Beyond Nuclear International
No emergency planning zones for SMRs?
NRC commissioner warns against “flimsy” rule that could extend to current reactor fleet
By Jeff Baran
Note: Beyond Nuclear is hosting a webinar on SMRs with leading experts: M.V. Ramana, Simons Chair in Disarmament and Global Security, University of British Columbia; Kerrie Blaise, Staff Lawyer, Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA); Ed Lyman, Director of Nuclear Power Safety, Union of Concerned Scientists. The webinar is co-hosted by the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick and CELA and will include contributions from Gordon Edwards and David Lowry. The webinar takes place on October 21 at 2pm Eastern time. Click here to register. A recording of the webinar will be available on YouTube. More information on SMRs can also be found in the Beyond Nuclear pamphlet.
In a 3-1 vote by NRC Commissioners on December 17, 2019, Proposed Rule: Emergency Preparedness for Small Modular Reactors and Other New Technologies (SECY-18-0103) was accepted. The Rule would eliminate the need for Emergency Planning Zones and dedicated offsite emergency planning for Small Modular Reactors. The lone dissenting vote came from NRC Commissioner Jeff Baran. These are his comments.
For the last 40 years, NRC has required emergency planning zones, or EPZs, (Emergency Planning Zones) around nuclear power plants “to assure that prompt and effective actions can be taken to protect the public in the event of an accident.” Every one of the 96* operating large light-water reactors in the country has a plume exposure pathway EPZ that extends about 10 miles around the site with dedicated offsite radiological emergency plans and protective actions in place to avoid or reduce radiation dose to the public during an accident. An ingestion exposure pathway EPZ with a radius of 50 miles around each of these sites is designed to avoid or reduce dose from consuming food and water contaminated by a radiological release.
The EPZs and dedicated radiological emergency plans are meant to provide multiple layers of protection – or defense-in-depth – against potential radiological exposure. Other NRC requirements are focused on preventing or mitigating a radioactive release. The emergency planning regulations are there to provide another layer of defense in case a release occurs despite those safety requirements.
In other words, EPZs and radiological emergency planning are designed to address low-probability, high-consequence events. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assesses the adequacy of the offsite emergency plans, and NRC regulations require licensees to hold offsite emergency preparedness drills at each plant at least once every 2 years to practice implementing the plans.
Under this proposed rule, emergency planning for small modular reactors (SMRs) and non-light-water reactors would be flimsy by comparison. Instead of a 10-mile plume exposure pathway EPZ, these reactors would have EPZs that encompass only areas where the projected dose from “credible” accidents could exceed 1 rem. An EPZ extending only to the site boundary is explicitly permitted under this methodology.
Read MoreA bridge to nowhere
New Brunswick must reject small modular reactors
By Gordon Edwards and Susan O’Donnell
Note: Beyond Nuclear is hosting a webinar on SMRs with leading experts: M.V. Ramana, Simons Chair in Disarmament and Global Security, University of British Columbia; Kerrie Blaise, Staff Lawyer, Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA); Ed Lyman, Director of Nuclear Power Safety, Union of Concerned Scientists. The webinar is co-hosted by the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick and CELA and will include contributions from Gordon Edwards and David Lowry. The webinar takes place on October 21 at 2pm Eastern time. Click here to register. A recording of the webinar will be available on YouTube. More information on SMRs can also be found in the Beyond Nuclear pamphlet.
On June 26, the Canadian federal government ended the Environmental Assessment of a proposed radioactive waste storage facility beside Lake Huron, after Ontario Power Generation (OPG) withdrew its proposal to build it. OPG decided to terminate the project after the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, on whose unceded territory the facility would be located, voted on January 31 not to support the project, which had been under consideration for 15 years.
What to do with radioactive waste remains a significant challenge for all nuclear reactor operators, including the two new nuclear projects currently supported by NB Power and the New Brunswick government. Recently, more than 100 groups across Canada, including nine in New Brunswick, signed a letter to the federal minister of Natural Resources asking to suspend all decisions about radioactive waste disposal until Canada has a sufficient radioactive waste policy in place.
Nuclear energy produces dangerous irradiated nuclear fuel and a host of other radioactive waste materials requiring safe storage for hundreds of thousands of years. Globally, no facility for permanent safe storage of irradiated fuel has been licensed to operate, and several facilities for storing non-fuel radioactive wastes have experienced setbacks costing billions of dollars to rectify.
In New Brunswick, the proposed new reactors (so-called “small modular nuclear reactors” or SMNRs) will create irradiated fuel even more intensely radioactive per kilogram than waste currently stored at NB Power’s Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station. The non-fuel radioactive wastes will remain the responsibility of the government of New Brunswick, likely requiring the siting of a permanent radioactive waste repository somewhere in the province.
Read MorePromises, promises
Nuclear power is failing. So why does news coverage suggest the opposite?
By Linda Pentz Gunter
Sometimes it’s “Promises promises”. On other days it’s “Another one bites the dust”.
If, like me, you are a fellow sufferer of a condition known as involuntary musical imagery (having a song stuck constantly in your head), lately you might have found yourself humming one or other of those catchy songs. Over and over again.
They are effectively the theme songs for nuclear power right now. Because if it’s not the false promise of climate-saving jobs, then it’s another premature shutdown, or new nuclear project canceled, the chimera of small mythical reactors, or a reactor failing to deal with the ever more prevalent weather extremes of climate change.
That’s the unavoidable story, no matter what myths the pro-nuclear propagandists try to spin. Reality has an annoying habit of grabbing the headlines. And right now, those read:
“Fresh delays at EDF’s Flamanville 3”
“Scottish nuclear power station to shut down early after reactor problems”
“Hitachi ‘withdraws’ from £20bn Wylfa project”
“Olkiluoto-3 nuclear power plant 11 months behind latest schedule”
“Nuclear reactor in France shut down over drought”
“Exelon vows to shut down Byron, Dresden nuclear plants”
And so on.
Read MoreSleepwalking into a crisis
Former world leaders urge those now in power to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
The following is an open letter signed by 56 former world leaders and government ministers from 20 NATO countries, plus Japan and South Korea, urging the world’s current leaders to support and join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The coronavirus pandemic has starkly demonstrated the urgent need for greater international cooperation to address all major threats to the health and welfare of humankind. Paramount among them is the threat of nuclear war. The risk of a nuclear weapon detonation today — whether by accident, miscalculation or design — appears to be increasing, with the recent deployment of new types of nuclear weapons, the abandonment of longstanding arms control agreements, and the very real danger of cyber-attacks on nuclear infrastructure. Let us heed the warnings of scientists, doctors and other experts. We must not sleepwalk into a crisis of even greater proportions than the one we have experienced this year.
It is not difficult to foresee how the bellicose rhetoric and poor judgment of leaders in nuclear-armed nations might result in a calamity affecting all nations and peoples. As past leaders, foreign ministers and defence ministers of Albania, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain and Turkey — all countries that claim protection from an ally’s nuclear weapons — we appeal to current leaders to advance disarmament before it is too late. An obvious starting point for the leaders of our own countries would be to declare without qualification that nuclear weapons serve no legitimate military or strategic purpose in light of the catastrophic human and environmental consequences of their use. In other words, our countries should reject any role for nuclear weapons in our defence.
By claiming protection from nuclear weapons, we are promoting the dangerous and misguided belief that nuclear weapons enhance security. Rather than enabling progress towards a world free of nuclear weapons, we are impeding it and perpetuating nuclear dangers — all for fear of upsetting our allies who cling to these weapons of mass destruction. But friends can and must speak up when friends engage in reckless behavior that puts their lives and ours in peril.
Read MoreExposed!
Extinction Rebellion fact checks pro-nuclear front groups
The following is a statement from Extinction Rebellion, UK, in light of misrepresentations of their movement by a former team member now working for a pro-nuclear front group. It alleges that Environmental Progress, its new employee, Zion Lights, its founder, Michael Shellenberger, and the group’s predecessor, Breakthrough Institute (still operating as well) have ties to big corporations and to climate denial.
There have been a number of stories in the press in the last few weeks with criticisms about Extinction Rebellion by Zion Lights, UK director of the pro-nuclear lobby group Environmental Progress. It appears that Lights is engaged in a deliberate PR campaign to discredit Extinction Rebellion.
For any editors who might be considering platforming Lights, we would like to make you aware of some information about the organisation she works for and her employer, Michael Shellenberger.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS & MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER
Environmental Progress is a pro-nuclear energy lobby group. While the group itself was only established in 2016, its backers and affiliates have a long and well-documented history of denying human-caused climate change and/or attempting to delay action on the climate crisis. A quick look at groups currently promoting Zion Lights through their social media channels include climate deniers and industry lobbyists such as The Global Warming Policy Foundation and the Genetic Literacy Project (formerly funded by Monsanto).*
The founder of Environmental Progress, Michael Shellenberger, has a record of spreading misinformation around climate change and using marketing techniques to distort the narrative around climate science. He has a reputation for downplaying the severity of the climate crisis and promoting aggressive economic growth and green technocapitalist solutions.
Shellenberger appeared on the Tucker Carlson Show on Fox News just last week to say that the forest fires currently raging in California are due to “more people and more electrical wires that they’ve failed to maintain because we’ve focused on other things like building renewables” and we’ve been “so focused on renewables, so focused on climate change.”
Read MoreLessons from Lesotho
What a tiny African country can teach Wales and the world
By Dr. Carl Iwan Clowes
March 1985 – a sight to behold as the Lesotho Ambassador and the High Commission staff from London, clad in their national dress of Basotho blanket and traditional hat, climbed the steps of the Welsh Office in Cathays Park.
They were there for a ceremony to mark the launch of the unique link between our two countries. As they stepped into the main hall they were greeted by a choir from Ysgol y Wern followed by a short welcome in Sesotho from Bishop Graham Chadwick.
The scene, full of colour, was already vibrant when the Basotho responded in the traditional rhythm of African song.
The civil servants, who had left their offices to welcome the guests from the balcony, burst into spontaneous applause, an emotional response which rang through the corridors of power. The Welsh Office hadn’t seen anything like this before!
Thirty five years on, many thousands of teaching and health personnel, children, politicians and cultural organisations in both countries have gained from the experience of our link. It was always the ambition to ensure this was an equitable relationship built on understanding and friendship between our peoples.
Challenging as this has been, the aspiration for equity remains and the profound personal experiences gained by both the Basotho and the people of Wales are testimony to that. In 2014 a Memorandum of Understanding between the Governments of Lesotho and Wales was signed reaffirming the importance of the relationship.
Read More
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