5. The U.S. Geological Survey has officially designated it the Great Tohoku Earthquake.
6. The risk of station blackout had been raised within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the 1970s. The nuclear industry resisted this concern, asserting that the likelihood of the electrical grid and the on-site emergency diesel generators all failing simultaneously was low. That argument prevailed until March 1990, when the Unit 1 reactor at the Vogtle plant in Georgia actually experienced a blackout. Fortunately, the plant was shut down when the blackout occurred, giving workers sufficient time to repair the emergency diesel generator and avert disaster.
7. Fukushima Daiichi is loosely translated as “Fukushima One” and Fukushima Daini as “Fukushima Two.” The designation is based on their construction dates.
8. Japan has two incompatible electricity grids. The grid supplying the northeastern half of the country, including an area served by TEPCO, operates at fifty hertz. Power to the western portion of the island is sixty hertz. The two grids arose from the original sources of generation equipment: Germany (fifty hertz) and the United States (sixty hertz). The inability to share large amounts of electricity between the grids compounded energy shortages during the Fukushima accident and can do so at other times when demand peaks in one area but not the other.
2. March 12, 2011: “This May Get Really Ugly . . .”
Transcripts of conversations recorded at the NRC’s emergency operations center as well as e-mails and other NRC documents were used in this chapter. News accounts, scientific journal articles, and information from the U.S. Geological Survey were utilized. Details of the accident at the Tokai nuclear facility were published in “Accident Prone: The Trouble at Tokai-Mura,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March–April 2000. Information also comes from the Hatamura report.
1. For disclosure, one of the authors (Lochbaum) has traveled through the “revolving door”: having worked for more than a decade in the U.S. nuclear power industry, he moved to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) for more than a decade, went to the NRC for more than a year, then returned through the door to the UCS.
2. As a result of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa fire, TEPCO required that fire engines be stationed at its nuclear plants, which proved beneficial at Fukushima Daiichi in the days after March 11.
3. March 12 Through 14, 2011: “What the Hell Is Going On?”
The Hatamura investigation, NRC transcripts, and the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations’ Special Report on the Nuclear Accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, INPO 11-005 (Atlanta: Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, 2011), www.nei.org/corporatesite/media/filefolder/11_005_Special_Report_on_Fukushima_Daiichi_MASTER_11_08_11_1.pdf, were used in this chapter.
1. If even that limited information had been heeded, investigators later concluded, evacuation routes for several communities northwest of the reactors could have been altered to avoid exposing the public to the radiation plumes they thought they were fleeing.
2. Water acts as a “moderator” in reactors like those at Fukushima, slowing neutrons so that they more readily split atoms. Fuel, water, and control rods are carefully arranged to ensure that the nuclear chain reaction can be controlled. But injecting water into the potentially molten core carried the risk of increasing the fission rate and possibly restarting a chain reaction. For this reason, water reserves maintained at reactors are mixed with boric acid, a neutron absorber, before being injected into the core. The boric acid can help prevent a chain reaction.
3. Those standards are set by the Environmental Protection Agency and known as Protective Action Guides, or PAGs.
4. A hardened vent is a separate vent pipe capable of withstanding heavier loads during an accident, such as a station blackout. It is a safety mechanism for relieving pressure in the primary containment by releasing steam and radioactivity at an elevated point outside the reactor building.
5. In the event of a nuclear plant disaster involving radiation releases in the United States, the states, not federal agencies, decide on public protection measures like evacuations and sheltering. The NRC’s role is to provide information to state authorities to inform their ultimate decisions.
6. In pressurized water reactors, the spent fuel pools are located in buildings adjacent to and outside of the containment. This separation makes it less likely that reactor issues will affect spent fuel pools and vice versa. The spent fuel pools are at or below ground level; this placement makes it easier to add water, because smaller pumps are needed to move water across the ground than to push it up five floors. But even the PWR spent fuel pools typically have space below them where water could quickly drain if the pool liner were breached.
7. During normal operation, steam produced inside the reactor vessel is transported through four large pipes. Each pipe is equipped with three or four relief valves, which automatically open when pressure rises or when pressure risks are too high. The relief valves can also be manually opened from the control room—when power is available—to allow the operators to reduce pressure in the steam lines and in the reactor vessel itself. When a relief valve is open, steam flows via a metal pipe into the torus, where it is discharged beneath the surface of the water. Thus, the heat energy from the steam remains inside the containment. The containment vent valves, in contrast, transfer energy to the atmosphere outside.
8. The U.S. NRC does not limit the amount of radiation workers may receive in an emergency. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set voluntary guidelines of up to twenty-five rem (250 millisieverts) for life-threatening emergencies.
4. March 15 Through 18, 2011: “It’s Going to Get Worse . . .”
NRC transcripts, congressional hearing testimony, and the Hatamura report provided information for this chapter, as well as testimony delivered to subcommittees of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, “The Fiscal Year 2012: Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission Budgets,” Joint Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Energy and Power and the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy, 112th Cong., March 16, 2011, www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg68480/pdf/CHRG-112hhrg68480.pdf, and to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, “Full Committee Briefing on Nuclear Plant Crisis in Japan and Implications for the United States,” March 16, 2011, www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=bb6c78e6-802a-23ad-4c7b-9aa7a3bb0c31.
1. Masao Yoshida died of esophageal cancer on July 9, 2013, at age fifty-eight. In November 2011, after being diagnosed with the disease, he took a leave of absence from TEPCO. Medical experts said his cancer was unrelated to radiation exposure from the accident at Fukushima Daiichi.
2. Casto had just three hours to pack before boarding the plane bound for Narita Airport. Flight personnel, noticing Casto’s shirt with its NRC logo, soon relocated him to a seat in the nearly empty first-class section and began peppering him with questions about the accident in Japan. Uppermost in their minds: was it safe to even fly into the country? Upon arriving in Tokyo, Casto soon discovered that his choice of clothing—what he calls “emergency response casual,” polo shirts and khakis—was not suitable for his formal meetings with the Japanese. He called his wife and asked her to FedEx every suit in his closet.
3. The NRC’s Office of Research had neglected to provide Casto with more recent technical analyses from the agency’s State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequences Analyses program. These analyzed accident scenarios very similar to those occurring at Fukushima in even more detail.
4. B.5.b is the title of a section within the NRC’s Order for Interim Safeguards and Security Compensatory Measures of February 2002.
5. The role played by Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) was as symbolic as it was material. About one hundred thousand SDF troops had been called up by the government on March 11 to respond to the natural disaster. As conditions at Fukushima Daiichi deteriorated, the SDF mission was broadened to help with the reactor crisis. “The SDF operation [at Fukushima Daiichi] encouraged others
. . . to say that this problem was not just TEPCO’s accident, it was Japan’s,” Prime Minister Kan later explained. “Everyone started to feel strongly that this was about whether Japan would survive.”
5. Interlude—Searching for Answers: “People . . . Are Reaching the Limit of Anxiety and Anger”
This chapter drew on documents from the NRC; National Diet of Japan, The Official Report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (Tokyo: National Diet of Japan, 2012), warp.da.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/3856371/naiic.go.jp/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/NAIIC_report_lo_res10.pdf; the Hatamura report; and the Tokyo Electric Power Company. In addition, journalist Bill Dedman provided background information and correspondence.
1. Like other Japanese leaders during the first weeks of the crisis, Edano routinely appeared before the cameras in sky-blue coveralls. The two-piece uniform is worn by officials during emergencies to demonstrate a sense of unity with labor crews, reported the Wall Street Journal. Similar two-piece company uniforms were worn by TEPCO executives throughout the accident.
2. More than half the people ordered to leave twelve municipalities around the plant remained unaware that their evacuation was the result of problems at Fukushima Daiichi until the morning of March 13, nearly two days after the accident, according to a later survey.
6. March 19 Through 20, 2011: “Give Me the Worst Case”
NRC transcripts and documents were a primary source in this chapter. Also cited is a report titled “Overview of the Department of Energy’s Radiological Dose Assessment of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Releases,” prepared by Terry Kraus and Brian Hunt of Sandia National Laboratories, SAND Report 2012-1226C, astarnmjss.nmcourts.gov/speakernotes/Japan_CM_Overview_Brief.pdf.
This chapter also utilized information obtained from a 2012 Union of Concerned Scientists Freedom of Information Act request to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
1. The accuracy of water-level readings was a chronic problem at Fukushima Daiichi. Water level indicators for the reactor cores themselves were erroneous, in addition to the uncertainty about water covering the spent fuel.
2. Once the use of freshwater could be restored, the salt deposits building up inside the reactor would begin to dissolve, allowing cooling water to circulate more effectively.
3. MELCOR is a computer code developed for the NRC by Sandia National Laboratories. It models the progression of severe accidents and can estimate source terms under a variety of accident scenarios.
7. Another March, Another Nation, Another Meltdown
Report of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: The Need for Change: The Legacy of TMI (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), available at www.threemileisland.org/downloads/188.pdf, provided historical materials in this chapter. Additional details can be found at the NRC’s “Backgrounder on the Three Mile Island Accident,” www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html.
1. According to a survey by the Kemeny Commission, the Union of Concerned Scientists led the list of organizations the media relied on during the accident.
8. March 21 Through December 2011: “The Safety Measures . . . Are Inadequate”
Interview with Charles Casto of the NRC, findings of the Hatamura investigation, and NRC documents provided background for this chapter, as well as the article “The Radiological and Psychological Consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi Accident,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September–October 2011.
1. Japan’s demonstration breeder reactor, Monju, generated power for only a few months before a sodium fire disabled it in December 1995. After plant overseers finally obtained permission to restart it in 2010, another accident shut it down until at least 2014.
9. Unreasonable Assurances
This chapter uses information from numerous articles from the trade newsletters Nucleonics Week and Inside N.R.C. dating to the early 1980s. It draws from numerous public documents from the NRC, General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office), Congressional Research Service, the Federal Register, and TEPCO. It also draws upon two outstanding books: Citizen Scientist by Frank von Hippel (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 19–21, and Tritium on Ice by Kenneth D. Bergeron (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 57–58.
1. When the NRC staff is considering “especially important or controversial rules,” the agency publishes what it calls an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, laying out the issue and soliciting comments from the public in advance of developing a draft rule. Ordinarily public comment would not be sought until after publication of a draft rule.
2. A backfit is a modification of or addition to systems, structures, components, or the design of an existing nuclear plant resulting from changes in the NRC’s rules or reinterpretations of old ones.
3. Also, by not having to submit a license amendment, owners avoided giving the public an opportunity to intervene and challenge its adequacy. Any “voluntary” upgrades would be conducted outside public scrutiny.
4. When the NRC inspected U.S. nuclear plants shortly after Fukushima, it found that while all plants had SAMGs, 23 percent did not train workers on the tasks assigned to them in the SAMGs, and 40 percent never conducted exercises using the SAMGs to see whether workers could successfully follow the guidelines. In addition, fewer than half the plants updated their SAMGs to reflect modifications made to the plants.
5. Two examples illustrate how the NRC’s risk sword was razor sharp on one side and Nerf-like on the other. In the 1990s, two decades of experience found little damage in pipes and the welds holding them together, indicating that the inspection requirements were unnecessarily strict. As a result, the NRC significantly reduced the frequency of pipe and weld inspections. On the other hand, when evidence emerged that ice condensers and the Mark III were vulnerable to containment failure in station blackouts, the NRC refused to strengthen its rules to require backup power for the igniter systems needed to burn off hydrogen.
6. According to a March 2011 e-mail from NRC staff member Martin Stutzke concerning the Indian Point plant, “the licensee told us they does [sic] not maintain their seismic PRAs . . . there’s little regulatory motivation for them to do so. It’s somewhat understandable that the licensee would focus on the internal event CDF [core damage frequency] . . . and tend to ignore the contributions from earthquakes and fires.”
7. Through the process of “radiolysis,” oxygen would start to build up as radiation broke water apart into oxygen and hydrogen molecules.
10. “This Is a Closed Meeting. Right?”
This chapter is indebted to several contemporaneous stories about the CRAC2 report by Milton Benjamin in the Washington Post and Robert Sangeorge of United Press International, as well as Kenneth Bergeron’s Tritium on Ice. It also references the 2003 article in the journal Science and Global Security, R. Alvarez et al., “Reducing the Hazards of Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in The United States,” which one of us (Lyman) co-authored. In addition, it draws on numerous NRC documents originally withheld from the public on the SOARCA program that were released to UCS under the Freedom of Information Act in 2011. It also relies on other NRC and ACRS public documents, including some released under Fukushima-related FOIAs.
1. The Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks lobbying and campaign expenditures, reported that from 2008 through 2010 the Nuclear Energy Institute spent more than $6 million lobbying the federal government on nuclear issues. Large utilities and nuclear manufacturers spent millions more.
On February 9, 2012, the NRC commissioners voted 4–1 to approve licenses to construct the reactors at the Vogtle nuclear complex, about 170 miles east of Atlanta. (NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko cast the lone “no” vote, saying, “I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima had never happened.” Jaczko thought that lessons learned from the Japanese disaster could lead the NRC to adopt new requirements for U.S. plants, and he argued that any new licenses
should be conditioned on plant owners’ agreement to incorporate all safety upgrades that the NRC might require in the future.) Two reactors already were operating at the facility, and upon completion this would become the nation’s largest private multiple-reactor complex.
2. In 1983, for example, the NRC required that any testimony on the consequences of an accident at the Indian Point nuclear plant also had to address the probabilities. In all cases, the NRC argued, those were very low.
3. One of the authors of this book, Edwin Lyman, was among several co-authors of the study.
4. McGaffigan was cleared after the NRC staff members told the inspector general that they had arrived independently at their conclusions rebutting their study. The staff and the commissioner were conveniently on the same wavelength.
5. The NRC Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research conducts some of its technical work in-house but farms out most of it to external contractors, primarily staff at the Energy Department’s national laboratories.
6. The two Peach Bottom reactors are almost identical to Fukushima Daiichi Units 2–5.
7. The NRC uses the term conservative in the sense of conservative factor of safety, a widely used term related to building in extra safety margins for various products or models.
8. The CRAC2 study used accident source terms that dated to the 1975 Reactor Safety Study. The worst-case source term was denoted “SST1.” SST1 postulated a release, at ninety minutes after the accident began, of a very large fraction of the radioactive material within the core.
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