Tag Archives: Electric Power Research Institute

For Nuclear Power This Summer, It’s Too Darn Hot

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You know that expression, “Hotter than July?” Well, this July, July was hotter than July. Depending on what part of the country you live in, it was upwards of three degrees hotter this July than the 20th Century average. Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis and St. Louis are each “on a pace to shatter their all-time monthly heat records.” And “when the thermometer goes way up and the weather is sizzling hot,” as the Cole Porter song goes, demand for electricity goes way up, too.

During this peak period, wouldn’t it be great to know that you can depend on the expensive infrastructure your government and, frankly, you as ratepayers and taxpayers have been backstopping all these years? Yeah, that would be great. . . so would an energy source that was truly clean, safe, and too cheap to meter. Alas, to the surprise of no one (at least no one who watches this space), nuclear power, the origin of that catchy if not quite Porter-esque tripartite promise, cannot.

Take, for example, Braidwood, the nuclear facility that supplies much of Chicago with electricity:

It was so hot last week, a twin-unit nuclear plant in northeastern Illinois had to get special permission to continue operating after the temperature of the water in its cooling pond rose to 102 degrees.

It was the second such request from the plant, Braidwood, which opened 26 years ago. When it was new, the plant had permission to run as long as the temperature of its cooling water pond, a 2,500-acre lake in a former strip mine, remained below 98 degrees; in 2000 it got permission to raise the limit to 100 degrees.

The problem, said Craig Nesbit, a spokesman for Exelon, which owns the plant, is not only the hot days, but the hot nights. In normal weather, the water in the lake heats up during the day but cools down at night; lately, nighttime temperatures have been in the 90s, so the water does not cool.

But simply getting permission to suck in hotter water does not make the problem go away. When any thermoelectric plant (that includes nuclear, coal and some gas) has to use water warmer than design parameters, the cooling is less effective, and that loss of cooling potential means that plants need to dial down their output to keep from overheating and damaging core components. Exelon said it needed special dispensation to keep Braidwood running because of the increased demand for electricity during heat waves such as the one seen this July, but missing from the statement is that the very design of Braidwood means that it will run less efficiently and supply less power during hot weather.

Also missing from Exelon’s rationale is that they failed to meet one of the basic criteria for their exception:

At the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that is generally critical of nuclear power safety, David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer, said the commission was supposed to grant exemptions from its rules if there was no increase or only a minor increase in risk, and if the situation could not have been foreseen.

The safety argument “is likely solid and justified,’’ he wrote in an e-mail, but “it is tough to argue (rationally) that warming water conditions are unforeseen.’’ That is a predictable consequence of global warming, he said.

Quite. Lochbaum cites two instances from the hot summer of 2010–New Jersey’s Hope Creek nuclear station and Limerick in Pennsylvania each had to reduce output due to intake water that was too warm. In fact, cooling water problems at US thermoelectric generators were widespread along the Mississippi River during the hot, dry summer of 1988.

And the problem is clearly growing. Two months ago, a study published in Nature Climate Change predicted continued warming and spreading drought conditions will significantly reduce thermoelectric output in coming decades:

Higher water temperatures and reduced river flows in Europe and the United States in recent years have resulted in reduced production, or temporary shutdown, of several thermoelectric power plants, resulting in increased electricity prices and raising concerns about future energy security in a changing climate.

. . . .

[The Nature Climate Change study] projects further disruption to supply, with a likely decrease in thermoelectric power generating capacity of between 6-19% in Europe and 4-16% in the United States for the period 2031-2060, due to lack of cooling-water. The likelihood of extreme (>90%) reductions in thermoelectric power generation will, on average, increase by a factor of three.

Compared to other water use sectors (e.g. industry, agriculture, domestic use), the thermoelectric power sector is one of the largest water users in the US (at 40%) and in Europe (43% of total surface water withdrawals). While much of this water is ‘recycled’ the power plants rely on consistent volumes of water, at a particular temperature, to prevent overheating of power plants. Reduced water availability and higher water temperatures – caused by increasing ambient air temperatures associated with climate change – are therefore significant issues for electricity supply.

That study is of course considering all thermoelectric sources, not just nuclear, but the decrease in efficiency applies across the board. And, when it comes to nuclear power, as global temperatures continue to rise and water levels in rivers and lakes continue to drop, an even more disconcerting threat emerges.

When a coal plant is forced to shut down because of a lack of cool intake water, it can, in short order, basically get turned off. With no coal burning, the cooling needs of the facility quickly downgrade to zero.

A nuclear reactor, however, is never really “off.”

When a boiling water reactor or pressurized water reactor (BWR and PWR respectively, the two types that make up the total of the US commercial reactor fleet) is “shutdown” (be it in an orderly fashion or an abrupt “scram”), control rods are inserted amongst the fuel rods inside the reactor. The control rods absorb free neutrons, decreasing the number of heavy atoms getting hit and split in the fuel rods. It is that split, that fission, that provides the energy that heats the water in the reactor and produces the steam that drives the electricity-generating turbines. Generally, the more collisions, the more heat generated. An increase in heat means more steam to spin a turbine; fewer reactions means less heat, less steam and less electrical output. But it doesn’t mean no heat.

The water that drives the turbines also cools the fuel rods. It needs to circulate and somehow get cooled down when it is away from the reactor core. Even with control rods inserted, there are still reactions generating heat, and that heat needs to be extracted from the reactor or all kinds of trouble ensues–from too-high pressure breaching containment to melting the cladding on fuel rods, fires, and hydrogen explosions. This is why the term LOCA–a loss of coolant accident–is a scary one to nuclear watchdogs (and, theoretically, to nuclear regulators, too).

So, even when they are not producing electricity, nuclear reactors still need cooling. They still need a power source to make that cooling happen, and they still need a coolant, which, all across the United States and most of the rest of the world, means water.

Water that is increasingly growing too warm or too scarce. . . at least in the summer. . . you know, when it’s hot. . . and demand for electricity increases.

In fact, Braidwood is not the only US plant that has encountered problems this sultry season:

[A] spokeswoman for the Midwest Independent System Operator, which operates the regional grid, said that another plant had shut down because its water intake pipes were now above the water level of the body from which it draws its cooling water. Another is “partially curtailed.”

That spokeswoman can’t, it seems, tell us which plants she is talking about because that information “is considered competitive.” (Good to know that the Midwest Independent System Operator has its priorities straight. . . . Hey, that sounds like a hint! Anyone in the Midwest notice a nearby power plant curtailing operations?)

So, not isolated. . . and also not a surprise–not to the Nature Climate Change people this year, and not to the industry, itself. . . 17 years ago. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a non-profit group of scientists and engineers funded by the good folks who generate electricity (a group that has a noticeable overlap with the folks that own nuclear plants), released a study in 1995 that specifically warned of the threat a warming climate posed to electrical generation. The EPRI study predicted that rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide would make power production less efficient and more expensive, while at the same time increasing demand.

And climate predictions have only grown more dire since then.

Add to that mix one more complicating factor: when the intake water is warmer, the water expelled by the plant is warmer, too. And there are environmental protections in many areas that limit how hot that “waste” water can be. There have been instances in the past where thermoelectric plants have had to curtail production because their exhaust water exceeded allowable temperatures.

And yet, despite a myriad of potential problems and two decades of climate warnings, it is sobering to note that none of the US reactors were built to account for any of this. . . because all American nuclear reactors predate these revelations. That is not to say nuclear operators haven’t had 20 years (give or take) to plan for these exigencies, but it is to say that, by-and-large, they haven’t. (Beyond, that is, as described above, simply lobbying for higher water temperature limits. That’s a behavior all too recognizable when it comes to nuclear operators and regulators–when nuclear plants can’t meet requirements, don’t upgrade the procedures or equipment, just “upgrade” the requirements.)

But, rather than using all this knowledge to motivate a transition away from nuclear power, rather than using the time to begin decommissioning these dinosaurs, nuclear operators have instead pushed for license extensions–an additional 20 years beyond the original 40-year design. And, to date, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has yet to reject a single extension request.

And now the nuclear industry–with the full faith and credit of the federal government–is looking to double down on this self-imposed ignorance. The “Advanced Passive” AP1000 reactors approved earlier this year for Georgia’s Plant Vogtle (and on track for South Carolina, too) may be called “advanced,” but they are still PWRs and they still require a large reserve of cool, circulating water to keep them operating and nominally safe.

The government is offering $8.3 billion of financing for the Georgia reactors at rock-bottom rates, and with very little cash up front from the plant owners. There have already been numerous concerns about the safety of the AP1000 design and the economic viability of the venture; factor in the impact of climate change, and the new Vogtle reactors are pretty much the definition of “boondoggle”–a wasteful, pointless project that gives the appearance of value while in reality delivering none. It is practically designed to fail, leaving the government (read: taxpayers and ratepayers) holding the bag.

But as a too-darn-hot July ends, that’s the woo being pitched by the nuclear industry and its government sweethearts. Rather than invest the money in technologies that actually thrive during the long, hot days of summer, rather than invest in improved efficiency and conservation programs that would both create jobs and decrease electrical demand (and carbon emissions), rather than seizing the moment, making, as it were, hay while the sun shines, it seems the US will choose to bury its head in the sand and call it shade.

Nuclear power was already understood to be dirty, dangerous and absurdly expensive, even without the pressures of climate change. Far from being the answer to growing greenhouse gas emissions, the lifecycle of nuclear power–from mining and milling to transport and disposal–has turned out to be a significant contributor to the problem. And now, the global weirding brought on by that problem has made nuclear even more precarious–more perilous and more pricy–and so an even more pernicious bet.

According to the Kinsey Report, every average man you know would prefer to play his favorite sport when the temperature is low. But when the thermometer goes way up and the weather is sizzling hot, a gob for his squab, a marine for his beauty queen, a GI for his cutie-pie–and now it turns out–the hour for nuclear power is not.

‘Cause it’s too darn hot.
It’s too. Darn. Hot.

The Party Line – September 9, 2011: Shaken, But Still Not Stirred

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Sunday, September 11, will of course be the tenth anniversary of a tragedy that fundamentally changed America in ways we are still trying to understand. But this 9/11 is also a day for other anniversaries, ones that will likely get little, if any, recognition in the US.

In 1985, for instance, September 11 saw a Keystone Kops-like collection of miscues during a test of the remote shutdown protocols at the Limerick Generating Station, a boiling water nuclear reactor outside of Philadelphia. During the shutdown, a valve on a cooling system failed to open, and attempts to manually open the valve were met by a locked door, and a call for a key, which, after a 15-minute wait, turned out to be the wrong key. Once the proper key was found and the door was opened, the operators found the valve’s hand wheel chained and padlocked to prevent accidental opening. Those keys were in the abandoned control room. Bolt cutters had to be used before the operators could finally open the valve.

All that time, the reactor core’s temperature was increasing. Fortunately, the test was done during startup, when decay heat is relatively low, so control rods were able to slow the reaction enough to provide time to overcome the multiple barriers to opening the valve. Had the plant been operating at full power when this series of problems occurred, the outcome would likely have not been so rosy.

September 11 will also mark six months since the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan triggered a series of cataclysmic failures at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex. That accident provides no amusing anecdotes or happy endings, but those horrible events should provide a loud wakeup call and numerous object lessons for nuclear power programs across the globe.

As previously noted, the Japanese nightmare and domestic political realities have spurred German Prime Minister Angela Merkel to announce a rather rapid phase out of her country’s nuclear plants. The Japanese government, too, has spoken of turning away from nuclear power and toward renewable alternatives.

But here in the United States, six months on from Japan’s quake, there are no such proclamations or pledges–if anything, quite the contrary–and almost no movement on even the most incremental of recommendations.

In the face of lessons still not learned, a trio of nuclear experts gathered in Washington, DC on September 8 to highlight key concerns that still have not been addressed six months after the start of the world’s worst nuclear accident. Included on the list are several issues discussed in this space since the Fukushima quake (this is a partial and edited list–please use the link for more concerns and more explanation):

The U.S. regulatory response since Fukushima has been inadequate. “Six months after Fukushima, it seems clear that the U.S. is not going to undertake the type of fundamental, no-holds-barred look at its nuclear regulatory practices that followed the much less serious accident at Three Mile Island some 30 years ago.”

America should avoid post-9/11 mistakes in tightening reactor safety standards. “In responding to Fukushima by issuing orders, the NRC should not make the same mistakes as it did following 9/11, when industry stonewalling delayed implementation of critical security measures for many years. Even today, some post 9/11 security upgrades have not been completed at numerous plants. . . . The U.S. must respond to Fukushima in a much more comprehensive way or it may soon face an accident even worse than Fukushima.”

The U.S. was warned of Fukushima-style problems but failed to act … and is still failing to do so. “U.S. reactors have some of the shortcomings of the Fukushima plants. Furthermore, citizen groups and scientists had tried to call one of these – spent fuel pool vulnerability — to Nuclear Regulatory Commission attention during the last decade. The NRC dismissed these efforts. . . . Without a root cause analysis of its own failure to heed the now validated warnings about spent fuel pools, the NRC may patch the technical problems revealed by Fukushima, but it won’t fix the underlying shortcomings that allow defects to persist until catastrophic events rather than regulatory vigilance force the nuclear industry and the public to face up to them.”

Emergency planning zones in the U.S. must be expanded. “In contrast to the [NRC] Task Force conclusions, we believe that emergency planning zones should be expanded, certain hydrogen control measures should be immediately enforced and spent fuel transfer to dry casks should be accelerated. Also, the safety margins of new reactors need to be reassessed.”

The recent East Coast earthquake should spur more NRC safety analysis. “The earthquake near the North Anna nuclear plant, which reportedly exceeded the plant’s seismic design basis, reinforces the urgency of the NRC Fukushima task force’s recommendation that all plants immediately be reviewed for their vulnerability to seismic and flooding hazards based on the best available information today.”

To that last point, as noted before, the earthquake that struck Mineral, VA in late August should have moved US nuclear regulators to quickly adopt the recommendations of the Fukushima task force. Well, the quake doesn’t seem to have moved the NRC much, but it did move some things, like most of the 117-ton dry storage casks at the North Anna facility. . . and, as we now have learned, pretty much everything else there:

Last month’s record earthquake in the eastern United States may have shaken a Virginia nuclear plant twice as hard as it was designed to withstand, a spokesman for the nuclear safety regulator said on Thursday.

Dominion Resources told the regulator that the ground under the plant exceeded its “design basis” — the first time an operating U.S. plant has experienced such a milestone. . . .

That a facility experienced such a milestone is now known because, over two weeks after the fact, data from the so-called “shake plates” has finally been released (almost a week after it was expected):

“We are currently thinking that at the higher frequencies, the peak acceleration was around 0.26” g, which is a unit of gravity that measures the impact of shaking on buildings, said Scott Burnell, an NRC spokesman.

The plant was designed to withstand 0.12 g of horizontal ground force for parts that sit on rock, and 0.18 g for parts that sit on soil, Burnell said.

Dominion’s sensors recorded average horizontal ground force of 0.13 g in an east-west direction and 0.175 g in a north-south direction, officials said.

The apparent discrepancy seems to stem from the distance between instruments used by the US Geological Survey and those cited by North Anna’s operator, Dominion, but even taking the smaller numbers, the design limits of the plant were exceeded.

Dominion officials have been quick to point out that even though some things have moved and some structures show cracks, those changes are merely cosmetic and in no way dangerous. But nuclear engineer John H. Bickel says that vessels and pipes are not the first things to go in a quake:

[A]n analysis of plants hit by earthquakes had shown that the most vulnerable components were ceramic insulators on high-voltage lines that supply the plants with power and electrical relays, which resemble industrial-strength circuit-breakers and switches.

Even if the relays are not damaged, they might be shaken so that they change positions, cutting off the flow of electricity or allowing it to flow without any command from an operator.

As previously noted (with more than a hint of irony), in order to safely generate electrical power, nuclear plants need an uninterrupted supply of electrical power. Without electricity, cooling systems and important monitors in both the reactors and spent fuel storage pools cannot function. Without effective cooling, nuclear facilities are looking at a series of disasters like the ones encountered at Fukushima Daiichi. That the most quake-vulnerable components directly affect a nuclear plant’s power supply is yet another data point underscoring the urgent need to review and enhance seismic safety at US facilities.

But even before that nation-wide examination can take place, the damage to the shaken North Anna plant needs to be surveyed and analyzed so that Dominion might restart its reactors. What does Dominion need to show in order to get the thumbs up, what criteria need to be met, what repairs or retrofits should be required? To paraphrase the head of the NRC: Who knows?

In an interview last week, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko told Reuters it was unclear what the plant would need to show to resume operations because it is the first time an operating plant has sustained a beyond-design-basis quake.

As Hurricane Irene revealed the lack of national guidelines for what to do in the face of an approaching storm, the Virginia earthquake has shown that the United States has no regulatory regime for learning, analyzing, or acting on data from events that exceed the often-negotiated-down design parameters of its nuclear facilities.

In fact, the NRC does not even have a post-quake inspection protocol. Inspections of North Anna are being done according to procedural guidelines drawn up by the Electric Power Research Institute, “a nonprofit utility consortium that has inspected dozens of industrial plants hit by earthquakes around the world.”

Yes, the nuclear industry has written its own post-event checklist, and, in the absence of any other standard, is left alone to use it.

That sort of self-policing leads to some noteworthy analysis, like this from a nuclear industry attorney: “You shake something really hard, and it’s not designed to be shaken that hard — it doesn’t mean that it’s broken.”

But there is something even more disturbing, if that is possible, propagated by the weak regulations and weak-willed regulators. It leaves space for arguments like this one from that same industry lawyer:

The incident helps make the case for new-generation nuclear plants, which have additional safety features. . . . “If you can have a car from 2011 vs. a car from 1978, what are you going to put your toddler in?”

Beyond the fact that no one is actually suggesting the 1978 plants get traded in for newer models (just augmented with them), cars have to compete for consumer dollars in a way that nuclear plants do not. Nuclear plants could not be built, fueled, operated or maintained without massive subsidies, loan guarantees, and infrastructure commitments from the federal government.

Also of note, a 2011 automobile is safer and more efficient than a 1978 model because of government regulation. The auto industry has fought improvements like mandatory airbags, three-point restraints, and CAFE standards, but a strong government imposed those requirements anyway. And your toddler is safer in that car because the Consumer Product Safety Commission reviews the design of child car seats, and laws mandate their use.

Where the comparison does work, however, is that both represent a false choice. Just as a car is not the only way to transport a toddler, nuclear plants are not the only means by which to generate power. And in 2011, there are many more choices, and many safer choices, than there were in 1978.

Which recalls the important contrast between a country such as Germany–which, faced with a restive electorate and lessons to be learned from Japan’s misfortune, has made a commitment to not just trade in nuclear but trade up to renewable alternatives–and the US, where corporate influence and politics as usual have left the government with seemingly few options beyond willful ignorance and calcification.

Even without recognition of the Japan quake’s semi-anniversary, September 11 will probably be a tense day for most Americans, especially those with personal connections to the events of ten years ago. But while remembrance will be hard, it will mostly be so because of an event now relegated to history.

Residents of Japan, still living with an ongoing and ever-evolving threat, cannot so neatly define their anguish. And if there is a message to be found in this coincidental concurrence of dates, it perhaps springs from there. While Americans can debate what could have been done to prevent the attacks of 9/11/2001, it is a debate held in hindsight. For the Japanese dealing with the aftermath of their disaster, hindsight still seems like a luxury to be enjoyed very far in the future.

But, for the United States, a debate about what can be done to prevent a Fukushima-like disaster here is theoretically blessed, both because it is a debate that can be had before the next crisis, and because it is a debate that can be informed by events. And experience, science, economics and common sense are all pretty clear on what needs to be done.