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You’d think the government believes a nuclear meltdown is inevitable. The EPA has recommended new regulations that relax (increase) radiation exposure limits during and after catastrophic reactor accidents. It must appear cheaper to permit large human radiation exposures then, than to shut down a rickety reactor now.
EPA’s proposal may have been prompted by Fukushima, because the government of Japan has increased -- by 20 times -- the allowable radiation exposures deemed tolerable for humans. Prior to the triple meltdowns that began March 11, 2011, the Japanese allowed only 1 milliSievert of radiation per year in an individual’s personal space. Now the exposure limit is 20 milliSieverts per year. This is not safe; it’s just allowable, or rather affordable, since the cost of decontaminating 1,000 square miles of Japan to the earlier standard would bankrupt the country.
The federal Price Anderson Act provides liability insurance for reactor owners, relieving private utilities of hundreds of billions in financial risk posed by meltdown roulette. The owners won’t be bankrupted by the next loss-of-coolant disaster, but the US might.
Fukushima has spewed more long-lived radioactive chemicals into the air and the ocean than any reactor catastrophe in history. But the chant heard round the world, like psychic insulation for the industry, is: “no immediate danger.” So they might dodge Germany’s answer to Fukushima -- a permanent reactor phase-out -- global promoters of nuclear power have nearly buried all warnings of radiation’s health and environmental damage
Have you heard of PSR’s March 2011 “Health risks of the releases of radioactivity from the Fukushima reactors: Are they a concern for residents of the US?”; or IPPNW’s June 2014 “Critical Analysis of the UNSCEAR Report”; or the Nov. 2012 “Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health within the context of the nuclear accident at Fukushima”; or Greenpeace’s two major reports “Lessons from Fukushima,” and “Fukushima Fallout”? No, the feds would rather you read UNSCEAR’s summary which claims Fukushima’s effects “at the population level were considered unlikely to be observable.” Reassuringly, this conclusion was made before any research was done.
The chances of reactor disasters will increase even further if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows old reactors to run for 80 years. This is what Duke Power, Dominion Power and Exelon intend to do with seven of their 40-year-old rattle traps now chugging along in Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina.
The seven retirement-age reactors were designed to be shut down in the current decade. However, the nuclear industry since 1991 has been granted 70 “license extensions” that have generally added 20 years of increasingly risky operations. Still the reactor owners want 40 extra years.
Former NRC Commissioner George Apostolakis wasn’t quite apoplectic when the commission considered the subject last May, but, according to the Oct. 20 New York Times, he said, “I don’t know how we would explain to the public that these designs, 90-year-old designs, 100-year-old designs, are still safe to operate.” Now Apostolakis is gone, and the NRC, while it has yet to rule on the 80-year plan, has never denied an extension application.

Gunning the old engines

Pushing our luck further still, since 1977 the NRC has approved 149 “power uprate” applications and has denied exactly one.
“Power uprates” boost the output of old reactors beyond what their licenses permit. It’s done by packing reactor cores with extra uranium and running them harder. Uprates often require the replacement of hundreds of tons of giant equipment so that the boosted heat, pressure and vibrations can be controlled.
More chilling still is that 23 operating US reactors are Fukushima-type GE Mark 1 boiling water reactors. (Can you say ‘station blackout’?) Fifteen of these death wish machines have been granted power uprates; and seven of the 15 have been granted a second power uprate. Susquehanna’s 31-year-old GE reactors in Pennsylvania were granted a hair-raising three power uprates. (See chart)
With industry and the NRC working to deny or delay post-Fukushima safety improvements -- and the government is searching for ways to ignore or downplay the growing risk of disaster -- how do you feel about reactor operators stomping the accelerator while they run their jalopies into the ground?

-- John LaForge works for Nukewatch and lives on the Plowshares Land Trust near Luck, Wisc.