Congress, help the Country - Enlist Nuclear Energy!

Congress, help the Country - Enlist Nuclear Energy!

In its 2009 stimulus package, Congress ignored nuclear power. While possibly by oversight, or a gaff, or erroneous miscalculation, the conclusion is unmistakable. While other Congresses approved nuclear energy initiatives, the 2011th Congress overlooked nuclear potential - an unfortunate occurrence. To enlist other appealing technologies to fight carbon emissions, ignoring clean, nuclear contributions would be a tragedy. For energy success, Congress must recognize the energy champion before them, and place it on their agenda.

Reasons why Congress barred nuclear power from stimulus…

While Congress provided $5 billion directly for energy stimulus and with another $15 billion for new technology development each year, they failed to enlist the country’s proven non-carbon energy resource to combat carbon emissions. Could the nuclear energy solution be too simple to accept? While we could speculate forever, nuclear opponents shared reasons to bar nuclear energy stimulus participation. While we hear their concerns, we can’t accept their positions entirely. The common ones listed below deserve careful consideration.

1. Yucca Mountain: An unnecessary struggle fraught with difficulty, we should abandon and forget Yucca Mountain. Other methods available manage nuclear waste far better.
2. Nuclear Waste: Presented as an intractable problem for forty years, now we see every energy form has a footprint. Shouldn’t we ask, which is most economic, environmentally friendly and politically acceptable? Can’t we be creative?
3. Nuclear Plant Safety: In November 2007, Vermont constituents made nuclear safety their primary concern - after all, no one wants nuclear plants “that might blow up.” We need safer nuclear plant designs, or at least someone who can explain how they work - why nuclear plants can’t blow up - just like that!
4. Lengthy reviews: As critics point out, the track record licensing nuclear plants is very slow (8 years, average). Yucca Mountain (31-years) only expanded that fear.
5. High, unpredictable costs: Dissenters point out that nuclear construction, unlike solar or wind, takes forever. Never complete, it creates high, unpredictable costs. For anyone on a budget - as energy projects must be - that is not reasonable.
6. Consistency: The U.S. licenses many designs, of multiple vintages and types. U.S. regulatory interpretation varies for plants of the exact same type licensed historically in the U.S. Someone should ask who figured out this mess? “My three-year old daughter’s drawings make more sense,” said one critic. Critics seek regulatory and plant design consistency, unlike they remember in the past.
7. Trust: Although nuclear performance has been fair lately, only thirty years ago, industry spit up a problem - Three Mile Island. Local pundits said, “You promised us you wouldn’t do that. Gee, thanks, pal (tongue in cheek).”
8. Footprint: Okay, so nuclear energy has a no carbon footprint - big deal! Who cares if you still have to deal with radiation? After all, an event like Chernobyl could still kill you. You cannot trust nuclear operators or regulators to not act stupid - anywhere on earth. You hear that in the news, day in and out.
9. Endorsement: Nuclear engineers disclaim all that they do - how can you trust them to do anything right? Otherwise, wouldn’t they stand behind their design products? Instead, they act like weenies. Why can’t they just promise safe economic power?

Solutions for Congress

1. Abandon Yucca Mountain - it’s become a symbolic struggle. As candidate, Obama ruled out Yucca Mountain “because it was built on a fault line, shoved down the throats of the people of Nevada, [and] it was impossible to get done.” Otherwise, superior methods are available. Shutting down Yucca definitively tomorrow frees up billions of dollars to spend on a permanent solution - not waste in Nevada.
2. Nuclear waste has a simple solution. France has a reprocessing plant in LeHarve. They will take our high-level waste, reprocess it, and sell it (the fuel) back to us, vitrifying waste residue ending our nightmares. That solves our problem, once and for all. We get encapsulated residue, rendered harmless for eternity, new nuclear fuel to reuse in our reactors, or even theirs. All save millions of tons CO2 added to the environment year-by-year, pound-for-pound. (Ninety percent of France’s electricity comes from 59 reactors, initially designed here in the U.S. - surprise!!!) We only need the money to pay them, which shutting down Yucca Mountain makes available.
3. Improve Nuclear Safety Design. “There’s nothing we don’t like about nuclear power... just that it might blow up, kill us and radiate us - that’s the problem.” (Vermont, October 27, 2007 to Guy MacMillan) We must continue to improve nuclear plant safety designs to alleviate our President’s fears. We must also persuade hypochondriacs that nuclear plants won’t blow up, kill or radiate them, because they can’t. Because we designed and built them that way, just as Congress asked and regulated. They are not like the bombs the President described. Then more safe nuclear energy could help address global warming, economically.
4. Streamline Reviews. “The NRC is a moribund agency that has become a captive of the industry that it regulates and needs to be revamped… More broadly, the NRC is similar to the EPA, FCC, and FDA …. We’ve got a whole bunch of federal agencies … filled with cronies who lost their mission.” (October, 2007) We can improve slow nuclear plant licensing, compared with France, Japan or Taiwan. Sadly, our Finnish cousins suffer the same nuclear disease we had: interminable delays; ponderous design changes; unaccountable project management…and an open national pocketbook, regardless of safety benefits or the cost. Yep, even the U.S., which invented the infinite loop nuclear plant review cycle, saw analysis-paralysis alive and well in Finland at TVO’s Olkiluoto Plant. Yucca Mountain, déjà vu! “I want to make government ‘cool again’ - which I say partly tongue in cheek. I want to make them lean mean, make them work… [I want to] weed our bureaucracies that are bloated … not performing a useful function. Let’s restore the sense that government can get things done.” If Congress asks nuclear agencies to improve their processes they will - but not until then. Let’s show the President what we can do! Let’s meet his challenge - after all, didn’t we go to the moon? Could this be as hard as that?
5. Lower nuclear costs. Not constructed right, nuclear plants create unpredictable costs. Nuclear plants can’t be thrown up (or torn down) overnight. While we offer no excuse for past performance, we think we’ve put that behind us. We’ve learned many lessons for first of a kind plants, custom installations, design-build-license fast-track construction (versus turnkey design-license-build) from forty-years of nuclear experience under our belts. While an ungainly framework supports new plant construction, we can still make Part 52 overlapping rules work. We need political, financial and energy consensus before we start. We should not suffer blockers for approved safe, certified-design projects using the highest quality people and materials building the best available technologies. We will apply the best available new technology, even distributed controls, databases and other technology that apply.
6. Assure consistent processes. Multiple designs created a U.S. nuclear quagmire. Furthermore, each plant started from an independent license source. Regulations and interpretations for the same vintage and type of plant reflect historical U.S practice. Although Technical Specifications remain exceptions standardized in the 1980’s, most other plant aspects - operating procedures, scheduled maintenance plans, monitoring, safety significant equipment lists, probabilistic risk assessments, training… - remain custom. Systematic process simplification for consistency would require mapping the entire regulatory framework logically - something those familiar with existing regulations are loath to do. Like English measures, users familiar with English units never want to accept Metric alternatives. Although more consistent regulations would benefit new plants, those familiar with the current framework say it works acceptably - regardless how well. They seek to retain traditional methods.
7. Build trust. Thirty years ago saying, “Trust us,” industry spewed forth Three Mile Island. After that came Chernobyl. Then nuclear experts equivocated. Engineers said these improbable events were inevitable, just like a global tsunami. To regain trust engineers need standard, durable designs. They also need better processes, and people who operate designs inside well-defined intended limits. Trust requires simple transparent terms and processes. Engineers must share their work clearly to gain trust, not talk down obfuscating safety issues. They must clarify abstract ideas until the public grasps them. Finally, they must appreciate that trust isn’t bought or traded - it’s earned. Only consistently getting better earns public respect. We must also learn that trust includes cutting waste to lower costs.
8. Clarify footprint. “I [am] agnostic on nuclear power. I’m not saying it’s off the table - there is no perfect source. If we can make it safe, store it safely, it’s not vulnerable to terrorist attack, and we can control proliferation, nuclear power should be in the mix. [There are] a whole set of questions, but if they’re not solvable - I just don t want it. There’s nothing (inevitably) that we don’t like about nuclear power... just the fact that it might blow up, kill us and radiate us - that’s the problem.” Reactors inevitably will have limits, though new passive-safe LWR designs are safer than ever before. New helium-cooled reactors are even safer still; they can’t melt down, even externally dismembered. That the worst scenario, Chernobyl, could still kill you - is even far more remote. The greenest reactors leave little fission residue, not creating but retaining wastes better than ever before. Even in extreme accidents, they hold fission products unlike Navy reactors ever could. Failure testing demonstrates these reactors outperform their predecessors in crises, better than ever before. Like other technology, with experience and time, engineers refine designs to remove safety problems and risk. We seek to develop reactors that owners, their operators or regulatory authorities don’t need fret over. They do what’s right, naturally. These avoid the stupidest errors, because they’re simple by design - everywhere. We can make new reactors “passively safe,” as never before - more resilient to human conditions, operator errors and even terrorists like never before. While we cannot promise perfection, performance will be much better than ever. We provide better clean, low-risk power today than virtually any conventional power plant, 10,000 reactor-operating years of experience later.
9. Seek public endorsement. Nuclear designers and operators seek perfection in everything. The sophisticated codes they write project nuclear performance very well. Compared to other predictions, theirs are far more accurate. People in professional organizations like the ANS, IEEE, ASME, and ACHE wrote the standards, developed these codes and advanced nuclear technology to the position it holds today. Steady advances in countries like France, Japan or Korea provide a high fraction of energy from nuclear sources, securing its global position. Increasingly, environmental advocates praise it. Even former Greenpeace leader and founder Patrick Moore remade his commitment to the environment based upon nuclear energy. Responsibly factoring people’s need to grow food, make products or help their economy into account shares the best of both worlds - clean, reliable energy, and the freedom to use it, without the burden worrying that we’re damaging our planet. Though nuclear is not perfect, its problems are far easier (and less costly) to manage than other solutions people propose.