Beyond Nuclear International

Cracked and dangerous reactor should be ‘autopsied’ as part of decommissioning

By Linda Pentz Gunter

Sometimes good things happen. Or at least the right thing. Sometimes we win one.

Last May, Entergy Corporation, the owner of the Palisades single unit nuclear power plant in Covert, Michigan, announced it was closing the reactor for good. This was a huge relief because Palisades was — and is —arguably the most dangerously degraded reactor in the United States.

At 51, the Palisades reactor was having more than a mid-life crisis. It was in possession of the most embrittled reactor pressure vessel in the country; it had a severely degraded reactor lid; and its steam generators were worn out — all key safety components.

As my Beyond Nuclear colleague, Kevin Kamps, who’s from Michigan said, “we are thankful that this reactor has indeed been shut down before it melted down.”

But there was a wrinkle. The reactor was sold to Holtec, a notorious US company with a spotty track record, which has been buying up reactors in order to decommission them. It has already faced a number of accusations over its decommissioning procedures at the closed Oyster Creek reactor site in New Jersey.

However, when the Biden administration started dangling $6 billion in funding via the Civil Nuclear Credit program in front of struggling reactor owners — in an effort to keep nuclear power plants running —Holtec made a grab for a share of the handout.

Luckily, there was a problem. Holtec does not have an operating license for Palisades. Nor has it ever operated a nuclear reactor so another company would need to be found to do that. The reactor was out of fuel. And of course there were all those technical and safety problems that would have to be addressed and, presumably, paid for.

Late last week, the US Department of Energy turned down Holtec’s request for funding from the Civil Nuclear Credit program, which would potentially have given the green light to Holtec to reopen Palisades.

Why is the US government still pouring tax dollars into SMRs?

By Linda Pentz Gunter

Among the myriad problems of the ever-promised-but-never-quite-here Small Modular Reactors (SMR)—aside from the fact that there is no economic rationale or established demand for ordering them — is access to the fuel most of the models would require.

With the exception of the NuScale reactor design, which is based on the traditional light water reactor, many of the remaining American SMRs on the drawing board would use High Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU) fuel, something only Russia commercially manufactures currently. (The “low enriched” in the name is misleading as the uranium is actually enriched to close to 20% which borders on weapons-usable.)

On the one hand, the US and European Union countries appear to have no “energy security” concerns about continuing to import raw uranium and nuclear fuel from an increasingly hostile Russia already at war in Ukraine amid tightening fuel embargoes. 

On the other hand, the need to import HALEU from Russia has suddenly prompted an attack of conscience in at least one quarter. 

“We didn’t have a fuel problem until a few months ago,” Jeff Navin, director of external affairs of the Bill Gates owned company, TerraPower, told Reuters. “After the invasion of Ukraine, we were not comfortable doing business with Russia.”

Before the invasion, Russia was in the habit of exiling, imprisoning, poisoning and assassinating its detractors, including Russian journalists. But that, apparently, was no deterrent to Terrapower and others.

John Kerry uses last-chance climate summit to tout nuclear power

By Linda Pentz Gunter

“Russia’s seizure earlier this year of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy facility is shining a new light on the safety and security risks of the atomic export policies of the United States and other technologically advanced countries,” began a promising November 8 article in Roll Call.

However, that light seems to have blinded those in power to any common sense.

What has the alarm over the vulnerabilities of Ukraine’s reactors caught in a war zone actually taught any of them? Let’s start with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“The problem is not nuclear energy,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi told the BBC recently. Nuclear power, Grossi said,“can provide a safe, clean source of energy and this is why many countries in Africa and in other places are turning to nuclear.” It’s just war that’s the trouble, Grossi said.

That’s like the gun lobby claiming it’s bad guys, not guns, that do the killing. Sorry, but no. Bad guys without guns can’t shoot people. Broken solar panels and fallen wind turbines can’t release massive amounts of radioactivity. The problem here very definitely IS nuclear energy. Period.

The IAEA position isn’t disingenuous of course. It’s a necessity borne of the agency’s massive conflict of interest, bound, as it is, to further and expand the use of nuclear power across the world. And then enforce safety at plants that are inherently dangerous.

“You will see that nuclear energy has a really solid, very consistent safety record,” said Grossi as the COP27 climate summit got underway in Egypt.

Except of course when there is a war, a prolonged loss of power, a natural disaster, a major human error or a catastrophic technical failure. Then, all of a sudden, having nuclear power plants is, according to Grossi, “playing with fire.”

Poland picks nuclear power that energy agency says is “stagnating or in decline”

By Linda Pentz Gunter

Congratulations must go to Poland — and to US vice president, Kamala Harris, and US energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm for brokering the deal — for its commitment to purchase a triad of American nuclear lemons.

With breathtaking myopia, the Polish government has signed a deal to partner with the US company, Westinghouse, in the construction of three nuclear reactors in Poland.

Apparently, everyone concerned is happy to ignore the fact that Westinghouse was bankrupted by its disastrous nuclear projects in South Carolina and Georgia. The former was canceled mid-construction and the latter, at Plant Vogtle, is now years behind schedule and well beyond its originally predicted 2016 start-up date, with ever-ballooning cost over-runs that have now topped $30 billion.

Also overlooked was that former Westinghouse Electric Company Senior Vice President, Jeffrey A. Benjamin, was charged with 16 felony counts including conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, and causing a publicly-traded company to keep a false record, over the company’s handling of its now canceled V.C. Summer 2-reactor project in South Carolina.

The official reason that long-shelved plans to build nuclear reactors were suddenly revived is that the war in Ukraine has caused energy shortages in heavily fossil fuel-dependent Poland. But, tellingly, another reason given was Poland’s “lack of immediate renewable substitutes”.

Like France with its nuclear power monopoly, Poland’s reliance on coal and gas stifled renewable energy development. Now there is nowhere else to turn. France is similarly stranded and is importing fossil fuel energy and even reopening closed coal plants. 

The backward turn by France in climate mitigation was effectively caused by prioritizing nuclear power for so many decades. Added to that, its aging nuclear reactor fleet is now breaking down with remarkable alacrity — at various times recently more than half of all French reactors have been out of operation. It’s a perfect demonstration of why the nuclear choice is a rash and unreliable one, even without addressing all the inherent dangers and waste issues.