking about one of the first blog posts I did last year just as Citation Station was beginning.  In that post I talked about the premise of how I believe that striving to be compliant with law and regulation can have an additional benefit of allowing one to also be running a top notch prevention program that avoids the problems the laws were promulgated to prevent.  When I think about Japan I think about a society that truly believes in that premise.  Being in a high risk area for earthquakes, the Japanese have some of the most stringent building requirements in the world.  Some say that they are much more stringent than those in the United States.  When you analyze the post-earthquake, pre-tsunami period of this recent disaster, I believe you would find that the country fared extremely well from the quake itself. There were no building collapses in the city close to the epicenter and it seems as if the regulations prevented a catastrophe as has been seen in many other less regulated areas.  From a loss of life and property standpoint the prevention system worked as designed.  If you look at the post-tsunami outcome you see a very different picture.  Villages were wiped out. There was massive loss of life and treasure, and when you look at the regulatory makeup you find much less regulation and therefore much less prevention.

Now let’s add the nuclear power plant problems into the mix.  The earthquake knocked out power, but that was considered as a possibility in Japan’s safety regulations and there was a backup system of on- site emergency generators to keep water being pumped through the reactor and over the spent fuel rods.  The generators kicked in and everyone must have breathed a sigh of relief.  Then came the tsunami and the wall of water that flooded out the emergency generators and fouled the fuel supply. Luckily, there was a third safety system required by Japan’s nuclear regulator, that of battery backup.  The batteries kicked in and would work for up to eight hours – seemingly enough to repair whatever went wrong with the primary system or the backup system.  But as we now know, that rebuild time was not enough. 

The question before us, I believe, is:  Learning from this, second only to the Chernobyl disaster, should we just walk away from what might be considered the best non-carbon based source of power or should we re-examine at our regulatory system and determine whether there is yet more prevention that we need to build into the system?  I hope that we move away from emotion based decision making and towards a much more fact based analytical approach to determining how we provide our future power generation. 

What do you think?