James T. Ramey:

Remembering A Nuclear Pioneer

Nearly a week ago, the news carried an obituary for one of the early commissioners of the Atomic Energy Commission, James T. Ramey. I have been surprised not to have seen more tributes to his contributions than I have so far. Perhaps I can partially make up for that now.

Jim Ramey (second from the right in the photograph above) served on the AEC for more than a decade, from 1962 to 1973, during a period when nuclear power enjoyed great popularity and there were many plans for new plants. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to know Ramey personally, as I was just beginning my career as he ended his term on the AEC, and was not yet hobnobbing with the giants of the industry. Therefore, I can't offer any personal anecdotes or reminiscences in this posting.

Nevertheless, he was one of the people I kept hearing about and hoping I would meet someday. I never did have that opportunity, but when I saw the news of his death, I had an opportunity to learn more about him. In addition to the reports in the obituaries, his passing spurred me to do a little of my own research on him, and what I've learned from all the sources combined is impressive.

I won't repeat the stories about his background covered in the link to this posting, which are impressive in their own right. However, I think the best tribute I've seen is contained in one of J. Samuel Walker's comprehensive books on the history of nuclear regulation in the United States. In particular, his book, Containing the Atom: Nuclear Regulation in a Changing Environment, 1963-1971, describes Jim Ramey as follows:

"Ramey's experience with atomic programs, along with his knowledge, energy, and commitment, made him an active and influential participant in a broad range of AEC activities. From the time he joined the Commission, he took greater sustained interest in regulatory affairs than any other commissioner. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when opposition to nuclear power was becoming increasingly visible, he did more than any of his colleagues to reach out to nuclear critics in an effort to address their concerns and find common ground. His attentiveness to regulatory issues did not mean that he had curbed his enthusiasm for rapid nuclear development; one industry official described him in 1966 as 'industry's best friend on the Commission.' Rather, it suggested that he recognized more clearly than his fellow commissioners the intimate and inseparable relationship between safety questions and industry growth. He realized that a major nuclear accident would be a severe setback to nuclear progress, but he also worried that excessive regulation or public apprehension would have a similar effect. He guarded against actions that would impose what he viewed as unnecessary burdens on the industry or raise public fears."

Having served as a senior staff member at the NRC many years later, including for 5 years as an assistant to Commissioner Kenneth C. Rogers, I can only say that Jim Ramey had great foresight. The same issues that he understood and tackled, apparently before others did, are issues that continue to be important today.

***

Comparative Energy Risks:

Risks from Severe Accidents

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has just published a new study entitled "Comparing Nuclear Accident Risks with Those from Other Energy Sources." The full report can be downloaded from the NEA's list of recent publications. It provides a very useful summary of trends in performance indicators and in the predicted severe accident risk from nuclear power operations. However, the most interesting section for most people will be the comparative analysis of the deaths from severe accident risks for different energy technologies.

The NEA report draws on a collection of data from the Paul Scherrer Institute, a research center with in Switzerland that has a strong background in the energy sciences.

The key comparative information is contained in the table and figures on pages 35 and 36. It should be noted that the table (shown below) deals only with immediate fatalities. For nuclear power, of course, immediate fatalities do not provide a complete picture of the accident consequences. The NEA report addresses this issue in the narrative analysis on the subsequent pages, using some conservative estimates for the number of potential latent fatalities. In the narrative analysis, the NEA report also attempts to discuss latent effects of other energy sources, such as effects due to fine particulate emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants.
While it would have been nice to see some of the latent fatality data incorporated into the table as well, I do recognize the difficulties. The report does try to make some of these comparisons in the figures, as well as in the discussion. However, I am quite sure that many people won't read beyond the table.

Another notable observation from the data is the far different safety performance between OECD countries and non-OECD countries for most of the energy technologies. Although I am sure a country-by-country comparison would show a more complex picture (i.e., some of the non-OECD countries may have better safety statistics than some OECD countries), the data clearly show that for coal, oil, and hydropower, the performance of the non-OECD countries as a group seriously lags that of the OECD countries as a group. In the case of coal, they show that China has an even more dismal record than the non-OECD countries as a group.

With only one "severe" nuclear accident (the definition of a severe accident for this report is one with more than 5 fatalities) in the mix, one cannot make any direct comparisons. However, for me, it reinforces a concern that the entry of new countries into the sphere of nuclear power operators is not an unmixed blessing. As noted above, there are surely some non-OECD countries with high standards and good safety records in other areas, and these countries can undoubtedly develop a nuclear safety program to the high standards necessary for this technology. But there are other countries where the situation is very different. The supplier countries, together with the International Atomic Energy Agency, need to find a way to assure that the kinds of differences we see between OECD and non-OECD countries for coal, oil and hydro do not emerge for nuclear.

***

Responding to Nuclear Myths:

John Ritch Takes on the "Red Herrings"

Nuclear Energy Insider recently published an excellent synopsis of a speech given by John Ritch that I thought merited mention here. John, the Director General of the World Nuclear Association, spoke at the graduation ceremony of the Sixth Annual Summer Institute of the World Nuclear University on August 14 in Oxford, England.

John, who has had a distinguished career in Washington, DC and as the US ambassador to the United Nations organizations in Vienna, Austria--among them, the International Atomic Energy Agency--is an outstanding speaker, so it is no surprise that the excerpts of his speech published in the Nuclear Energy Insider hit the key issues head-on.

John terms the issues "red herrings." For readers who may not be familiar with idiomatic American speech, a red herring is a diversionary issue. John comments that "it sometimes seems that nuclear professionals are condemned to swim in a sea of these fish."

In his speech, John identifies 6 such issues:

1. Proliferation: He makes several points about the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the role he sees that it has had in maintaining a generally stable nuclear weapons situation. He acknowledges the remaining issues, but the key point he makes, in my opinion, is that "these issues would exist with or without the global renaissance in peaceful nuclear power."

2. Operational Safety: Here, John cites the statistics, highlighting the 14,100+ years of reactor operating experience in the world today.

3. Affordability: John takes on the claim the claims that nuclear power is heavily subsidized by the government, noting that research support is not an operational subsidy, and pointing out that the fee required from operators for the loan guarantees actually bring revenues into the government. He acknowledges, however, that industry faces a challenge to reduce the capital costs of new nuclear power.

4. Waste: After noting the small volume of nuclear waste, he points out that this is a government problem, and that several governments--he mentions Finland, Sweden and Russia, among others--have made strides in addressing the issue.

5. Terrorism: He feels concerns have been exaggerated, and that any radiological device is likely to come from a source such as a hospital rather than from a nuclear power facility.

6. New Red Herrings: He cites 3--shortages of fuel, people, and key equipment. (In my view, this really makes 8 red herrings--and I could probably add a few more that I know of--but this is a very slight quibble.) John asserts that all 3 are not intractable problems--a combination of new ore discoveries and mining techniques, reprocessing, breeders reactors and the thorium fuel cycle will assure ample and affordable fuel supplies for a long time; and supply and demand will assure that the people and the manufacturing facilities will grow to meet the emerging needs.

The above provides only excerpts of the excerpts from the Nuclear Energy Insider, so John undoubtedly fleshed out some of these areas more than I am able to do here. I myself would have liked to see what else he had to say in several of these areas, particularly on terrorism. However, even in abbreviated form, his speech provides a number of points that are useful to keep in mind when you find yourself swimming in a sea of red herrings.



***

When the Lights go Out:

Powerless!

A couple of weeks ago, the Washington area had what I hope is a wake-up call on the importance of a reliable supply of electricity in our lives today.

As was widely reported, a severe thunderstorm left a widespread power outage in its wake, and the ensuing recovery was slow. I myself was without electricity for about 50 hours--and some of the aftermath of the outage lingered several weeks longer, which is why I haven't written about this sooner. In any event, it reminded me of how totally dependent we are on electricity today, as if I needed such a reminder.

Of course, I hasten to say that this particular outage was not a problem of insufficient or intermittent supply, so some might say that it is not relevant to compare this situation to what might happen if some of our reliable baseload power sources are replaced by intermittent ones. Nevertheless, I think it is relevant to the degree that I could see how rapidly life deteriorated without electricity.

It may take a day or two for food in the refrigerator and freezer to spoil, but modern communications, from the humble telephone to the computer, all require electricity, so those were gone immediately. And the backup cellphone is only good until it needs to be recharged. Thank goodness I had a neighbor who needed a backup generator--for their tropical fish! (Hence the illustration for this posting.)

Others might say that human beings once lived comfortably without electricity, so we should be able to endure occasional outages. Or, that billions of people in the world still live without electricity, or with inadequate and unreliable electricity. True, but shouldn't our expectations be higher--for everyone?

The truth is that in the United States, just about everything in our lives is now dependent on electricity. Even the gas stove has an electric starter. Of course, you can still use a backup, but the assumption clearly is that we will have electricity 24/7. Or else, why has everything electronic that we own been designed with a clock that needs to be reset every time the power flickers?!

Of course, even with a generally reliable energy supply, we are still subject to the whims of nature, as the recent thunderstorm so spectacularly demonstrated. But that was (where I live, at least) once in over 30 years. This storm more than convinced me that I would not want this to happen--even for a couple of hours--every time the wind stopped blowing or every time we had a couple of days of heavy cloud cover.

Don't get me wrong. I am not against renewables. I think they have a place. My point is that every energy source has pluses and minuses. The intermittent nature of renewables is, in my view, a very big minus for those sources. So far, all the solutions I have seen will probably increase the cost of renewables to unacceptable levels, and will probably undercut the environmental benefits when you consider the environmental footprint of the backup sources. Baseload sources, including nuclear power, also have both pluses and minuses. However, on the scale of availability and reliability, there is no contest.

I may be spoiled by the fact that I've enjoyed the benefits of electricity, but I don't think it's wrong to want those benefits. After all, over time, hasn't technology, from the invention of the wheel onwards, lifted all of us from a world where most human beings lived short and brutal lives?

I just hope all the Washingtonians who were without power for days this summer remember this when it is time to make decisions that involve future electricity supplies.

***

New Reactor Designs:

Comparative Assessments

With the proliferation of possible new reactor design concepts bombarding us recently, it is encouraging to see some efforts starting that can help us compare the claims of the competing ideas on similar grounds. The first such effort to come to my attention is a recent article in IEEE Spectrum. Amusingly, the article is titled "Reactors Redux" in the hard copy of the journal, and "Nuclear Reactor Renaissance" on the Internet.

Perhaps I've missed some other comparative assessments, but most of what I have seen to date are claims by the proponents of each individual technology. If I have seen independent analyses at all, they have been targeted toward a particular technology, and did not provide a sense of where that technology stood with respect to others. Since some of the new design concepts are very different from current operating nuclear power plants, it is really helpful to have assessments that compare technologies on more or less equal terms.

The IEEE Spectrum article is at least a start in the right direction. Unfortunately, it doesn't go as far as I would have liked. And quite a few other people share that view, judging by the comments. A more serious flaw, in my view, is that the article does not provide a clear rationale for why they picked the designs they picked. Did they judge these to be the best of the crop? Were these the ones for which they had the most information? It makes a difference. The comments help in identifying some of the other potential options.

One could also argue that this article does not do an in-depth assessment of every one of the technologies. Clearly, it would not be sufficient to make a decision among the options, but that was not its purpose. It does help the reader understand in general terms some of the major issues associated with each technology, including the very important issue of its status of development.

I am aware that there are now other such efforts underway, and the coming months should provide us more and better comparisons between competing technologies. In particular, I know that Ed Kee of NERA Economic Consulting is presently starting a study that should greatly exceed the scope of the IEEE Spectrum article--covering more designs and more issues at greater depth. That study should be a great contribution to the dialogue. There will hopefully also be other articles in general technical publications in the future.

Until then, this article at least starts to put things in perspective for those of us with insufficient time or energy to have probed the details for ourselves.

***

A Highway and a Power Line:

The Difference is in Your Perspective

Dan Yurman, the publisher of the excellent nuclear blog, Idaho Samizdat, recently posted a message to a Social Media group mentioning how 1970s environmental groups in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, led the fight to stop the development of major new highways and road improvements. His point was that the environmentalists did so in an effort to stop suburban growth, loss of farmland and wildlife habitat, etc., but that the actual outcome was that the growth occurred anyway and that the main outcome was Washington's well-known impossible traffic jams.

His mention of the story, however, reminded me of another point, one based on a personal memory. I had recently moved to the Washington area then (and for those of you who are doing the math, I must have been 5 years old at the time!), and was living in Northern Virginia. My husband, who is an IEEE member, received a notice about an IEEE local section event featuring an executive from the local utility company as a speaker. Hoping to hear about their nuclear program, I joined him at the meeting.

For reasons that are unclear to me, the MC for the event, in addition to providing the usual information about the speaker's distinguished background and career, also wanted to share with us what a good, civic-minded citizen the speaker was. What he told us was that the speaker was leading a fight against a highway that had been proposed for the area, and that we all had him to thank for the fact that the highway was not going to come through our backyards.

Now, I would not have thought very much about this at all, as I really had no opinion at all about the highway. Indeed, I would long since have forgotten the whole evening except for the fact that, when the speaker took the podium, his main message was the need for more high-power transmission lines. In fact, he spent a fair amount of time bemoaning all the misguided citizens who were fighting his company because they didn't want one of those in their backyards. For some reason, he was totally oblivious to the irony of all this, but for my husband and me, it turns out to be the only thing we remember from that evening.

The message to me is clear. We need transmission lines, we need highways, we need green space. Everything has got to go in someone's backyard. Obviously, it's not easy to strike a balance, but it does seem to me that those of us in the business of energy supply should not turn a blind eye to the needs of transportation or other essential sectors. If anything, we should be taking a lead in helping to look at the picture in the broadest possible way. I was very interested to see that this was just the conclusion that Dan came to in recounting the results of the failure to build that highway.

***

Energy Sources, Pros and Cons:

No Free Lunch

Those of us in the nuclear business figured out a long time ago that there is no such thing as a perfect energy source. While the risks and shortcomings of nuclear power seem to have gotten most of the press over the years, as other energy sources are being promoted more and more, the downsides of those sources are also beginning to emerge.

I have been collecting some of the "newer" (at least to me) concerns about non-nuclear energy sources that I've seen mentioned in the press and elsewhere, and from time to time, I will share what I've collected. This posting will provide the first installment.

I hasten to say that I have not investigated every one of these concerns in great detail. Some, it seems to me, are most likely overblown. Others may not be very serious or may be easily overcome. Still, the very fact that concerns are emerging should, I hope, demonstrate to the general public that no alternative is entirely benign.

• Environmental Impacts of Solar Arrays

I have already commented on the fact that environmentalists have expressed concern about the environmental impacts of solar arrays. The issue continues to crop up. In fact, I had a comment to a previous posting from a reader that he shares the concern about the impact of large solar arrays on the desert. I am not insensitive to this concern. I had really noted the argument because, at the time, I was surprised that environmentalists were coming out against a solar power project. The recent article explains that the environmentalists are just against large arrays. They support the idea of building rooftop solar collectors and backyard windmills.

The problem I see is that not everyone lives in a suburban neighborhood with a sun-drenched roof. We also have to meet the needs of large urban populations, people in tree-covered neighborhoods, industry, commercial buildings, etc. The proponents of roof-top collectors are silent on how to meet the needs of the entire population. In an effort, perhaps, to show they are open-minded, one of their arguments is that we shouldn't rush into building large solar arrays. We should should stick to rooftop collectors for now, and should study large arrays more before building them.

I scratch my head in puzzlement, because other projections I hear assert that we shouldn't launch new nuclear power projects because they take too long to build, and we don't have the time to wait. Hmmm....

• Manufacturing Impacts of Solar Arrays

One issue that I've personally long wondered about has also finally surfaced, and that is the possible environmental impacts of manufacturing solar cells due to the toxic chemicals involved. The article reports that there is now a citizen suit in Spokane, Washington seeking to halt the construction and start-up of a chemical plant for silicon production. The suit alleges a history of permit violations, chemical releases and accidents by the company in the past.

Now, I am not going to defend any company that violates laws. Every company should be required to meet all applicable laws and rules, especially those affecting public or worker health and safety and the environment. No one wants an industrial neighbor with a bad track record, although in this case, it was unclear whether the citizens would be satisfied with a company with a clean track record. Knowing that manufacturing solar arrays is an industrial process like any other, and that it involves toxic chemicals, it strikes me that even a solar manufacturing plant operated by a company with an impeccable record might not be a popular neighbor.

If both the manufacturing facilities and the solar arrays are potentially going to meet strong public opposition, I again wonder what realistic solution will meet public approval.

• Offshore Windmills and Marine Life

We have already heard many objections to windmills from an aesthetic perspective, and from the perspective of impacts on migrating birds. A more recent report is that the noise of offshore wind turbines poses a threat to porpoises. The article notes that there are ways to reduce the noise, but they are costly. Again, I'm no expert on the effects of noise on aquatic mammals, but I have heard enough concerns about Navy sonars and whale migrations to know that this is an issue. Nor do I have any quantification of the cost of reducing the noise to acceptable levels. The article relates to porpoises in the Baltic Sea, but one would have to assume that the concern would apply to many other locations.

• Solar Panels and Insects

Perhaps a lower level of concern is a recent report that solar panels can attract breeding water insects. The shiny black solar cells reportedly can attract water insects away from breeding areas. I am not clear on whether this is really likely to impact insect populations seriously, and whether there are any larger potential effects (mosquito control, for example) of concern. In fact, I might have thought the big problem is not the loss of insects, but perhaps reduced efficiency of the collectors if some of the surface is covered. Furthermore, in this case, there appears to be a relatively easy fix--applying white grids or other additions to the surface of the solar cells to break up the polarized reflection of the light that deludes the insects into thinking the solar cells are water and depositing their eggs there. However, such grids or other modifications come at a cost--they cover some of the solar cell surface and therefore reduce the solar energy generated by up to a couple of percent.


I report these problems not to suggest that we cannot use solar cells or offshore windmills, but rather to point out that even the sources of energy that people consider the most benign may have environmental problems, ranging from small, solvable ones to large, intractable ones.

I actually regard it as a good sign that people are thinking about these kinds of impacts now. At the very least, this recognition should help us plan for the future with a fuller understanding of the pros and cons and to make more rational decisions on what we are willing to live with. In the past, industrial developments of all kinds have often been implemented without adequate anticipation of environmental and human impacts, especially as the scale of deployment increased. If we have learned that lesson and now project and plan for such impacts in advance, be they to porpoises, or water-breeding insects, or anything else, I see that as an improvement.

Of course, there is still a chance that the concerns could stall needed progress altogether, and we could end up deferring or rejecting the tougher decisions and hope that a few solar arrays on rooftops will solve our problems. However, I am optimistic that most people, and particularly the decision makers, are beginning to realize that every source of energy has pros and cons, that no alternative is without some risk or some human or environmental impact, and that the risk of doing nothing could ultimately have far more serious impacts--on public health and safety, the environment, and the economy--than does the risk of implementing a robust mix of energy supply options. In fact, I dare to think that the growing recognition of the concerns related to the use of solar and wind technologies is beginning to put the risks and benefits of all energy technologies in perspective--and that, in turn, is continuing to raise the interest in nuclear energy for the future.

***