Thoughts on the NRC Mess

This Nuclear Regulatory Commission thing sure is a mess, isn’t it?

I’m pretty confident that the NRC as a whole is going to be just fine – its not just these dysfunctional 5 people, but it is a whole bureaucracy who actually are some of the best federal workers in the government. I know several of them, and they seem to just be going about their job without regard here to fate of Jaczko.

Some people might ask, why doesn't the President just ask some people to resign? But - it doesn’t surprise me that no one will be asked to resign, because the NRC is almost a unique institution here in Washington. It actually is more like the Federal Election Commission than a government agency like the DoE. It is nominally an independent agency of the federal government, so I’m not even sure that the President could fire anyone, even if he wanted to.

It is extraordinary that this is happening publicly, but it seems like that’s a factor of Issa’s releasing the letter, not a desire to fight this in the court of public opinion.

I don’t think this will ultimately mean anything for the big fights the NRC has going on now that you mention, but it may be a symptom of those fights. If Jaczko is a proxy for the anti-nuclear crowd, and the rest of the commissioners get painted as pro-industry, as they seem to be, then it seems that there is some very big fault-lines that need to be worked-out before these decisions are made.

Finally – while it seems like the NRC is having problems – they’re nothing compared to the regulatory problems that Japanese utilities are undergoing right now. They can’t even get functioning nuclear plants back online after routine maintenance, due to public opposition and uncertain regulation. So – we can be thankful for the relative stability we’ve got here.

Nuclear Lessons Learned from Fukushima

The Springfield Nuclear Power Plant

This morning, I attended an event, "Lessons from Japan, Global Implications of Nuclear Disaster" hosted by the National Journal. I'm not going to do a full summary of the event - most of everything that was spoken wasn't new - it was a restating of positions. This is a problem in Washington: an external event - even one as big as the Tohoku disaster - does not change positions. Instead, it just causes people to restate their previous stances, and say "now more than ever" (with hat tip to Ezra Klein for that idea). At this event we saw such statements from Rep. Markey, as well as panelist from the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Center for American Progress.

The most pertinent presenter was Greg Jaczko, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulator Commission. The lesson he claimed the U.S. should learn is that accidents do happen - all of the preparation in the world cannot prevent every accident. In a nuclear disaster, its never just one thing that goes wrong, instead it is an unanticipated series of events that cascade into a severe disaster. That is what happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. To take account of that, there needs to be a constant re-evaluation of risk - including looking at the unknown and unpredictable as well as mainstream predictions. I am heartened to see the nuclear regulator taking this. As was discussed at the conference on energy and environmental risks I attended last week at Maxwell AFB, this is the difference between prediction and foresight. Planners need to look beyond a single, linear prediction, and instead realize that planning is about preparing for that which is not obvious.

Finally, a brief criticism of the event - if they were really looking for lessons from Japan, it seems that at least one of the presenters should have been from Japan. As it was, the overwhelming response to the event, from almost every participant, was that we don't yet know the final lessons. So - it seems that a pertinent speaker would have been someone from Japan who worked closely on the response. They could have then discussed how this experience should shape American nuclear policy. Instead, we had a series of American policymakers and commentators who seemed to be saying the same things they've always said.

North Anna's Reactor and the Earthquake

Just a quick hit today on an article that appeared in the NY Times: "After East Coast Quake, Virginia Nuclear Plant Takes Stock."

Credit: Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

I've been waiting for an assessment of the damage to the North Anna reactor after the quake. This reactor was rated prior to the quake as the "7th most At-Risk for Earthquake Damage" according the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). I found that story the day of the earthquake here in DC; it also said that North Anna was designed to withstand a magnitude 5.9 – 6.1 earthquake. Because our earthquake was rated as a 5.8-5.9, it quickly became clear that North Anna should be an area of concern. Although no one expected a Fukushima-style meltdown - it was the tsunami, not the earthquake, that did in their reactors - it is important that we learn how American reactors can stand up to trauma.

The New York Times article make clear that the jury is still out. The reactor has not yet come back on line after the quake, and the NRC is requiring them to prove that the damage to reactor was only cosmetic. The picture above shows how one of the 117 ton casks containing radioactive spent fuel shifted, it isn't clear that there was any real damage.