29 Responses to “Why I hate the NRC”

1. 1
   DV82XL Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 1:43 am

   “Others have pointed out that the US nuclear industry has an excellent safety record under the NRC.”

   With all due respect where in the Free World has the nuclear industry had a bad record for comparison?

   
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2. 2
   drbuzz0 Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 2:26 am

           DV82XL said:

   “Others have pointed out that the US nuclear industry has an excellent safety record under the NRC.”

   With all due respect where in the Free World has the nuclear industry had a bad record for comparison?

   Argentina? if you count nuclear medicine…

   Yeah… good point. I was trying to think of *something* positive I could say about the NRC to justify the fact that some seem to support it as an agency. That was about all I could think of. Although, truthfully, the NRC has a worse record than the AEC which had a spotless record for civil nuclear power and the NRC which had three mile island, which is still not a fatal accident, but still..

   
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3. 3
   Jason Ribeiro Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 5:26 am

   Though I’ve not seen a license application for a new plant, I hear they run 17,000 pages long with the new COL process. I wonder how this compares to other engineering documentation for other large scale projects like a bridge, skyscraper, airplane or subway. 17,000 pages seems absurdly large and complex, it makes me wonder how much of it might be unnecessary and/or redundant. If revisions to the process could be made then what and how to shorten the time for review from 4 years to 2.

   
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4. 4
   Q Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 5:32 am

           Jason Ribeiro said:

   Though I’ve not seen a license application for a new plant, I hear they run 17,000 pages long with the new COL process. I wonder how this compares to other engineering documentation for other large scale projects like a bridge, skyscraper, airplane or subway. 17,000 pages seems absurdly large and complex, it makes me wonder how much of it might be unnecessary and/or redundant. If revisions to the process could be made then what and how to shorten the time for review from 4 years to 2.

   If we can grant approval cheaply, rapidly and effectively for something as complex and with as many safety systems and possible modifications as a large passenger airliner then I think we can do it for reactors. I don’t know the systems super well, but if they want to overhaul the system I think they should throw away what they have and then start new and model it on the way aircraft are regulated because that obviously works very very well.

   
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5. 5
   Russ Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 5:38 am

   Shorten the time from four year to two?

   It takes twenty years for many reactors. ::Grumble::

   I think to get from initial submission to pouring concrete these days is going to take more than four years. Reasonably I would expect maybe ten, if it ever happens.

   No, this system absolutely can’t continue. I don’t know if that means getting rid of the NRC, but at least getting rid of the way things are done now.

   
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6. 6
   Jason Ribeiro Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 6:39 am

   Well this post opened my curiosity to the NRC website where I found their document library:
   http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm.html

   Using the ADAMS search engine, I put in the word “intervenor” and of course 1000+ documents come up in the search. Taking a peek at a few, I’ve got a new appreciation of what’s going on. The NRC is bathing in paper work from everyone and anything that feels slightly bothered by anything nuclear. It a wonder they get anything done. I think it is fair to say they are probably understaffed and given the importance of their function, they need a lot more funding for new employees. Handling all of these “intervenors” must be a huge distraction. Though I’ve not seen their org chart, maybe there’s a better way to structure to handle the work load, but hey it’s government bureaucracy at its finest.

   
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7. 7
   gman Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 9:37 am

   While I don’t disagree with your main point (increased regulation increases cost), I will say that there is more to the story. Just to identify two factors to consider when looking at the historical cost picture: (1) during the early days the reactor vendors (W and GE) were fiercely competing, and they probably lost money on projects like Conn Yankee & Oyster creek. (2) the high capital cost for nuclear units (true even in the early ‘AEC’ days) means that the prevailing interest rates have a huge effect on the cost of the units. It might be interesting to plot your cost data along with some measure like prime rate over the same years. This has changed in some states, which now allow the utility company to charge for construction work in progress – this reduces the time over which they borrow money.

   
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8. 8
   Derek L Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 10:52 am

   I was about to point out the same thing as gman… You chart doesn’t show a negative influence by the NRC as much as it does the massive inflation, etc. of the 1970’s. Worse yet, as the 70’s progressed there was increasing opposition to nuclear power and ever increasing public pressure for reviews and controls.

   Worse yet, engineering costs increased during that period even faster than inflation. That’s one of the reasons the Space Shuttle, which was on a more-or-less fixed annual budget, was so greatly delayed. And why the cost of the B-1 bomber soared so greatly. And why the Navy slashed it’s shipbuilding program (particularly nuclear submarines) during that era.

   
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9. 9
   Micah Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 11:04 am

   Interesting… I used to work in nuclear licensing and while nobody loved the NRC, I’d also never heard anyone suggest that TMI was their fault in any capacity.

   Any more details you want to share?

   
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10. 10
    drbuzz0 Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 1:45 pm

            Micah said:

    Interesting… I used to work in nuclear licensing and while nobody loved the NRC, I’d also never heard anyone suggest that TMI was their fault in any capacity.

    Any more details you want to share?

    The NRC approved the design of the TMI-2 reactor which was had a few differences from the TMI-1 reactor, including some ambiguous readouts which caused the failure of situational awareness.

    Of course they totally bungled the event. Here is some descent information: http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/behind-the-scenes-of-three-mile-island

            Derek L said:

    I was about to point out the same thing as gman… You chart doesn’t show a negative influence by the NRC as much as it does the massive inflation, etc. of the 1970’s. Worse yet, as the 70’s progressed there was increasing opposition to nuclear power and ever increasing public pressure for reviews and controls.

    Hence the CPI adjustment. I’ll admit that engineering costs go up, but increasing the cost by five or siz times in a few years?

    There are also many examples of how regulatory issues caused massive and unnecessary delays. Seabrook is a prime example. The way NRC policy works, any political entity within ten to twenty five miles of a plant can block its opening or sabotage the permits. The NRC does not have to do this. As a federal agency they are not obligated to take orders from the states, counties or towns. In the case of Seabrook, which isn’t even in Massachusetts, the governor of Mass (Michael Dukakis) made it a campaign promise block the opening of Seabrook. Of course this stonewalling dramatically increased cost.

    Shoreham is another example. The plant received its permit when the NRC did not require unanimous approval of state and local governments to have a plant built. The NRC changed the rules mid game and a few politicians killed it. Worse still, the boneheaded regulations of the NRC stated that the Shoreham facility couldn’t be just taken down: It had to be fully decommissioned as if it had highly irridiated components. It didn’t. It only had gone through a short low-power critical test that barely irradiated the vessel at all. The whole plant could have been disassembled and taken somewhere else. The NRC would not allow this.

    
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11. 11
    drbuzz0 Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 1:53 pm

    I am working on a second post on the NRC. Here is a blurb from it:

     

     

     

    Getting Approval for a reactor:

    The ESBWR – The
    Economically Simplified Boiling Water Reactor or ESBWR was first
    submitted for pre-application review by GE in 2002.   Although the reactor incorporates new design features and technology, the basic design pretty conventional in nature.   Based on proven boiling water reactor technology, the ESBWR is neither radical nor revolutionary in design.   In fact, it is largely based on the proven ABWR design, which had already been approved at the time of the application submission for the ESBWR. 

    The primary difference between the ESBWR and the ABWR is that the ESBWR incorporates greater use of natural convection for circulation and replaces some of the active components of the ABWR with passive regulation. 

    One might think that a reactor which is so similar to an existing and proven design would be simple to certify, but with the NRC, this is never the case.   It took GE over ten years and hundreds of thousands of man hours just to prepare their own design certification application.  It took years more for the NRC to give final approval.   GE spent upwards of $440 million on the process of certification.   Yet this is only a certification for the design in general.  Each plant where the reactor is to be built must also go through a long certification and approval process.   GE and any other company that wants to have a reactor certified is therefore looking at a cost of at least half a billion dollars that they must pay out of pocket, before a single reactor is built and before any of the cost can be recouped.   This is hundreds of millions of dollars of paperwork costs alone.

     

    Of course, one of the worst nightmares for any company would be that after
    bleeding out copious amounts of cash to appease the NRC, the reactor that
    they fought so long and hard to get approval for might never even end up
    being built.   Unfortunately, this does happen.  Given the
    length of the approval process, by the time the NRC finally gives the go
    ahead to a design (assuming they ever do), the design may be considered
    obsolete or market conditions may have changed and potential customers may
    be gone entirely.

    System 80 - The System 80 was
    designed by Combustion Engineering in the early 1980’s and received final approval in 1997.  Later design versions are known as the
    System-80+. The reactor was designed as a general purpose evolutionary GIII power reactor.  It is a light water PWR of a relatively conventional design.  During the time between design and approval, Combustion Engineering was bought by ABB in 1989.   ABB continued to peruse design certification and finally received it in 1997.   Although ABB offered the reactor,there were no buyers.

    By the time the final approval was granted for the design, some aspects of the system were on the verge of being considered obsolete.   ABB sold its nuclear energy interests to Westinghouse in 2000, who continued to offer the System-80, but now no longer actively promote the design.  A few aspects of the design were incorporated into the AP600/AP1000 reactors, however, not a single System 80 plant was ever built, despite the many years and untold amounts of money invested in approval.

    AP600 - The AP600 was designed by Westinghouse beginning in the 1980’s and was submitted for design certification to the NRC in 1992.   The approval process took about seven years and was finally approved in late 1998.  

    According to Westinghouse, "The AP600 has received final design approval from the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (US NRC) following over six years of review, which included over 380 technical meetings and over 7400 requests for additional information."   Although Westinghouse continues to promote the design, there have been no buyers as of yet.  
    
    It seems that after the years of design certification, grueling meetings and reviews and untold millions of dollars, by the time the NRC finally got around to approving the plant, few utilities were interested in a reactor with the capacity of the AP600 and wanted higher power reactors.   Thus, Westinghouse has developed the AP1000, which has to go through the same process all over again. The Approval for the AP1000 is slightly easier than the AP600, but only slightly.

    NOTE: There’s a reason this has not yet been published on this site. As is pointed out, this statement has some factual errors. Please do not use this as a source. It may have been a mistake to put it out at all before being fact checked.

    
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12. 12
    An Actual Scientist Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 2:08 pm

    I don’t have much good to say about the NRC, but part of this needs to be put in context: Yes, the way regulations are written does lead to ten years or more to get approval for a reactor build and does mean that the build may be stopped and restarted and stopped and restarted and so on. This is partially the NRC’s fault for how the system is setup but also it is due to how the system is exploited.

    The NRC licensing process includes many opportunities for public comment or for submission of petitions to challenge their data or demand a review. There are public hearings where individuals are permitted to submit grievances and there are also chances for the state and local governments to submit their own motions or to dispute the permit.

    If these kind of measures were reserved for only legitimate disagreement on the facts or were generally not receiving many submissions then the process would go much more smoothly. The problem comes from the fact that without failure any time there is an opportunity to contest something or petition for further studies or anything like that, they are flooded by every kind of petition, injunction, appeal, complaint and demand you can imagine.

    You do not see this kind of attention in other permit hearings and open sessions. There are similar kind of things for other public approvals but they don’t draw the same kind of flood of frivolous paper.

    By law, the NRC can’t usually toss these out without reviewing them. They bare some fault on this, due to how things are set up, but the blame also goes to those who work so hard to flood them with opposition.

    
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13. 13
    Sigivald Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    I hate (well, okay, moderately disapprove of) the NRC because they won’t let me buy a tritium marker* because it’s a “frivolous” use of nuclear materials.

    Sure, the rest of the farkin’ world can buy them, and they’re not actually dangerous or anything…

    (* At least, not one for a keychain or a pet. But if it’s for a stairwell, suddenly that’s different.)

    
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14. 14
    gman Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 2:52 pm

    drbuzz0 -you need to do some further fact checking on your draft second post (in post 11 above). The CE System 80 was approved by the NRC (see NUREG-0852, IIRC) as a standard design in the mid 1980’s and three were completed (and are now operating) in the US (Palo Verde 1, 2, & 3 outside Phoenix). A number of other System 80 units were begun but not completed, these projects were cancelled during the 1980s. Many very similar (though lower power) units were built in South Korea starting in the 1990s and continuing today. I think you are mixing up dates and facts between the Sys80 and the Sys80+ certification.

    Speaking of the Koreans, those guys know how to build a fleet of plants: pick a good design and build a bunch of them. I think they have 10 units based on the System 80 design and they are all very similar. That’s the way to do it. Here in the US, even ’sister’ units have their own quirks. The utility companies here all wanted to go their own way, and didn’t seem much interested in the concept of standard designs. We will see if they have changed. The W AP1000 units are intended to be nearly identical clones.

    
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15. 15
    drbuzz0 Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 3:03 pm

            gman said:

    drbuzz0 -you need to do some further fact checking on your draft second post (in post 11 above).

    Which is why I didn’t post it yet. Perhaps it was a mistake to even put it up. I’m confident about the ESBWR part, as I have multiple sources for that. I have some releases from the DOE which put the date at 1997, but they might be referring to the system-80+ amendment.

    Yes, the System-80 became the design basis for the Korean APR1400, but that is not certified to be used in the US and it would cost hundreds of millions to get to that point.

    
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16. 16
    An Actual Scientist Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 3:12 pm

    You confused the System-80 with the System-80+. The System-80+ is different enough to need a new design certification or at least a full amendment to the existing one for the components that the two don’t share. The System-80+ did take a long time to certify, but the System-80 didn’t take that bad by comparison. The 80+ was never built in the US but was built in Korea, so you could argue that the licensing expense was a waste but not the development of it to begin with.

    One thing is that although the development might be the same the certification standards country to country are different enough to add a good deal of expense. It might come down to incidentals like operating voltages or whether the bolts are English or metric, but its enough to mean that there needs to be modification for each country. you can’t exactly submit a carbon copy to each.

    The 80+ lives on in an upgraded version for Korea and Japan, but we won’t see that over here. They have no interest in that design for the US. We may see the Ap-1000 though.

    
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17. 17
    Engineering Edgar Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 4:19 pm

    The official license cost for a reactor is about 26 million dollars and then there are other governmental costs like water discharge and such things, so the official amount to pay in fees is not much more than 50 million at most. The process is more expensive in practice. I don’t know what it has been, because it has been all over the place and we haven’t built a reactor in many years. Entergy has their total bonds for pre-construction phase at close to 500 million. The estimated time for permit application to final approval of the combined construction and operating license is five to eight years (plus the time to build of course), so the 500 million does include some of the added interest costs during the approval phase.

    
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18. 18
    DV82XL Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 6:09 pm

    I have to walk carefully here as I am not a American, and God knows I would cheerfully dissolve the The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in an eye-blink for the same list of sins if I had the chance.

    I would like to know what the procedure is for getting a new gas or more importantly a new design of coal plant approved. That industry is claiming they can build clean plants with carbon sequestration, will they have to go through the same hoops as a nuclear plant? Will their license require them to meet or exceed every single parameter on the cert, or face closure? Will they be subject to the same inspection regimen that a nuclear plant is through its operating lifespan? Will they have to establish where the captured carbon is going before breaking ground on the project?

    In other words will the playing field be level, or are the dirt-burners going to get a free pass paid for by empty promises.

    
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19. 19
    drbuzz0 Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 6:59 pm

            DV82XL said:

    I have to walk carefully here as I am not a American, and God knows I would cheerfully dissolve the The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in an eye-blink for the same list of sins if I had the chance.

    I would like to know what the procedure is for getting a new gas or more importantly a new design of coal plant approved. That industry is claiming they can build clean plants with carbon sequestration, will they have to go through the same hoops as a nuclear plant? Will their license require them to meet or exceed every single parameter on the cert, or face closure? Will they be subject to the same inspection regimen that a nuclear plant is through its operating lifespan? Will they have to establish where the captured carbon is going before breaking ground on the project?

    In other words will the playing field be level, or are the dirt-burners going to get a free pass paid for by empty promises.

    As a comparison: there are currently several proposals in various forms in front of the NRC and the one that seems to be furthest along is the South Texas Project to add two new power reactors to a facility.

    http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/col/south-texas-project.html

    Beginning of preparations for submission: circa 2002-2005 (they actually had been working on plans for more reactors since the 1990’s)
    Letter of intent submitted to NRC: June 2006
    Tentative Schedule for Application Review Setup: February 2009
    Initial Safety Review: Scheduled to begin in September of this year
    Final Safety and Environmental Approval: Assuming the review stays on schedule, it should be 2011, at which point the enviornmental assessment is reviewed by the EPA.

    If all goes according to plan and there are no holdups, the final drafts should be sometime around mid to late 2011. (if there are no holdups)

    At that point a hearing before the NRC is scheduled which will likely take place within a year. The hearing, in theory, should last a few months.

    Construction of the first unit was expected to start in 2010, but that obviously is not going to happen. Right now they’re realistically hoping to get authorization around 2014. In theory it could be as soon as 2012, but that’s being extremely optimistic. Unit three could product watts out by 2018 realistically or 2015, optimistically.

    So about twelve years since the first formal step.

    By the way: South Texas is fortunate in being on an existing plant which cuts the approval down by skipping some of the initial site permit steps which are a good three or four years more.

    As far as coal goes: It’s a bit hit or miss. There is not the same level of federal oversight like with a nuclear plant. There are permits, of course, but it varies a lot depending on the state and such things. It is relatively easy to add capacity to existing plants if you’re not adding more boilers. Modifications to existing units to handle more coal or higher temperatures are easy to do, mostly under the table.

    The most recent new coal burner I’ve been able to find information on in a good amount is Spurlock Station in Kentucky.

    Spurlock-Gilbert is the newest phase of the station. A proposal for the first new unit came in 2002 and the unit first started operation in 2005. It is only 278 megawatts, relatively small, but it’s only part of the expansion. The second unit (which is Spurlock 3) is going to be fired up soon, if it hasn’t already. It is supposed to be at full power by summer 2009.
    The initial review on air quality to the EPA was submitted in 2006. Approval for construction was granted in 2007. Although it was easier due to the fact that the earlier portion of the plant had been approved and operating.

    Coal fired plants are hit or miss because although they are relatively easy to get approval for, there is enormous community and political pressure to stop them. Thus older plants are generally being pushed to their limits.

    There are several coal power plants under construction in Texas, Lousiana and Indiana

    Entergy managed to sneak one in by converting an old gas power plant to coal

    Gas plants, on the other hand: those are easy.

    There are a whole bunch of those under construction. I’ll go see if I can find some more info on that.

    
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20. 20
    DV82XL Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 7:44 pm

    OK so what I am seeing here is about the same as in Canada (and I suspect everywhere else) Environment Canada sets a much lower bar for coal-fired generators than the CNSC sets for nuclear plants, just as the U.S. EPA doesn’t ride coal as much as NRC does nuclear in the States.

    We all know that dirt-burners have gotten a free pass on radioisotope releases, and waste management compared to nuclear, what I don’t want to see is the same thing happen with ‘Clean Coal’ where the builder can make all sorts of promises and then get wavers when things don’t pan out.

    I don’t worry so much about wind and solar because in the end they will fail to deliver the power they promised and that reality will spell their end. Even now we can see that the shine is off the sector in Europe and while many are putting up a brave face, it’s clear that the writing is on the wall there. If we have to go through the same stupid process here in North America, then so be it.

    ‘Clean Coal’ on the other hand CAN produce power, no question, the issue is is it going to be all that clean and because they will be generating useful amounts of electricity, there is going to be a lot of pressure to keep them going, meeting their design promises or not.

    The thing is coal isn’t out of play yet and we have to watch our backs, because they will make a move before this is over.

    
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21. 21
    Engineering Edgar Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 9:07 pm

    In general, it is impossible to build a new coal power plant from scratch without some kind of scrubber system that takes out most of the particulates. You can, however, add to an existing plant that is pure dirty coal with no pollution control measures. It is a grandfather issue. It depends on past operations and permits. If a utility has operated a big dirt burner for a long time they can add to it and as long as they call it an upgrade to an existing plant they get off with almost no regulation.

    New coal: Depends. Coal gasification is actually pretty easy to build but if it’s traditional burning raw coal then it is a bit harder. In that case pretty good scrubbers are usually required, but it’s not a very difficult thing to get federal approval for.

    Gas fired plants are very easy to build. You don’t need much approval from any agency. A combined cycle gas plant does not have much regulatory hurdles.

    
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22. 22
    Gordon Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 11:38 pm

    One of the big issues with a nuclear power plant or any big project is delays. This applies in both the US and Canada and just about everywhere else. Any time construction is delayed it dramatically increases costs. It’s not just the added time paying construction expenses, but the interest. It is bad when there are delays during the planning phase but disastrous when it happens during construction because the expenses pile up and the interest keeps compounding onto itself.

    Once the plant is opened, then there is a cash inflow, but before it is a burden and the interest can cause the cost to spiral like crazy. This is why it is so important to keep the build relatively speedy. It is also why there is apprehension about going into any project where the possibility of delays is a concern. You really want to get the plant operational so you can start paying down the cost and generating a net income off of it.

    This goes for other things and big projects, of course, but the fact that nuclear power plants so often are hit by regulatory delays can be a big deal to the final cost.

    
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23. 23
    DV82XL Says:
    May 23rd, 2009 at 12:06 am

            Gordon said:

    One of the big issues with a nuclear power plant or any big project is delays. This applies in both the US and Canada and just about everywhere else. Any time construction is delayed it dramatically increases costs. It’s not just the added time paying construction expenses, but the interest.

    You are so right, about 40% of the total cost of the last few CANDU builds in Ontario was due to interest charges alone. What really screws things up is that in many jurisdictions the utility cannot start paying down the debt with existing revenue until the plant is producing power. This was supposed to prevent utilities from cranking up rates to pay for new generation before the fact, but it’s crippling to projects like these.

    
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24. 24
    Safe T Rad Says:
    May 24th, 2009 at 12:40 pm

    I agree that the NRC is not a very effective agency when it comes to licensing plants. There has not been a new power plant come full circle from planning to operation in thirty years. There have been many attempts but the daunting amount of paperwork and years of hearings usually makes it all but impossible to get it done. The NRC does not act fast about anything and does not make regulation simple, even where it can clearly be simplified.

    The system is a mess.

    However, we can’t blame the NRC alone and just say that they are incompetent. They operate under a political system that can make it difficult for them to change things even if they want to. Any kind of reduction in regulation (even if it’s reducing an unnecessary or redundant step) or streamlining of the process will be grabbed by interest groups and held up as proof of laxing safety standards. Do we really need two years to study the safety concerns of evacuating a whole area within dozens of miles of the plant? No, not really. What if they did away with this requirement? The politicians would not be very happy and would start their talk of the safety of the children and so on.

    If you want an example, not long ago, the NRC classified depleted uranium at the lowest level of nuclear waste. Aside from questioning whether it needs to be classified as nuclear waste at all, this would make sense. If it has to be classified as nuclear material, it should be at the lowest level, since it’s pretty innocuous material that is barely radioactive at all. The politicians called for a hearing to determine why they would do that and started with a lot of unsubstantiated allegations that they were bought off or not doing their jobs.

    How can you expect an agency to do its job under those conditions? The NRC is a mess, but it’s a mess by design and if those who work at the NRC made a real effort to fix it, they’d be hauled before Congress.

    
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25. 25
    gman Says:
    May 24th, 2009 at 1:24 pm

            Safe T Rad said:

    … but it’s a mess by design …

    I like that one! The entire US federal system defined in the Constitution is a “mess” in the sense that the designed checks & balances make it very hard for the gov’t to *do* anything. It’s set up such that most votes will end up in a tie or deadlock. Ironically, the main thing they *have* been able to agree on over the last 200+ years is that they can stick their noses into what should be none of their business. I don’t think the founding father’s ever envisioned the system evolving to the current situation, where the federal gov’t is actually concerned with business activities. I think they’d be shocked to see Representatives & Senators debating whether you or I could run a power plant.

    
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26. 26
    Rob Morse Says:
    June 21st, 2009 at 1:45 am

    The NRC is not incompetent. Let us look at the forces acting upon the NRC. They get paid to regulate, and regulate is what they do very well. The longer it takes to approve a reactor or power plant, the more staff they have justified. Note that there is NO incentive to ever license a reactor or build a plant. The incentives are opposite to that. The goal of the NRC is to justify itself and escape blame. Perfection can be their goal, and neither cost nor efficiency need cloud their choices. It is fine, and perhaps a preferred outcome, to minimize political risk at the NRC if the licensing costs penalize nuclear power to the point of extinction. It is not their problem that more people die from other sources of power. It is not their problem that the US looses its economic competitiveness and you loose your job.

    Sorry, not their problem.

    I want you to remember that government does not have to be responsible. The way to avoid all responsibility is for the NRC to stop all activity. You can’t prove that THEY are responsible for your job dying or at least leaving the US, not in our sound-bite media. Please remember that the next time you worry about having a good job in the US.

    I’m a very high tech geek and I no longer expect innovation from US companies. I think we are a failed state. California’s bankrupcy is an example.

    I wonder what country will build its future and were my children will choose to live. I wonder if Argentina or Korea needs nuclear engineers?
    Rob

    
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27. 27
    Peter van der does Says:
    October 1st, 2010 at 6:10 pm

    Reply to the first post – what country has had a bad record in the nuclear industry ?
    Government officials and nuclear regulatory officials tend to downplay accidents and
    radioactive releases no matter what country it’s in. Let me give you two exemples of
    complete stupidity regarding a nuclear accident: At the Golfech nuke plant on the
    Garonne river which flows down to Bordeaux,France, nuclear engineers put electrical
    systems near the banks of the river. Well guess what ? After 4 days of rain this major
    water source overflowed and interupted the electrical system. Part of that was an emergency back up system for some part of the plant. Had there been a meltdown at the same time as the flood they would have been in deep doo-doo. How stupid can you get ?

    Second instance this time in Japan at a nuclear reprocessing plant. Signs were put in plain view detailing the protocol for some process with the admonition : Never do such & such !!!
    Well some fool did exactly what he wasn’t supposed to and they had a huge release and a
    temporary evacuation. One again…how stupid can you get ?

    The main problem is that you can’t make a perfect machine and you certainly can’t make a perfect human. It is generally recognized that most nuclear accidents are a result of
    human error. What gets me is that we’ll have to live through another Chernobyl before
    we wake up to the fact that we shouldn’t be playing around with nuclear energy.

    
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28. 28
    DV82XL Says:
    October 1st, 2010 at 6:35 pm

            Peter van der does said:

    Government officials and nuclear regulatory officials tend to downplay accidents andradioactive releases no matter what country it’s in.

    And antinuclear scaremongers always spin the least release or incident in Armageddon narrowly avoided.

    I was barbecuing some hamburgers yesterday on my wooden deck, i was a bit careless and had a little grease fire, that had I left would most likely have spread to the wooden railing, then to the deck, and then to the house. It might even have spread to the next house, and give most of the town is wood-frame buildings, if we had a hard wind, as we do sometimes, we could have lost the whole town.

    But it was a blob of grease the size of a dime that was burning, so I gave it a slap with my spatula, and it was extinguished. By antinuclear standards, we almost lost the whole village, therefore absolutely no one should ever be permitted to BBQ ever again, not only in my town, but everywhere in the world.

    When you mealy mouthed Cassandras start giving numbers along with your breathless stories of near misses in nuclear power events, and really show the scale, we’ll talk. Otherwise this is nothing but meaningless propaganda, without any meaningful content.

    
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29. 29
    drbuzz0 Says:
    October 1st, 2010 at 6:45 pm

            Peter van der does said:

    Had there been a meltdown at the same time as the flood they would have been in deep doo-doo. How stupid can you get ?

    A meltdown of a PWR is not a danger off sight. In the unlikely event that one had happened, there would have been some prtty expensive damage internal to the plant.

            Peter van der does said:

    Second instance this time in Japan at a nuclear reprocessing plant. Signs were put in plain view detailing the protocol for some process with the admonition : Never do such & such !!!
    Well some fool did exactly what he wasn’t supposed to and they had a huge release and a
    temporary evacuation. One again…how stupid can you get ?

    That was what is known as a “criticality accident” We had one in the US back in the 1960’s under similar circumstances. A worker died. Of course it’s tragic for the family and everything, but industrial accidents happen. Every once in a while someone in a factory operates a piece of equipment wrong or something malfunctions and someone pays for it with their life.

    Of course this will happen in the nuclear industry from time to time. Nuclear plant workers have died on rare occasions after falling off a catwalk or having a hoist break and cause a part to land on their head. It’s sad and tragic, but it’s what occasionally happens in industry.

    The point being, it’s no greater danger to the community than any other accident and while the area may need to be evacuated for a short time, in this case, it’s not like this is somehow unique to nuclear. Dozens have died this year in catastrophic fossil fuel accidents. Gas explosions – mine collapses – oil fires etc etc.

    If you work in a nuclear plant, you’re not 100% safe from industrial misshaps, because they can always happen, but in terms of danger, you’re a lot safer than almost any other industry. The community is safer too! A criticality accident at a reprocessing center can’t kill those in the surrounding area. However, a release from a chemical factory of chlorine gas or “sour gas” or hydrofluoric acid easily can!

    By the way, yes, these kind of chemical release events have happened and lives have been lost!

    
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