Another hurdle that Jaczko is erecting in front of the Nuclear Renaissance
I realize that my topic selection during the past couple of days might have given the mistaken impression that NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko’s action to derail the Yucca Mountain project is the main reason that I think that the man is a hazard to the prosperity of my grandchildren.
People who have been reading Atomic Insights for a long time or those with easy access to search engines will realize, however, that I have never been in favor of wasting time and resources to build an underground repository or specialized transportation systems to a remote location in the Nevada desert. I am far more interested in eventually making full use of the resources that we should continue carefully setting aside in used fuel pools and dry storage containers.
Jaczko is also abusing his position in numerous other ways in what I see as an important part of an orchestrated effort to derail nuclear energy development in the United States and in as many places around the world as possible. He keeps claiming that he is passionately interested in “nuclear safety” but based on his actions, I suspect that his personal view is that the only way to achieve that goal is to prevent humans from taking any advantage of the incredible capabilities offered by nuclear energy.
As much as I hate to admit it, I am beginning to believe that all of the supportive words that President Obama has said about nuclear energy are mere distractions to keep atomic advocates from recognizing the real plan of slow rolling the technology into a high cost oblivion. (He can prove me wrong by demoting Jaczko from his position as Chairman.)
In addition to Yucca Mountain fiasco, the outrageous 50 mile evacuation order for Americans in Japan, the unlawful assumption of emergency powers on the basis of an accident that did not affect any NRC license holders and the alignment with antinuclear activists with regard to very minor tritium emissions at sites like Vermont Yankee, Chairman Jaczko is also taking aim at the process of awarding licenses for new nuclear plant construction. By inserting as much delay as possible, he might be able to derail any hope of a recovery in the potentially enormous nuclear plant manufacturing and construction business in the United States. In an era where the number of good jobs is far below the need for good jobs, that action would be a serious blow to our hopes of a sustainable economic recovery.
Though the $8.3 Billion dollar loan guarantee to Southern Company and its partners was announced with great fanfare and a well-chosen backdrop more than 16 months ago, that guarantee has not yet been awarded. No money has been made available to Southern Company or its Georgia Power subsidiary based on that federal promise of support.
The loan guarantee and the associated loan is contingent upon the granting of a combined construction and operating license (what the nuclear industry calls a COL) by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Up until this spring, it appeared likely – to most observers – that the COL for the Vogtle project would be awarded in the late summer or early fall of 2011. The 75-day public comment period ended and no real show stoppers had emerged.
Then, in a move that reminds me of Lucy, Charlie Brown, and footballs, Chairman Jaczko issued a press release that seemed to snatch away hope of an timely license approval. According to the Chairman, the review of Westinghouse’s license application had resulted in uncovering “technical issues”. I have been working for the past three weeks to understand exactly what that phrase meant. As near as I can tell, there are a couple of very minor objections being discussed.
A single dissenting reviewer on the NRC staff, Dr. John Ma, objected in writing to the test program and claimed that results showed that the shield building for the AP1000 was brittle and could shatter “like a glass cup” in an earthquake or if struck by a commercial aircraft. After that objection was raised, Purdue University announced that they had conducted some very demanding physical tests on samples of the same type of concrete structures that Westinghouse plans to use. According to the results of those tests, the structures are strong enough and flexible enough to exceed all requirements.
A second objection has apparently been suggested by a philosophy professor named Dr. Susan Sterrett. Before going back to school to obtain her PhD in philosophy, Ms. Susan Sterrett worked for Westinghouse in the 1980s. She was a math and engineering major as an undergrad, so her role was to perform calculations and build mathematical models. According to Dr. Sterrett, Westinghouse erred when modeling the post accident conditions that might arise inside the steel containment structure. She thinks that the modelers should have included the contribution to stress that would be added by solar energy induced temperature differentials on the exterior of the shield building. In a modeled scenario where the containment structure is being filled with high pressure steam from a coolant system rupture, most reasonable engineers would agree that the contribution to stress from the sun heating the exterior of the building would be small enough to be ignored.
As it turns out, when generous assumptions for the worst possible case solar irradiation on the shield building are included in the model, the projected maximum pressure inside the containment dome increases from about 58.9 psi to 59.3 psi – still below the maximum allowable pressure of the building. Westinghouse is currently “polishing the cannonball” on its models and calculations in preparation for a meeting scheduled to be held this coming week with the NRC.
Greg Jaczko has announced to the world that unless Westinghouse’s recalculations meet his personally set standards of satisfaction, he might reopen the application to public comment, an action that would inevitably add several months of delay to the project. That might not seem like much, but there are already a few thousand people employed at the site, at the suppliers, and in the engineering offices that are working to a schedule. Every month of artificially imposed delay adds many millions of dollars to the cost with no improvement in eventual revenue and no improvement in safety. Adding uncertainty on top of that additional cost – what if Westinghouse is never able to satisfy the Chairman – could cause decision makers to rethink their investment choices.
It would not be unreasonable, though it would be a signifiant tragedy to all of the employees and to the people of the great state of Georgia (my late father’s native state), if the Southern Company Board of Directors viewed a reopening of the public comment period as an indication that it is time to avoid future losses and close down the project. The people in Georgia have been burned before – the first two units of the Vogtle power station were initially projected to cost $660 million and ended up costing $8 billion.
The Georgia Public Service Commission, which is fiscally responsible to the ratepayers for the costs that it allows monopoly utility companies that it regulates to incur, is already worried. The PSC hired a consultant (with Georgia Power’s money) to help them figure out what a delay could mean to the rate payers who are already paying a small amount every month for their share of the construction work in progress. That consultant, William Jacobs, a Marietta nuclear engineer, filed a report on Thursday, June 9, 2011 that includes some cautionary statements.
“Possible schedule delay … would impact the financing cost of the project,” Jacobs said in a report filed late Thursday with the PSC.
Jacobs said Georgia Power hasn’t accounted for so-called change orders that could “significantly impact the direct construction costs of the project.” He listed possible cost impacts in his testimony, although that information was redacted.
Based on a number of emailed exchanges over the past two years with the Office of Public Affairs at the NRC, I am fairly certain that Chairman Jaczko would tell the ratepayers of Georgia that he is not concerned about the cost of their project, the cost of their current electricity or the time that it might take to finally obtain a license to continue construction.
My educated guess is that Chairman Jaczko would piously announce that his only concern is nuclear safety and that he will not allow the project license to be approved until Westinghouse has proven that its design is safe – to his personal satisfaction. Chairman Jaczko has demonstrated that he is not bound by any rules, laws, or collegial opinions of his fellow commissioners, even in the case of a formal vote that goes against his personal desires and agendas.
If you want to hear about the AP1000 from the point of view of another (former) NRC regulator, you can listen to my May 28, 2011 interview of Jeff Merrifield, currently a Senior VP of the Shaw Group, on The Atomic Show Podcast.
Vote for Obama in 2012 – four more years of Jackzo! Way to go, Rod.
Or vote for a psycho like Sarah Palin, and get nuclear)-weapon) Armageddon. A two-party political system is dreadful if one of the parties (in the US case, the Republicans) is taken over by psychos.
The situation is reminiscent of the Louisiana gubernatorial election of 1992, or the French presidential election run-off of 2002.
Policy formulated by White House staff and approved by President Obama is followed in such detail by NRC and DoE Department Heads it begs the question about an assumed Monarchy in Washington, DC. The sad fact remains that the financial and technical systems that this country depends on have been bought “Lock Stock and Barrel” by funny money and corruption. What is wrong with this picture?
How much to fuel Air Force One every time a meeting is called when a telconference would get the job done. Well, it is obvious many more than one agenda is being worked at each destination. After all, The New World Order, and deals worked out of public view need to be done regardless of fuel cost to the Tax Payer. Classified Department of State documents that are classified only to cover up unilatoral actions by this administration need overview by the Congress. But how much corruption and abuse of power can the Congress investigate? I have concluded that writting to ones Congressman is a waste of effort. I can’t compete with Exxon’s “Ideas” and who has the favor of the Administration by whatever leverage.
I was robbed once and found my options for recovery were nil. Damn!… if it hasn’t happend again an by the government I trusted. Exposure of what is going on is our only recourse….How do you expose corruption and abuse of power as a citizen in the dark?
My contention is that Mr. Jaczko is using the Union of Concerned Scientists’ playbook for his position on the AP 1000 and Yucca Mt. It is an opinion I have been considering for some time. However, after the latest round of press releases by Mr. Jaczko, I now firmly believe Mr. Jaczko is using the UCS playbook as his guide for running the NRC. To that end I have listed several points and warn upfront this is a long comment.
Point #1:
From Mr. Ed Lyman’s testimony in his latest appearance before Congress:
“The Union of Concerned Scientists is neither pro nor anti-nuclear power, but has served as a
nuclear power safety and security watchdog for over 40 years”
That statement is total bunk. Everything Mr. Lyman and the UCS do is anti-nuclear. One just has to look at their Climate 2030 plan to know they are anti-nuclear. Mr. Lyman’s professional work is devoted to putting the nuclear “safety” bar so high that nuclear power becomes impossible to use (or any other power generation source for that matter if the similar “safety” rules where applied to non-nuclear sources).
Consider the fact that Mr. Jaczko got his political start as a staff member for Congressman Markey who is as anti-nuclear a politician as they come. Also consider the fact that UCS is headquarted near Representative Markey’s district. And add in the TMI issues that both UCS and Representative Markey worked on years ago, it is hard to dispute the ties between Markey and the UCS stretch back decades.
Therefore, it shouldn’t be a great surprise to see Mr. Jaczko speaking the same language as the UCS. It is very disappointing for the current leader of the NRC to use the same language but not a surprise considering those long-term connections. The one question about this connection between Mr. Jaczko and the UCS I have concerns the time the two parties spent discussing nuclear “safety”.
In other words, how much time did Mr. Jaczko, Mr. Lyman and Mr. Lochbaum spend in meetings together when Mr. Jaczko was working as a staff member for Representative Markey? Those kind of professional and personal relationships are not automatically shut off when one gets a political promotion, as did Mr. Jaczko. In fact, if Washington DC politics teaches nothing else it teaches how to use political connections to their fullest to achieve one’s goals. So do those ties continue to this day and are they affecting Mr. Jaczko’s decisions on how he is running the NRC? I believe so.
UCS is in the business of obstructing nuclear power in every conceivable way. Why wouldn’t they want a person on the NRC commission who supports their objectives and why wouldn’t they be cheering right now after Mr. Jaczko’s latest string of press releases about the AP 1000?
Point #2:
Yucca Mountain is legally required to consider the feasibility of retrievability of the spent fuel. UCS is against recycling or reprocessing nuclear fuel since their driving belief system assumes reprocessing automatically leads to nuclear weapons. The UCS also assumes United States still has superiority and control of reprocessing technology so by stopping reprocessing here it will be stopped elsewhere in the world. These ideas are very outdated since the US has little to no operating knowledge of reprocessing while France and others have achieved decades of experience.
Various nations have progressed both with their reprocessing technology and their nuclear weapon paths independent of US governmental actions in the reprocessing realm or in this case US government inaction.
In fact, one could argue that our inaction in this arena because of politically active groups like UCS, the United States has lost the will and ability to lead these types of discussions. That is another comment for another day though.
What Mr. Jaczko did by backdooring the closure of Yucca Mt. is hand the UCS a great big shiny present. They are now potentially sitting in the driver’s seat on the issue of recycling and reprocessing since they get to claim the head of the NRC is on board with their position against Yucca Mt and the chairman is speaking their language about nuclear safety. Especially after the BRC waffled by kicking the can down the road on this issue.
The hope of the UCS, and apparently Mr. Jaczko through his actions since he became chairman, is that by forcing the nuclear power plants to continue to store the spent fuel on-site without a definitive long-term plan despite the US legal obligation to do so, they will begin to hammer on the issue of long-term “safety” of the stored fuel. The goal of that UCS end game is to shut down the remaining 104 operating reactors by trying to portray dry spent fuel storage as a terrorist threat in their ongoing efforts to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about nuclear power despite no evidence and vague “facts” to support their position.
What is entirely wrong is for Mr. Jaczko to appear as if he is taking his walking orders from a known anti-nuclear group instead of following the rules and regulations governing his position as congressionally appointed leader of the NRC. No matter how the anti-nuclear wolf is clothed, it is still an anti-nuclear wolf. It appears Mr. Jaczko is that wolf and is now in charge of a governmental organization that has the power to affect billions invested in the power generation marketplace as well as the operations of all 104 operating nuclear reactors here in the United States.
That wolf seems to be doing everything in his power to make sure future investments in the power generation market here in the United States are spent in accordance with the UCS Climate 2030 plan even if that means violating the intent of the regulations set forth by Congress for running the NRC.
At the risk of veering off into ad hominem territory here the thing that always kills me is that in every picture I’ve seen of Jaczko he even LOOKS like a devious bureaucratic weasel.
“psycho”
Not nice, Carty. You usually are more calm than this. The impolite “Ioannes” aside, you sound like Phil Collins and Genesis ca. 1982.
Rod Adams wrote:
He (Jaczko) keeps claiming that he is passionately interested in “nuclear safety” but based on his actions, I suspect that his personal view is that the only way to achieve that goal is to prevent humans from taking any advantage of the incredible capabilities offered by nuclear energy.
It is quite possible that Jaczko is indeed passionately interested in “nuclear safety”. Problem is, though, that one can take too narrow a view. Since we are going to use energy, we need to be passionately interested in energy safety. If we focus exclusively on “nuclear safety”, that it be 100% safe come what may, and at the same time let other more dangerous sources of energy just slide by without equal safety requirements, we have not done any favor for the public.
Unfortunately, bureaucracies seems to have a way of nurturing public officials with narrow points of view who passionately believe their view is correct. And politicians have a way of taking advantage of such officials.