EPA's New Rule and Nuclear Power:

Another Renaissance?

It's been a big week.  In France, the world celebrated the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.  I heard one report call it one of the most historic wars in the history of the world.  And in the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its new rules for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.

I am not particularly trying to draw any connections between the two events (although I am sure that some will say the EPA rules are an epic war on coal!).  I just mention this because, with D-Day being celebrated this week, it was a little hard for me to start by saying the biggest news was the EPA announcement.  It is the event of the day that is likely to have the most impact on the future, just as D-Day had a profound effect on the course of history in its time..  Well, I suppose there's my parallel.

To get serious, the pundits are now lining up to predict what effect the rules are going to have--on the coal industry, on renewables, on natural gas, and on nuclear power.  I personally think there is still a lot uncertainty about this whole initiative.  Will Congress find a way to undercut it?  Will there be legal challenges?  What will happen if the next Administration opposes it?

And even if it succeeds, it pointedly does not spell out a single, uniform solution.  It does not follow the path of some states have adopted in the past by mandating a percentage of renewables (or any other energy source).  It merely spells out the carbon dioxide reduction goals and identifies several possible approaches to reaching those goals.

In that sense, it doesn't mandate--or handicap--either renewable energy sources or nuclear power.  This looks like it should be a good thing for nuclear power.  We have just been going through a bleak period where we have seen some plant closures spurred by a flawed marketplace, and have heard warnings that there could be more such closures.  There have been calls to fix that marketplace.  This EPA rule doesn't directly do that, but it may create incentives to modify the marketplace rules in order to create a more level playing field for all clean energy sources. 

At a minimum, it should help halt the premature closures of the current fleet of nuclear power plants.  The longer-term impacts are more difficult to project.  It should encourage the completion of the current nuclear power plant construction projects, and it may revive some that are on the books that have stalled in recent years.  It could even spur the initiation of some new projects, although that is less certain.  It will probably give at least some encouragement to advanced reactor development plans.  However, realistically, the goals in the EPA plan are relatively short term, so designs that are not yet ready for prime time may not help meet the goals.

On the other hand, one prominent point that has been made about the EPA goals is that they still fall short of US commitments to the global community for greenhouse gas reductions, specifically, the broader targets of the 2009 United National Copenhagen Accord.  Therefore, if this is viewed as a first step, and if even more stringent goals are expected to follow, the incentive to develop new designs could be very strong.

As is often the case with government rules and regulations, the landscape is very complex.  There are a lot of interacting factors.  There are a lot of special interests who are going to weigh in heavily on this.  We already see the coal lobby lining up.  And although this rule is very favorable for renewable energy, we already see complaints that it has the fingerprints of the nuclear lobby on it.

Realistically, the most reliable predictions are the nearest-term ones, and the primary near-term prediction for nuclear power is that the rule will help stave off the threat of closures of operating plants.  This rule has the potential to set the stage for longer-term R&D as well--for a variety of energy sources, including clean coal, renewables, and advanced nuclear power.  But a lot of things have to happen before we are sure of just how much this rule may help longer-term projects.  It is a bit too early to break out the champagne.  But perhaps we can put it in the frig to chill.

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Lessons from the VA:

A Reminder for the Nuclear Community

I hesitate a little to talk about the recent revelations from the Department of Veterans Affairs of apparent widespread falsification of records of patient waiting times.  There is still much we don't know about what happened and where the blame should be assigned.

However, as the story has unfolded in the past few days, I have been reflecting on nuclear safety culture and how it requires constant vigilance to maintain the standards we set to assure the safe operation of nuclear power plants.  I think it is timely to say a few things that are already apparent.  

In the nuclear community, we have established a principle that safety is paramount.  Further, we have realized that everyone has a stake in ensuring safety, that ensuring safety requires adherence to the rules and procedures, and that ensuring safety requires the willingness to stand up when necessary and identify when rules and procedures aren't being followed.

Of course, as everyone knows, the understanding of what is required to ensure safety developed in response to instances where things went wrong because someone fabricated a maintenance report, or ignored a critical step in a procedure, or failed in some other way to adhere to the highest standards.  And as we also know, it is very easy to "fall off the wagon."  But overall, the nuclear industry has established and maintained high standards.

Furthermore, management has learned that they get the performance they ask for, whether they ask explicitly or implicitly.  The nuclear industry has made great strides in creating an environment where, most of the time, employees feel free to report problems.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that other industries and other organizations need some of the same kinds of standards.  Whatever we learn from the VA fiasco in the future, it is already clear that staff and management were responding to a short-sighted focus on performance statistics and paying insufficient attention to other signals.  If it turns out that the problem was that the organization didn't have sufficient funding, staffing, and facilities in the first place, then what has happened is all the more tragic.

Whatever the outcome of this situation, I hope that the VA will look to the nuclear community for examples of how to create a culture where employees feel free to bring problems to the attention of management.  In the meantime, I hope the nuclear community will look at this example and reinforce their efforts to sustain that culture.

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Women and Nuclear:

The More Things Change

Maria Korsnick

Sarah Kovaleski

I hadn't expected to be writing about women in the nuclear field twice in one month, but shortly after I reported on historic election at the American Nuclear Society, where 3 out of 4 new board members elected were women, two articles on women in the nuclear industry were in the news in the past week.

These stories report on progress in the utility sector.  One is an interview on NPR with Maria Korsnick, the first woman in the US to become a Chief Nuclear Officer (at Exelon), and the other is a personal reflection by Sarah Kovaleski, the first woman at Ameren Missouri to hold the position of Director of Engineering Design.

The first message from these two stories being reported so closely together and so soon after the ANS election is that things really are changing.  It's good to see that women are being recognized more and more, both by management and by their peers, and I congratulate both these women.

The other message that I get from these two stories is that some of the changes are taking far longer than I had expected.  Since I entered the nuclear field well before these two women, I am almost surprised to hear them report some of the same things I experienced:  being the only woman in a group; awkward moments over matters of protocol, like dress code and shaking hands; a lack of ladies rooms; etc.

Most striking is the fact that both articles report that there are nine men to every woman in the industry.  I think that the trend is changing and that, as the recent grads become a larger fraction of the workforce, we will see the disparity reduced.  In the meantime, for those who do not realize what the challenges that women still face in the engineering world, it is instructive to read these two reports.

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Food Irradiation:

Slow Progress

 When I was president of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) in 2001-2, I got interested in food irradiation.  I knew that unaged, unpasteurized cheeses, which I had enjoyed on trips to Europe, were not permitted for sale or distribution in the United States because of concerns about listeria, a bacteria that can be harmful, particularly to pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems.  I launched an effort to try to get temporary, one-time approval to irradiate the cheese to serve at a reception at an ANS conference, hoping that might ultimately lead to full approval for such products.

That effort was ultimately unsuccessful, but I have continued to monitor the status of food irradiation from time to time.

Therefore, I was very interested in recent news that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month approved the use of irradiation for crustaceans (shrimp, lobster and crabs).  As a side note, given last winter's cold weather has apparently decimated the supply of crabs in the Chesapeake Bay, I anticipate that a lot of the crabs in this area will come from elsewhere, likely making this FDA approval particularly timely for the Washington-Baltimore area.

So, the approval for irradiation of shellfish was the good news.  But, as a recent article on food irradiation in the Washington Post points out, it took 13 years to get that approval, and the last approval before that, for spinach and iceberg lettuce in 2008, took nearly 10 years.  That's the bad news.  Or at least some of the bad news.

The other bad news is the continuing efforts of small groups to fight the further use of food irradiation.  Their arguments are mostly hypothetical, minor, preventable, inconsistent, or just plain wrong.  Furthermore, a lot of the arguments against food irradiation are similar to arguments against the pasteurization of milk.  I wondered if there might be any messages in the story of how pasteurization came to be accepted.  Looking at this history, it took a combination of the endorsement by groups like the American Medical Association, an unfortunate typhoid epidemic in New York that killed thousands, and several decades.

While I certainly hope that it will not take such a tragedy to gain acceptance for food irradiation, the public should realize that, in fact, there have been illnesses and deaths from food contamination that would have been prevented had the food been irradiated.  In fact, the last large food poisoning incident occurred less than a year ago and sickened over 600 people. 

The other thing I learned from the Washington Post article was how very confusing and illogical our food laws are.  For example, the rules for indicating that a food has been irradiated (using the radura symbol shown at the left) are different for single food items, like shrimp, and for packaged food products, like frozen dinners.  Irradiation is treated as a food additive, when it is really a process, like canning or freezing, and not an additive at all.  Furthermore, it is considered an adulterant, which subjects it to the case-by-case approval process that has resulted in such long delays for approval.  This should be contrasted with the case for salt, for example, which is in the class of foods that are "generally regarded as safe."  As a result, salt can be used unlimited amounts in any food product, even though we know today that large amounts of salt are harmful to the health of a significant fraction of the population.

On a personal level, perhaps the most enjoyable fact I learned from the Washington Post article was that irradiated ground beef is available on the retail consumer market.  Only one supermarket chain was mentioned in the article, Wegman's.  Two mail-order providers are also mentioned, Schwan's Home Service and Omaha Steaks.  Although Wegman's is not a national chain, there happens to be one not too far from us, so on a recent foray, we picked up a package to sample.  It was clearly marked, but the store gave no indication of why they were selling it.

The Wegman's blog, however, provides just the kind of rationale that made me interested in irradiated cheese.  The blog has a very clear and open explanation of why Wegman's chose to sell irradiated ground beef--recommendations for food safety call for cooking hamburger to 160 degrees F, but a lot of their customers prefer a rarer and juicier burger.  (They sell unirradiated ground beef as well, so there is freedom of choice.)  While the Wegman's blog doesn't mention it, the reason they sell irradiated ground beef and not irradiated whole cuts of beef is that the bacterial contamination is limited to the surface of whole cuts of meat.  For ground beef, any contamination is spread throughout the product.  Hence, it must be heated to the center to destroy any bacteria. 

It struck me that this argument is very much in line with my interest in irradiated cheese.  It allows customers to enjoy a product with less taste-changing processing and greater safety.  What's not to like? 

Now that we've discovered a source, it looks like we will be able to enjoy rare, irradiated hamburger in our home.  Maybe there is hope yet for irradiated cheese.  I only hope I don't have to wait another 20 years for that.

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Ukraine, Russia, and Nuclear Power:

Complicated Connections

I don't usually comment in this blog on current events, particularly those involving interactions between countries on other continents.  However, I can't help but notice how much energy in general, and nuclear power in particular, is intertwined with recent Russian actions in Ukraine.

Clearly, natural gas is a major issue in the conflict.  Crimea, which Russia has taken over, has most of Ukraine's natural gas and oil reserves.  But of even more importance, some of Russia's pipelines to Europe run through Ukraine.  The combination clearly puts Russia in a very controlling position.  The European nations, quite understandably, are reluctant to try to oppose Russia, which could easily use its gas supplies to hold them hostage.

This should be a vivid lesson to the rest of the world, whenever nations are tempted to narrow their energy sources to the options that are seemingly the cheapest or easiest.

What is most interesting to me is the role that nuclear power plays in this conflict.  Jim Conca, who blogs at Forbes, has produced a very thorough discussion of the role that nuclear power--or the lack thereof--is playing in this conflict.  In particular, he highlights the impacts of Germany's shutdown of a number of their plants, and the planned shutdown of more.  He notes that the shutdowns of Germany's nuclear fleet have increased their dependence on Russian gas, and therefore, limit their options.

Could this crisis become severe enough to cause Germany to back off, even temporarily, on their plans?  I don't know.  I would hope that ideology would give way to reason when they are confronted with what could become a serious threat to the continent.

Could this crisis spur new nuclear development elsewhere in Europe?  Possibly, but new nuclear power plants are a long-term proposition.  They may be part of a good plan to prevent Russia from ever having the power to repeat such an exercise, but they will have no impact for many years.

The sad truth is that there is no quick solution to replacing Europe's energy supplies.  People look to the new gas discoveries here in the United States, but developing those fields will take time as well.  This could, however, be part of a longer-term solution.

In the meantime, we in the US should continue to seek diversity in our energy supply.

Jim's article points out that Russia also wields a big stick in the nuclear area.  They are aggressively marketing their reactor technology, which will make some countries dependent upon them for reactor services.  For countries already dependent on Russia for gas, this is double jeopardy.  With other countries marketing nuclear technology aggressively as well, Russia does have competition in this arena, with or without the US.  Nevertheless, it is clear that even purely peaceful nuclear technology could become an element in international diplomacy, if it hasn't already attained that status.

The situation in the Ukraine is also likely to affect a lot of unrelated activities.  Among them could be the ongoing effort to build a new, more permanent cover for the Chernobyl reactor.  It is not clear yet whether and how this will be affected, but military activity could well distract current efforts. 

Finally, some have expressed concerns about possible military activities around Ukraine's nuclear power plants.  I hope for many reasons that this conflict can be defused before it reaches such serious proportions, but would find it very difficult to believe that Russia would turn a nuclear power plant into a weapon so close to their own border.  After all, they have the experience of Chernobyl.
However, we all are aware of the potential for unintended events in wartime situations.  Among the problems that Ukraine--and its friends--will have to face should the situation escalate will be arranging for defensive measures around their nuclear plants.  In today's climate, where we have considered terrorist threats to nuclear power plants, this is probably not as much of a change as it might have been prior to 9/11.  Nevertheless, even without a direct attack on a nuclear power plant, a prolonged loss of outside power could be a threat, so such possibilities will have to be considered.

So, for many reasons, I hope that this current situation can be resolved and defused.

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Women and Nuclear:

Maybe We Have Come A Long Way!

I was very interested to see the results of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) election for officers and Board members, which were just announced today.  Three out of the four U.S. At-Large Directors elected to the ANS Board are women!  (They are Katherin Goluoglu, Gale Hauck, and Sandra Sloan.)  In fact, the non-U.S. At-Large Director, Sandra Dulla, is also a woman, so 4 out of the 5 new Board members are women. 

I may be dating myself, but when I first got involved with ANS, women in the Society were few and far between, and women in governance were even rarer.  In fact, the first time I ran for the ANS Board of Directors, the late Gail de Planque, who was one of the few women who had served on the Board to that time, was very upset when she saw that I was one of two women on the ballot.  Her thinking was that the membership might vote for one woman, but never two, so we might end up splitting the vote and both losing.  I'm happy to report that she was wrong.  It was probably one of the few times she was wrong, but both the other woman and I were elected.

But wait. There's more.  The incoming president, Mikey Brady Raap (shown on the left), is a woman, and Margaret Harding has just been selected to fill the remaining term of the treasurer following the recent unexpected death of Mike Lineberry, who had held that position.  Furthermore, two other women (Angie Howard and Heather MacLean Chichester) continue as members of the Board, making a total of 8 women out of 20 positions (and 2 of the 4 executive committee positions).


My point in making note of these election results is not intended to imply that a Board that is almost half women is going to be "better."  The ANS membership is fortunate in that we always have a strong slate of candidates, and the real pity is that we can't elect them all.  My point is a very personal reaction, perhaps reflecting on my conversation so many years ago with Gail de Planque, when I don't think either of us would have envisioned an election result like the one we saw from ANS today.

So, congratulations to the newly elected women, and ALSO to the newly elected men, and best wishes to both the new and continuing Board members as they work to lead the ANS in the year ahead.  

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More NIMBYism:

My Livelihood, but Not My Backyard!

I am beginning to see more and more instances of NIMBYism (NIMBY = Not in My Backyard).  It's an observation I made before, but once again, what I am seeing is not limited to nuclear power.  Far from it.  Some of the recent objections, in fact, make it clear that the concerns aren't even necessarily about safety and clean air.

The most recent instances that have popped up in my news sources are particularly interesting, as one involves Japan, where much of the population now opposes nuclear power, and another comes from Texas and has a very interesting twist. 

Someone brought to my attention an article in a Japanese newspaper saying that the local population in an area targeted for the installation of a solar power plant is objecting on the grounds that this is a resort area and the plant will "wreck the scenery."   The article discusses how the local government is trying to derail the plan, and also mentions other places in Japan where the local population is objecting to planned solar installations.  This, despite the fact that much of the Japanese population is against the restart of the nuclear power plants and believes that renewable energy sources can be built to replace the lost power. 

This concern by the local population mirrors a similar situation in California a couple of months ago, where the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power plans to put 1 million photovoltaic panels on land they own a few miles from the infamous World War II Manzanar Japanese-American internment camp.  Japanese-American organizations and National Park Service officials have expressed concern that the installation will compromise the isolated nature of the site, which is part of the understanding of the experience of the internees that they are trying to convey.

The most interesting news item, however, was the one from Texas, where the residents of a very upscale neighborhood of multimillion dollar ranches are suing to block the construction of a water tower, to be used in part for hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking") near their neighborhood.  The tower, the lawsuit claims, "will create a constant and unbearable nuisance to those that live next to it" due to noise and traffic hazards.  What makes the suit newsworthy is the fact that one party to the suit is Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corporation and a "zealous advocate of the US shale boom" and the use of fracking!

While some of the details of the positions of the various protagonists are unclear to me (he already lives near some oil and gas wells and he claims not to object to the use of the tower for fracking operations), the fact that he is a party to the lawsuit is certainly sending a mixed message.

And these are not the only stories that have come to light of local residents objecting to new installations in their areas, even if they are in favor of the technologies and want to see them installed--somewhere else.  I still recall the fight a few years ago over the plans for a offshore wind farm opposite the Kennedy compound in Cape Cod. 

I fully realize the importance of keeping some unspoiled land, the value of preserving important parts of our historical heritage (both positive and negative), and I even understand the expectation that people who buy expensive properties have that they have a "right" to preserve what they bought.  I also understand the rights of the poor not to have all the negative parts of our infrastructure dumped on them, and of those in heavily populated areas not to have infrastructure further encroach on their limited space.

But despite all of this, everyone wants electricity on demand, 24/7 and in whatever quantities they want, and they want it at a reasonable price.  So I find myself very frustrated. 

Japan is a small, mountainous country with a high population density and a long history, so siting almost anything is bound to impact views, interfere with recreational activities, or be near populated or historical areas.  The places that have the most land available for solar or other space-intensive activities are just the places that we would like to see preserved, whether for their beauty or for their history or for the wildlife they harbor.

I sometimes wonder if all these NIMBY objections will ultimately point to an advantage of nuclear power.  Nuclear power plants require far less space than renewable power plants, and many of the advanced plants and smaller plants being contemplated today, in addition to being more passively safe, can be constructed partially or completely underground, thus further reducing their impact on the scenery.

Perhaps that is too much to hope for, but in the long run, it would be very good if people begin to realize that nothing is "free," and that we need to balance a lot of conflicting interests and requirements to develop appropriate solutions to meet our energy needs.

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