Group items tagged

DOE views nuclear safety and assuring a robust safety culture as essential to the success of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) and all of our projects across the DOE complex.

Over the past year, the Department has undertaken a broad range of steps to assure a strong and questioning safety culture at WTP and sites across the DOE complex. We will only be successful if we remain committed to continuous improvement and teamwork. DOE takes all safety concerns--whether from our employees, our contractors, the Board, or third-parties--very seriously. This input is an integral part of the Department's efforts to constantly strengthen nuclear safety at our facilities.

Even though the Department cannot accept the allegations without the opportunity to evaluate the Board's full investigative record, in the spirit of continual improvement DOE accepts the Board's recommendations to assert federal control to direct, track, and validate corrective actions to strengthen the safety culture at WTP; conduct an extent of condition review to assess safety culture issues beyond the WTP project; and support the ongoing Department of Labor (DOL) review of Dr. Tamosaitis' case.

In October 2010, HSS completed its investigation, which included interviews with more than 250 employees. While HSS found that the fundamentals of a robust safety culture were present at WTP, the report identified the need for improvement in key areas, including, among others: more clearly defining federal roles and responsibilities; identifying mechanisms to strengthen trust among the workforce and better communicate information to employees; and putting in place processes to ensure nuclear safety programs remain robust and effective during project changes.

The corrective actions that address the recommendations from the HSS report will be fully implemented by September 30, 2011. HSS will then conduct a follow-on visit to assure that these steps were executed effectively across the project, as well as to perform additional analysis to determine if cost and schedule pressures are challenging the implementation of a robust nuclear safety culture.

DOE and Bechtel National, Incorporated (BNI)--the prime contractor on the WTP project--have been engaged in a variety of initiatives to strengthen the nuclear safety culture at WTP for over a year. Steps that have already occurred include completing a revision to the WTP Project Execution Plan, currently under review, to more clearly delineate federal roles and organizational responsibilities at WTP and the Office of River Protection (ORP), and conducting a number of employee forums to ensure that employees clearly understand the changes in those roles and responsibilities.

Also in response to the HSS recommendations, BNI commissioned a confidential survey of more than 300 WTP employees to assess if a Nuclear Safety Quality Culture (NSQC) gap existed at the site and to identify additional areas for improvement. As a result, the contractor assigned a retired Navy Admiral and former nuclear utility executive experienced in application of Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) methods as the Manager of NSQC Implementation for the project. To date, approximately 1,600 people at the site, including all senior managers, have received training focused on making the workforce comfortable with raising issues and systematically moving issues through to resolution. In addition, over the last 13 months, BNI has conducted three all-hands meetings with DOE project team participation to emphasize the importance of a robust nuclear safety culture.

Even while some initiatives are already underway, we recognize the need to continue improving nuclear safety at WTP and across the complex. To that end, DOE has developed a comprehensive action plan to address the Board's specific recommendations to strengthen the safety culture at WTP. Initial steps are discussed below:

The Deputy Secretary and I will continue to be personally engaged in asserting federal control to ensure the specific corrective actions to strengthen safety culture within the WTP project in both contractor and federal workforces--consistent with DOE Policy 420.1--are tracked and validated. Federal control within the WTP project has been and will continue to be asserted and regularly reinforced through our direct involvement.

This will include a series of ``town-hall'' style meetings hosted by senior DOE officials to highlight for workers the importance of maintaining a strong nuclear safety culture at each of our sites and to solicit their input. These forums across the DOE complex will also help improve the direct communication of safety issues between senior managers and employees. To address the concern regarding extent of condition, HSS will independently review the safety culture across the entire complex. This review will provide insights into the health of safety culture within Headquarters organizations, different program offices, and different field sites.

In addition, DOE and BNI are arranging Safety Conscious Work Environment (SCWE) training for BNI and ORP managers and supervisors with a firm that conducts SCWE training for the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations Senior Nuclear Plant Manager's course. We will also be joining with BNI to sponsor an independent, executive-level

assessment of the project's nuclear safety culture by a group of nuclear industry subject matter experts, who have experience in INPO evaluations and/or Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspections. At both a site and corporate level, we are also taking steps to enhance reporting mechanisms for safety-related concerns. At the Hanford site, we have combined the Employee Concerns Programs for ORP and the Richland Operations Office to leverage existing resources to both strengthen this important program and increase its visibility at the site.

Within EM Headquarters, we have established ombudsmen to act as advocates for employees and their concerns.

We have made it easier for employees to use a variety of avenues to raise concerns, including: the line management for each project, site employee concerns programs, union representatives, EM's Office of Safety and Security Programs, HSS, and DOE's Chief of Nuclear Safety. Each office now offers employees access to both a hotline number and general email inbox, so that workers will have the opportunity to ask questions or voice concerns either directly or anonymously.

We will also require that both EM Headquarters and field sites assess nuclear safety culture and the implementation of a safety conscious work environment in their annual submittals for Integrated Safety Management System (ISMS) declarations. The specific criteria will build on the existing requirements for the ISMS declarations and will be expanded to include safety culture principles not only from DOE, but also from INPO and NRC.

DOE does not agree with all of the findings included in the Board's report. Specifically, the conclusions drawn by the Board about the overall quality of the safety culture at WTP differ significantly from the HSS findings and are not consistent with the safety culture data and field performance experience at WTP. We are concerned that your letter includes the October 2010 HSS review in the list of ``other examples of a failed safety culture.''

The Department disagrees with this categorization and believes the HSS report provided an accurate representation of the nuclear safety culture-- and existing gaps--at the WTP.

Commitment to Continuous Learning, Safety

The U.S. industry—through its commitment to continuous learning and relentless pursuit of excellence in safe operations—has taken significant action to ensure that American reactors are operated safety and securely. This includes actions in the following areas: Command and control: key operational and response decisions remain with shift supervisor—Decision-making remains on site with licensed operators. Reactor operators drill on accident scenarios several times each year and are prepared to respond to a wide range of potential severe events.

Operator licensing and training—U.S. reactor operators are licensed by the NRC and must re-qualify for their license every two years. U.S. reactor operators spend one week out of six in simulator training, which is more continuous training than pilots and doctors. Safety culture—The industry’s safety culture is transparent and encourages and facilitates the reporting of problems or concerns by employees through several channels. A commitment to safety culture is evidenced by employees who embrace continuous learning and maintain a questioning attitude regarding safety. This attitude gives rise to tools like corrective actions programs.

Independent regulator that includes resident inspectors—The NRC is an independent agency whose sole mission is protection of public health and safety. NRC inspectors located at each of America’s nuclear energy facilities have unfettered access to workers and data as part of their daily inspections. Creation of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations—INPO was formed by the industry after the Three Mile Island accident to drive industry toward operational excellence and above and beyond NRC requirements. Post 9/11 security contingency measures—The NRC and industry took several actions after 9/11 to enhance security at America’s nuclear energy facilities. These features also would help mitigate extreme events, such as large fires or explosions.

(Also see NEI’s graphic: “Commitment to Continuous Learning, Safety.”)

Regulations are loosened, and reactors are back in compliance."That's what they say for everything ...," said Demetrios Basdekas, a retired NRC engineer. "Every time you turn around, they say, 'We have all this built-in conservatism.' "The crisis at the decades-old Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility in Japan has focused attention on nuclear safety and prompted the NRC to look at U.S. reactors. A report is due in July.But the factor of aging goes far beyond issues posed by Fukushima.

Commercial nuclear reactors in the United States were designed and licensed for 40 years. When the first were built in the 1960s and 1970s, it was expected that they would be replaced with improved models long before their licenses expired.That never happened. The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, massive cost overruns, crushing debt and high interest rates halted new construction in the 1980s.Instead, 66 of the 104 operating units have been relicensed for 20 more years. Renewal applications are under review for 16 other reactors.As of today, 82 reactors are more than 25 years old.The AP found proof that aging reactors have been allowed to run less safely to prolong operations.

Last year, the NRC weakened the safety margin for acceptable radiation damage to reactor vessels -- for a second time. The standard is based on a reactor vessel's "reference temperature," which predicts when it will become dangerously brittle and vulnerable to failure. Through the years, many plants have violated or come close to violating the standard.As a result, the minimum standard was relaxed first by raising the reference temperature 50 percent, and then 78 percent above the original -- even though a broken vessel could spill radioactive contents."We've seen the pattern," said nuclear safety scientist Dana Powers, who works for Sandia National Laboratories and also sits on an NRC advisory committee. "They're ... trying to get more and more out of these plants."

Sharpening the pencilThe AP study collected and analyzed government and industry documents -- some never-before released -- of both reactor types: pressurized water units that keep radioactivity confined to the reactor building and the less common boiling water types like those at Fukushima, which send radioactive water away from the reactor to drive electricity-generating turbines.The Energy Northwest Columbia Generating Station north of Richland is a boiling water design that's a newer generation than the Fukushima plants.Tens of thousands of pages of studies, test results, inspection reports and policy statements filed during four decades were reviewed. Interviews were conducted with scores of managers, regulators, engineers, scientists, whistleblowers, activists and residents living near the reactors at 65 sites, mostly in the East and Midwest.

AP reporters toured some of the oldest reactors -- Oyster Creek, N.J., near the Atlantic coast 50 miles east of Philadelphia and two at Indian Point, 25 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River.Called "Oyster Creak" by some critics, this boiling water reactor began running in 1969 and is the country's oldest operating commercial nuclear power plant. Its license was extended in 2009 until 2029, though utility officials announced in December they will shut the reactor 10 years earlier rather than build state-ordered cooling towers. Applications to extend the lives of pressurized water units 2 and 3 at Indian Point, each more than 36 years old, are under NRC review.Unprompted, several nuclear engineers and former regulators used nearly identical terminology to describe how industry and government research has frequently justified loosening safety standards. They call it "sharpening the pencil" or "pencil engineering" -- fudging calculations and assumptions to keep aging plants in compliance.

"Many utilities are doing that sort of thing," said engineer Richard T. Lahey Jr., who used to design nuclear safety systems for General Electric Co., which makes boiling water reactors. "I think we need nuclear power, but we can't compromise on safety. I think the vulnerability is on these older plants."Added Paul Blanch, an engineer who left the industry over safety issues, but later returned to work on solving them: "It's a philosophical position that (federal regulators) take that's driven by the industry and by the economics: What do we need to do to let those plants continue to operate?"Publicly, industry and government say that aging is well under control. "I see an effort on the part of this agency to always make sure that we're doing the right things for safety. I'm not sure that I see a pattern of staff simply doing things because there's an interest to reduce requirements -- that's certainly not the case," NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko said in an interview.

Neil Wilmshurst, director of plant technology for the industry's Electric Power Research Institute, acknowledged the industry and NRC often collaborate on research that supports rule changes. But he maintained there's "no kind of misplaced alliance ... to get the right answer."Yet agency staff, plant operators and consultants paint a different picture:* The AP reviewed 226 preliminary notifications -- alerts on emerging safety problems -- NRC has issued since 2005. Wear and tear in the form of clogged lines, cracked parts, leaky seals, rust and other deterioration contributed to at least 26 of the alerts. Other notifications lack detail, but aging was a probable factor in 113 more, or 62 percent in all. For example, the 39-year-old Palisades reactor in Michigan shut Jan. 22 when an electrical cable failed, a fuse blew and a valve stuck shut, expelling steam with low levels of radioactive tritium into the outside air. And a 1-inch crack in a valve weld aborted a restart in February at the LaSalle site west of Chicago.

* A 2008 NRC report blamed 70 percent of potentially serious safety problems on "degraded conditions" such as cracked nozzles, loose paint, electrical problems or offline cooling components.* Confronted with worn parts, the industry has repeatedly requested -- and regulators often have allowed -- inspections and repairs to be delayed for months until scheduled refueling outages. Again and again, problems worsened before being fixed. Postponed inspections inside a steam generator at Indian Point allowed tubing to burst, leading to a radioactive release in 2000. Two years later, cracking grew so bad in nozzles on the reactor vessel at the Davis-Besse plant near Toledo, Ohio, that it came within two months of a possible breach, an NRC report said, which could release radiation. Yet inspections failed to catch the same problem on the replacement vessel head until more nozzles were found to be cracked last year.

Time crumbles thingsNuclear plants are fundamentally no more immune to aging than our cars or homes: Metals grow weak and rusty, concrete crumbles, paint peels, crud accumulates. Big components like 17-story-tall concrete containment buildings or 800-ton reactor vessels are all but impossible to replace. Smaller parts and systems can be swapped but still pose risks as a result of weak maintenance and lax regulation or hard-to-predict failures.Even mundane deterioration can carry harsh consequences.For example, peeling paint and debris can be swept toward pumps that circulate cooling water in a reactor accident. A properly functioning containment building is needed to create air pressure that helps clear those pumps. But a containment building could fail in a severe accident. Yet the NRC has allowed safety calculations that assume the buildings will hold.

In a 2009 letter, Mario V. Bonaca, then-chairman of the NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, warned that this approach represents "a decrease in the safety margin" and makes a fuel-melting accident more likely.Many photos in NRC archives -- some released in response to AP requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act -- show rust accumulated in a thick crust or paint peeling in long sheets on untended equipment.Four areas stand out:

Brittle vessels: For years, operators have rearranged fuel rods to limit gradual radiation damage to the steel vessels protecting the core and keep them strong enough to meet safety standards.But even with last year's weakening of the safety margins, engineers and metal scientists say some plants may be forced to close over these concerns before their licenses run out -- unless, of course, new regulatory compromises are made.

Leaky valves: Operators have repeatedly violated leakage standards for valves designed to bottle up radioactive steam in an earthquake or other accident at boiling water reactors.Many plants have found they could not adhere to the general standard allowing main steam isolation valves to leak at a rate of no more than 11.5 cubic feet per hour. In 1999, the NRC decided to allow individual plants to seek amendments of up to 200 cubic feet per hour for all four steam valves combined.But plants have violated even those higher limits. For example, in 2007, Hatch Unit 2, in Baxley, Ga., reported combined leakage of 574 cubic feet per hour.

Cracked tubing: The industry has long known of cracking in steel alloy tubing used in the steam generators of pressurized water reactors. Ruptures have been common in these tubes containing radioactive coolant; in 1993 alone, there were seven. As many as 18 reactors still run on old generators.Problems can arise even in a newer metal alloy, according to a report of a 2008 industry-government workshop.

Corroded piping: Nuclear operators have failed to stop an epidemic of leaks in pipes and other underground equipment in damp settings. Nuclear sites have suffered more than 400 accidental radioactive leaks, the activist Union of Concerned Scientists reported in September.Plant operators have been drilling monitoring wells and patching buried piping and other equipment for several years to control an escalating outbreak.But there have been failures. Between 2000 and 2009, the annual number of leaks from underground piping shot up fivefold, according to an internal industry document.

For India, this is a lesson and an exceptional opportunity to relook at the protected structures of the department of atomic energy (DAE), and establish more transparent processes and procedures.

In the past, the Three Mile Island incident (1979) and Chernobyl accident (1986) had provided similar opportunities to evaluate nuclear safety and regulatory systems. India, in response to these incidents, constituted safety audits to assess the safety of nuclear power plants. However, A. Gopalakrishnan, (a former chairman of Atomic Energy Regulatory Board) in his recent article said, “DAE management classified these audit reports as ‘top secret’ and shelved them. No action was taken on the committee’s findings.”

If this is so, these reports, or at least action-taken reports, ought to have been published and made available. Such steps could have guaranteed DAE considerable public faith in the functioning of regulatory authorities and given significant confidence in engaging with stakeholders in the present expansion plan.

Nuclear Power Corp. of India Ltd, post-Fukushima has undertaken safety evaluation of 20 operating power plants and nuclear power plants under construction. The inm report titled Safety Evaluation of Indian Nuclear Power Plants Post Fukushima Incident suggested a series of safety measures that must be incorporated in all the audited nuclear power plants in a time-bound manner. Measures pertain to strengthening technical and power systems, automatic reactor shutdown on sensing seismic activity, enhancement of tsunami bunds at all coastal stations, etc.

However, in the same breath, the report provides assurance by stating that, “adequate provisions exist at Indian nuclear power plants to handle station blackout situations and maintain continuous cooling of reactor cores for decay heat removal”. Further, the reports recalls, “the incidents at Indian nuclear power plants, like prolonged loss of power supplies at Narora plant in 1993, flood incident at Kakrapar plant in 1994 and tsunami at Madras (Chennai) plant in 2004 were managed successfully with existing provisions.”

DAE’s official response, post-Fukushima, has been cautious while providing assurance. Separately, DAE has made it clear the nuclear energy programme will continue as planned after incorporating the additional safety features identified by the safety audit report.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his speech two days ago in West Bengal was emphatic about the future of India’s nuclear energy programme. He said that “there would be no looking back on nuclear energy. We are in the process of expanding our civil nuclear energy programme. Even as we do so, we have to ensure that the use of nuclear energy meets the highest safety standards. This is a matter on which there can be no compromise”.

S. Banerjee, chairman of Atomic Energy Commission and secretary DAE at the International Atomic Energy Agency Ministerial Conference on Safety, categorically said: “India’s effort has been to achieve continuous improvement and innovation in nuclear safety with the basic principle being, safety first, production next.” This is important at a time when we are in the process of expanding nuclear capacity at an incredible pace.

Currently, there are several domestic and international power projects in the pipeline. DAE has projected 20,000MWe (megawatt electric) by 2020 from present 4,780MWe, a fourfold increase from the current production. Going further, Banerjee stated that India hopes to achieve targets exceeding 30,000MWe by 2020 and 60,000MWe by 2032. This is a tall order, considering our experience in executing major infrastructure projects. DAE has struggled in the past to achieve targets.

Execution of these targets is to be achieved by importing high-capacity reactors and through DAE’s own programme. As we see greater activity in the nuclear energy sector?which was traditionally not transparent in engaging with the public?the trust deficit could only widen as we expand the programme

Land acquisition is already a major concern for infrastructure projects and has become an issue at the proposed Jaitapur nuclear power plant as well. However, the biggest challenge in this expansion would be to convince the public of the safety and security of nuclear power plants and also arrive at a comprehensive information and communication package for states in whose territory projects are being executed. Because of the nature of India’s nuclear programme?the combined existence of civilian and military programmes?the nation may not be in a position to achieve the kind of regulatory autonomy, process and engagement that has been witnessed in many European countries and in the US.

The bifurcation of India’s nuclear establishment into civilian and military, subsequent to commitment under India-US civil nuclear cooperation has provided with the prospect of an empowered regulatory system.

Incidents in Jaitapur and the Fukushima nuclear disaster have further pushed the government to commit to establish an independent nuclear regulator, the Bill of which is expected to be in Parliament any time this year. Nuclear programme is likely to face more complex issues in the future with respect to environment, social and health. Neighbouring countries may also join the chorus soon since some of the proposed nuclear power plant sites are close to our borders

According to the draft of the recommendation in July, the Food Safety Commission was aiming at setting "100 millisieverts lifetime limit" that would include the external radiation exposure from the nuclides in the air. However, based on the opinions from the general public, the Commission decided that the effect of external radiation exposure was small and focused only on internal radiation exposure from food.

If we suppose one's lifetime is 100 years, then 1 millisievert per year would be the maximum. The current provisional safety limit assumes the upper limit of 5 millisievert per year with radioactive cesium alone. So the new regulations will inevitably be stricter than the current provisional safety limits.

In addition, the Commission pointed out that children "are more susceptible to the effect of radiation", but it didn't cite any specific number for children. The Commission explained that it would be up to the Ministry of Health and Labor and other agencies to discuss" whether the effect on children should be reflected in the new safety limits.Oh boy. So many holes in the article.First, I suspect it is a rude awakening for many Japanese to know that the current provisional safety limits for radioactive materials in food presuppose very high internal radiation level already. The Yomiuri article correctly says 5 millisieverts per year from radioactive cesium alone. The provisional safety limit for radioactive iodine, though now it's almost irrelevant, is 2,000 becquerels/kg, and that presupposes 2 millisieverts per year internal radiation. From cesium and iodine alone, the provisional safety limits on food assume 7 millisievert per year internal radiation.

(The reason why the radioactive iodine limit is set lower than that for radioactive cesium is because radioactive iodine all goes to thyroid gland and gets accumulated in the organ.)I am surprised that Yomiuri even mentioned the 5 millisieverts per year limit from cesium exposure alone. I suspect it is the first time ever for the paper.Second, the article says the Commission decided to exclude external radiation from the "100 millisieverts" number because of the public opinion. Which "public" opinion are they talking about? Mothers and fathers with children? I doubt it. If anything, the general public (at least those who doesn't believe radiation is good for them) would want to include external radiation so that the overall radiation limit is set, rather than just for food.

Third, and most importantly, if the proposed lifetime limit of 100 millisieverts is only for internal radiation from FOOD, then the overall internal radiation could be much higher. Why? Because, pre-Fukushima, the natural internal radiation from food in Japan was only 0.41 millisievert per year (mostly from K-40), or 28% of total natural radiation exposure per year of 1.45 millisievert (average). Of internal radiation exposure, inhaling radon is 0.45 millisievert per year in Japan, as opposed to the world average of 1.2 millisievert per year.Now, these so-called experts in the government commission are saying the internal radiation from food can be 1 millisievert per year (assuming the life of 100 years), in addition to the natural internal radiation from food (K-40) which is 0.41 millisievert per year. Then, you will have to add internal exposure from inhaling the radioactive materials IN ADDITION TO radon which is 0.45 millisievert per year.

Winter in the Pacific Ocean side of east Japan is dry, particularly in Kanto. North wind kicks up dust, and radioactive materials in the dust will be kicked up. The Tokyo metropolitan government will be burning away the radioactive debris from Iwate Prefecture (Miyagi's to follow) into the wintry sky. So-called "decontamination" efforts all over east Japan will add more radioactive particles in the air for people to breathe in.

For your information, the comparison of natural radiation exposure levels (the world vs Japan), from the Nuclear Safety Research Association Handbook on treating acute radiation injury (original in Japanese; my translation of labels). Japan has (or had) markedly lower radon inhalation than the world average, and much lower external radiation from the ground and from cosmic ray. It makes it all up by overusing the medical X-rays and CT scans, and even the Nuclear Safety Research Association who issued the following table says Japan tends to use too many X-rays and scans and that the medical professionals should make effort not to overuse them.

This wasn't the first time the GAO investigated DOE contracts with Bechtel. In 2004, the agency released a report critical of the DOE and Bechtel's clean-up plans, warning of faulty design and construction of the Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), a structure at the heart of the clean-up effort. The WTP building was not designed to withstand a strong earthquake, but only after prodding from the DNFSB did the DOE force Bechtel to go back to the drawing board to ensure the plant could withstand one. As a result, Bechtel's design and cost estimates to finish construction skyrocketed from $4.3 billion to more than $10 billion. And in 2006, GAO released another paper critical of Bechtel's timeline and cost estimates, which seemed to change annually, saying that they have "continuing concerns about the current strategy for going forward on the project."

Seeking the middle ground, the IAEA appeared to have gradually lowered its ambitions in a series of drafts. The one that was adopted placed more emphasis on the voluntary nature of the measures than earlier versions, also regarding the central issue of nuclear plant inspections organised by the IAEA — so-called peer reviews.

At the start of the board meeting in Vienna on Monday, Amano defended the plan against the criticism, saying it would mark a significant step forward in nuclear safety. U.S. Ambassador Glyn Davies said it represented a “sound beginning to learn and act upon what we now know” about the Fukushima accident, the world’s worst such disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. He added, in his statement to the board, “We believe member states should focus their efforts initially on completing national assessments (of safety at plants) and implementing the results of those assessments.”

Germany’s envoy, Ruediger Luedeking, had earlier expressed “regret” that the plan did not “fully meet our expectations”. A ministerial meeting in June asked the Vienna-based UN agency to draw up the plan to help improve standards in how reactors are able to withstand natural disasters, in how the industry is regulated and in how to respond to emergencies. The political impact of the massive earthquake and huge tsunami that caused Japan’s crisis was particularly strong in Europe, highlighted by Germany’s move to close all its reactors by 2022 and Italy’s vote to ban nuclear power for decades.

Fuel rods in three reactors at the Japanese complex started melting down when power and cooling functions failed, causing radiation leakage and forcing the evacuation of 80,000 people. At present, there are no mandatory, international nuclear safety regulations, only IAEA recommendations which national regulators are in charge of enforcing. The UN agency conducts review missions, but only at a member state’s invitation.

Decisions on the safety of nuclear installations will “remain squarely the prerogative of sovereign national governments” also after adoption of the IAEA action plan, said Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. NAN

Is all this true? Or is it contrary to what many nuclear professionals know to be the case with regulation of the nation's 104 reactors? I turned to John Bickel, who's impeccable credentials include several decades of nuclear engineering experience backed by advanced degrees in the field

Bickel has 36 years experience in the US and International nuclear engineering profession, specializing in reliability and risk assessment. He has a Masters Degree and PhD in nuclear engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. ~ John Bickel, left, attending a meeting of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris, where he chairs the special working group on Defense in Depth of Electrical Systems (DIDELSYS) ~ I asked Bickel what he thought of the AP article. Here are some highlights of what he said in a series of email exchanges. Bickel agreed to let me post his personal email comments here. Also, he agreed to let me post his contact information at the end of this blog post so that AP, or anyone else in the media, could contact him for confirmation. Here’s what he said. "I had hoped for more insight from a prestigious organization such as AP. Their article entitled: “US nuke regulators weaken safety rules” is pretty sloppy and indicative of the fact AP failed to research much of what they have written about."

Point and counterpoint

Making Existing Reactors More Secure against Terrorist Attacks The NRC should revise its assumptions about terrorists' capabilities to ensure nuclear plants are adequately protected against credible threats, and these assumptions should be reviewed by U.S. intelligence agencies. The NRC should modify the way it judges force-on-force security exercises by assessing a plant's "margin to failure," rather than whether the plant merely passes or fails. The U.S. government should establish a program for licensing private security guards that would require successful completion of a federally supervised training course and periodic recertification. Making New Reactors More Secure against Terrrorist Attacks The NRC should require new reactor designs to be safer than existing reactors. The NRC should require new reactor designs to be more secure against land- and water-based terrorist attacks.

Improving the NRC's Cost-Benefit and Risk-Informed Analyses The NRC should increase the value it assigns to a human life in its cost-benefit analyses so the value is consistent with other government agencies. The NRC should require plant owners to calculcate the risk of fuel damage in spent fuel pools as well as reactor cores in all safety analyses. The NRC should not make decisions about reactor safety using probabilistic risk assessments (PRAs) until it has corrected its flawed application of this tool. Ensuring Public Participation The NRC should fully restore the public's right to obtain information and question witnesses in hearings about changes to existing power plant licenses and applications for new licenses.

And Ahmad Al-Malabeh, a professor in the Earth and Environmental Sciences department of Hashemite University, adds: "Jordan is rich not only in solar and wind resources, but also in oil shale rock, from which we can extract oil that can cover Jordan's energy needs in the coming years, starting between 2016 and 2017 ... this could give us more time to have more economically feasible renewable energy."

Finance, rather than Fukushima, may delay South Africa's nuclear plans, which were approved just five days after the Japanese disaster. South Africa remains resolute in its plans to build six new nuclear reactors by 2030. Katse Maphoto, the director of Nuclear Safety, Liabilities and Emergency Management at the Department of Energy, says that the government conducted a safety review of its two nuclear reactors in Cape Town, following the Fukushima event.

Vietnam's nuclear energy targets remain ambitious despite scientists' warning of a tsunami risk. Vietnam's plan to power 10 per cent of its electricity grid with nuclear energy within 20 years is the most ambitious nuclear energy plan in South-East Asia. The country's first nuclear plant, Ninh Thuan, is to be built with support from a state-owned Russian energy company and completed by 2020. Le Huy Minh, director of the Earthquake and Tsunami Warning Centre at Vietnam's Institute of Geophysics, has warned that Vietnam's coast would be affected by tsunamis in the adjacent South China Sea.

Larkin says nuclear energy is the only alternative to coal for generating adequate electricity. "What other alternative do we have? Renewables are barely going to do anything," he said. He argues that nuclear is capable of supplying 85 per cent of the base load, or constantly needed, power supply, while solar energy can only produce between 17 and 25 per cent. But, despite government confidence, Larkin says that a shortage of money may delay the country's nuclear plans.

The government has said yes but hasn't said how it will pay for it. This is going to end up delaying by 15 years any plans to build a nuclear station."

The Ninh Thuan nuclear plant would sit 80 to 100 kilometres from a fault line on the Vietnamese coast, potentially exposing it to tsunamis, according to state media. But Vuong Huu Tan, president of the state-owned Vietnam Atomic Energy Commission, told state media in March, however, that lessons from the Fukushima accident will help Vietnam develop safe technologies. And John Morris, an Australia-based energy consultant who has worked as a geologist in Vietnam, says the seismic risk for nuclear power plants in the country would not be "a major issue" as long as the plants were built properly. Japan's nuclear plants are "a lot more earthquake prone" than Vietnam's would be, he adds.

Undeterred by Fukushima, Nigeria is forging ahead with nuclear collaborations. There is no need to panic because of the Fukushima accident, says Shamsideen Elegba, chair of the Forum of Nuclear Regulatory Bodies in Africa. Nigeria has the necessary regulatory system to keep nuclear activities safe. "The Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority [NNRA] has established itself as a credible organisation for regulatory oversight on all uses of ionising radiation, nuclear materials and radioactive sources," says Elegba who was, until recently, the NNRA's director general.

Vietnam is unlikely to experience much in the way of anti-nuclear protests, unlike neighbouring Indonesia and the Philippines, where civil society groups have had more influence, says Kevin Punzalan, an energy expert at De La Salle University in the Philippines. Warnings from the Vietnamese scientific community may force the country's ruling communist party to choose alternative locations for nuclear reactors, or to modify reactor designs, but probably will not cause extreme shifts in the one-party state's nuclear energy strategy, Punzalan tells SciDev.Net.

Will the Philippines' plans to rehabilitate a never-used nuclear power plant survive the Fukushima accident? The Philippines is under a 25-year moratorium on the use of nuclear energy which expires in 2022. The government says it remains open to harnessing nuclear energy as a long-term solution to growing electricity demand, and its Department of Science and Technology has been making public pronouncements in favour of pursuing nuclear energy since the Fukushima accident. Privately, however, DOST officials acknowledge that the accident has put back their job of winning the public over to nuclear by four or five years.

In the meantime, the government is trying to build capacity. The country lacks, for example, the technical expertise. Carmencita Bariso, assistant director of the Department of Energy's planning bureau, says that, despite the Fukushima accident, her organisation has continued with a study on the viability, safety and social acceptability of nuclear energy. Bariso says the study would include a proposal for "a way forward" for the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, the first nuclear reactor in South East Asia at the time of its completion in 1985. The $2.3-billion Westinghouse light water reactor, about 60 miles north of the capital, Manila, was never used, though it has the potential to generate 621 megawatts of power. President Benigno Aquino III, whose mother, President Corazon Aquino, halted work on the facility in 1986 because of corruption and safety issues, has said it will never be used as a nuclear reactor but could be privatised and redeveloped as a conventional power plant.

But Mark Cojuangco, former lawmaker, authored a bill in 2008 seeking to start commercial nuclear operations at the Bataan reactor. His bill was not passed before Congress adjourned last year and he acknowledges that the Fukushima accident has made his struggle more difficult. "To go nuclear is still the right thing to do," he says. "But this requires a societal decision. We are going to spark public debates with a vengeance as soon as the reports from Fukushima are out." Amended bills seeking both to restart the reactor, and to close the issue by allowing either conversion or permanent closure, are pending in both the House and the Senate. Greenpeace, which campaigns against nuclear power, believes the Fukushima accident has dimmed the chances of commissioning the Bataan plant because of "increased awareness of what radioactivity can do to a place". Many parts of the country are prone to earthquakes and other natural disasters, which critics say makes it unsuitable both for the siting of nuclear power stations and the disposal of radioactive waste.

In Kenya, nuclear proponents argue for a geothermal – nuclear mix In the same month as the Fukushima accident, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency approved Kenya's application for its first nuclear power station (31 March), a 35,000 megawatt facility to be built at a cost of Sh950 billion (US$9.8 billion) on a 200-acre plot on the Athi Plains, about 50km from Nairobi

The plant, with construction driven by Kenya's Nuclear Electricity Project Committee, should be commissioned in 2022. The government claims it could satisfy all of Kenya's energy needs until 2040. The demand for electricity is overwhelming in Kenya. Less than half of residents in the capital, Nairobi, have grid electricity, while the rural rate is two per cent. James Rege, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Energy, Communication and Information, takes a broader view than the official government line, saying that geothermal energy, from the Rift Valley project is the most promising option. It has a high production cost but remains the country's "best hope". Nuclear should be included as "backup". "We are viewing nuclear energy as an alternative source of power. The cost of fossil fuel keeps escalating and ordinary Kenyans can't afford it," Rege tells SciDev.Net.

Hydropower is limited by rivers running dry, he says. And switching the country's arable land to biofuel production would threaten food supplies. David Otwoma, secretary to the Energy Ministry's Nuclear Electricity Development Project, agrees that Kenya will not be able to industrialise without diversifying its energy mix to include more geothermal, nuclear and coal. Otwoma believes the expense of generating nuclear energy could one day be met through shared regional projects but, until then, Kenya has to move forward on its own. According to Rege, much as the nuclear energy alternative is promising, it is extremely important to take into consideration the Fukushima accident. "Data is available and it must be one step at a time without rushing things," he says. Otwoma says the new nuclear Kenya can develop a good nuclear safety culture from the outset, "but to do this we need to be willing to learn all the lessons and embrace them, not forget them and assume that won't happen to us".

But the government adopted its Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) for 2010-2030 five days after the Fukushima accident. Elliot Mulane, communications manager for the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, (NECSA) a public company established under the 1999 Nuclear Energy Act that promotes nuclear research, said the timing of the decision indicated "the confidence that the government has in nuclear technologies". And Dipuo Peters, energy minister, reiterated the commitment in her budget announcement earlier this year (26 May), saying: "We are still convinced that nuclear power is a necessary part of our strategy that seeks to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions through a diversified portfolio, comprising some fossil-based, renewable and energy efficiency technologies". James Larkin, director of the Radiation and Health Physics Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, believes South Africa is likely to go for the relatively cheap, South Korean generation three reactor.

It is not only that we say so: an international audit came here in 2006 to assess our procedure and processes and confirmed the same. Elegba is firmly of the view that blame for the Fukushima accident should be allocated to nature rather than human error. "Japan is one of the leaders not only in that industry, but in terms of regulatory oversight. They have a very rigorous system of licensing. We have to make a distinction between a natural event, or series of natural events and engineering infrastructure, regulatory infrastructure, and safety oversight." Erepamo Osaisai, Director General of the Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission (NAEC), has said there is "no going back" on Nigeria's nuclear energy project after Fukushima.

Nigeria is likely to recruit the Russian State Corporation for Atomic Energy, ROSATOM, to build its first proposed nuclear plant. A delegation visited Nigeria (26- 28 July) and a bilateral document is to be finalised before December. Nikolay Spassy, director general of the corporation, said during the visit: "The peaceful use of nuclear power is the bedrock of development, and achieving [Nigeria's] goal of being one of the twenty most developed countries by the year 2020 would depend heavily on developing nuclear power plants." ROSATOM points out that the International Atomic Energy Agency monitors and regulates power plant construction in previously non-nuclear countries. But Nnimmo Bassey, executive director of the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), said "We cannot see the logic behind the government's support for a technology that former promoters in Europe, and other technologically advanced nations, are now applying brakes to. "What Nigeria needs now is investment in safe alternatives that will not harm the environment and the people. We cannot accept the nuclear option."

Thirsty for electricity, and desirous of political clout, Egypt is determined that neither Fukushima ― nor revolution ― will derail its nuclear plans. Egypt was the first country in the Middle East and North Africa to own a nuclear programme, launching a research reactor in 1961. In 2007 Egypt 'unfroze' a nuclear programme that had stalled in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. After the Egyptian uprising in early 2011, and the Fukushima accident, the government postponed an international tender for the construction of its first plant.

Yassin Ibrahim, chairman of the Nuclear Power Plants Authority, told SciDev.Net: "We put additional procedures in place to avoid any states of emergency but, because of the uprising, the tender will be postponed until we have political stability after the presidential and parliamentary election at the end of 2011". Ibrahim denies the nuclear programme could be cancelled, saying: "The design specifications for the Egyptian nuclear plant take into account resistance to earthquakes and tsunamis, including those greater in magnitude than any that have happened in the region for the last four thousand years. "The reactor type is of the third generation of pressurised water reactors, which have not resulted in any adverse effects to the environment since they began operation in the early sixties."

Ibrahim El-Osery, a consultant in nuclear affairs and energy at the country's Nuclear Power Plants Authority, points out that Egypt's limited resources of oil and natural gas will run out in 20 years. "Then we will have to import electricity, and we can't rely on renewable energy as it is still not economic yet — Egypt in 2010 produced only two per cent of its needs through it." But there are other motives for going nuclear, says Nadia Sharara, professor of mineralogy at Assiut University. "Owning nuclear plants is a political decision in the first place, especially in our region. And any state that has acquired nuclear technology has political weight in the international community," she says. "Egypt has the potential to own this power as Egypt's Nuclear Materials Authority estimates there are 15,000 tons of untapped uranium in Egypt." And she points out it is about staying ahead with technology too. "If Egypt freezes its programme now because of the Fukushima nuclear disaster it will fall behind in many science research fields for at least the next 50 years," she warned.

The wild card. Finally, human nature being what it is, there are always the wild cards: people who kill romantic rivals via nuclear meltdown, freelance experimenters, terrorists, operators who should never have made it through personnel screening, operators who are drunk on the job, operators whose performance has declined through laziness, depression, boredom, or any host of reasons.

Overwhelmed by speed and complexity. As Charles Perrow argues in his influential book Normal Accidents, which was inspired by the Three Mile Island accident, human operators function well in environments of routinized normality; but, when highly complex technical systems function in unpredicted ways -- especially if the jagged interactions between subsystems unfold very rapidly -- then the human capacity for cognitive processing is quickly overwhelmed. In other words, if a reactor is veering toward an accident caused by the failure of a single system in a way that operators have been trained to handle, then they are likely to retain control. But, if the accident-in-the-making involves unforeseen combinations of failures unfolding quickly and requires improvised responses rather than routinized ones, the outcome is far less hopeful.

The politics of oversight. Regulatory apparatuses tend to degrade over time -- especially in political systems such as America's, which tend to facilitate the corporate capture of government functions. Thanks to the leverage afforded by campaign donations and the revolving door between public and private employment, industries have become extremely skillful at inserting their former employees, future employees, and other allies into the very regulatory agencies that oversee them. A brilliant piece of investigative journalism on the Securities and Exchange Commission in the latest issue of Rolling Stone shows how this can reduce a regulatory agency to an empty husk. Whether it's the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the Food and Drug Administration, the story is the same: Government agencies that started off as aggressive watchdogs have become absorbed over time by those over whom they have titular oversight. Americans recently saw the dire consequences of this trend in the banking meltdown of 2008.

The bottom line: Nuclear safety is threatened by human as well as technical malfunctions, and the risk of disaster can only be attenuated through attention to the principles of social engineering as well as nuclear engineering. While human behavior can always overflow the bounds of our plans for its containment, there are measures that can at least lower the risk of a nuclear disaster caused by human factors: First, the nuclear industry needs to do more to both protect and reward whistle-blowers; and, second, the industry needs regulators with a genuine desire to exercise oversight -- rather than people hoping to increase their income by later going to work for the very companies that they were regulating. Unfortunately, this goes against the ethos of the contemporary United States, where the trend-lines are going in the wrong direction.

While tsunami are not foreseen as a problem in Europe, the plants have been obliged to consider other external and internal initiating events that could trigger a loss of safety functions.In France, a total of 150 nuclear facilities including operating reactors, reactors under construction, research reactors and other nuclear facilities are affected. In its progress report, French regulator Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN) notes that the risk of similar phenomena to those that triggered the Fukushima accident is negligible and says that it prefers to submit a more comprehensive report for all of its affected installations later in the year. However, reports for the 80 facilities identified as priorities have been submitted and those for the country's 58 operating power reactors have already been published on the ASN's web site.

No fundamental weaknesses in the definition of design basis events or the safety systems to withstand them has been revealed for UK nuclear power plants from either the stress tests or from earlier national reviews, according to the progress report from the UK's Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR). However, lessons are being learnt about improving resilience for beyond-design-basis events and removing or reducing cliff-edges, and will be applied in a timely manner, the regulator says.

Measures under consideration in the UK include the provision of additional local flood protection to key equipment and the provision of further emergency back-up equipment to provide cooling and power, while EDF Energy, operator of the country's AGRs and single PWR plant, is preparing additional studies to reconsider flood modelling for specific sites and to review recent climate change information that arrived subsequent to recent routine ten-yearly safety reviews. The main focus for the country's Magnox reactors will be to improve the reliability of cooling systems in the face of a variety of beyond-design-basis faults to reduce or minimise the potential for cliff-edges. Evaluations of findings are still ongoing. Operators have up to 31 October to make their full report back to their national regulator, and regulators have until 31 December to make their full reports to the European Commission.

Regulatory changes    The size, budget and capability of the Chinese regulatory system should grow dramatically. It is currently overseen by a staff of 30-40 at the National Nuclear Safety Administration, with support from the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Centre's 200 technical experts. Inspection of power plants and equipment suppliers, as well as radiation monitoring, is undertaken by six regional centres.   This set-up runs on a budget that is a tiny fraction of parallel regimes in other countries - and some budgetary areas have not been growing at the same speed as reactor build, said Zhou.   Overall, she considered the system "on a par with global standards." But while there exists the proper strong safety culture, led from the top of the regime, there is a "lack of experience and technical capability to identify the technical issues," which has manifested itself in some construction delays.

The Tea Association of the US's chairman said, "There's nothing in the world like green tea from Japan. If we upload the data [that the governor has given us] to our homepage, the sale of green tea will be back to normal."

Answers to the question of what's wrong with the governor's statement:1. Shizuoka is far away from Fukushima, so what? That does not change the fact that radioactive materials have been falling in Shizuoka since the Fukushima blowup, and hasn't stopped at the prefectural border (although initially some people in Shizuoka actually claimed that the Hakone Mountains blocked the radiation).2. The statement that "the levels of radioactive cesium were below the safety limit" is plain wrong. French authorities confiscated the green tea grown and processed in Shizuoka Prefecture when that tea tested over 1000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium, twice the loose safety limit of Japan and the EU. Also, the tea from Warashina District tested higher than the 500 becquerels/kg limit, which was first discovered by Radish Boya, an online grocer in Tokyo.

3. Standard? What standard? The radiation safety limit for food in the US is 170 becquerels/kg. Of all teas from Shizuoka's tea growing regions, only 4 would be considered safe, being below 170 becquerels/kg. The data is right there in the Shizuoka prefectural government website.

If the governor tries to get away by saying the radioactive materials in the brewed tea in a teacup tested below the safety limit, that's also wrong. The Shizuoka government website also has that data, which shows between 1.6 and 14 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium. Since it is water that is used to brew the tea, we can translate this as having 1.6 to 14 becquerels/liter of radioactive cesium. It sure clears the Japan's extremely loose standard after Fukushima, which is 200 becquerels/liter.

However, the US standard for drinks is 0.11 becquerels/liter. None of the Shizuoka tea, even when brewed, would pass the safety standard of the US. Several would fail the WHO standard, which is 10 becquerels/liter.Maybe the Tea Association chairman didn't know about the standards in the US. Or maybe the strict standards have been modified quietly in the US just like the EU did.

28,079 Abandoned Wells in Gulf of Mexico In an explosive report at Sky Truth, John Amos reveals from government data that “there are currently 24,486 known permanently abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico, and 3,593 ‘temporarily’ abandoned wells, as of October 2011.” [6] TA wells are those temporarily sealed so that future drilling can be re-started. Both TA wells and “permanently abandoned” (PA) wells endure no inspections.

Not only cement, but seals, valves and gaskets can deteriorate over time. A 2000 report by C-FER Technologies to the Dept. of Interior identified several  different points where well leaks can occur, as this image (p. 26) reveals.  To date, no regulations prescribe a maximum time wells may remain inactive before being permanently abandoned. [13] “The most common failure mechanisms (corrosion, deterioration, and malfunction) cause mainly small leaks [up to 49 barrels, or 2,058 gallons]. Corrosion is historically known to cause 85% to 90% of small leaks.” Depending on various factors, C-FER concludes that “Shut-In” wells reach an environmental risk threshhold in six months, TA wells in about 10-12 years, and PA wells in 25 years.  Some of these abandoned wells are 63 years old.

Leaking abandoned wells pose a significant environmental and economic threat. A three-month EcoHearth investigation revealed that a minimum of 2.5 million abandoned wells in the US and 20-30 million worldwide receive no follow up inspections to ensure they are not leaking. Worse: “There is no known technology for securely sealing these tens of millions of abandoned wells. Many—likely hundreds of thousands—are already hemorrhaging oil, brine and greenhouse gases into the environment. Habitats are being fundamentally altered. Aquifers are being destroyed. Some of these abandoned wells are explosive, capable of building-leveling, toxin-spreading detonations. And thanks to primitive capping technologies, virtually all are leaking now—or will be.” [11] Sealed with cement, adds EcoHearth, “Each abandoned well is an environmental disaster waiting to happen. The triggers include accidents, earthquakes, natural erosion, re-pressurization (either spontaneous or precipitated by fracking) and, simply, time.”

Over a year ago, the Dept. of Interior promised to plug the “temporarily abandoned” (TA) wells, and dismantle another 650 production platforms no longer in use. [7] At an estimated decommissioning cost of $1-3 billion [8], none of this work has been started, though Feds have approved 912 permanent abandonment plans and 214 temporary abandonment plans submitted since its September 2010 rule. [9] Over 600 of those abandoned wells belong to BP, reported the Associated Press last year, adding that some of the permanently abandoned wells date back to the 1940s [10].  Amos advises that some of the “temporarily abandoned” wells date back to the 1950s. “Experts say abandoned wells can repressurize, much like a dormant volcano can awaken. And years of exposure to sea water and underground pressure can cause cementing and piping to corrode and weaken,” reports AP.

As far back as 1994, the Government Accountability Office warned that there was no effective strategy in place to inspect abandoned wells, nor were bonds sufficient to cover the cost of abandonment. Lease abandonment costs estimated at “$4.4 billion in current dollars … were covered by only $68 million in bonds.” [12] The GAO concluded that “leaks can occur… causing serious damage to the environment and marine life,” adding that “MMS has not encouraged the development of nonexplosive structure removal technologies that would eliminate or minimize environmental damage.”

The AP noted that none of the 1994 GAO recommendations have been implemented. Abandoned wells remain uninspected and pose a threat which the government continues to ignore. Agency Reorganization The Minerals Management Service (MMS) was renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) last May after MMS drew heavy fire for malfeasance, including allowing exemptions to safety rules it granted to BP. An Office of Inspector General investigation revealed that MMS employees accepted gifts from the oil and gas industry, including sex, drugs and trips, and falsified inspection reports. [14] Not only was nothing was done with the 1994 GAO recommendations to protect the environment from abandoned wells, its 2003 reorganization recommendations [15] were likewise ignored.  In a June 2011 report on agency reorganization in the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill, the GAO reports that “as of December 2010,” the DOI “had not implemented many recommendations we made to address numerous weaknesses and challenges.” [16] Reorganization proceeded.  Effective October 1, 2011, the Dept. of the Interior split BOEMRE into three new federal agencies: the Office of Natural Resources Revenue to collect mineral leasing fees, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) “to carry out the offshore energy management and safety and environmental oversight missions.” The DOI admits:

“The Deepwater Horizon blowout and resulting oil spill shed light on weaknesses in the federal offshore energy regulatory system, including the overly broad mandate and inherently conflicted missions of MMS which was charged with resource management, safety and environmental protection, and revenue collection.” [17] BOEM essentially manages the development of offshore drilling, while BSEE oversees environmental protection, with some eco-protection overlap between the two agencies. [18] Early this month, BSEE Director Michael R. Bromwich spoke at the Global Offshore Safety Summit Conference in Stavanger, Norway, sponsored by the International Regulators Forum. He announced a new position, Chief Environmental Officer of the BOEM:

This person will be empowered, at the national level, to make decisions and final recommendations when leasing and environmental program heads cannot reach agreement. This individual will also be a major participant in setting the scientific agenda for the United States’ oceans.” [19] Bromwich failed to mention anything about the abandoned wells under his purview. Out of sight, out of mind. Cost of the Macondo Blowout

On Monday, the GAO published its final report of a three-part series on the Gulf oil disaster. [20]  Focused on federal financial exposure to oil spill claims, the accountants nevertheless point out that, as of May 2011, BP paid $700 million toward those spill claims out of its $20 billion Trust established to cover that deadly accident. BP and Oxford Economics estimate the total cost for eco-cleanup and compensatory economic damages will run to the “tens of billions of dollars.” [21] On the taxpayer side, the GAO estimates the federal government’s costs will exceed the billion dollar incident cap set by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (as amended). As of May 2011, agency costs reached past $626 million. The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund’s income is generated from an oil barrel tax that is set to expire in 2017, notes GAO.

With Monday’s District Court decision in Louisiana, BP also faces punitive damages on “thousands of thousands of thousands of claims.” U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier denied BP’s appeal that might have killed several hundred thousand claims, among them that clean up workers have still not been fully paid by BP. [22] Meanwhile, destroying the planet for profit continues unabated. It’s time to Occupy the Gulf of Mexico: No more oil drilling in our food source.

Cumulative radiation dose is neither an accurate nor an appropriate measure of cancer induction risk for protracted or fractionated ionizing radiation exposure except for describing the virtual threshold for various exposures; and Cancer promotion risk for ongoing lifetime biological processes is a relative process as seen in the RERF (Radiation Effects Research Foundation) studies of the Japanese atomic bomb survivors for brief high dose-rate exposures to ionizing radiation. It cannot be used to estimate cancer induction risk from protracted or fractionated ionizing exposures over long times and at low dose rates.

RecommendationsThe current ICRP radiation protection recommendations certainly provide a high level of safety and protection for radiation workers and the public. Radiation safety has been the most important goal of the ICRP, and their recommendations have met that goal with distinction. However, the ICRP risk estimates and response models for protracted or fractionated ionizing radiation exposures and long-lived internal emitters seriously overestimate the risks of low doses. Reasonably accurate cancer induction risk estimates are needed to avoid expensive over-regulation and to bolster the scientific foundation of radiation safety regulations and analysis. Many of the current environmental radiation safety standards are inappropriately low and prohibitively expensive to enforce.

The current ICRP models of radiation carcinogenesis can be misleading. Revision of the radiation safety standards is needed that clearly distinguishes between radiation cancer promotion as observed in the atomic bomb survivor studies and radiation cancer induction as observed for long-lived internal emitters. In particular, the ICRP needs to revisit and revise the standards currently recommended for ionizing radiation-induced cancer. Recommended standards should be considered that are based on lifetime average dose rate to sensitive tissues in the case of internally-deposited, relatively long-lived radionuclides and other protracted or fractionated exposures rather than on cumulative or committed dose.

Nuclear Energy As the world reevaluates how to meet today and tomorrow's energy needs, the IAEA projects slower nuclear growth after Fukushima.

Safeguards In the area of nuclear safeguards, the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC) celebrated 20 years of successful application of nuclear verification.

As for green tea, the tea producer was mixing the tea that passed the provisional safety limit but which still contained radioactive cesium with the tea made in Kyushu, far away from Fukushima I Nuke Plant. The blend was the radioactive tea 20%, the Kyushu tea 80%.Most water purification plants had voluntarily stopped shipping the radioactive sludge until the provisional safety limit was decided. However, the company who runs this particular water purification plant that continued to ship says, "The detection level was low. If the sludge was made into the garden soil it would be diluted further". The company blames the manufacturers who bought the radioactive sludge, saying "The ultimate responsibility rests with those who make [the sludge] into final products and sell them". The company is currently selling the radioactive sludge to the businesses that supply dirt for construction projects, as the national government has sent out an instruction that "the use of radioactive sludge in the garden soil had better be suspended".According to the green tea producer, there weren't enough of the tea leaves that passed the safety limit [but still contained radioactive cesium] to make it worthwhile to sell, so the company decided to mix it to make a "blend tea". The person in charge of the "blend tea" says "We made it clear in the package that it was a "blend tea", so there should be no problem. We just wanted to make the tea safer for the consumers".

SuspicionThese practices are not illegal, and when the contaminated products are mixed with non-contaminated products there should be less ill-effect on humans. However, if this "dilute and sell" model takes hold, it will only add to doubt and confusion for the consumers. Damage from "baseless rumors" may spread to milk and rice. It has been a standard practice to mix milk from different locations. The same goes for rice.The national consumer association federation chief proposes the detailed labeling of the place of manufacture on a prefectural level so that the consumers can choose safely.

However, there is no law requiring the place of manufacture for the garden soil, and there is no voluntary guideline by the industry either. The national standard for food labeling only requires the label "Made in Japan" in the case of "blended" produce like rice and tea and processed foods; there is no requirement to show the name of prefecture where the product is made. The Consumer Affairs Agency of Japan [which is supposed to regulate the industries with the welfare of consumers in mind] is not going to do anything at this point, saying "Places of manufacture for the blended goods may change, so it is not practical to require detailed labels".

On the other hand, the head of the Worldwide Agricultural Policy Information Center is critical. He says "The role of the national government is to stop the spread of radioactive materials. To allow goods with radioactive materials to be diluted and and sold widely would be considered as approval by the national government to spread the contamination [all over Japan]". JA agricultural co-op Fukushima is also distrustful of the government policy [or lack thereof], saying "There will be no "baseless rumors" if the produce that is found with radioactive materials is not sold".However, for now, we can only count on the voluntary effort by the industries. A new national policy would be necessary, just like when there was a problem of labeling "made in Japan" and "imported" goods.

Yet in the entire history of the nuclear industry, there have been three major reactor accidents: Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Chernobyl in Russia and Fukushima. And apart from Chernobyl — which was caused by a flawed reactor design that is not employed anywhere in the United States — no nuclear workers or members of the public have ever died as a result of exposure to radiation from a commercial nuclear plant. This fact is attributable to sound designs, strong construction, a culture in which safety always comes first, a highly trained, conscientious workforce, and rigorous government oversight.

Nuclear power plants are constantly upgraded.Unlike cars or appliances that are typically run until they break down, U.S. nuclear plants have a proactive aging-management program that replaces equipment well before it has the opportunity to malfunction. Using the car analogy, think of it this way: While the body of the car may have been manufactured years ago, its engine and safety systems are upgraded and rebuilt continuously with state-of-the-art components over time.In 2009 alone, the U.S. nuclear industry invested approximately $6.5 billion to upgrade plant systems with the latest technology. Continuous upgrades have always been the standard for U.S. nuclear plants for many reasons — most importantly protecting the health and safely of the public and workers. This industry considers continuous improvement to be a necessary investment rather than "optional" expense.

The amount of spent fuel is small and can be managed safely.In many cases, the issue of storing used fuel is discussed without proper context.Used nuclear fuel is in the form of solid pellets about the size of a pencil eraser. The fact is, the total amount of waste generated by the entire U.S. nuclear industry over more than 60 years of operation would fit in the area of one football field. For this entire time, we have safely and securely stored this fuel on-site in specially-designed pools and in strongly-engineered dry storage containers.

Nobody would argue that the on-site storage of used fuel is ideal. But it is a responsible option for now, since the relative amount of used fuel is so small; because multiple levels of safety and security protection have proven to be effective; more than 50 years of scientific research, engineering and experience proves that it can be stored with little environmental impact; and on-site storage is the only option utilities have until the federal government fulfills its responsibility to identify a long-term disposal solution.Moreover, only a small percentage of the available energy has been harvested from this fuel at the point when regulations require it to be stored on-site. This fuel should be recycled and re-used, as other countries have successfully concluded. But until political barriers in this country allow for this logical path, it must be stored on-site.

Nuclear plants have more government oversight than any other industry.The rigor and comprehensiveness of nuclear safety oversight in the United States is extraordinary. Our licensing and regulatory process is studied and emulated worldwide.Every nuclear power plant in the United States has multiple government inspectors on-site, year-round. They are top experts in the field and have unrestricted access to all vital areas of the plant, including plant records. In addition to these daily oversight activities, each plant frequently undergoes multiple evaluations and inspections that include detailed reviews of security, emergency planning, environmental protection, industrial safety, critical plant systems, plant culture and safety processes — all of which are aimed at ensuring the continued safe operation of these facilities.

Honest questioning from concerned citizens regarding nuclear energy is understandable. A thinking society should continuously strive for accurate, credible validation of its technologies. As to the safety and security of U.S. nuclear plants, the facts are reassuring. I firmly believe that these — and other facts — should be the basis for any discussion on the future of nuclear energy here in America.