Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant to Close

Subtitle: Another one calls it quits - Losing Money

Three Mile Island nuclear plants,
containment domes as white circles at top right
credit:  NRC

The infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania has one reactor still running.  The other one, the one that melted down after only one year of operation, has been closed with its radioactive fuel core removed.  Now, almost 40 years later, the financial losses are overwhelming, the government refused to provide tax dollars as still more subsidies, and the owners have announced the plant's closure in September, 2019.    (UPDATE:  It closed on Sept 20, 2019.  Cheers for another one closed, forever. )

So much for the nuclear cheerleader mantra that "nuclear plants last for 60 years."  No, they don't.   SLB has a list of the US' closed nuclear plants, see link.   Three Mile Island will join that list if and when it actually closes down, in approximately 10 weeks from today. 

At SLB, the opinion is that many more nuclear reactors in the US will shut down in the next few years, approximately half of the existing fleet, as the electricity market changes for the better, and nuclear plants cannot compete.  The combination of old plants, high operating costs, and tremendous pressure from low-cost wind and natural gas power, makes shutting them down the only practical solution.   However, a few states (notably Ohio) have chosen to give even more subsidies to their nuclear plants to keep them running and the workers employed.    One wonders how much largesse actually exists in the legislature and governor's office, when the plants require many hundreds of million $ invested to remain within the Federal safety regulations.   Who will purchase bonds to fund the investments, when at best the plants will run for only 10 years?

So, what actually happens when a nuclear power plant shuts down?  How does the grid cope?  Quite well, actually.   We have seen this demonstrated time and time again, in California, Nebraska, Massachusetts, and others. 

Many of the remaining power plants each increase their output to cover the load that the nuclear plant formerly supplied.    At night especially, some plants will not reduce output as much as when the nuclear plant was operating.   The grid remains stable, the customers are happy, and a high-cost provider is removed from the generation mix.   This is how regulated capitalism is supposed to work, the most efficient survive, and the least efficient fall by the wayside.  

One last point, about nuclear plants supposedly being zero-carbon sources of power.   No, they aren't, especially when they shut down.  That Three Mile Island plant will soon be a big load on the grid, drawing power 24 hours per day, to keep spent fuel cooled and various other needs.   That power intake is from the grid as a whole, which of course includes coal-fired power and natural gas-fired power.   That is not unique to Three Mile Island, as every closed nuclear plant continues to draw power from the grid in various amounts.  

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  

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  

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 22

Subtitle:  Fukushima - The Disaster That Could Not Happen

The Fukushima Dai-ichi reactor meltdowns have been extensively watched and written about.  This article gives my perspective.   The basics are these: the plants were heavily damaged by a larger-than-expected earthquake, at 9.0 magnitude, and a larger-than-expected tsunami of approximately 50 feet height about 40 minutes after the first earthquake.  (the initial shock was followed by hundreds of after-shocks.  

Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, Reactors 1-6 Before Earthquake
source:  ORNL

Some of the after-shocks were major earthquakes themselves, at 7 or greater magnitude.) Meltdowns occurred in 3 reactors, with the extent of the meltdowns yet unknown.  Explosions that destroyed containment buildings occurred in 4 plants.  Radioactive water was dumped into the ocean because operators had no other place to store it.  More radioactive water continues to this day to leak out of cracked foundations, through the porous soil and into the ocean.   Fish caught nearby were ruled unsafe for human consumption due to radioactivity.  Children living near the meltdown plants already have high rates of thyroid cancer, yet thyroid cancer in children is extremely rare.   US sailors on an aircraft carrier developed radiation sickness and other health issues.    This disaster is still unfolding, as even the technology-savvy Japanese struggle with what to do and how to do it.   No matter what nuclear technology is in place, a meltdown will occur when zero power is available for day after day.   That is the fundamental fact of Fukushima Dai-ichi.

The lessons for all of the nuclear industry are clear, and grim:  even the best designers and operators take huge risks when gambling human lives and health against the powers of Nature. 

It should be noted that the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors are not large, but are medium size.  If a similar meltdown occurs in a modern, large reactor, the devastation would be proportionately greater. 

The nuclear industry advocates continually state the plants are safe; yet disaster after disaster occurs.  Is it time to invoke the insanity clause: when one repeats the same old steps over and over, while expecting different results, this is insanity?  The Big Three meltdowns thus far are Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima.  What plant will be next in the massive meltdown missive?

Facts on events of March 11, 2011

It is important to note a few features of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plants: there are six reactors located right on the coast, they use seawater for cooling, and they are only a few feet above sea level.  An earthquake rated at 9.0 occurred, and reactor units 1, 2, and 3 automatically shut down.  The land movement, or shaking, in the East-West direction was greater than the design.   Unit 4 was already shut down for routine maintenance.  Emergency generators started at all six reactors 1 – 6.    40 minutes later, the 50-foot tsunami hit and all power was lost except for one generator at reactor 6.  The other emergency generators stopped.   The one operating generator was then connected also to reactor 5, and those two reactors (5 and 6) were cooled sufficiently to go into cold shutdown.   Note that the diesel-powered generators were underwater for some time during the multiple tsunami waves.

However, units 1, 2, and 3 reactor cores melted down due to an extended lack of emergency power.  Also, buildings in units 1, 2, 3, and 4 exploded – probably from hydrogen production as the fuel melted.   It is not yet clear exactly why unit 4 exploded, as

Fukushima Dai-ichi Containment Building
After Explosion   source: ORNL

it was not operating at the time of the earthquake.

In addition, the operators were unable to maintain cooling in the spent fuel pool at reactors 1, 2, 3, and 4. 

Subsequently, operators attempted to cool the meltdown reactors’ cores, with little success.  Ultimately, out of desperation, seawater was used.  Seawater is highly corrosive, so metal parts in contact with seawater are ruined.  Afterward, a series of water storage tanks were installed and water was pumped through the melted-down reactors and spent fuel pools and back to the storage tanks. 

Substantial leaks through the ground and into the sea occurred, with radioactive water flowing into the sea.   The earthquakes damaged the foundations sufficiently to provide leakage pathways through the foundations and into the sea.   Note that some nuclear apologist sites claim that the earthquake itself caused no damage.  This is patently untrue.  If no earthquake damage occurred, the foundations would not be cracked and leaking radioactive water into the sea.

It will be years before anyone can open the reactors and determine the extent of the damage due to earthquake and meltdown, just as was the case after the meltdown at Three Mile Island.

 see link to ORNL report

and NRC report: "Recommendations For Enhancing Reactor Safety in the 21st Century"  see link

Lessons

What everyone needs to know about nuclear power plants and their designs: designers play the probability game.  Somebody (perhaps an expert) provides the odds of natural disasters of different severities occurring in the next 50 to 60 years, for things such as earthquake, tsunami, dam failure, tornado, volcanic eruption, hurricane and its storm surge, and others.   Typically, a small event is quite common, but the largest events are extremely rare.  To save money, the plant is designed to withstand a given event with an appropriately remote chance of occurrence in the plant’s lifetime.  The plant is not designed to withstand the greatest known event of all-time, especially when the odds of the event occurring during the 50 to 60 year life of the plant are very small.   This is the probability calculus used in designing nuclear power plants.    In the Fukushima Dai-ichi event, the earthquake design was slightly exceeded, however the multiple aftershocks of large magnitude were likely not in the design basis.  The tsunami design was far less than the actual 50-foot tsunami that occurred.  One source states the design was for a 23-foot tsunami.  That then shows that nature flung a wall of water more than 27 feet higher than was expected and planned for in the design. 

The next unexpected design problem was complete isolation from any power for days on end.   The plants are designed for a power failure, with onsite diesel-powered generators to supply power for some hours until grid power is restored.  At Fukushima Dai-ichi, the diesel-powered generators were inoperable after the tsunami.  There was no backup plan in place for grid power loss for days or weeks, plus no diesel-powered generators.   The Japanese management and operators were smart, well-trained, resourceful people, yet even they could not prevent meltdown in the cores without a power source.   What happens when a similar outage occurs in a third-world country?

There are other lessons from Fukushima Dai-ichi.  What about other deprivations, other than grid power and emergency generator power?  What of loss of cooling water – the lake, river, or other source?   Even nuclear plants close to shore, as Fukushima Dai-ichi is, can lose ocean cooling if the land is thrust upward in an earthquake so that the water intakes are now above sea level.   Even if electrical power were restored in time, it is mighty difficult to cool reactor cores without any water.   What about dam break, with flood including mud, debris, rocks, or ice blocks?   Ash rain from volcano?  Crash impact from missile?  Crash impact from a heavy aircraft, even a bomber loaded with bombs?  Multiple mechanical breakdown of critical pumps – e.g. bolts all failing at the same time as happened at Salem 2 in 2014.  Or, the electrical grid disconnected plus diesel generators that will not start due to any malfunction.  

What about sabotage – deliberate destruction of key cooling equipment due to a security breach?  This is a favorite theme of movies, but could it happen?  Hopefully not, with security teams on the alert.

Nuclear advocates falsely insist that the Fukushima Dai-ichi core meltdowns were due to the old, BWR (boiling water reactor) design.  That is false.   Even a modern PWR (pressurized water reactor) design would meltdown without power for several days.   This is a fact that is recognized by NRC and other sober persons.

Foundation cracks and radioactive water leaks, as have occurred at Fukushima Dai-ichi, are being addressed now, three years later.  The plan is to install an ice-dam in the earth surrounding the plant.  The ice will be kept cold by refrigeration units, powered by the grid.  In effect, there will be a giant section of artificial perma-frost underneath the leaking foundations.  One hopes that this works, and that the grid does not fail yet again.   Meanwhile, for three years the cracked foundations have leaked radioactive water into the ocean. 

  

Aftermath

Despite the claims of nuclear proponents, Fukushima radiation clearly has impacted public health, land, air, and ocean with contamination.  The radioactive air plume arrived in just a few days at the US west coast, although the radioactivity was far below danger levels.   Tsunami flotsam arrived in other countries, radioactive water flowed into the ocean, fish, crops, and milk were contaminated.

It is early yet in the life of a nuclear meltdown, but there will be cancers, diabetes, thyroid illness, and mental problems (worry, stress).   There may also be birth defects.   Unlike at Chernobyl, there will likely be no early deaths from radiation sickness.  However, there very well could be early deaths from cancer. 

Japan has made decisions on shutting down other nuclear reactors, instead using other fuels / plants for power – oil, coal, and natural gas.  Recently, some reactors have been restarted.  Nuclear power is very controversial in Japan at this time.   Germany has declared it will not build new reactors, and will shut down existing reactors in a few years’ time.  China has declared it will continue building reactors, as will India. 

Other countries took a long, sober look at their own reactors and preparations for a similar situation: if a long period without power occurs, what would they do?    The US response is to have a few resource centers, with critical equipment being available to any reactor in dire straits.   One hopes the nature of the disaster lends itself to timely delivery of the critical equipment.   

Other new requirements were issued by the NRC.  The NRC issued a long report with about 20 new requirements for the existing fleet and any new construction.   See link.

Conclusion

It appears the world has reached a tipping point, or perhaps is beginning to lose patience with the never-ending lies and deceptions from the nuclear industry.  Before Three Mile Island, the industry insisted the plants were safe.  Even the NRC bought into the “things are safe” mantra, until operator error after a common equipment malfunction (a pump stopped pumping) at Three Mile Island showed the “things are safe” line was totally wrong.  Then, Chernobyl exploded and spewed radiation all around the northern hemisphere – yet the nuclear apologists stated this was an aberration, rogue operators in a badly designed plant were doing an unauthorized test (it had graphite for moderation – basically carbon that can easily burn).   Now, Fukushima Dai-ichi has three reactor cores melted down, with four containment buildings blown apart in four separate explosions, a spent fuel pool that overheated, cracked foundations that allow radioactive water to flow into the ocean, and many children already diagnosed with thyroid cancer.   Their young lives are changed forever.   Even today, nuclear apologists insist that the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster (they don’t call it a disaster, rather the word they use is “incident”) was just an unfortunate natural event that is too rare to ever be concerned about again. 

The truth about nuclear power is this: no design is adequate for what Nature can put forth.  No humans can accurately and confidently run the numbers and predict the odds of a massive natural disaster.   No contingency plan can anticipate every eventuality.  The price we pay as a society, as a human race, is living with the very real, and rational, fear of another meltdown in a reactor near you.  How many more human errors will be made, as equipment breaks down, as natural disasters occur, in combinations that were not planned for?   How much more unsafe are the plants, when the regulatory agency relaxes rule after rule after rule?

This concludes the article on Fukushima: The Disaster That Could Not Happen.   Next, is the San Onofre Shutdown Saga. 

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 - this article

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