Keeping Nuclear Power Safe: Disaster in Japan has focused attention on U.S. plants • Northwest Indiana Business Magazine

Keeping Nuclear Power Safe: Disaster in Japan has focused attention on U.S. plants

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by Rick A. Richards

There isn't a single nuclear power plant in Northwest Indiana–or the entire state for that matter–but that doesn't mean the region is exempt from concern about nuclear plant safety.

Illinois and Michigan have nuclear power plants and some are within 30 miles of major population areas in the region. In the event of an emergency, those areas could be placed under emergency procedures, including evacuation.

The LaSalle Generating plant, operated by Exelon Corp., is 20 miles southwest of Joliet, Ill., putting much of western Lake County and northern Newton County in its safety preparedness plan. The Cook Nuclear plant in Bridgman, Mich., is operated by AEP Corp. and its safety procedures (should there be an emergency) affect northern LaPorte and St. Joseph counties.

Nuclear safety in the United States became a concern following a massive Japanese earthquake earlier this year that heavily damaged that country's Fukushima nuclear power plant. While the plants withstood the quake, they were devastated by the tsunami that rolled ashore afterwards.

Then in August, a 5.8 earthquake rocked the East Coast. It was centered in Virginia, not far from the North Anna nuclear plant operated by Dominion Power. Even though the plant sustained little damage, the quake heightened concern. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission began reviewing the safety procedures of all 104 nuclear power plants in the United States.

Jere Jenkins, director of the radiation laboratory at Purdue University in West Lafayette, says that while it's natural for people to be concerned, he says the safety record of the nation's nuclear plants is among the best in the world.

Jenkins says the NRC is constantly evaluating the nation's nuclear utilities and monitoring the safety of their plants. “In the wake of the recent earthquakes, the NRC is re-examining all the possibilities because it wasn't the earthquake that damaged Fukushima; it was the tsunami. It was the loss of power and their ability to use backup generators because they were put in places that were vulnerable to flooding.

“The diesel generators they planned to use in an emergency were knocked out by the tsunami,” says Jenkins. “The infrastructure documented in Japan showed they had a lack of capability to bring in backup generators. That does not exist here.”

Jenkins says the utilities that operate nuclear plants in the U.S. are experienced with nuclear power. “AEP, for instance, has one plant and two units in Michigan. The company is an amalgam of several nuclear operations around the country. They know what they are doing and you rarely hear of a problem with any of their plants.”

Jenkins says nuclear power is a safe generating source. France, for instance, generates 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear power and does it more cheaply than the U.S. by reprocessing spent fuel rods. “We invented the technology but President Carter killed off a program for us to reprocess spent fuel. Now our dirty little secret is what to do with our spent fuel. Since we can't reprocess it, we have to do something else with it.”

Even though the U.S. Nuclear Waste Policy Act called for storage of spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada some 20 years ago, it hasn't happened because of political opposition in Congress. Senate President Harry Reid is from Nevada and so far he has blocked efforts to ship spent fuel rods to his state.

The problem with storage, says Jenkins, is that the half life of the uranium, plutonium, Californium, Einsteinium and other radioactive material is thousands of years. “We can't build anything that will last that long. By reprocessing spent fuel, we could use 96 or 97 percent of the material again. Most of the rest is inert and the 0.5 percent that is really radioactive has a half life of like 30 years. That's a lot more manageable.”

While figuring out what to do with spent nuclear fuel is a pressing issue for the nuclear energy industry, the immediate concern for places like Northwest Indiana is safety in the event of a natural disaster.

Illinois has 11 nuclear plants, the most of any state. The safety record of the plants there has improved since they were acquired by Exelon Corp. from Commonwealth Edison Co. a few years ago.

Even though Exelon has been fined more than $1 million for a release of radioactive steam and a leak of radioactive tritium at Braidwood, the NRC says the company's safety record is much better than Commonwealth Edison. Braidwood is in Will County south of Chicago, not far from Joliet.

At one time, there were six reactors on the national safety watch list and four of them were operated by Commonwealth Edison. Much of Exelon's efforts have focused on cleaning up and fixing problems left over from Commonwealth Edison.

Six of the 11 plants in Illinois have been operating for 40 years, and are the same age and design as the Fukushima reactors.

By law, nuclear power plants in the United States are built to withstand an earthquake larger than the strongest ever recorded in their area. In Illinois, that means nuclear plants have to withstand the largest quake ever recorded in the U.S.–the 1811 New Madrid quake, whose fault line runs through Missouri and Illinois.

Bill Schalk, a spokesman for AEP's Cook Nuclear plant, says safety has been a major topic of discussion in recent months, not only by the public but also by the industry.

“We've done a lot of outreach to let people know what we're doing here at the plant,” says Schalk. “People are aware of what happened at Fukushima and they want to make sure it doesn't happen here. It wasn't so much that there is an increased fear among people, but they have a lot of questions that need answers.”

Schalk says once he began meeting with the public and answering their questions, many of the concerns disappeared.

“Mother Nature has thrown quite a few curveballs at the nuclear industry in recent months. There was flooding in Nebraska that affected a plant there and in Kansas; there were tornadoes near plants in Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi and an earthquake in Virginia. And to top it off, we had a hurricane that affected the entire East Coast and the plants there. In every case, the nuclear plant safety procedures worked. In our case at Cook, if we feel any seismic activity, we activate an emergency plan,” says Schalk.

That plan was activated following the Virginia earthquake when small tremors were felt in Michigan, but reactors at Cook continued to operate and no damage was found.

Even though the Cook Nuclear plant is on the shore of Lake Michigan, Schalk says he doesn't think a tidal wave like the one that hit Fukushima is possible. He explained that there is a tidal wave phenomenon that can happen on Lake Michigan called a seiche, but its speed is slower and the waves aren't as severe. The highest waves ever recorded in a seiche were 8 feet in 1954 in Michigan City.

As part of Cook's general emergency plan, everyone living within 10 miles of the plant–an area that goes south to just north of the Indiana state line where mandatory evacuation would be necessary–is mailed evacuation procedures each year, says Schalk.

A potential evacuation area extending 50 miles goes as far west as Gary and includes Michigan City, LaPorte, and part of the South Bend area. Schalk says AEP conducts an evacuation drill every two years in Michigan, and every six years, the drills include emergency responders from Indiana.

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