Nuclear Power Plant Performance 2014:

Maintaining High Levels

One recent bright spot was the announcement by the Nuclear Energy Institute that the performance by the U.S. nuclear power industry in 2014 was the highest ever.  In particular, the average estimated capacity factor for 2014 was 91.9 percent – the highest capacity factor achieved by the U.S. nuclear industry in any year.

The second highest capacity factor in a year was 91.8 percent in 2007.  Now, one can argue that this isn't a statistically significant improvement.  However, what this does tell us is that U.S. nuclear power plants are continuing to operate at very high levels of performance, probably about the highest that can realistically be achieved.  And they are doing this in an environment where there are a lot of negative pressures, both economic and other, that are affecting operating nuclear power plants.

I therefore take the news as a positive indication.

***

Nuclear Liability:

The Logic of Liability Regimes

Once again, I have seen an article criticizing the fact that nuclear liability regimes assign financial responsibility solely to the nuclear plant operator, thus appearing to insulate vendors from financial claims.  On the surface, these criticisms seem to have some logic--after all, who wouldn't want to go after the "real" culprit, if there is one; or after everyone, just to make sure?

This viewpoint, however, neglects to consider fully what the likely outcome would be of a system that tried to assign the "real" blame, or that opened the field to everyone suing everyone.   The likely outcome:  Chaos.  Delay.  Hugh litigation costs.  More delay.  Strong possibility of no compensation for victims. 

It is just those likely outcomes that motivated the originators of all the major nuclear liability compensation regimes (both US and international) to focus the responsibility on the operator.

There is a fundamental logic to that approach.  After all, we always say that it is the operator that is ultimately responsible for the safety of a nuclear plant.  Not the regulator.  Not the vendor.  Not the other suppliers.

Assigning the operator responsibility puts the onus on the operator to check what the vendor and other suppliers do, to hold them to the highest standards, not to skimp where safety is concerned.  While a blog like this is not the place to make final determinations about who knew what and when, and who should have done something about it, I can at least identify the type of questions one would have to address if one were to try to specify exactly who is to blame for the Fukushima accident.

Let's look at the article cited above, which advocates assigning responsibility for the accident to GE.  In the first place, the article identifies critiques of the GE BWR Mark I design by officials of the US Atomic Energy Commission dating from the early 1970s and gives that as a rationale for concluding that GE should take the blame.  However, the article does not note that modifications were made to that design and were implemented in US plants.  Operators--and regulators--in Japan should have known this.  So, who knew what?  When did they know it?  What did they do about it?

The article mentions that GE was "involved" in shaving down the cliff where Fukushima Dai-ichi was constructed, thus increasing its vulnerability to tsunamis.  I don't know what they mean by "involved."  Who recommended it?  Who approved it?  Who brought in the bulldozers?  I have a feeling that everyone shares some blame here, so who should be considered to have the ultimate responsibility? 

While the parallel may not be exact, some of the same thinking went into the approach used to compensate the families of the victims of the World Trade Center--and when presented with the option to litigate endlessly or to accept a one-stop, fixed-price compensation system, most opted for the latter.

I am not here to defend GE--or to vilify it.  I am just here to point out that multiple liability regimes have concluded that it is in the best interest of any injured parties to achieve a prompt resolution of claims, and that can best be done by assigning full responsibility to the one party where one can truly say, "The buck stops here."

As to the final argument in the article cited above, that accepting the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage would saddle the taxpayers of Japan either directly or indirectly with the cost of cleanup, that argument, too, has been considered by the framers of this convention, as well as of other liability regimes.

The liability regimes all establish provisions for substantial amounts of compensation that would have to be paid by utilities.  That compensation is expected to be more than adequate for most cases.  However, in very rare cases--and Fukushima is one--the regimes all recognize that governments do have an ultimate responsibility.  Governments have that responsibility for natural disasters, such as tsunamis.  Governments also have that responsibility for other industrial infrastructure.  The government responsibility has been recognized in actions following large industrial accidents and in compensation schemes for other industries.

The Nuclear Energy Institute and the American Nuclear Society have published good accounts of the provisions of the Price-Anderson Act, which is the US nuclear liability law, and give some examples of other industries that have similar liability limits.  The World Nuclear Association has a comprehensive piece covering the different international liability regimes (as well as some of the national ones).  I commend all 3 for further reading:

• NEI Fact Sheet on the Price-Anderson Act
• ANS Background Paper on the Price-Anderson Act
• WNA Information Paper on Liability for Nuclear Damage

***

The Nuclear Renaissance:

Putting it in Perspective

I think everyone has a tendency to try to extrapolate from limited information.  One reactor order equals a renaissance, and one shutdown shows that nuclear power is on its deathbed.  The truth, as usual, is much more complicated than either extreme, so I was very gratified to read a piece by Richard Myers of the Nuclear Energy Institute on the Intelligent Utility website. 

Richard makes several points.  Perhaps the most important among them is that the announcements of shutdowns this year mainly represent anomalies.  In particular, 3 of the 4 units (2 at San Onofre and 1 at Crystal River) and are due to steam generator replacements gone wrong.  He points out that this should be viewed against a backdrop of 110 steam generator replacements, 57 of them in the United States.  Only one, Kewaunee, was the victim of market conditions.  It is indeed possible that a few other plants, particularly older, smaller, single units in merchant markets, might also be vulnerable, but just because 4 units close in one year, it does not mean that this is a trend.

Another point Richard makes is one that I hadn't previously thought much about.  He observes that estimates suggest that approximately 100 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity will be retired this decade, primarily because it does not make economic sense to install the pollution control technology required by more stringent environmental standards.  This is approximately 10 percent of installed capacity, and demonstrates some of the pressures the entire utility industry is facing.

He also contrasts the shutdowns to the new builds.  In addition to the 4 units under construction in Georgia and South Carolina, TVA is also completing work on the long-stalled Watts Bar station.  Even more important, dozens of other reactors are under construction or being planned around the globe.  And I might add, some of them are in countries just entering the nuclear power arena.  As Richard points out, "The nuclear energy industry is a global enterprise with a global supply chain. It would be a mistake to gauge its health by taking a snapshot of one country at a single point in time."

Richard points out that much of what we are seeing today is a function of the economic turn down coupled with the currently low price of natural gas. 

Discussions of the surge in wind or solar power stations should be viewed with the same caution.  It is easy to achieve large percentages of growth when starting from a low level.  It is much harder to sustain the same rate of growth when the base level is higher or when other conditions change.

I always like to cite the Yogi Berra quote that it is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.  (Note:  I've also seen this quote attributed to Niels Bohr and a lot of other people.)  In this case, it is very true.

***

Nuclear Power and the Press:

Getting it Right vs. Making a Splash

Last year (actually a couple of months ago), someone shared an article on a Columbia Journalism Review critique of an Associated Press article on possible cancer risks from Fukushima. The review points out that the article gets the facts right, but spins the message. For example, the title of the article is "Future cancers from Fukushima plant may be hidden." The first line of the article says, "Even if the worst nuclear accident in 25 years leads to many people developing cancer, we may never find out."

So, not only may people get cancer from Fukushima, we won't even know they are getting cancer from Fukushima. Scary, right? The CJR review continues by saying that is just the point. The article itself refutes the title, citing one expert saying, "The cancer risk may be absent...," another as saying that the 2 million residents of Fukushima Prefecture probably got too little radiation to have a noticeable effect on cancer rates, and yet a third who said that, from what he'd seen, nobody in Fukushima except for some plant workers has been exposed to harmful levels of radiation.

OK, I'm cherry picking here, too, as several quotes talk about risk levels too small to detect--and that is where the authors have picked up their headline. However, my very point is that the headline and the lead-in to the article don't promote the idea that the cancer risk may be very low or even non-existent. Rather, they just say it will be "hidden." That actually sounds more ominous than a specific, but small, number. By contrast, as I read the quotes, I would probably have titled the article "Few if any cancers expected from Fukushima accident." But that wouldn't sell newspapers. And that is probably why I went into engineering, and not journalism.

But the story reminded me of several other news items I'd come across in the same vein--that is, articles that slant the coverage in one way or another. The Nuclear Energy Institute did a great analysis of a series in the Associated Press a few months ago on safety at US nuclear power plants. (It should be noted that the CJR, at NEI's request, looked into that series. While it largely agreed with NEI's criticism of the reporting, it also critiqued NEI's response.)

Some more specific examples, especially of headlines, are also of interest. For example, Reuters came out with a story at around that same time on the post-Fukushima review of the nuclear reactors in France. The title of the Reuters article was "France needs to upgrade all nuclear reactors." The first paragraph of the article states that the head of the French nuclear safety agency [IRSN] said that France "needs to upgrade the protection of vital functions in all its nuclear reactors to avoid a disaster in the event of a natural calamity," but goes on to say--in that first paragraph--that there is no need to close any plants. Other media that picked up this story entitled it "Are all of France's nuclear power plants unsafe?" and in their first paragraphs, stated (without citing a source) that French nuclear power plants are "unsafe and need a massive overhaul."

For the final example I want to highlight today, it is Reuters that goes for the sensational title. In this case, it is a report on the release of a draft of the International Energy Agency's 2011 World Energy Outlook. The title reads "Exclusive: IEA draft: Nuclear to fall as power demand." I'd say that sounds like a prediction, right? Reading the article, we see that this was the low nuclear case, and there is a specific quote in the report that the low nuclear case is not a forecast but "is intended to illustrate what a pessimistic view of the prospects for the nuclear power industry might entail."

I also note that the IEA later slammed the press for jumping to publish its story based on a partial draft that IEA said had been revised and updated, and its own press release when the report was later published makes it clear that this was intended to illustrate the significant consequences of a major reduction in the use of nuclear energy. In fact, the primary scenario shows a significant growth in nuclear power, even with the consequences of the Fukushima accident factored in. The WEO-2011 report is available for purchase from IAE, but a very good summary has been posted on-line by the World Nuclear Association. Furthermore, in the wake of the publication of the report, the IAE has been vocal on the need for nuclear power, both in general and for specific countries such as Japan.

All the above is not intended as a rant against journalism, or against hard-hitting reporting. However, I do feel justified in complaining about one-sided reporting, or about misleading reporting. I realize that a sensational headline sells newspapers (or whatever media is being used), and that we are unlikely to see these kinds of practices ending anytime soon. Nevertheless, just as the press ideally helps keep our institutions honest, I feel a duty to call the press out when it is less than completely honest.

***