Archive for the ‘Nukes’ Category

16 August 2011

World Nuclear News

The near-term prospects for an expansion in the use of nuclear energy in the USA "will be miserably hard and extremely challenged by economics," according to the head of Exelon, the country’s largest nuclear utility.

Speaking at the American Nuclear Society’s 2011 Utility Working Conference in Hollywood, Florida, on 15 August, Exelon chairman and CEO John Rowe said that the renaissance of the US nuclear industry is being limited by economics rather than technology.

"When making decisions about what to build, the same standards that we say should be applied to renewable, coal and gas must be applied to nuclear." These include costs, energy demand, energy security and government support. "Politicians ignore many of these factors, especially economics, and want to promote their favourite technologies."

Rowe told the conference, "The country needs nuclear power if it is going to tackle the problem of climate change, clean up our generation stack, maintain reliability and improve overall energy security… But we must keep our hopes for new generation harnessed to facts. Nuclear needs to be looked at in the Age of Reason and not the Age of Faith. It is a business and not a religion."

Exelon is America’s biggest generator of nuclear electricity with ten power plants and 17 reactors located throughout Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Approximately 93% of its total electricity generation is nuclear power, making it one of the lowest polluting utilities in the USA.

It also has an uprate program that could see the effective addition of up to 1500 MWe in extra generating capacity by 2017, at a cost of about $3.5 billion – half the cost of building a new plant. This comes on top of about 1100 MWe in uprates added to the units in the decade up to 2009.

Rowe said that 20 years ago he put forward four preconditions for investing in new US nuclear power plants.

The first is that we have the right technology. He said that new designs needed more safety features and to be simpler to operate than earlier designs. "The new reactor designs have made great progress in this area, and this condition has been met," Rowe concluded.

The second requirement is to have a workable solution for dealing with radioactive waste. However, he said, "Unfortunately the federal government is further away from keeping its promise on waste disposal than ever and this condition cannot be met."

Thirdly, there needs to be demand for new generating capacity. "There is not currently a need for new baseload generation because of minimal load growth and excess generation capacity," Rowe said. "This could change with more coal plant retirements, but right now this condition cannot be met."

The final precondition is that there are consistently higher prices for gas, making nuclear a more economical option. However, he noted that new supplies of natural gas "has caused prices to plummet from their historic highs. It is the most affordable fuel for at least one, perhaps two decades." Therefore, "This condition cannot be met due to the influx of shale gas into the market." Rowe added, "Shale is good for the country, bad for new nuclear development."

"So it is not the technology – it’s the economics that we are challenged by," according to Rowe. "Despite not meeting my test for new build right now, nuclear energy presents a challenge and an opportunity, and remains, in my view, a career of choice for bright, talented people."

In 2008 Exelon planned a two-unit nuclear power plant at a new site in Victoria county, Texas, and applied for a combined construction and operating license before backing away in March 2010. It is still, however, pursuing an Early Site Permit for the potential Victoria plant.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Monday 14 March 2011

Greg Palast

I need to speak to you, not as a reporter, but in my former capacity as lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations.

I don’t know the law in Japan, so I can’t tell you if Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) can plead insanity to the homicides about to happen.

But what will Obama plead? The administration, just months ago, asked Congress to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas – by TEPCO and local partners. As if the Gulf hasn’t suffered enough. Here are the facts about TEPCO and the industry you haven’t heard on CNN:

The failure of emergency systems at Japan’s nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.

Nuclear plants the world over must be certified for what is called "SQ" or "Seismic Qualification." That is, the owners swear that all components are designed for the maximum conceivable shaking event, be it from an earthquake or an exploding Christmas card from al-Qaeda.

The most inexpensive way to meet your SQ is to lie. The industry does it all the time. The government team I worked with caught them once, in 1988, at the Shoreham plant in New York. Correcting the SQ problem at Shoreham would have cost a cool billion, so engineers were told to change the tests from "failed" to "passed."

The company that put in the false safety report? Stone & Webster, now the nuclear unit of Shaw Construction, which will work with TEPCO to build the Texas plant. Lord help us.

There’s more.

Last night, I heard CNN reporters repeat the official line that the tsunami disabled the pumps needed to cool the reactors, implying that water unexpectedly got into the diesel generators that run the pumps.

These safety backup systems are the "EDGs" in nuke-speak: Emergency Diesel Generators. That they didn’t work in an emergency is like a fire department telling us they couldn’t save a building because "it was on fire."

What dim bulbs designed this system? One of the reactors dancing with death at Fukushima Station 1 was built by Toshiba. Toshiba was also an architect of the emergency diesel system.

Now be afraid. Obama’s $4 billion bailout in the making is called the South Texas Project. It’s been sold as a red-white-and-blue way to make power domestically with a reactor from Westinghouse, a great American brand. However, the reactor will be made substantially in Japan by the company that bought the US brand name, Westinghouse – Toshiba.

I once had a Toshiba computer. I only had to send it in once for warranty work. However, it’s kind of hard to mail back a reactor with the warranty slip inside the box if the fuel rods are melted and sinking halfway to the earth’s core.

TEPCO and Toshiba don’t know what my son learned in eighth grade science class: tsunamis follow Pacific Rim earthquakes. So, these companies are real stupid, eh? Maybe. More likely is that the diesels and related systems wouldn’t have worked on a fine, dry afternoon.

Back in the day, when we checked the emergency backup diesels in America, a mind-blowing number flunked. At the New York nuclear plant, for example, the builders swore under oath that their three diesel engines were ready for an emergency. They’d been tested. The tests were faked; the diesels run for just a short time at low speed. When the diesels were put through a real test under emergency-like conditions, the crankshaft on the first one snapped in about an hour, then the second and third. We nicknamed the diesels, "Snap, Crackle and Pop."

(Note: Moments after I wrote that sentence, word came that two of three diesels failed at the Tokai Station as well.)

In the US, we supposedly fixed our diesels after much complaining by the industry. But in Japan, no one tells TEPCO to do anything the Emperor of Electricity doesn’t want to do.

I get lots of confidential notes from nuclear industry insiders. One engineer, a big name in the field, is especially concerned that Obama waved the come-hither check to Toshiba and TEPCO to lure them to America. The US has a long history of whistleblowers willing to put themselves on the line to save the public. In our racketeering case in New York, the government only found out about the seismic test fraud because two courageous engineers, Gordon Dick and John Daly, gave our team the documentary evidence.

In Japan, it’s simply not done. The culture does not allow the salary men, who work all their lives for one company, to drop the dime.

Not that US law is a wondrous shield: both engineers in the New York case were fired and blacklisted by the industry. Nevertheless, the government (local, state, federal) brought civil racketeering charges against the builders. The jury didn’t buy the corporation’s excuses and, in the end, the plant was, thankfully, dismantled.

Am I on some kind of xenophobic anti-Nippon crusade? No. In fact, I’m far more frightened by the American operators in the South Texas nuclear project, especially Shaw. Stone & Webster, now the Shaw nuclear division, was also the firm that conspired to fake the EDG tests in New York . (The company’s other exploits have been exposed by their former consultant, John Perkins, in his book, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.") If the planet wants to shiver, consider this: Toshiba and Shaw have recently signed a deal to become worldwide partners in the construction of nuclear stations.

The other characters involved at the South Texas Plant that Obama is backing should also give you the willies. But as I’m in the middle of investigating the American partners, I’ll save that for another day.

So, if we turned to America’s own nuclear contractors, would we be safe? Well, two of the melting Japanese reactors, including the one whose building blew sky high, were built by General Electric of the Good Old US of A.

After Texas, you’re next. The Obama administration is planning a total of $56 billion in loans for nuclear reactors all over America.

And now, the homicides:

CNN is only interested in body counts, how many workers burnt by radiation, swept away or lost in the explosion. These plants are now releasing radioactive steam into the atmosphere. Be skeptical about the statements that the "levels are not dangerous." These are the same people who said these meltdowns could never happen. Over years, not days, there may be a thousand people, two thousand, ten thousand who will suffer from cancers induced by this radiation.

In my New York investigation, I had the unhappy job of totaling up post-meltdown "morbidity" rates for the county government. It would be irresponsible for me to estimate the number of cancer deaths that will occur from these releases without further information; but it is just plain criminal for the TEPCO shoguns to say that these releases are not dangerous.

Indeed, the fact that residents near the Japanese nuclear plants were not issued iodine pills to keep at the ready shows TEPCO doesn’t care who lives and who dies, whether in Japan or the USA. The carcinogenic isotopes that are released at Fukushima are already floating to Seattle with effects we simply cannot measure.

Heaven help us. Because Obama won’t.

August 1, 2011

San Francisco Chronicle

Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, said it detected the highest radiation to date at the site.

Geiger counters, used to detect radioactivity, registered more than 10 sieverts an hour, the highest reading the devices are able to record, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the utility, said today. The measurements were taken at the base of the main ventilation stack for reactors No. 1 and No. 2.

The Fukushima plant, about 220 kilometers (137 miles) north of Tokyo, had three reactor meltdowns after the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and backup generators. Radiation leaks displaced 160,000 people and contaminated marine life and agricultural products.

The utility, known as Tepco, tried to vent steam and gas the day after the earthquake as pressure in reactor No. 1 exceeded designed limits. A buildup of hydrogen gas subsequently caused an explosion that blew out part of the reactor building.

"I suspect the high radiation quantity was an aftermath of venting done," Matsumoto told reporters in Tokyo. "The plant is not running. I don’t think any gas with high radiation level is flowing in the stack."

Tepco sent three workers around the ventilation stack today after a gamma camera detected high radioactivity levels in the area yesterday, Matsumoto said. The workers were exposed to as much as 4 millisieverts during the work, he said.

The utility will create a no-go zone around the stack and cover the area with protective material, he said.

–With assistance from Shunichi Ozasa in Tokyo. Editors: Amanda Jordan, Reed Landberg

Tue, Jun 28, 2011

By JEFF DONN – AP National Writer
Associated Press

FILE – This July 12, 1972 file picture shows the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant.

FILE – In this March 30, 2011 file photo, nuclear reactor operators Chris Heinz and Roger Patterson.

ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) — When commercial nuclear power was getting its start in the 1960s and 1970s, industry and regulators stated unequivocally that reactors were designed only to operate for 40 years. Now they tell another story — insisting that the units were built with no inherent life span, and can run for up to a century, an Associated Press investigation shows.

By rewriting history, plant owners are making it easier to extend the lives of dozens of reactors in a relicensing process that resembles nothing more than an elaborate rubber stamp.

As part of a yearlong investigation of aging issues at the nation’s nuclear power plants, the AP found that the relicensing process often lacks fully independent safety reviews. Records show that paperwork of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sometimes matches word-for-word the language used in a plant operator’s application.

Also, the relicensing process relies heavily on such paperwork, with very little onsite inspection and verification.

And under relicensing rules, tighter standards are not required to compensate for decades of wear and tear.

So far, 66 of 104 reactors have been granted license renewals. Most of the 20-year extensions have been granted with scant public attention. And the NRC has yet to reject a single application to extend an original license. The process has been so routine that many in the industry are already planning for additional license extensions, which could push the plants to operate for 80 years, and then 100.

Regulators and industry now contend that the 40-year limit was chosen for economic reasons and to satisfy antitrust concerns, not for safety issues. They contend that a nuclear plant has no technical limit on its life.

But an AP review of historical records, along with interviews with engineers who helped develop nuclear power, shows just the opposite: Reactors were made to last only 40 years. Period.

The record also shows that a design limitation on operating life was an accepted truism.

In 1982, D. Clark Gibbs, chairman of the licensing and safety committee of an early industry group, wrote to the NRC that "most nuclear power plants, including those operating, under construction or planned for the future, are designed for a duty cycle which corresponds to a 40-year life."

And three years later, when Illinois Power Co. sought a license for its Clinton station, utility official D.W. Wilson told the NRC on behalf of his company’s nuclear licensing department that "all safety margins were established with the understanding of the limitations that are imposed by a 40-year design life."

One person who should know the real story is engineering professor Richard T. Lahey Jr., at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. Lahey once served in the nuclear Navy. Later, in the early 1970s, he helped design reactors for General Electric Co.; he oversaw safety research and development.

Lahey dismisses claims that reactors were made with no particular life span. "These reactors were really designed for a certain lifetime," he said. "What they’re saying is really a fabrication."

NUCLEAR LIFE RENEWED

Relicensing is a lucrative deal for operators. By the end of their original licenses, reactors are largely paid for. When they’re operating, they’re producing profits. They generate a fifth of the country’s electricity.

New ones would each cost billions of dollars and take many years for approval, construction and testing. Local opposition may be strong. Already there is controversy about the safety of a next-generation design. Even before the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex in Japan, only a handful of proposed new reactors in the U.S. had taken the first steps toward construction.

Solar and wind power are projected to make very limited contributions as electrical demand rises about 30 percent by 2035. So keeping old plants operating makes good business sense.

But it’s challenging to keep existing plants safe and up to date.

The NRC has indicated that safety improvements are likely in the aftermath of melted fuel in the Japanese reactors in March. NRC inspectors have found some problems with U.S. equipment and procedures. But the agency says all sites are ready to deal with earthquakes and flooding. The NRC also has formed a task force to investigate further and report back in July. Both the task force and the NRC chairman have already suggested that changes will be needed.

Meanwhile, license renewals, which began in 2000, continue. The process essentially requires a government-approved plan to manage wear. These plans entail more inspection, testing and maintenance by the operator, but only of certain equipment viewed as subject to deterioration over time.

The plans focus on large systems like reactor vessels. It is assumed that existing maintenance is good enough to keep critical smaller parts — cables, controls, pumps, motors — in good working order for decades more.

Some modernization has been put in place — upgrades on fire-prevention measures and electronic controls, for example. But many potential improvements are limited by the government’s so-called "backfit rule." The provision exempts existing units from safety improvements unless such upgrades bring "a substantial increase" in public protection.

Even with required maintenance, aging problems keep popping up.

During its Aging Nukes investigation, the AP conducted scores of interviews and analyzed thousands of pages of industry and government records, reports and data. The documents show that for decades compromises have been made repeatedly in safety margins, regulations and emergency planning to keep the aging units operating within the rules. The AP has reported that nuclear plants have sustained repeated equipment failures, leading critics to fear that the U.S. industry is one failure away from a disaster.

INDUSTRY, GOVERNMENT AS PARTNERS

Despite the aging problems, relicensing rules prohibits any overall safety review of the entire operation. More conservative safety margins are not required in anticipation of higher failure rates in old plants, regulators acknowledge.

The approach has turned relicensing reviews into routine approvals.

"Everything I’ve seen is rubber-stamped," said Joe Hopenfeld, an engineer who worked on aging-related issues at the NRC before retiring in 2008. He has since worked for groups challenging relicensing.

Numerous reports from the NRC’s Office of Inspector General offer disturbing corroboration of his view.

For example, in 2002 the inspector general wrote: "Senior NRC officials confirmed that the agency is highly reliant on information from licensee risk assessments." Essentially that means the industry tells the NRC how likely an accident is and the NRC accepts the analysis.

Five years later, in a relicensing audit, the inspector general complained of frequent instances of "identical or nearly identical word-for-word repetition" of the plant applications in NRC reviews. The inspector general worried that the repetition indicated superficial reviews that went through the motions, instead of thorough and independent examinations.

The problems went beyond paperwork. The inspector general found that the NRC reviews usually relied on the plants to report on their operating experience, but the agency didn’t independently verify the information.

NRC spokesman Eliot Brenner said staffers have now agreed to use their own words in their reviews of relicensing applications.

Christopher Grimes, former director of license renewal at the NRC, acknowledges that the agency "has to rely much more on the contents of the applications … over direct inspection."

He blames budget constraints, but others view relicensing as a charade. Clean Ocean Action unsuccessfully challenged relicensing at the Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey, but chief scientist Jennifer Sampson said, "We really knew it was a waste of time."

FROM 40 YEARS TO 60 AND BEYOND

There are two thrusts to the revisionist argument that nuclear reactors can last for decades and decades: First, that they weren’t really designed only for 40 years; second, that there is no technical limitation on any length of time. Tony Pietrangelo, chief nuclear officer at the industry’s Nuclear Energy Institute, says 40 years for the initial license was simply how long it was expected to take to pay off construction loans.

In 2008, an NRC report was emphatic about the economic rationale of 40-year license, insisting that "this time limit was developed from utility antitrust concerns and not physically based design limitations from engineering analysis, components, or materials."

Even so, it felt compelled to acknowledge, in passing, that "some individual plant and equipment designs" were engineered for 40 years of life.

What’s the truth? Fifty years ago, rural electricity cooperatives, worried about competition, did object to granting indefinitely long licenses to the new nuclear industry. But that’s only part of the story.

The 40-year license was created by Congress as a somewhat arbitrary political compromise — "some long period of time, because nobody in his right mind would want to operate a nuclear plant beyond that time,’" said Ivan Selin, an engineer who chaired the NRC in the early 1990s.

Instead of stopping at 40 years, or even 60, the industry began advancing the idea of even longer nuclear life in discussions with its NRC partners starting several years ago.
In 2009, an issue paper by the industry-funded Electric Power Research Institute said that "many experts believe … that these plants can operate safely well beyond their initial or extended operating periods — possibly to 80 or 100 years."

In November, an EPRI survey of industry executives found that more than 60 percent of executives strongly believed reactors can last at least 80 years.

EPRI engineer Neil Wilmshurst, vice president of its nuclear sector, said in an interview that many in the industry foresee the feasibility of reactors lasting even longer.
Adding its own push, Congress has set aside $12 million over the past two fiscal years for the Department of Energy to study if nuclear plants can last decades longer.
So for industry, the question is not if plants can run decades longer — that is now presumed true — but for how long?

"The research must start now, as it will take years to gather the data necessary to justify life extension out to 80 or 100 years," EPRI says in a background document.

HOW LONG CAN THEY GO?

Reactors and their surrounding equipment obviously were not made to fall apart the day after their 40th birthday. But how long can they safely last?

Other power generators have recognized the limits of design life. Though plants burning coal and other traditional fuels incorporate many similar systems to nuclear units — minus the atomic reactor — 90 percent close within 50 years, according to Department of Energy data analyzed by the AP.

Dana Powers, a member of the NRC’s independent Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, said he believes nuclear plants can last for just one license extension, or up to 60 years total. "I doubt they go two," he added.

Peter Lyons, a physicist and recent NRC commissioner, said several features of plants are extraordinarily hard to replace and could limit their lifetimes. They include reactor vessels, electric cables set in concrete, and underground piping.

In an AP interview at NRC headquarters here, agency chairman Gregory Jaczko said decisions on license extensions are based on safety, not economics.
Former NRC chief Selin says extension decisions should be made "on a case-by-case basis."

And industry executives and regulators acknowledge that more research is needed.

In the past, though, both parties found ways to shift assumptions, theories and standards enough to keep reactors chugging.
There’s every reason to think they’ll try to do it again.

The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate(at)ap.org

Populations around US nuke plants soar

Mon Jun 27, 2011

AP – In this Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009 picture, the reactor containment domes of the Indian Point nuclear power plant.

By JEFF DONN, AP National Writer
Associated Press

BUCHANAN, N.Y. – As America’s nuclear power plants have aged, the once-rural areas around them have become far more crowded and much more difficult to evacuate. Yet government and industry have paid little heed, even as plants are running at higher power and posing more danger in the event of an accident, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Populations around the facilities have swelled as much as 4 1/2 times since 1980, a computer-assisted population analysis shows.

But some estimates of evacuation times have not been updated in decades, even as the population has increased more than ever imagined. Emergency plans would direct residents to flee on antiquated, two-lane roads that clog hopelessly at rush hour.

And evacuation zones have remained frozen at a 10-mile radius from each plant since they were set in 1978 — despite all that has happened since, including the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan.

Meanwhile, the dangers have increased.

More than 90 of the nation’s 104 operating reactors have been allowed to run at higher power levels for many years, raising the radiation risk in a major accident. In an ongoing investigative series, the AP has reported that aging plants, their lives extended by industry and regulators, are prone to breakdowns that could lead to accidents.

And because the federal government has failed to find a location for permanent storage of spent fuel, thousands of tons of highly radioactive used reactor rods are kept in pools onsite — and more is stored there all the time.

These mounting risks, though, have not resulted in more vigilant preparations for possible accidents.

The AP found serious weaknesses in plans for evacuations around the plants, including emergency drills that do not move people and fail to test different scenarios involving the weather or the time of day.

Some plans are merely on checklists, and never have been tested. In drills, responders typically go to command centers and not to their emergency posts. There is no federal requirement for how fast an evacuation must be carried out.

And disaster planners from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have made dubious assumptions about the public response to a major accident. They insist, for example, that people who are not called upon to evacuate will stay put; they’re now saying that they might under some circumstances tell people to hunker down at home even in the 10-mile evacuation zone, and they believe people will do it.

That advice flies in the face of decades of science and policy, millions of dollars in planning and preparations — and common sense.

The advice also conflicts with what U.S. officials told Americans in Japan in March, when an earthquake and tsunami knocked out power to Fukushima and melted fuel in three of its six nuclear reactors.

Japanese officials ordered those living within 12 miles of the site to leave. The U.S. government’s advice to its citizens? If you’re within 50 miles, you should evacuate. And NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko insisted that this was nothing more than what would be recommended in a similar situation at home.

In fact, under rules in force for more than 30 years, U.S. communities must by law prepare federally reviewed evacuation plans only for those living within 10 miles of a plant. In a severe accident, most of the early deaths — those from radiation sickness, not cancer — are predicted to occur within a 10-mile radius.

Those living within 50 miles, meanwhile, are covered only by an "emergency ingestion zone," where states are required to make plans to ban contaminated food and water — but not evacuate.

After a May 10 tour at the Indian Point nuclear complex, where two reactors operate just 25 miles from New York City’s northern border, Jaczko said the 10-mile rule was merely a "planning standard." He said decisions on what to do in the "unlikely event" of an accident would be based on circumstances. "So if we needed to take action beyond 10 miles, that’s certainly what would be recommended."

If a 50-mile order were ever issued for Indian Point, it would take in about 17.3 million people — 6 percent of all Americans, according to an AP population analysis. That would include parts of New Jersey and Connecticut and all of New York City, except for a chunk of Staten Island.

Such a mass exodus would be an "enormous challenge" — and a historic feat, said Kelly McKinney, New York City’s deputy commissioner of preparedness.
"At no time in the history of man," he said, "has anyone tried to move 17 million people in 48 hours."

ANALYSIS PINPOINTS GROWTH

When reactors were being built, starting in the 1960s, they were generally kept away from population centers. Their remote locations were viewed as a fundamental safety feature — protection aimed at "reducing potential doses and property damage in the event of a severe accident," according to federal guidelines.

However, over the decades, millions of newcomers have transformed tranquil woodland or shoreline into buzzing suburbs and bedroom communities.

The AP gathered four sets of population data starting in 1980 through 2010 and used mapping software to calculate growth as part of a yearlong investigation of aging issues at nuclear power plants.

Last week, the AP reported that federal regulators, working in concert with industry, have repeatedly weakened or failed to enforce safety standards so old reactors can keep operating. The records review included tens of thousands of pages of government and industry studies, test results, inspection reports and regulatory policy statements.

The AP found in its population analysis that over the decades, plant operators and federal regulators have given surprisingly little thought to nearby population growth.
Officials calculate plant safety margins without considering whether an accident would expose 10,000 or 100,000 people to radiation sickness and cancer. And federal regulators have set no limit for how long evacuations may take for given conditions and locations.

The NRC and FEMA acknowledge that radiation releases can happen within a half hour of an accident. Yet a 2004 study for Indian Point estimated total evacuation time from the 10-mile zone, in the snow that is common during local winters, would take 12 hours.

The federal government has not even required population updates for the evacuation zones, though that would change under a proposal expected to be adopted later this year.
The AP analysis also shows that:

• Four million people now live within 10 miles of the 65 operating sites. (Population in overlapping zones was counted only once for this part of the analysis.) Back in 1980, with 38 nuclear sites, only 1.5 million people lived that close.

• Overall, from 1980 to 2010, the average population in the 10-mile evacuation zones ballooned by 62 percent, from 39,762 to 64,363.

• Populations within the 10-mile radius have more than doubled at 12 of the 65 sites during the same 30-year period.

• The most explosive growth occurred around the two-reactor Saint Lucie complex near Fort Pierce, Fla., where the 10-mile population of 43,332 in 1980 grew 366 percent to 202,010 in 2010. Others in the top five: the two-unit Brunswick complex near the North Carolina coast, which increased 326 percent from 8,164 to 34,782; Monticello, 35 miles from Minneapolis, where population rose 314 percent from 14,130 to 58,538; the two-unit Turkey Point site, 20 miles south of Miami, up 302 percent; and the two-unit San Onofre facility in San Clemente, Calif., up 283 percent.

• Among newer reactors, the biggest jump occurred around Shearon Harris, 20 miles southwest of Raleigh, N.C., where population nearly quadrupled from 24,700 in 1990 to 94,465 in 2010. Three other facilities where populations more than doubled during the same 20-year period are the three-unit Palo Verde site, 50 miles west of Phoenix; two-unit McGuire site, 17 miles north of Charlotte, N.C., and the two-unit Catawba complex in South Carolina, 18 miles south of Charlotte.

TRAFFIC JAMS ON A GOOD DAY

The geography and population around Indian Point have always been a challenge for emergency planners.

Homes and businesses dot hillsides sloping to the eastern shore of the Hudson River. Along its bank, a curvy, two-lane main artery meanders past traffic lights through quaint town centers suffused with Dutch history and the lore of writer Washington Irving. At rush hour, the roadway crawls with idling cars.

Choke points are everywhere: the narrow Bear Mountain Bridge just north of the plant; the Route 202 slog through old Peekskill; and the Tappan Zee Bridge, which acts as the major river crossing to the south, beyond the 10-mile evacuation zone.

A potential destination for many evacuees, the bridge often backs up with traffic for miles during the morning and evening commutes.

Just a mile to the west across the Hudson, two-lane Route 9W snakes beneath the base of Bear Mountain State Park, offering few escape routes.

Though modest population growth of 32 percent within 10 miles of Indian Point has mirrored the nation’s increase as a whole between 1980 and 2010, more people live within this evacuation zone than any other in the country: 268,906, according to the AP analysis.

Population density isn’t the only concern. A 2008 Columbia University study discovered a seismic fault line near Indian Point, where another earthquake-prone zone was already known to exist. Yet a steel liner designed to be earthquake-proof has been leaking at the site since 1973.

New York state has fought relicensing. Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the area can’t be evacuated in a severe nuclear accident.

Given the local topography — natural and man-made — a quick evacuation would be a challenge.

But when Jaczko’s talk of a possible 50-mile evacuation in the United States is brought into the equation, the prospect is truly daunting.

In some accidents, New Yorkers would presumably head west to New Jersey using the George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel and the Holland Tunnel — passageways that are rarely light on traffic. Any evacuation from the 10-mile zone along those routes could be complicated by a so-called shadow evacuation by those living within 50 miles who defy official instructions to stay put.

There are other fears — that some police and bus drivers would leave instead of stay to help and that parents would rush to schools instead of meeting their children at designated centers outside the evacuation zone.

As with other nuclear sites, the Indian Point emergency plan puts school reception centers outside the 10-mile zone — but not far outside.

Indian Point’s lead community evacuation planner, Anthony Sutton, at the Westchester County Department of Emergency Services, acknowledged that area roads couldn’t handle the traffic surge from a full-scale nuclear emergency. "I think in a perfect world, we’d all like to see the place in a different location, with all the challenges of evacuating the public around it," he said.

Paul Blanch, a nuclear safety expert who used to consult at Indian Point but now opposes its effort for a 20-year license extension, was more blunt: "No matter what they say, they’re not going to be able to evacuate these areas."

John Curry, Indian Point’s emergency director, said he believes people can evacuate from the 10-mile zone. But he acknowledges the depth of public skepticism: "It’s very difficult, and I don’t know how to make them feel any better."

SAFETY IN `LOW’ NUMBERS

Two dozen of the nuclear sites along the East Coast are within 50 miles of New York, Boston, Washington, Baltimore or Richmond, Va.

"Anyone who lives on the East Coast knows population has grown up around these reactors, and there are certain places where they should never have been built in the first place," said Jim Riccio, nuclear policy analyst for environmental group Greenpeace.

For the most part, though, the early sites were favored if they satisfied the criterion of "remoteness from heavily populated areas," according to the NRC’s predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission.

In 1998, federal guidelines said low-population areas were "generally preferred" because they limit exposure to radiation accidents. This was viewed as part of the NRC’s philosophy of multiple layers of accident safeguards. NRC regulations continue to require "low population zones" around prospective nuclear sites.

But from the beginning, it was hard to use very remote sites. Sites were desirable when they were still close enough to transportation networks to haul in massive equipment and supplies and near enough to amenities to lure engineers and corporate managers.

The contradiction meant choosing places like the piney hills of Wake County, N.C., where federal regulators gave permission to build Shearon Harris in 1978.

They described the region as a "sparely populated rural area." But it was just 20 miles from Raleigh — and future commuter sprawl — which accounted for the population nearly quadrupling within the 10-mile zone from 1990 (three years after it went online) to 2010.

Complicating things nationwide, government and industry officials also tended to underestimate projected growth — picking numbers that helped win approval for favored sites.

For example, federal regulators predicted in 1973 that the 50-mile population around the Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida would expand from 155,900 to only 381,000 by 2020. "The basic rural character of the area is not expected to change in the coming 40 years," the government predicted.

Yet the plant was built in Citrus County on the state’s picture-postcard west coast, 70 miles north of Tampa. And by 2010 — 10 years ahead of the predicted timetable — the population had already multiplied by six, to over 1 million, the AP analysis shows.

"These population explosions are very likely to make the evacuation plan unworkable," said anti-nuclear activist Paul Gunter at Beyond Nuclear in Takoma Park, Md., who has pressed for reviews of emergency community planning before relicensing.

Even Dana Powers, a member of the NRC’s independent Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, says his group "has had troubles with evacuation strategy assumptions."
U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu recently suggested that the Japanese accident will indeed drive U.S. regulators to pick less populated areas for future nuclear plants.

Emergency readiness was supposed to account for growth and stay up to date. The joint guidance of the NRC and FEMA in 1980 stated that "evacuation time estimates should be updated as local conditions change." In fact, according to AP’s review of government records, once plant turbines started humming, little was done to keep planning in step with population increases.

In 2007, then-Commissioner Jaczko acknowledged that some evacuation time estimates had not been updated "in decades."

A proposed rule would require fresh estimated evacuation times with new Census data every 10 years — and after that, with any jumps in population that would increase the time estimate by either 25 percent or 30 minutes.

The proposal also would require an annual update of the population estimate. If adopted as expected, it would be the first overhaul of emergency preparedness rules since 1980.
Given the lack of a required evacuation time, though, any updates might make little difference.

Even with increased concern among federal regulators, challenges remain in the mission to inform the public quickly and accurately.

A FEMA web page entitled "Nuclear Power Plant Emergency," last modified on April 8, states: "Nearly 3 million Americans live within 10 miles of an operating nuclear power plant." That’s off by one million people.

Then there is the relatively new and sparsely publicized concession to escalating populations and roads that haven’t been upgraded or widened in decades. It’s called "sheltering" — if people stay put, maybe they can evacuate later, after the first wave of people has left.

A 2007 Sandia National Laboratories report said excess radiation doses could be reduced if residents simply hunkered down in their homes. However, the report acknowledged that "some contamination and radiation will enter most shelters."

Then, sending another mixed message that could prompt unofficial evacuations, the report continued: If quick evacuation is possible, leaving is "always the most appropriate recommendation."

PLAYING WITH NUMBERS

As part of its investigation, the AP has reported that researchers’ numbers and assumptions — along with NRC regulations — have been periodically adjusted to keep the reactors within stated limits for operating safety. Similarly, confronted with evacuation troubles, the NRC has minimized the presumed impact of accidents, allowing plants to stay on the power grid.

The studies date back to the early 1980s, when the NRC wanted more guidance about where to locate nuclear reactors. So the agency decided to assess the potential effects of serious accidents on surrounding communities.

Its 1982 report alarmed Congress. At Indian Point Unit 3, the study predicted 64,000 deaths and $314 billion in damages from a bad accident ($700 billion today, adjusted for inflation).

The public was so shaken that the NRC and industry avoided similar analyses for decades.

However, in its Indian Point relicensing proposal, owner Entergy Corp. finally reevaluates some of the numbers. The effects of a bad accident are minimized, according to an AP analysis of those numbers: no more than 2,130 cancer deaths and only $117 billion in economic damages.

Plant spokesman Jerry Nappi went even further when pressed. Contrary to the calculations of planners, he said he didn’t "believe a scenario like this is credible or perhaps even possible" with all the protections built into the plant. As for a 50-mile evacuation encompassing New York, he said a 10-mile radius "is already a very conservative planning zone."

Nuclear planners gave similar confident reassurances about their tsunami planning in Japan. And the BP emergency plans left out Gulf of Mexico oil spill scenarios that occurred, even though they supposedly couldn’t happen.

Meanwhile, the NRC’s partner, Sandia National Laboratories, has again been studying the impact of accidents. The work is still under way, but researchers have tentatively concluded that reactor defenses will work way better than believed in the 1980s.

NRC officials say the conclusion stems from decades of additional research and sophisticated computer modeling. But they also wrap their equations in a ribbon of rosy assumptions:

• Accidents will develop more slowly than thought.

• Buildings designed to contain radiation leaks will hold.

• Emergency plans will work.

• Responders will do their jobs.

• Ninety percent of those told to stay put will obey.

"The magnitude of possible releases from these accidents is much smaller than originally thought," said NRC spokesman Scott Burnell in a preview of the conclusions expected to take final form by 2012.

PLANS LACK TEETH

The population boom near nuclear sites cries out for stronger evacuation standards, according to safety watchdogs. But little has been done, thus helping ensure the continued operation of the aging reactors.

While keeping evacuation zones the same size at aging plants, regulators often have allowed the units to run at higher power levels. More power means more radioactivity that could be released in an accident.

Since 1977, all the reactors collectively have upgraded their maximum power output 139 times.

In May, the two Point Beach reactors, on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan, were each given permission to increase power levels by 17 percent. Meanwhile, population within 50 miles has grown by 36 percent from 573,050 to 779,140 over the past three decades.

In 2008, the NRC’s policymaking commissioners even voted to give lower-level staff the authority to approve sensitive changes that would weaken emergency plans. It had been in the purview of the commission itself.

Today, government regulators verify emergency preparedness of communities essentially by checklists, not by standards for what plans must accomplish. They require that communities show the elements of a good plan, but not that the plan is effective.

For example, evacuation time estimates are required, but there is no standard for how quickly people must be able to leave. Regulators say the estimates will help planners make decisions in a real accident, even in the absence of a standard.

Jim Kish, a FEMA administrator who focuses on emergency preparedness, said in an interview that a standard would put communities in an undesirable "planning box."
"They need the flexibility to make decisions on what to evacuate, and when to evacuate, and how to evacuate," he said.

"I think the NRC wants to make sure that the evacuation side of things doesn’t make plants have to close, even if the population grows quickly," said Richard Webster, an environmental lawyer who unsuccessfully fought the relicensing petition at the Oyster Creek reactor in Lacey Township, N.J.

More broadly, the government seems careful to avoid anything fully binding in its planning requirements. It sets a supposed standard that people within 10 miles must be notified of an accident within 45 minutes. But NRC rules also say that’s not a guarantee early notification can be provided for everyone.

And notification of an accident within 45 minutes says nothing about how long it will take to flee.

NRC rules also concede there’s no guarantee that emergency sirens, "when tested under actual field conditions, will meet the design objective in all cases."
This movable standard makes things easier for plant owners who often struggle to keep warning sirens working from their perches within the 10-mile zones.

FEMA encourages drills for rush-hour traffic, night conditions, or bad weather. But it does not require them, the agency acknowledged.

Heather Heigl, the lead community emergency planner for the area around the Brunswick site in North Carolina, said daylong drills every two years verify that the right people and resources are available, and that communications systems are working.

However, she acknowledged, the exercises don’t actually send rescue workers to shelters or police officers to traffic control points. Asked for the estimated evacuation times for her site, she wasn’t sure.

"The NRC rubber-stamps these evacuation plans, but they’re not based on discernible performance standards," said Alex Matthiessen, president of the Riverkeeper environmental group fighting Indian Point relicensing. "If they applied any kind of meaningful standard in evaluating the emergency plans of the nation’s nuclear power plants, there would be no nuclear power plants in this country, at least not in populated areas."

Attorney Webster argued that safety standards should become harder to meet as populations grow around plants like Oyster Creek. (In AP’s analysis, population between 1980 and last year increased 269 percent within 10 miles of Oyster Creek, from 36,738 to 135,378.)

During an emergency there, many would be forced to leave in the same direction, away from the Atlantic Ocean, along a highway that a pro-nuclear state senator has called "a two-lane cow path."

Janet Tauro, a nuclear safety activist who lives 18 miles from the plant, wonders: "Picture me with my son on his BMX bike and my daughter at dance class, multiply me by 100,000 — and you have pandemonium."

Helen Henderson, who lives three miles from the reactor, is among the doubters. She said she repeatedly ignored the forms sent home by her children’s school certifying that she has read and agrees with the Oyster Creek emergency plan.

Tired of the stream of reminders sent her way, Henderson said she finally wrote back: "Refuse to sign. Evacuation plan will not work."

The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate(at)ap.org