NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS: BOTHERED, BEWITCHED OR BEWILDERED?
Nation Union Journalists
http://www.nujcec.org/paris/NUCLEAR-ACCIDENTS-BOTHERED
Wednesday 11 February 2009, by Patricia Brett
A version of this article appeared in the IHT in October 2008.
Nuclear energy results in the release of radioactivity into the atmosphere and into bodies of water, either through routine, scheduled releases or because of accidents. Each nuclearized country has a watchdog to control the industry, but how well do they actually perform? This article looks at a few worrisome examples of regulators at work.
A host of nuclear accidents [1] across Europe this summer, including 100 workers inadvertently contaminated and an off-site release of radioactive iodine, served as reminders that far from being clean, the industry is a source of routine and accidental radioactive pollution [2]. Operators and regulators were prompt to assure that public health was unharmed. Yet, when Anne Lauvergeon, CEO of AREVA came to visit SOCATRI, the subsidiary guilty of dumping uranium by error in local waterways, she was met by public outcry.
AREVA, the world’s largest nuclear group, was responsible for three of the events – six of which occurred in France, the most nuclear-dependent country with 80% of nuclear-produced electricity. Four of the French events concerned the 600 hectare Tricastin site.
Responding to critics on the 75 Kg uranium spill, Lauvergeon, said that nuclear installations are subject to “the most draconian international norms” and deplored public “confusion” about the “incident”. [3]
That nuclear power is a source of confusion is undeniable but comments such as Lauvergeon’s do nothing to dissipate it. For example, there are no binding international radio-protection standards. National regulators follow the ill-defined ALARA – As Low As Reasonably Achievable – guidelines allowing them suitable flexibility to set dose limits for each radionucleide.
ALARA itself is a source of bafflement. Many believe that exposure to ALARA levels is risk-free but that’s not the case, warns Jean-René Jourdain, head of internal dosimetry at the IRSN, the technical support provider for the French nuclear regulator, the ASN. Low-dose radiation produces the same damage to target tissues as high doses but with lower probability. How much lower is unknown, Jourdain says, because “what we know about low-level radiation was extrapolated from studies on atom bomb victims that were flawed” both in methodology and type of exposure studied.
Chernobyl provided unanticipated results on the effects of cumulative low-dose exposure, Jourdain says. “We expected leukemia in children, instead we found that infants were more prone to thyroid cancer – and much sooner than we’d expected, only five years after the accident rather than 10 to 15 years as we’d thought,” he adds.
SOCATRI added to the bewilderment by providing conflicting information and failing to inform the ASN in a timely manner [4]. As in most countries, the ASN relies heavily on operator data. Based on that, it classified the event, at a level 1 on its scale of 0 to 7. And this is discombobulating because on the ASN web site, an unauthorised off-site release ranks as a more serious level 3. [5]
Furthermore, the ASN waited two days before sending a team on site. “This is normal procedure based on the information given by the operator” Jean-Luc Lachaume, deputy director of ASN says. Even if the operator had released 360kg of radioactive uranium, as initially reported, this wasn’t a problem because the agency knows what the plant releases “it is one of a hundred such incidents in France each year,” he says.
President of the CRIIRAD, an independent laboratory, Roland Desbordes is perplexed by this reasoning because “360kg of uranium is equivalent to at least 9,000 MBq or more than 100 times SOCATRI’s annual limit. Brought down to ‘only’ 75kg the annual limit is overshot by 27 times”.
After the spill, the IRSN monitored radioactivity in surface and groundwater around Tricastin. In a report issued on Sept 4 [6], it found radiation levels three times higher than the national average in marine life and sediments in surface water.
An IRSN study released on Sept. 15, [7] on radioactive water pollution around all nuclear installations found radioactive pollution downstream of and groundwater contamination at nearly all sites. Tricastin again, chalked up some of the highest levels but the IRSN says it can’t identify the source of the groundwater contamination. The CRIIRAD incriminates a mound of radioactive waste buried on site since the 1970s. The IRSN report does point to old waste storage sites, in general, protected by obsolete technology as a source of leakage and pollution, some of it on-going for years. Asked what the ASN would do about the Tricastin mound, Lachaume testily replied that it was a defence issue and the ASN had no authority over it.
With 104 reactors, the US leads in the number of nuclear power plants. The Union of Concerned Scientists and others petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2006 to take action on a similar issue, documenting chronic leaks, some decades-old. [8] “The NRC responded that an industry voluntary initiative, that is by those that have been obfuscating for years, to report the leaks would suffice,” says Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear.
Radiation levels around Tricastin have been higher than average for over a decade but this doesn’t worry the IRSN which notes, in the Sept 4th report, that in 1991 (while investigating a previous spill [9]) it found radiation levels five times above the national average. The IRSN implies that since radiation is now lower than in 1991, which has apparently become the standard for “background” radiation at Tricastin, there is no need for concern.
“Background” radiation, often called “natural”, is baffling when confused with “naturally-occurring” radiation. Background includes artificial radiation produced by, among others, nuclear power plants – the more radioactivity is released and stays in the environment, the higher background levels become, explains Jourdain, of IRSN.
All nuclear installations routinely release radioactive liquids or gases. The releases authorised by the ASN and other regulatory bodies are site-specific and cover a variety of radioneuclides. Limits can vary greatly from one country or even from one installation to the next. In France, for example, one installation will be authorised to release 60,000 GBq of radioactive tritium while another is allowed 18,000 TBq [10]. Even allowing for differences in activity and location, these discrepancies can muddle the public mind.
To understand how these limits are set, the example of SOCATRI is enlightening. In 2006, SOCATRI began a new waste reconditioning activity and requested authorisation to release 85 MBq/yr of Carbon 14, a low-level radioactive gas. In 2006 and 2007, SOCATRI exceeded it’s authorised levels by 40 times at around 3,400 MBq/yr so it asked the ASN to increase its authorisation to 3,400 MBq/yr. The request was granted, Lachaume explains, because “we didn’t know how much would be released at first so we set the levels very low but when it turned out that these were unrealistic, they were slightly revised”. [11]
In June – reported in August – SOCATRI exceeded its annual limit and was shutdown. Lachaume says the Carbon 14 limit will not be raised again but has no suggestion as to how the plant should deal with the problem. “That’s their business,” he says.
In a 2006 review of the ASN, the International Atomic Energy Agency, found that “…some states may encounter difficulties in separating the regulatory control from the promotion and operation of facilities and activities…”. [12] . This is understandable in the newly independent (since 2006) ASN as the State is a majority shareholder in both AREVA and EDF, France’s nuclear utility. But even in the US where the industry is in private hands, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, headed by five presidentially-appointed commissioners, has been known to ignore safety issues in favour of financial arguments advanced by operators.
In 2002, the Davis-Besse (DB) plant came to within 3/8th of an inch of a nuclear disaster because the bottom line took priority over public safety, NRC records show. Both the NRC and the industry were aware of severe premature ageing problems due to boric acid corrosion which plagued reactor vessels world-wide since the 1980s. Yet the NRC allowed the industry to treated the issue as a financial problem, not a safety issue [13]. Loss of coolant can lead to reactor meltdown and massive release of high-level radiation. . In 2001, the NRC suspected DB of serious corrosion issues and told the operator, FENOC, to shutdown by Dec 31 to visually check for and repair corrosion damage.
FENOC planned to shutdown for refuelling in April and requested an extension citing the economic toll early shutdown entails. Convinced that safety requirements were not met, NRC staff drafted a shutdown order and sent it to the five-member Commission for approval. But Commission staff questioned the order, requiring 100% proof, available only by shutting the plant, that imposing a financial burden was warranted, a report by the NRC inspector-general shows In the end the NRC allowed the plant to run for an extra six weeks. When workers scrapped off years-old boric acid crud they found that a cavity 7 inches deep and 5 inches wide had bored through the entire outer layer of the reactor lid leaving only the 3/8th of an inch of inner lining to retain the primary coolant inside the vessel [14]. Loss of coolant can lead to reactor meltdown and massive release of high-level radiation.
Plants are ageing faster than expected, says Laurent Foucher, IRSN’s head of equipment and structural analysis, and finding replacement parts is becoming difficult.
Tony Pietrangelo, vice president for regulatory affairs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobby group, says that “there’s a supply chain issue with ultra heavy equipment.”
Asked if deteriorating plans resulted in more near misses, Scott Burnell, press officer at the NCR says no but adds that “we’re having to deal with more complex situations”.
P.S.
This subject is highly controversial and I anticipate dissent from some quarters, hence the footnotes. But if you think it’s too much, I can take them out. Also not sure where it should go?!
Footnotes
[1] In nuke-speak these events are referred to as “anomalies” or “incidents”. I chose to use the Collins English Dictionary definition of accident – “an unforeseen event”
[2] 100 workers contaminated. See ASN Avis d’incident du 31 juillet 2008
iodine. See Agence Federale de Controle Nucléaire (Belgium) Communique de Presse du 6 Septembre 2008;
[3] interview to the JDD July.
[4] Confirmed in interview to JL Lachaume deputy director of ASN. Sept 8, 2008.
[5] INES scale
[6] IRSN Fiche technique SOCATRI du 4 septembre 2008.
[7] IRSN Report on Water around Nuke sites 4 septembre 2008.
[8] UCS petition and response to NRC response
[9] The 1991 spill is not mentioned in the Sept 4 report but is alluded to in the Sept 15 report.
[10] IRSN Report on Water around Nuke sites 15 septembre 2008.
[11] Figures confirmed by Lachaume at ASN .
[12] IAEA Integrated Review Service, Full Scope to France 2006.
[13] NRC INSPECTOR GENERAL DAVIS-BESSE REPORT DEC 2002
NRC Generic Letter 88-01 March 17, 1988
NRC Information Notice 90-10 Primary Stress Corrosion Cracking PWSCC Feb 23, 1990
NRC Lessons Learned
NRC Information Notice 86-108. Jan 5, 1995
NRC Degradation of Control Rod Mech… Generic Letter 97-01 April 1, 1997
NRC Bulletin 2001-01 Aug, 3 2001
NRC Bulletin 2002-01. March 18, 2002
NRC INSPECTOR GENERAL DAVIS-BESSE REPORT DEC 2002.
[14] idem.
4 Forum messages
- 19 February 2009 21:01, by Alison Culliford
1. Sellafield’s small ad in the Whitehaven News: ’We need your help. Did you work at Sellafield in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s? Were you by chance in the job of disposing of radioactive material? If so, the owners of Britain’s nuclear waste dump would very much like to hear from you: they want you to tell them what you dumped - and where you put it.’ Is this some kind of joke? Was it really placed by Sellafield or an anti-nuclear power group?
2. I read an official report on Chernobyl issued by Nuclear Electric to all chief charge engineers in the UK (my dad was one, at Hinkley Point). It drew the conclusion that the normal safety valve of self-preservation was no longer present among workers in post-Communist Ukraine, and smugly judged that this could never happen in Britain. The latter is probably true if we retain our democracy, but selling reactors to the likes of Libya surely must be questioned.
3. That said, Dad was disillusioned after privatisation. My brother met a 60-year-old surfer on the beach at Croyde Bay who was high up in Nuclear Electric. "Ah yes, the three awkward charge engineers," he said. My Dad and his colleagues, who had started out in nuclear power believing it was the new clean power, were given golden handshakes to get them out of the way in the mid-1990s. They insisted on doing things the old way. Dad, who used to leave on holiday with a suitcase full of Hinkley Point paperwork, constantly phoned in to work, and made us visit any nuclear site within a 500 mile radius in any country we were in (even if it meant staring at it through binoculars), ended his days walking on the Quantocks and gazing ruefully at the twin blocks of his former workplace. I think the worry finally killed him (if it wasn’t the radiation. He had a form of leukemia).
4. But give me a good alternative. I would like to see nuclear power regulated by a stringent UN-enforced international regulatory body, staffed by people like my father, who wasn’t just in it for the money.
Reply to this message - 24 February 2009 14:47, by Pat
Atomic power has, from its inception in the 1950s, benefited from both generous subsidies and unfailing governmental support. Many people believed in the radiant future it promised.
Little was known at the time of the effects of nuclear power, especially of low-level radiation, to which we are routinely exposed. The only data available was extrapolated from data collected on the survivors of high-level exposure from the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the years, the data results were revised when what was considered the radiation-free control groups turned out to be contaminated by low-level radiation and developed cancers, cardiac and reproductive problems as well as genetic mutations typical of radiation exposure. [For additional information see: http://www.rerf.or.jp/]
In addition to these flawed studies, other evidence indicated the nefarious effects of low-level exposure including among Navaho uranium miners and their families whose drinking water was contaminated by uranium tailings and sludge in the US. [See: http://www.downwinders.org/cortez.html]. And there was the high level of cancer and leukaemia deaths in the towns located near the US test sites – St. George, Utah, to name the most blighted of these.
But the industry and the governments that regulate it chose not only to ignore this information but to suppress it. I too have visited nuclear sites where I am told that the radiation released is “safe?. Yet, the International Committee for Radio Protection, hardly a hotbed of anti-nuke activists, states that: “It is assumed that any exposure is capable of causing an effect, with no threshold.? Limits are set only to limit cancer deaths to “an acceptable frequency and “to prevent unacceptable levels of risk.? It all depends on the definition of unacceptable.
Nuclear industry workers are the first to be affected by the suppression of mounting evidence that low-level radiation is more harmful than first believed. They are often over-exposed without being warned of the possible ill effects.
Nuclear pioneers, such as your father, at least knew that they were dealing with a dangerous technology. But this attitude has faded with the years. For example, according to the EDF inspector general for safety, the safety culture at EDF is poor and a certain complacency has set in. [See http://energies.edf.com/html/IGSN/2007/rapportIGSN-2007.pdf]
Regulators depend on the industry for information about everything that goes on at nuclear installations. Independent monitoring is deemed unnecessary.
It is true that we lack studies to back up claims of the effects of low-level radiation. This is because only governments are capable of implementing such comprehensive studies but are too busy burying their heads firmly in the sand on this issue to do so. In a recent broadcast of “Pieces à Conviction? on FR3, André-Claude Lacoste, chair of the Authorité de sureté nulcéaire, said it was unnecessary for the ASN to undertake such a study because the effects of low-level radiation were too negligible to show up. In other words, he doesn’t need to study a controversial issue because he already knows the answer. It is always the same broken record “Don’t worry, be happy?.
Last but decidedly not least, there is the problem of radioactive waste. The industry generates radioactive pollution that is a zillion times more toxic than anything found in nature and offers no viable way to dispose of it. Reprocessing plants such as Sellafield or La Hague spend a lot of energy and resources to simply recondition the waste and make the raw materials for bombs – plutonium and enriched uranium – more easily available by separating them from the rest of the waste. But it remains waste and as such, still needs to be disposed of and therein lies the rub. There is no way to predict what will happen to geologic formations hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years from now. To claim that deep repositories will withstand, without leaching into ground water reservoirs, the massive radioactive bombardment that they will be subjected to for the required centuries is a further example of nuclear industry hubris.
Reply to this message - 28 March 2009 18:13, by peter russell
Over recent years some extremely worrying facts have been brought to light by a number of scientists working independently of the establishment and therefore able to state their findings without fear of losing their jobs (though they might, one surmises, worry for their lives).
First among these is Dr. Chris Busby, who has been measuring and making tests on the radioactivity around nuclear sites in England - notably Sellafield, the North Wales coast and Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset which is close to the Hinkley Point nuclear power station. His surveys in each of these places has produced considerably elevated figures for cancers and leukaemias, especially among children, close to the coasts of Cumbria, Conway, N.Ireland, and the Bristol Channel. Some of his results have been reported in Richard Bramhall’s periodical "Radiation Times". Busby produced a DVD, called "Nuclear Cover-ups", about the effects on the children of N. Wales some years ago, which I believe is still available. In 2006 Dr. Busby wrote a substantial treatise on the effects of low-level radiation, especially regarding particles inhaled or imbibed and lodging in the human system. This was unfortunately titled "Wolves of Water", which means little to most people, and expansively subtitled "A study constructed from atomic radiation, morality, epidemiology, science, bias, philosophy and death". In about 500 pages this covers the whole field of the effects of low-level radiation and the reasons for its serious effects on the human system and human health and human geneology. Busby also co-operated with A. V. Yablokov in the mainly-Russian report on the long-term effects from the Chernobyl disaster, titled "Chernobyl: 20 years after", another harrowing 250-page document full of unhappy facts relating to the continuing sickness and death caused all over Europe but particularly in Belarus and around Chernobyl.
Another telling document is the 2006 book by Dr. Helen Caldicott, another dedicated expert on the effects of radiation, and called "Nuclear Power is not the Answer". Her reasoning and her references back up the findings of Dr. Rosalie Bertell, in her 1985 book "No Immediate Danger", and her subsequent pontifications on the subject of the millions who have died as a direct or indirect result of our nuclear activities.
These and other writers are sufficient to persuade less academic but concerned people that the human race is indeed doomed, if not from climate change, epidemics, rain-forest loss and species loss, or just outright warfare, certainly without fail from the legacy of radioactive materials. All of these, sooner or later, will escape their storage places and contaminate the planet more and more to the point where the "background" radioactivity is so high that not one in three people will die from cancer, but everybody, and many in their pre-reproductive years. Unfortunately, the dire effects will also disrupt animal and plant life in general, and it may be many millions of years before the total radioactive load has diminished enough for life to be sustainable again, and Darwin’s process of evolution start all over again.
I am one of those who are convinced that this is the scenario on which we are already well-embarked, and the pie-in-the-sky assertion that "science will solve the problem" is just not going to happen.
Reply to this message - 3 April 2009 13:16, by Pat Brett
Thank you for pointing out the work of Dr. Chris Busby, I am not familiar with it and will try to look it up.
I am familiar with the work done by Drs. Rosalie Bertell and Helen Caldicott. Interviewing them in the late 1970s combined with covering the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s totally inefficient response to the accident at Three Mile Island raised my concerns about the effects of radiation and the lack of public information on the issue.
