Meltdown Message - A Little Humility Needed

Subtitle:  Nuclear Can and Still Does Melt Down

Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant
courtesy Google Maps

Today, March 28, marks forty years to the day since the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant melted down in 1979 in Pennsylvania, USA.  It was a sobering reminder of the incredible danger associated with building nuclear power plants.   I remember it well, as a young 

process engineer working in a chemical plant on the Houston Ship Channel.   March 28 was a Tuesday, just another ordinary day, until the word began coming over the radio that a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania was having troubles.   Radiation leak was the phrase. 

As was normal then, and still is today, the nuclear industry was in full protect-thine-own-butt mode, with as little information made public as possible.  And then, only the bare minimum.  Those guys knew then, and know today, full well that their industry hangs on a slender thread.   One screwup, one meltdown, one massive radiation release into the sky or water, and they are done.  

As it turned out, TMI, as it was known, suffered "only" a partial melt-down.   The reactor operators screwed up, and screwed up royally.  They actually turned off a water pump that sent water into the core, and that act let the core overheat and melt down.  Eventually, they started that pump again and sent water into the core, but by then the damage was done.  The nuclear core had melted almost entirely through the reactor vessel's wall.   In their (operators') defense, the plant designers and those who approve the design did not give the operators a way to watch the water level in the reactor core.  They had to infer the water level by watching other measurements.   That was a design error that was changed in other US nuclear plants.  

All of the trouble started when a pump failed to operate.   As I wrote a few years ago in the Truth About Nuclear Power series, part 21:

"TMI (meltdown) was caused by a routine mechanical failure of a pump.  Nobody can claim that a pump failure is a rare event.   The problem at TMI was made much, much worse by a valve that stuck open.  It is inexcusable that nuclear plant designers, operators, and oversight agencies failed to recognize that valves sometimes stick.   The fact that valves sometimes stick in the open position, sometimes closed, and sometimes in-between is well-known to those in the process industries.   This particular valve was a relief valve.  Relief valves are even more prone to sticking open, a fact that is common knowledge.   Yet, as the facts below demonstrate, TMI operators made blunder after blunder because they believed the relief valve closed by itself – they believed it had not stuck open.  

"Nuclear proponents frequently argue that the reason nuclear plants cost so much is due to needless design changes by the NRC during plant construction, and costly retrofits to those plants already in operation.  The argument is invalid.  We would indeed be a stupid society to allow plants to operate with known safety deficiencies such as existed at TMI before the accident.   In fact, if not for the existence of all three required containment systems, deadly nuclear radiation would have spewed all over the northeastern corridor of the United States.   Those three levels of containment are the fuel tube, the reactor vessel, and the containment building.  Ultimately, the fuel tubes failed and melted, the reactor vessel barely contained the melted fuel, and the containment building contained most, but not all, of the gaseous radioactive particles.  

"With the passage of time, more than 3 decades now, TMI has faded into the background.  Yet, the lessons from that incident are serious, and point to what we can expect going forward."    see link to the rest of the TMI meltdown analysis on SLB. 

Fast forward 40 years to today, and we see the nuclear industry still points to the TMI incident as the turning point where the public mood for nuclear turned sour, and costs to build new nuclear plants began to zoom.   Today, a plant cannot be built for less than $10 billion for a 1,000 MWe output.  More typical is $12 billion.  That is approximately 10 to 12 times the price of a natural gas power plant with the same output.   We saw just recently that two new reactors were abandoned, unfinished, as completely out of the question due to construction costs rising and rising.   Two more reactors, these at Vogtle in Georgia, are staggering along, many years late and many $billions over their budget.  Only time will tell if the Vogtle reactors ever get finished, and what the final cost will be.  

In retrospect, nuclear plants seemed appropriate in the 1960s and then the 1970s after the oil price increases during the OPEC oil embargo.  We burned fuel oil then to make electricity, as strange as that sounds today.  Nuclear plants had almost zero fuel cost, we were told back then.  So, scrapping expensive oil as fuel, and building nuclear plants with very cheap fuel might have made sense.   After all, solar and wind power systems were possible, they actually worked, but their costs were outrageously high.   So, we built nuclear plants, approximately 120 of them.  

Today, though, all that has changed.  Wind turbines have declined in cost and improved in output, and the same is true for solar PV systems.  Also, natural gas power plants no longer are limited to the modest efficiency of a steam plant, with the Rankine cycle.  Improvements over the years now make the combined-cycle gas turbine plant much more efficient, at 60 percent.  Low natural gas prices also exist today due to superb innovations in natural gas production that uses precision directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing.  

Because of these things, we no longer have a need for nuclear power plants.   They served their purpose, they had their day.  It is time to retire them and stop building them.  

We note that it is seldom, and perhaps never, that a meltdown occurs in a shutdown nuclear power plant.   We don't need another Three Mile Island meltdown.   We need clean, safe, low-cost wind energy with efficient natural gas plants to accommodate the variations in output.  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Houston, Texas

copyright (c) 2019 by Roger Sowell - all rights reserved

Topics and general links:

Nuclear Power Plants.......here

Climate Change................here  and here

Fresh Water......................here

Engineering......................here  and here

Free Speech.................... here

Renewable Energy...........here  

Japanese Nuclear Utility Executives Face Criminal Charges

Subtitle: Fukushima Dai-ichi Disaster Was Alleged Crime 

From the Japanese on-line newspaper, English version, Mainichi Shimbun editorial of August 1, 2015, "Decision to indict ex-TEPCO executives in court over nuclear accident is meaningful."  see link   

From the editorial:  "The Tokyo No. 5 Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution recommended that former TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and two former vice presidents, Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro, be prosecuted on charges of professional negligence resulting in death and injury. This was the second recommendation by the

Fukushima Dai-ichi Plant before earthquake
source:  ORNL

prosecution inquest panel, whose eleven members were selected from among members of the general public.

In 2008, three years before the disaster, TEPCO released its estimate that the atomic power plant could be hit by a tsunami up to 15.7 meters in height. The inquest panel determined that the three former executives failed to take necessary measures, and neglected their duty to prevent a serious accident, even though they knew of this possibility."

This is significant because the Dai-ichi nuclear plant was designed for only a 6 meter tsunami (23 feet).  The 15.7 meter tsunami estimate from 2008 would be 51 feet.  The actual tsunami was approximately 50 feet high.  

If the TEPCO executives do stand trial and are convicted, a clear message will be sent to nuclear utility executives to modify their nuclear plants when new information becomes available, and not wait until a disaster occurs. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California
copyright (c) 2015 by Roger Sowell

The Truth About Nuclear Power - Part 25

Subtitle: Price-Anderson Act Gives Too Much Protection to Nuclear Plants

[UPDATE 7/3/2014-  India has its own problems with its version of nuclear liability law.  See near end of article. -- end update]

In an earlier article in The Truth About Nuclear Power series, (part 13 see link), several forms of government subsidy for nuclear power were discussed.  This article discusses one of those subsidies in more detail, the Price-Anderson Act by which government assumes the liability from a large nuclear accident, after industry reaches the stated cap on its liability.  To encourage the nuclear industry to build any plants at all, the inherently unsafe characteristics of nuclear power plants required government shielding from liability, or subsidy, for the costs of a nuclear accident via the Price-Anderson Act.

Even as early as the 1950s, the nuclear industry was aware of the catastrophic nature of a nuclear accident, a meltdown due to a loss-of-cooling-accident, radiation released into the atmosphere or water, and the potential for hundreds of thousands of deaths or even many, many more.    Industrial insurance underwriters also were keenly aware of the risks, and had their premiums adjusted accordingly.  Utilities that wanted to enter the nuclear power business realized quickly that they could not afford to build the plants, plus pay for insurance premiums.  The price for their nuclear-based power would be prohibitive – and the adverse publicity would be devastating.  One can imagine the headlines: “Nuclear Disaster Insurance Increases Electricity Prices to Unaffordable Levels.”  Or, some similar headline.  

Subsequent events have shown that such nuclear calamity is not only possible, but extremely deadly.  Three major events have happened to date, at Three Mile Island in 1979 with a reactor core partially melting down, Chernobyl in 1986 with a core explosion, and Fukushima Dai-ichi in 2011 with three reactors melted down and four containment buildings exploded.    With hundreds of reactors operating world-wide and almost one hundred more either planned or under construction, more meltdown disasters are inevitable.  

With the economic consequences in mind, the industry asked for relief from Congress, and Congress responded with the Price-Anderson Act in 1957.    The language of the Act mentions “extraordinary liability that companies would incur if a nuclear accident were to happen…”    The extraordinary liability is a result of nuclear activities being classified as an ultrahazardous activity.  These activities are defined as an activity that cannot be made safe even with the utmost care taken.   Examples include the use and storage of of explosives, blasting such as in mining or quarrying, use, storage and transport of certain chemicals, nuclear materials used in medicine and industry, and nuclear power reactors. 

Note that most of these activities have existed long before nuclear energy was discovered.   The concept of an ultrahazardous activity is not new; it is merely the proper category in which nuclear energy must be placed.    The person or company that engages in ultrahazardous activities bears the risk of any harm to persons or property from that activity - with very limited legal defenses to liability.  He also carries insurance to limit his own risk.  However, for nuclear power plants, the insurance is simply unaffordable – except as provided for under the Act. 

An example from my own industrial experience deals with the use and storage of a certain thermally-unstable chemical.   The chemical was a liquid, and was used as an initiator in the production of PVC resin from vinyl chloride monomer.   The chemical was packaged in a plastic cube surrounded by cardboard, approximately one foot on each side.  The boxes of initiator were stored in a dugout-style bunker with stout walls and a flimsy roof, the entire room kept at below freezing temperature.  The nature of the initiator was that it was stable when very cold, but would explode when warmed to something below ambient temperature.   A description from an initiator supplier states it is a “refrigerated organic peroxide undergoing self-accelerating thermal decomposition below room temperature.”     My company did not have, nor did it require, an act of Congress to limit the liability from using the explosive initiator.   Nuclear power is far, far more dangerous than that explosive liquid. 

The words of the Price-Anderson Act are excerpted below:

“Congress passed the Price-Anderson Act in 1957 to ensure that adequate funds would be available to compensate victims of a nuclear accident. It also recognized that the risk of extraordinary liability that companies would incur if a nuclear accident were to happen would render insurance costs prohibitively high, and thwart the development of nuclear energy.  
. . . 
The Price-Anderson Act requires owners of commercial reactors to assume all liability for damages to the public resulting from an ``extraordinary nuclear occurrence'' and to waive most legal defenses they would otherwise have. However, in exchange, their liability will be limited to capped amounts established in the Act.”   – Re-Authorization of the Price-Anderson Act, December 9, 2003, Senate Report 108-218.  

The Act is all that stands between nuclear plants and total shutdown, immediately.  Without it, no nuclear plant would assume the risk of $2 trillion – or more – in damages from an “extraordinary nuclear occurrence” – a meltdown and subsequent deaths of millions of people. 

As mentioned earlier, the US has narrowly escaped such an incident at Three Mile Island in 1979, where only by sheer dumb luck did clueless plant operators turn on a water injection pump just before the nuclear fuel melted all the way through the reactor walls.   The operators had no clue what they were doing, and actually turned off a water pump earlier in the day that could have prevented the meltdown.  The meltdown eroded almost all the way through the reactor walls.   This incident was discussed in some detail in Part 21 -- see link. 

If an accident occurs, and a million people were to die from radiation, liability would be approximately $7 million per each death, using the US EPA’s value of a statistical life.    That alone is $7 trillion, for a single incident.  There are many nuclear reactors close to population centers that each contain millions of people: near Miami: Turkey Point and St. Lucie, near Atlanta: Vogtle and Hatch, along the northeast corridor: Three Mile Island (where one reactor melted down but the other continues to operate to this day),  North Anna, Surry, Calvert Cliffs, Salem, Limerick, Peach Bottom, Susquehanna, Indian Point, and Millstone, near Chicago: LaSalle, Braidwood, Byron, Dresden, and Quad Cities, near Dallas: Comanche Peak, near San Francisco: Diablo Canyon, and near Phoenix: Palo Verde (a triple-reactor plant).   Note that many of the sites listed have two reactors, although some have a single reactor. 

Even if a settlement could be reached with each decedent’s estate for $1 million each, a million victims would still require a payout of $1 trillion.  It can be seen then, why no nuclear power plants would be built with that amount of potential liability.  As the preface to the Price-Anderson Act states, [Congress] “recognized that the risk of extraordinary liability that companies would incur if a nuclear accident were to happen would render insurance costs prohibitively high, and thwart the development of nuclear energy.” 

Insurance for Liability 

The Act requires each nuclear power plant to carry $300 million in liability insurance for each reactor.  

“First, each licensed reactor must carry the maximum amount of insurance commercially available to pay any damages from a severe nuclear accident. That amount is currently $300 million.”  -- the Act

Excess Damages beyond Insurance Amount

Excess damages, beyond $300 million, are covered up to approximately $10 billion by requiring all covered commercial reactors to pay up to approximately $100 million each; with approximately 100 US reactors, the total reaches $10 billion.   The Act states:

“Any damages exceeding that amount are to be assessed equally against all covered commercial reactors, up to $95.8 million per reactor (most recently adjusted for inflation by NRC in August 2004).Those assessments would be paid at an annual rate of no more than $10 million per reactor. According to the NRC, all of the nation’s 103 commercial reactors are currently covered by the Price-Anderson retrospective premium requirement.

Funding for public compensation following a major nuclear incident would therefore include the $300 million in insurance coverage carried by the reactor that suffered the incident, plus the$95.8 million in retrospective premiums from each of the 103 currently covered reactors, totaling $10.2 billion. On top of those payments, a 5 percent surcharge may also be imposed, raising the total per-reactor retrospective premium to $100.6 million and the total potential compensation for each incident to about $10.7 billion.

Under Price-Anderson, the nuclear industry’s liability for an incident is capped at that amount, which varies depending on the number of covered reactors, amount of available insurance, and an inflation adjustment that is made every 5 years.”  -- The Act

Excess Damages Beyond $10 Billion

For a large event with damages beyond $10 billion, the US government assumes the amount above $10 billion.  

“The Act provides that in the event that actual damages from an accident are in excess of this amount, [$10.7 billion] Congress will ‘‘thoroughly review’’ the incident and take such action as is necessary to provide ‘‘full and prompt compensation to the public.’’ "  -- Price-Anderson Act

Conclusion

The very existence of nuclear power plants depends on Congress renewing the Price-Anderson Act as it periodically expires.  Without the government assuming the excess liability, nuclear plants would shut down immediately.  No utility company has resources of $1 trillion, and certainly cannot buy insurance in that amount.  The Act is the single largest subsidy for nuclear power, greater than loan guarantees ($8 billion roughly for each reactor), the carbon tax on coal plants that benefits nuclear plants due to their “carbon free” power production, no lawsuits being permitted during construction (a limited exception applies), increased electricity prices during nuclear plant construction to avoid paying interest on loans, and operating safety regulations routinely relaxed to allow nuclear plants to continue operating without meeting safety standards. 

It is a struggle to think of any other industry that enjoys such a government benefit: what other industry would shut down tomorrow if its uninsurable risks were not borne by the government?    The risks are so great, and the cost of insurance is just too high for the nuclear power industry to compete, or even exist, without the comfortable cushion of the Price-Anderson Act.  

Indeed, that raises the question: are nuclear plant operators too comfortable, too complacent, due to the certain knowledge that any catastrophic event will be paid first by $300 million in insurance, and then cost them only $100 million each?  Any amount over and beyond those limits will be paid for by the US Government.   Perhaps nuclear plants would pay more attention to safety, and operating procedures if they knew the plant would shut down or be sold at auction to pay the damages.   Perhaps the nuclear industry would be much more self-policing if the limits were $20 billion for each reactor, not the $100 million that exists today.   (see link to part 16 for a description of near misses in US reactors over the previous four years) 

[UPDATE 7/3/2014:  India has its own problems with apportioning civil liability from a nuclear disaster.  A Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Law is nearing completion, but it places risk and costs on equipment suppliers for latent or patent defects, plus inferior service (e.g. installation work).  Understandably, nuclear reactor suppliers are not happy.  see link.   -- end update ]

Previous Articles

The Truth About Nuclear Power emphasizes the economic and safety aspects by showing that (one) modern nuclear power plants are uneconomic to operate compared to natural gas and wind energy, (two) they produce preposterous pricing if they are the sole power source for a grid, (three) they cost far too much to construct, (four) use far more water for cooling, 4 times as much, than better alternatives, (five) nuclear fuel makes them difficult to shut down and requires very costly safeguards, (six) they are built to huge scale of 1,000 to 1,600 MWe or greater to attempt to reduce costs via economy of scale, (seven) an all-nuclear grid will lose customers to self-generation, (eight) smaller and modular nuclear plants have no benefits due to reverse economy of scale, (nine) large-scale plants have very long construction schedules even without lawsuits that delay construction, (ten) nuclear plants do not reach 50 or 60 years life because they require costly upgrades after 20 to 30 years that do not always perform as designed, (eleven) France has 85 percent of its electricity produced via nuclear power but it is subsidized, is still almost twice as expensive as prices in the US, and is only viable due to exporting power at night rather than throttling back the plants during low demand, (twelve) nuclear plants cannot provide cheap power on small islands, (thirteen) US nuclear plants are heavily subsidized but still cannot compete, (fourteen), projects are cancelled due to unfavorable economics, reactor vendors are desperate for sales, nuclear advocates tout low operating costs and ignore capital costs, nuclear utilities never ask for a rate decrease when building a new nuclear plant, and high nuclear costs are buried in a large customer base, (fifteen) safety regulations are routinely relaxed to allow the plants to continue operating without spending the funds to bring them into compliance, (sixteen) many, many near-misses occur each year in nuclear power, approximately one every 3 weeks, (seventeen) safety issues with short term, and long-term, storage of spent fuel, (eighteen)  safety hazards of spent fuel reprocessing, (nineteen) health effects on people and other living things, (twenty) nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, (twenty-one) nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, (twenty-two)  nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima, (twenty-three) near-disaster at San Onofre, (twenty-four) the looming disaster at St. Lucie, (twenty-five)  the inherently unsafe characteristics of nuclear power plants required government shielding from liability, or subsidy, for the costs of a nuclear accident via the Price-Anderson Act, and (twenty-six) the serious public impacts of large-scale population evacuation and relocation after a major incident, or "extraordinary nuclear occurrence" in the language used by the Price-Anderson Act.  Additional articles will include (twenty-seven) the future of nuclear fusion, (twenty-eight) future of thorium reactors, (twenty-nine) future of high-temperature gas nuclear reactors, and (thirty), a concluding chapter with a world-wide economic analysis of nuclear reactors and why countries build them.  Links to each article in TANP series are included at the end of this article.

Additional articles will be linked as they are published. 

Part One – Nuclear Power Plants Cannot Compete

Part Two – Preposterous Power Pricing if Nuclear Power Proponents Prevail

Part Three – Nuclear Power Plants Cost Far Too Much to Construct

Part Four – Nuclear Power Plants Use Far More Fresh Water

Part Five – Cannot Simply Turn Off a Nuclear Power Plant

Part Six –  Nuclear Plants are Huge to Reduce Costs

Part Seven -- All Nuclear Grid Will Sell Less Power

Part Eight – No Benefits from Smaller Modular Nuclear Plants

Part Nine -- Nuclear Plants Require Long Construction Schedules

Part Ten -- Nuclear Plants Require Costly Upgrades After 20 to 30 Years

Part Eleven - Following France in Nuclear Is Not The Way To Go

Part Twelve - Nuclear Plants Cannot Provide Cheap Power on Small Islands

Part Thirteen - US Nuclear Plants are Heavily Subsidized

Part Fourteen - A Few More Reasons Nuclear Cannot Compete

Part Fifteen - Nuclear Safety Compromised by Bending the Rules

Part Sixteen - Near Misses on Meltdowns Occur Every 3 Weeks

Part Seventeen - Storing Spent Fuel is Hazardous for Short or Long Term

Part Eighteen - Reprocessing Spent Fuel Is Not Safe

Part Nineteen - Nuclear Radiation Injures People and Other Living Things

Part Twenty - Chernobyl Meltdown And Explosion

Part Twenty One - Three Mile Island Unit 2 Meltdown 1979

Part Twenty Two - Fukushima The Disaster That Could Not Happen 

Part Twenty Three - San Onofre Shutdown Saga

Part Twenty Four - St Lucie Ominous Tube Wear

Part Twenty Five - this article

Part Twenty Six - Evacuation Plans Required at Nuclear Plants

Part Twenty Seven - Power From Nuclear Fusion

Part Twenty Eight - Thorium MSR No Better Than Uranium Process

Part Twenty Nine - High Temperature Gas Reactor Still A Dream

Part Thirty - Conclusion

Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California

The Truth About Nuclear Power - Part 21

Subtitle: Three Mile Island, Unit 2 Meltdown 1979

The Three Mile Island accident, TMI, is one of the most heavily written-about nuclear incidents in history.  An internet search returns more than 25 million webpages, or hits using the search term “Three Mile Island.”   More than 14,000 books are listed on a popular internet book selling site.  With that, this article strives to provide a different perspective – a perspective based on principles of safety and process engineering.   For comparison, a search for the Fukushima meltdown produces only 12 million webpages (about half) and only 1500 books on the same book-selling site.  

Three Mile Island nuclear plant consists of two almost-identical units, number 1 and number 2, located on an island in the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, about 80 miles west of Philadelphia and 50 miles north of Baltimore. (see photos)  It is very near the heavily populated northeast corridor running from New York City through Philadelphia, Baltimore, and

Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant
Unit 1 (top) and Unit 2 (bottom)
Showing operating cooling towers
at unit 1, idle towers at Unit 2.  Containment
domes can be seen at left center.
credit: from google maps

Washington DC.  The meltdown was caused by a combination of mechanical failure, design flaws, improper training, and human error.  This accident was one of, if not the first wakeup calls to the nuclear industry that the plants are not safe.   Despite the industry’s loud insistence that the plants were safely designed and operated, TMI showed at least a few of the deficiencies.  Those deficiencies existed in most, if not all of the other plants.  The NRC required the existing plants to correct their deficiencies, and all new plants to incorporate the changes to increase safety.  

This accident at TMI showed clearly and emphatically that a meltdown was possible even without the very rare events that caused the problem at Chernobyl, performing an unauthorized test with safety systems disabled, and at Fukushima, where an earthquake was followed immediately by a tsunami, both of which were greater in magnitude than the plant was designed to handle.   

TMI was caused by a routine mechanical failure of a pump.  Nobody can claim that a pump failure is a rare event.   The problem at TMI was made much, much worse by a valve that stuck open.  It is inexcusable that nuclear plant designers, operators, and oversight agencies failed to recognize that valves sometimes stick.   The fact that valves sometimes stick in the open position, sometimes closed, and sometimes in-between is well-known to those in the

Three Mile Island Units 1 and 2 in 1979
Unit 1 is on the left, Unit 2 is on the right
source:  NRC

process industries.   This particular valve was a relief valve.  Relief valves are even more prone to sticking open, a fact that is common knowledge.   Yet, as the facts below demonstrate, TMI operators made blunder after blunder because they believed the relief valve closed by itself – they believed it had not stuck open.  

Nuclear proponents frequently argue that the reason nuclear plants cost so much is due to needless design changes by the NRC during plant construction, and costly retrofits to those plants already in operation.  The argument is invalid.  We would indeed be a stupid society to allow plants to operate with known safety deficiencies such as existed at TMI before the accident.   In fact, if not for the existence of all three required containment systems, deadly nuclear radiation would have spewed all over the northeastern corridor of the United States.   Those three levels of containment are the fuel tube, the reactor vessel, and the containment building.  Ultimately, the fuel tubes failed and melted, the reactor vessel barely contained the melted fuel, and the containment building contained most, but not all, of the gaseous radioactive particles.  

With the passage of time, more than 3 decades now, TMI has faded into the background.  Yet, the lessons from that incident are serious, and point to what we can expect going forward.   

Summary of Events  from NRC website  see link

“The accident began about 4 a.m. on Wednesday, March 28, 1979, when the plant experienced a failure in the secondary, non-nuclear section of the plant (one of two reactors on the site). Either a mechanical or electrical failure prevented the main feedwater pumps from sending water to the steam generators that remove heat from the reactor core. This caused the plant's turbine-generator and then the reactor itself to automatically shut down. Immediately, the pressure in the primary system (the nuclear portion of the plant) began to increase. In order to control that pressure, the pilot-operated relief valve (a valve located at the top of the pressurizer) opened. The valve should have closed when the pressure fell to proper levels, but it became stuck open. Instruments in the control room, however, indicated to the plant staff that the valve was closed. As a result, the plant staff was unaware that cooling water was pouring out of the stuck-open valve.  (emphasis added) (design flaw – operators relied on bad information.  Also, when water pours out of a relief valve, there should be an indication – a flow measurement – of that water.  The receiving vessel also should have a level indicator that can be observed as increasing. -- RES )

As coolant flowed from the primary system through the valve, other instruments available to reactor operators provided inadequate information. There was no instrument that showed how much water covered the core. (design flaw)  As a result, plant staff assumed that as long as the pressurizer water level was high, the core was properly covered with water. As alarms rang and warning lights flashed, the operators did not realize that the plant was experiencing a loss-of-coolant accident. They took a series of actions that made conditions worse. The water escaping through the stuck valve reduced primary system pressure so much that the reactor coolant pumps had to be turned off to prevent dangerous vibrations. To prevent the pressurizer from filling up completely, the staff reduced how much emergency cooling water was being pumped in to the primary system. These actions starved the reactor core of coolant, causing it to overheat.

Without the proper water flow, the nuclear fuel overheated to the point at which the zirconium cladding (the long metal tubes that hold the nuclear fuel pellets) ruptured and the fuel pellets began to melt. It was later found that about half of the core melted during the early stages of the accident. Although TMI-2 suffered a severe core meltdown, the most dangerous kind of nuclear power accident, consequences outside the plant were minimal. Unlike the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents, TMI-2's containment building remained intact and held almost all of the accident's radioactive material.

Federal and state authorities were initially concerned about the small releases of radioactive gases that were measured off-site by the late morning of March 28 and even more concerned about the potential threat that the reactor posed to the surrounding population. They did not know that the core had melted, but they immediately took steps to try to gain control of the reactor and ensure adequate cooling to the core. The NRC's regional office in King of Prussia, Pa., was notified at 7:45 a.m. on March 28. By 8 a.m., NRC Headquarters in Washington, D.C., was alerted and the NRC Operations Center in Bethesda, Md., was activated. The regional office promptly dispatched the first team of inspectors to the site and other agencies, such as the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, also mobilized their response teams. Helicopters hired by TMI's owner, General Public Utilities Nuclear, and the Department of Energy were sampling radioactivity in the atmosphere above the plant by midday. A team from the Brookhaven National Laboratory was also sent to assist in radiation monitoring. At 9:15 a.m., the White House was notified and at 11 a.m., all non-essential personnel were ordered off the plant's premises.

By the evening of March 28, the core appeared to be adequately cooled and the reactor appeared to be stable. But new concerns arose by the morning of Friday, March 30. A significant release of radiation from the plant's auxiliary building, performed to relieve pressure on the primary system and avoid curtailing the flow of coolant to the core, caused a great deal of confusion and consternation. In an atmosphere of growing uncertainty about the condition of the plant, the governor of Pennsylvania, Richard L. Thornburgh, consulted with the NRC about evacuating the population near the plant. Eventually, he and NRC Chairman Joseph Hendrie agreed that it would be prudent for those members of society most vulnerable to radiation to evacuate the area. Thornburgh announced that he was advising pregnant women and pre-school-age children within a five-mile radius of the plant to leave the area.

Within a short time, chemical reactions in the melting fuel created a large hydrogen bubble in the dome of the pressure vessel, the container that holds the reactor core. NRC officials worried the hydrogen bubble might burn or even explode and rupture the pressure vessel. In that event, the core would fall into the containment building and perhaps cause a breach of containment. The hydrogen bubble was a source of intense scrutiny and great anxiety, both among government authorities and the population, throughout the day on Saturday, March 31. The crisis ended when experts determined on Sunday, April 1, that the bubble could not burn or explode because of the absence of oxygen in the pressure vessel. Further, by that time, the utility had succeeded in greatly reducing the size of the bubble. “ (this was an acceptable conclusion.  Basic chemistry shows that the hydrogen was formed by catalytic and heat-driven reactions from hot zirconium in the fuel tubes with water; basically water (H2O) was split into hydrogen and oxygen.  The hydrogen formed a gas, but the oxygen combined with the zirconium to form ZrO2, zirconium dioxide. )

Also, see the Report of the President's Commission on Three Mile Island see link 

Also "Three Mile Island; A Report to the Commissioners and to the Public," by Mitchell Rogovin and George T. Frampton, NUREG/CR-1250  see link

Commentary

Plant operators on shift that night were all ex-navy nuclear submarine.  Yet, with all their vaunted training, they made one critical mistake after another.  

A nuclear reactor core requires continued cooling even after a shutdown – it requires days to cool the tons of nuclear material in the core down to a long-term safe temperature.  Circulating water, with the water externally cooled is the means of cooling the core.  

Each time an incident occurs in a nuclear plant, the industry advocates insist the plants are safe.  They insist that the event was an anomaly, it cannot happen elsewhere.   Yet, another accident happens. 

It is significant in the TMI meltdown saga that industry experts had witnessed a similar minor loss of coolant accident at a different plant only a year or so earlier.  No meltdown occurred, but a sharp analyst noted that such an incident could easily result in a meltdown.  A written warning was sent to the NRC, but nothing came of it.  In short, the “dots” were collected, but nobody connected the “dots.”

In this case, a cooling water pump failed.  This particular pump was located on the steam-generator side.  It is important to know that there are three primary water circulating loops in a pressurized-water nuclear plant such as the design at TMI.  The first loop is of radioactive water, this circulates through the core at very high pressure, and releases its heat in the steam generator.  The water in the first loop remains a liquid at all times under normal operation. The second loop, the one with the pump failure at TMI, has non-radioactive water at high pressure that is turned to steam in the steam generator.  This steam then spins the turbine.  Exhaust steam from the turbine is condensed back to water in the condenser.  The condensate is then pumped as liquid water back to the steam generator.  It was the pump for the second loop, sending water to the steam generator that failed at TMI.    The third water loop is the cooling water, usually from a cooling tower but sometimes from the ocean or a lake or river.  The third water loop circulates cool water through the condenser, and other areas of the plant that require cooling. 

Damage to the reactor vessel was extensive.  A 1998 report shows that 45 percent of the fuel – 62 metric tonnes --  melted.  It is important to note that TMI unit 2 was not a large reactor by today’s standards.  It produced only about 900 MWe.  More modern plants produce 1200 MWe, and some are designed for 1600 MWe.   This means that approximately twice as much core material exists in the largest designs.   It is questionable (doubtful?) that a larger reactor would withstand a similar core meltdown.  The reason for this is the reactor vessels are made in the form of a vertical cylinder with a closed head at top and bottom.  The diameter is only a bit larger (approximately 40 percent greater) for double the volume.    TMI 2 Vessel Investigation Project Integration Report, Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, June 1998. (note: this report was 19 years after the accident)  

See link

Almost 1 million gallons of radioactive water accumulated in storage tanks and in the bottom of the containment building (700,000 gallons were reported).  

Upon eventual opening the reactor and removing the melted mess, the still-radioactive fuel was shipped across the entire US – from Pennsylvania to Idaho – for treatment and disposal.  It must have been a comfort to all those citizens along the route to know that radioactive, melted core material from TMI was passing by their homes.  

One final note: the TMI meltdown occurred during the showing of one of the most-watched movies ever made on nuclear plants, The China Syndrome, starring Jack Lemmon and the infamous Jane Fonda.  

Conclusion

The Three Mile Island meltdown, due to a minor loss of coolant accident, was not caused by a rare event such as an earthquake, tsunami, or other natural disaster as happened at Fukushima.  It was not caused by plant operators who violated a planned test as happened at Chernobyl.   TMI meltdown was caused by a combination of bad design, a normal equipment failure, a stuck valve that should have been recognized immediately but was not (even by the vaunted former-Navy submarine nuclear operators), improper training, misinterpretation of available data, and general confusion.    In the TMI meltdown, operators had perfectly good equipment ready to inject water into the reactor to prevent a meltdown.  Instead, they stopped the water flow long enough for the meltdown to occur.   Only by sheer good luck was the water flow re-started when it was.  

The reactor wall and bottom head were badly damaged by the melted core, and only good luck intervened to provide adequate cooling to the core in time to prevent a breach of the reactor itself.  Had a reactor breach happened, melted core material would have flowed onto the containment building floor, and vast quantities of explosive hydrogen gas would have mixed with air in the containment building.  The hydrogen most likely would have exploded with devastating consequences, exactly like the explosions at Fukushima 30 or so years later. 

Modern reactors continue to have mechanical failures, electrical failures, security breaches, and emergency core shutdowns, as documented in article 16 of TANP (see link below).  The major incidents amounted to 70 events in just the past four years – a rate of one every 3 weeks.  Minor incidents number in the hundreds each year.   It would not take much for a similar combination of operator confusion, lack of training, system replacement with different characteristics, and bad luck this time to have a much worse nuclear nightmare: a complete meltdown and reactor wall breach.    It would not create the China Syndrome, but the results would be devastating. 

Previous Articles

The Truth About Nuclear Power emphasizes the economic and safety aspects by showing that (one) modern nuclear power plants are uneconomic to operate compared to natural gas and wind energy, (two) they produce preposterous pricing if they are the sole power source for a grid, (three) they cost far too much to construct, (four) use far more water for cooling, 4 times as much, than better alternatives, (five) nuclear fuel makes them difficult to shut down and requires very costly safeguards, (six) they are built to huge scale of 1,000 to 1,600 MWe or greater to attempt to reduce costs via economy of scale, (seven) an all-nuclear grid will lose customers to self-generation, (eight) smaller and modular nuclear plants have no benefits due to reverse economy of scale, (nine) large-scale plants have very long construction schedules even without lawsuits that delay construction, (ten) nuclear plants do not reach 50 or 60 years life because they require costly upgrades after 20 to 30 years that do not always perform as designed, (eleven) France has 85 percent of its electricity produced via nuclear power but it is subsidized, is still almost twice as expensive as prices in the US, and is only viable due to exporting power at night rather than throttling back the plants during low demand, (twelve) nuclear plants cannot provide cheap power on small islands, (thirteen) US nuclear plants are heavily subsidized but still cannot compete, (fourteen), projects are cancelled due to unfavorable economics, reactor vendors are desperate for sales, nuclear advocates tout low operating costs and ignore capital costs, nuclear utilities never ask for a rate decrease when building a new nuclear plant, and high nuclear costs are buried in a large customer base, (fifteen) safety regulations are routinely relaxed to allow the plants to continue operating without spending the funds to bring them into compliance, (sixteen) many, many near-misses occur each year in nuclear power, approximately one every 3 weeks, (seventeen) safety issues with short term, and long-term, storage of spent fuel, (eighteen)  safety hazards of spent fuel reprocessing, (nineteen) health effects on people and other living things, (twenty) nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, (twenty-one) nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, (twenty-two)  nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima, (twenty-three) near-disaster at San Onofre, (twenty-four) the looming disaster at St. Lucie, (twenty-five)  the inherently unsafe characteristics of nuclear power plants required government shielding from liability, or subsidy, for the costs of a nuclear accident via the Price-Anderson Act, and (twenty-six) the serious public impacts of large-scale population evacuation and relocation after a major incident, or "extraordinary nuclear occurrence" in the language used by the Price-Anderson Act.  Additional articles will include (twenty-seven) the future of nuclear fusion, (twenty-eight) future of thorium reactors, (twenty-nine) future of high-temperature gas nuclear reactors, and (thirty), a concluding chapter with a world-wide economic analysis of nuclear reactors and why countries build them.  Links to each article in TANP series are included at the end of this article. 

Additional articles will be linked as they are published. 

Part One – Nuclear Power Plants Cannot Compete

Part Two – Preposterous Power Pricing if Nuclear Power Proponents Prevail

Part Three – Nuclear Power Plants Cost Far Too Much to Construct

Part Four – Nuclear Power Plants Use Far More Fresh Water

Part Five – Cannot Simply Turn Off a Nuclear Power Plant

Part Six –  Nuclear Plants are Huge to Reduce Costs

Part Seven -- All Nuclear Grid Will Sell Less Power

Part Eight – No Benefits from Smaller Modular Nuclear Plants

Part Nine -- Nuclear Plants Require Long Construction Schedules

Part Ten -- Nuclear Plants Require Costly Upgrades After 20 to 30 Years

Part Eleven - Following France in Nuclear Is Not The Way To Go

Part Twelve - Nuclear Plants Cannot Provide Cheap Power on Small Islands

Part Thirteen - US Nuclear Plants are Heavily Subsidized

Part Fourteen - A Few More Reasons Nuclear Cannot Compete

Part Fifteen - Nuclear Safety Compromised by Bending the Rules

Part Sixteen - Near Misses on Meltdowns Occur Every 3 Weeks

Part Seventeen - Storing Spent Fuel is Hazardous for Short or Long Term

Part Eighteen - Reprocessing Spent Fuel Is Not Safe

Part Nineteen - Nuclear Radiation Injures People and Other Living Things

Part Twenty - Chernobyl Meltdown And Explosion

Part Twenty One - this article

Part Twenty Two - Fukushima The Disaster That Could Not Happen

Part Twenty Three - San Onofre Shutdown Saga

Part Twenty Four - St. Lucie Ominous Tube Wear

Part Twenty Five - Price-Anderson Act Protects Nuclear Plants Too Much

Part Twenty Six - Evacuation Plans Required at Nuclear Plants

Part Twenty Seven - Power From Nuclear Fusion

Part Twenty Eight - Thorium MSR No Better Than Uranium Process

Part Twenty Nine - High Temperature Gas Reactor Still A Dream

Part Thirty - Conclusion

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. 
Marina del Rey, California

Nuclear Power Highly Impractical for Future

Subtitle: Nuclear Is Simply Not Possible - Long Term

An interesting article from 2011 gives several points why it is highly impractical to use nuclear power for future energy needs ("Is Nuclear Power Globally Scalable?" Abbot, D., Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 99, No. 10, pp. 1611–1617, 2011,  see link).

Professor Abbot concludes that there simply are not enough resources (rare metals for alloys, uranium for fuel, etc) to supply [what he stated is ]  the 15,000 GW of electricity the world uses.  [ Note: checking the 15,000 GW electric installed capacity shows Abbot is off by a factor of approximately 3, as EIA statistics (see link) show the world had 5,085 GW installed in 2010, the same year Abbot used. ]   However, it would only require 55 years at an annual growth rate of 2 percent per year to reach the 15,000 GW as Abbot states in his article.   As this article is about the very long-term future, we can accept the 15,000 GW number. 

Furthermore, replacing the plants as they reach the end of their life creates huge problems.  Using 15,000 nuclear plants online at one time (at 1 GW each), and my number of 40 years life (maximum), this requires 375 plants to be under construction every single day.  Stated another way, the world must start up a bit more than one new reactor every day, forever.   This is probably a low number, as it is likely that world energy consumption will increase beyond present-day 5,000 GW.   If, in perhaps 100 years, the world requires 35,000 GW, then there must be almost 4 plants started up every day.  (A growth rate of 2 percent per year over 100 years gives 35,000-plus GW).

More problematically, the world would retire and decommission an equal number of reactors, one per day for the 15,000 demand.  Given that many years are required to decommission, there would be thousands upon thousands of decommissioning projects, in perpetuity.   Finding appropriate disposal sites for the radioactive remains of all those deactivated nuclear power plants will present quite a problem. 

Abbot's article addresses 15 issues, which are good reading but I am not sure how accurate the numbers are.  Given the discrepancy in Abbot's claiming 15,000 GW and the EIA stating 5,000 GW installed capacity as of 2010, the article bears close checking.   In any event, here are the 15 issues Abbot addresses:

1.  Not enough plant sites (away from population, near cooling water, etc)

2.  Land area required per plant

3.  Embrittlement problem

4.  Entropy problem

5.  Nuclear waste disposal

6.  Nuclear accident rate problem 

7.  Proliferation

8.  Energy of extraction (mining dilute ores for uranium)

9.  Uranium resource limits

10. Seawater extraction for uranium

11. Fast Breeder Reactors

12. Fusion Reactors

13. Materials Resources (materials of construction, rare alloy metals)

14. Elemental diversity

15. Nuclear power and Climate Change

It is notable that Abbot did not discuss the economics of an all-nuclear grid, the load-following problems, and that these issues are greatly increased as wind and solar power are added to the grid.  My article Two in Truth About Nuclear Power address this see link. 

This article by Abbot serves as a useful starting point for more arguments against nuclear power.  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California