Mad Science: The Nuclear Power Experiment

by Joseph Mangano

  Despite Randall’s warning, the NRC approved the application for a twenty-year license renewal for Yankee Rowe. In June 1991, the Union of Concerned Scientists and New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution then took legal actions against the NRC, with the goal of shutting the plant. The actions succeeded and Yankee Rowe closed permanently in October 1991.

  The NRC now had a problem. If Yankee Rowe couldn’t cut the mustard, would any other reactor be able to meet regulatory requirements for license extension? This was an extremely important issue. With a stagnant industry, nuclear backers wanted to run reactors for over forty years, as perhaps a final chance to squeeze out more revenue before reactors began closing. Of course, it was a gamble, since nobody knew the safety risks involved in operating a reactor over thirty years old.

  In December 1991, just two months after Yankee Rowe closed, the NRC published regulations governing reactor license extensions. But the industry lobbied to strongly water down the requirements, so that all the operators would have to do is present a program of age-related degradation management. They were successful, and in August 1994, the regulations were changed.

  To get a twenty-year license extension beyond the forty-year, utilities were not required by the NRC to show their “report card” proving that they caused no health harm or safety threats during their first forty years of operation. The National Whistleblower Center argued the rules in federal court, but failed to force any change in the new, weakened regulations period.

  The stage was now set for a bonanza of extending reactor licenses. In June 1995, departing NRC Chairman Ivan Selin predicted that existing plants would become “valuable assets” in the coming years after his NRC had simplified the processes to build new reactors and extend the old ones.

  The new regulations needed to be tried out, and the test case was the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant. Calvert Cliffs is a plant on the Chesapeake Bay, just forty miles from Washington, DC and fifty-five miles from Baltimore. Its two reactors began operating in October 1974 and November 1976. Two other reactors in adjoining Charles County were ordered in the early 1970s, but were cancelled a few years later.

  The idea of large nuclear reactors so close to such a large metropolis, including the nation’s capital, didn’t sit well with many people. About 3.3 million people live within a fifty-mile radius of the plant, and the only land-based means of escape is through the Baltimore-Washington area. Moreover, those who valued the marine life in the Chesapeake Bay were not happy either. A citizens committee took the AEC to court in the late 1960s, claiming that the initial AEC licensing of Calvert Cliffs ignored the newly-enacted National Environmental Protection Act. The committee actually won, and the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (as well as all future applicants for reactor licenses) were forced to prepare and submit an Environmental Impact Statement.

  Calvert Cliffs had compiled a checkered record during its first twenty years, including:

  – It experienced three “near miss” meltdowns. Two (one for each reactor) occurred on July 23, 1987, when off site power was lost. These were considered the fifteenth and sixteenth worst situations at US reactors from 1986 to 2006. The other was on January 12, 1994, when a reactor “trip” at Unit 2 experienced complications. Additional near misses subsequently took place in May 2001 and January 2004.

  – A 1996 NRC report estimated that the chance of a dangerous accident at Calvert Cliffs was one in 83 over a sixty-year period, four times greater than other US reactors.

  – Both reactors were placed on six consecutive semiannual NRC “watch lists” of the most problematic five nuclear plants in the US, from 1988 to 1991. The NRC stopped publishing this list in the late 1990s.

  – Of the fifty-one temporary shutdowns of US nuclear plants that lasted over a year, two were at Calvert Cliffs. Unit 1 was down for seventeen months (May 1989 to October 1990), while Unit 2 was down for twenty-six months (March 1989 to May 1991).

  – The cancer death rate in Calvert County was 2.2% below other Maryland counties in 1979–1983, just after the two reactors came online. But by 2002–2005, the county rate was 16% above the rest of the state. Calvert County is growing fast, now approaching 100,000 residents, up from 35,000 in 1980.

  A substandard performance like this would worry any company subject to effective regulatory requirements. But Baltimore Gas and Electric wasn’t worried, and rolled up their sleeves to prepare the first license extension application. It was a lengthy document that took several years, but finally was sent to the NRC in April 1998. Over the next two years, the NRC made three site visits to Calvert Cliffs. In addition, four public meetings featuring many comments from local citizens were held, and the NRC allowed the public to comment in writing as well. The Environmental Impact Statement and Safety Evaluation Reports were huge, like thick telephone books. Many comments, both for and against license extension, were received.

  In March 2000, the NRC approved the applications. The Calvert Cliffs reactors could now operate until 2034/2036, a full sixty years after initial startup. The NRC had found no safety concerns in its Environmental Impact Statement – a curious conclusion, given the plant’s problematic record to date, and the complete lack of knowledge of how a sixty-year-old reactor would function.

  Calvert Cliffs turned out to be not just any other nuclear plant. President George W. Bush toured the site in June 2005 – the first president to visit a nuclear plant since a somber Jimmy Carter rushed to the stricken Three Mile Island site twenty-six years earlier. The plant was later bought by Baltimore-based Constellation Energy; and in 2008 Constellation partnered with Electricité de France to propose a new 1600 megawatt electrical reactor at the site, which would be the largest in the US, costing about $10 billion.

  Right after Calvert Cliffs received its approval, twenty-year license extension applications poured in and the NRC rubber stamp went into action. By April 2012, the NRC had made decisions on seventy-one of the 104 reactors – and approved all seventy-one. Another thirteen were under consideration, and more applications were expected in the next several years. Thus, it is likely that all 104 reactors will receive permission to operate for sixty years. By August 2011, nine reactors had passed forty years of operation, with another twenty-eight to join this group by the end of 2014. The fleet of US nuclear reactors is truly a geriatric one.

  In a few cases, citizen groups filed legal interventions opposing license extensions. Citizen groups opposing the Oyster Creek, NJ (the oldest of the 104 US reactors) stretched out the process for four years – only to have the NRC approve the twenty-year extension one week before the reactor turned forty. Other groups opposed the extension at Grand Gulf, located in Claiborne County, Mississippi, 85% of whose residents are black. But in most cases, there was little resistance.

  While the sixty-year mark will not be reached by a US reactor until 2029, already there are plans for keeping them in operation to a maximum of eighty years. In February 2011, the Electric Power Research Institute – a spinoff of the nuclear power industry – held a “Workshop on Life Beyond 60.”The conference discussed the interest that Constellation Energy has in proposing yet another twenty-year extension to the NRC, to a cumulative total of eighty years, in about the year 2020 for two reactors it owns in upstate New York, Nine Mile Point 1 and R.E. Ginna (EPRI). And the EPRI is investigating extensions up to 100 years as well.

  From the 1950s to the 1990s, nuclear reactors were operated by local utility companies – which produced energy in various forms, not just nuclear. The company that had by far the greatest investment in nuclear power was Commonwealth Edison, a Chicago-based firm that owned and operated eleven reactors at five plants in northern Illinois. The next highest was the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) with five reactors at two plants. Most utilities confined their nuclear operations to a single plant.

  But things changed starting in the late 1990s. Utilities began buying out smaller ones, absorbing their nuclear reactors in the process. The largest buyout occurred in October
2000, when Unicom (which owned Commonwealth Edison) merged with PECO, creating an energy giant that owned seventeen of the 104 reactors in the US, along with minority ownership in the two Salem New Jersey reactors and ownership of the two Zion reactors in Illinois, closed in 1998. The company, with revenues of $18.6 billion in 2010, also is profitable, with a net income of $2.6 billion.

  Exelon is still in acquisition mode; it made a deal in 2005 to buy the Public Service Enterprise Group in New Jersey, which was nixed only after considerable protests from New Jersey activists. In April 2011, it purchased Constellation Energy of Baltimore for $7.9 billion; Constellation owns five nuclear reactors in Maryland and New York (all purchased from 1999 to 2004) and had linked up with Electricité de France to build the largest reactor in US history – a plan that was scrapped in 2010.

  Another company making a big move in the nuclear world was New Orleans-based Entergy, with its nuclear division in Jackson, Mississippi, whose operations were traditionally confined to Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. But Entergy looked elsewhere, and from 1998 to 2006 purchased reactors in Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, and Vermont. The company now owns twelve reactors at ten plants, and is also profitable (annual revenue and profit of $13.1 and $1.2 billion). Its biggest purchase was the three reactors at Indian Point, just thirty-five miles north of midtown Manhattan. Unit 1 is closed permanently, Unit 3 was purchased in November 2000, and Unit 2 was purchased on September 6, 2001 – just five days before a jet hijacked by terrorists flew directly over Indian Point on its way to the World Trade Center. Duke Energy has made a name for itself too, controlling seven reactors in the Carolinas.

  What happens when nuclear reactors are owned by larger and more powerful corporations? The obvious answer is that the companies have much greater sway in determining nuclear policy. The growing companies formed the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) in 1994, a group that fronted the pro-nuclear agenda. The NEI claims to have 350 members in nineteen countries, representing not just owners of nuclear plants, but companies that manufacture parts for reactors.

  The all-out push to lobby for the nuclear agenda was on, by the NEI and its members. From 1999 to 2009, the industry spent $645 million on lobbying and another $63 million in campaign contributions. With that kind of financial strength, it wasn’t difficult to convince powerful officials to support an expansion of nuclear power.

  For example, a key player in the 2000 merger between Unicom and PECO was none other than Rahm Emanuel, who represented Unicom. Emanuel, of course, went on to become a member of Congress, the Chief of Staff in the Obama White House, and subsequently mayor of Chicago. Frank Clark, CEO of Commonwealth Edison, was a major Obama advisor and fundraiser. Duke Energy has pledged to raise $32 million for the 2012 Democratic national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Duke is based. The Republican side of the aisle had just as many, probably more, supporters from large energy conglomerations that operated nuclear plants.

  Getting a champion in the Congress to lead political efforts was important for the nuclear tycoons. In 1997, they found him – New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici. In that year, a suggestion by a Domenici staffer, who had worked at the Los Alamos lab in New Mexico, suggested that nuclear power would be a good issue for his boss to take a strong leadership role in. At first, Domenici was skeptical. But soon he was convinced, and spent his remaining fourteen years in Washington relentlessly supporting the cause of nuclear power.

  With the NRC and Congress taken care of, the final piece in the effort to generate political power for a nuclear revival was the White House. The big opportunity came in November 2000, with the highly controversial victory of George W. Bush over Al Gore in the Presidential election. Bush was strongly supportive of large energy companies. He had been an oil executive, as was his father, the former President. He had strong support in the energy community. And Vice President Dick Cheney had earned enormous sums in the 1990s working for energy giant Halliburton between stints in Washington as Secretary of Defense and Vice President.

  In early February 2001, barely after Bush had taken his seat in the Oval Office, the National Energy Policy Development Group was formed, with Cheney as its chair. The group met numerous times before a final report was issued on May 16. The White House would not release materials on the group’s activities, and fought requests to reveal these materials until 2005, when a federal appeals court ruled in favor of secrecy. But there can be little doubt that, along with oil and coal, leaders of nuclear interests were represented, as the report contained recommendations to 1) streamline regulations for nuclear plants, 2) attempt to revive reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, and 3) move faster towards a permanent repository of high level waste.

  The nuclear revival now had all the right players in place. Companies were earning more from reactors than ever before, because construction costs were paid and reactors were operating more of the time. Reactor operators had merged into conglomerates that had strong political allies. And with the passage of decades since the meltdowns at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the horrors that reactors were capable of were just memories fading into the past.

  But still, for the revival to succeed there had to be a well-defined purpose that the public and leaders would support. Nuclear power wasn’t new. In fact, it had failed to live up to the great hype at the start of the atomic age. And these were the same reactors – machines that produced electricity by heating water after splitting uranium atoms – that had been rejected, by financial institutions, elected officials, and the general public. The product needed repackaging.

  The answer wasn’t conceived by nuclear leaders so much as it fell into their laps. As the millennium began, the concern about global warming and climate change had gained considerable strength in the US and worldwide. Oil, coal, and natural gas producers were on the defensive. Many elected officials and scientists were speaking out about the hazards that continued greenhouse gas emissions presented. Nuclear leaders saw a great chance to capitalize.

  The industry conceived a campaign to promote nuclear power as “clean” or “green,” and even as “emission-free.” Prominently positioned in the NEI web site, under the section entitled Protecting the Environment, the NEI claims that “nuclear plants generate 69.3% of all carbon-free electricity in America and are an essential mitigation tool for reducing greenhouse gases.”

  The nuclear industry hired or encouraged others to subscribe to these ideas and to publicize them. Perhaps its most brilliant move was the industry’s formation of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition (CASE) in 2006. The Coalition was co-chaired by Patrick Moore. A Canadian who held a PhD in ecology, Moore had been one of the founders and early leaders of the environmental group Greenpeace in the 1970s. He spent fifteen years with the group, which was strongly against nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons tests. But by the mid-2000s, Moore had begun to criticize the environmental movement, and perhaps lured partially by lucrative compensation – how much CASE pays Moore remains a mystery – became co-chair of the group. Moore now took the position that nuclear power was necessary for the US, and was not a polluting source of energy. He contended that other environmentalists were now pro-nuclear. Moore drew considerable attention from the media. He converted his earlier logic to his new position by drawing spurious conclusions based on distortions and outright untruths:

  What nobody noticed at the time, though, was that Three Mile Island was in fact a success story. The concrete containment structure did just what it was designed to do – prevent radiation from escaping into the environment. And although the reactor itself was crippled there was no injury or death among nuclear workers or nearby residents.

  (TMI did in fact leak radiation into the environment – and does to this day – and cancer levels in the area are highly elevated.) Moore’s co-chair at CASE was Christine Todd Whitman, the former governor of New Jersey and EPA Administrator. Whitman had been known as a moderate or even liberal among Republicans. But she infuriated env
ironmentalists in 2001. Just seven days after the 9/11 attacks, the ruins of the World Trade Center were smoldering with a concoction of hazardous materials from the building, including asbestos, lead, mercury, and dioxin. The smell to local residents was strong, a number of rescue workers were reporting respiratory health problems, and a number of health professionals were speaking out about potential health hazards. But Whitman released a written statement that brazenly proclaimed: “Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York … that their air is safe to breathe and the water is safe to drink.”

  When Whitman and Moore were introduced as leaders of CASE, she proclaimed nuclear power to be “environmentally friendly, affordable, clean, dependable, and safe” – a mantra used by proponents. The industry made sure that CASE, the NEI, and other organizations convinced as many groups and individuals as possible, including those regarded as environmentalists. The NEI web site lists a number of these, including the EPA, Academies of Science for the G8+5 Countries, and Business Roundtable, which proclaimed that nuclear power is safe and/or the best means of reducing carbon emissions.

  The “green” campaign of nuclear supporters was based on slogans, as it had been during the 1950s. The same problems – routine exposures to local residents, the chance of a catastrophic meltdown, and the insoluble problem of waste storage – were still there, but ignored or minimized. “New nukes” were actually the same old nukes, i.e., machines that used split uranium atoms to heat water, and generate massive amounts of over 100 carcinogenic radioactive chemicals.

  One new component of the nuclear revival, that nukes didn’t produce greenhouse gases, was a huge distortion of fact. Nuclear reactors themselves do not produce greenhouse gases, but the initial steps in the nuclear fuel cycle – uranium mining, milling, enrichment, fabrication, and purification, along with the required transportation between these steps – each burn huge amounts of carbon. Transporting waste to a repository uses large amounts of carbon emitters. And after a nuclear plant is shut down, the process of decommissioning a reactor uses more greenhouse gases. Adding many more nuclear reactors would barely make a dent in the global warming problem.