Government Technology - September 2007 - (Page 52)

C O N T I N U E D F R O M PAG E 24 PHOTO COURTESY OF TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY a buildup of material on a certain valve, that inspector can then check with other inspectors to ask, ‘Have you seen this before? What has this indicated in the past? What action has been taken in the past to correct this?’” Burnell said, insisting that the NRC has a good safety record because it always catches problems before they threaten public health. Taylor agrees. “If your metric is how many people die from nuclear power, the answer is none, in the United States,” he said. “It’s a lot safer than the alternatives, like digging up coal.” Contractors conduct inspection of new fuel for Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant Unit 1. Securing the Nukes Most agree that federal, state and local regulations keep nuclear plants adequately safe from terrorist penetration on foot. However, many argue that a terrorist attack on the ground is unlikely. “After 9/11, one should learn that the enemies of the state don’t intend to be taken out by approaching buildings or fortifications on foot with weapons,” Block said. “Clearly they have other things in mind, and so far, we’ve seen that fuel-laden airplanes are pretty efficient.” The Tennessee Valley Authority’s ﬁrst nuclear plant – located on 840 acres beside Wheeler Reservoir on the Tennessee River, near Athens, Ala. — is named after Browns Ferry, which operated at the site until the middle of the 20th century. SEPT_07 Both sides of the nuclear debate disagree about whether a plane crashing into a nuclear plant could cause a reactor meltdown and nuclear catastrophe. The NRC formed a panel in 1980 to discuss security improvements for future plants, mostly focusing on preventing attacks on foot. The panel did, however, recommend upgrades to lessen the impact of a plane crash, according to Nuclear Reactor Security Design: 18th Century Ready, an issue brief from the UCS. But the report said the NRC approved several nuclear plant designs during the mid-1990s that didn’t incorporate many of the panel’s recommendations. After 9/11, the NRC evaluated the nation’s current fleet of reactors to determine their vulnerability to commercial aircraft impact, concluding that the plants’ existing structures would adequately keep radioactivity from entering the atmosphere. The NRC did, however, mandate $400 million worth of security improvements after 9/11 that didn’t directly relate to a plane crash threat. “The plants do have systems in place to deal with large fires and explosions. The structures themselves are very robust, Burnell said. “They are among the strongest structures you can find in civilian infrastructure.” The mechanisms in place to protect plants against interior problems also protect them for exterior problems, Kray said. “The plants were designed for increases in pressures coming from the reactor itself. You had to have a containment structure that would withstand that high buildup of energy from the inside to have a controlled reduction of it so that you prevented any release of radiation,” he said. “But that same structure that would protect you from something happening on the inside, coincidentally, protects you from something coming from the outside as well.” That doesn’t satisfy the UCS, which wants extra safeguards, specifically intended for aircraft impact, developed and implemented in all U.S. nuclear plant designs. “A number of studies in the public domain — such as the one Argonne National Laboratory did for the NRC — demonstrate nuclear reactor vulnerabilities to 9/11-type attacks,” Block said. “Isn’t it curious that only NRC secret studies seem to show otherwise? If those secret NRC studies really proved U.S. nuclear reactors will withstand an attack by fuel-laden jumbo jets, don’t you think the NRC would be handing them out to discourage would-be terrorists and reassure the public?” Block referred to a study the Argonne National Laboratory conducted in 1980 related to nuclear plants located near airports. In 2003, the Progressive Policy Institute gave the Bush administration an overall grade of a “D+” at protecting critical facilities in a report titled America at Risk: A Homeland Security Report Card. However, that report also gave the administration an “A” for securing nuclear power plants. The study even said the $400 million the NRC spent post-9/11 on additional plant security upgrades may have been unnecessary: “If anything, the NRC could be faulted for overkill, as nuclear power plants have always been extremely secure, and additional security measures may not be the best use of resources; worst-case scenarios of terrorist attacks on plants or nuclear waste under transport indicate a very low likelihood of collateral injury.” PHOTO COURTESY OF TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY Now at Visit www.govtech.com/revival for content related to this article. View a slide show of nuclear energy plants. j View diagrams of how various reactor designs work. j View production costs for common electricity-generation methods. View a breakdown of emissions-free power generation sources. j j 52 http://www.govtech.com/revival http://www.govtech.com/revival http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - September 2007

Contents Point of View Big Picture ESRI Insert The Last Mile GT Spectrum Profile Nuclear Revival Way Back Machine Intel Insert Tale of TIERS Joining Forces Saving Seniors Site Seeing Quarter Miles Two Cents Products Signal: Noise Digital Communities Contents Our Road Ahead Course of Action Shared Interests Special Report: Foundation for the Future Using Wireless to Save Lives Smart Grids for Energy Conservation Community Governing and Wizards

Government Technology - September 2007

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