A diagram of a dry storage cask for nuclear waste.
(Photo courtesy of the US Energy Information Administration)
President Barack Obama is
proposing billions to build
new nuclear power plants in
the US. But Shawn Allee reports the President
is also trying to tackle a
problem facing the country’s
old nuclear reactors:
Transcript
President Barack Obama is
proposing billions to build
new nuclear power plants in
the US. But Shawn Allee reports the President
is also trying to tackle a
problem facing the country’s
old nuclear reactors:
President Obama mentioned the future of nuclear power in his State of the Union Address.
“But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.“
At the same time, Obama’s dealing with an old nuclear problem: what to do with the hazardous radioactive waste building up at reactors in thirty one states. Obama gave up on an old plan to bury spent fuel inside Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. That project dragged on for decades and cost nine billion dollars.
Recently, the President set up a panel that recommend what to do with all this waste. That panel’s supposed to report to the President in less than two years.
Meanwhile, spent nuclear fuel is stored at nuclear power plants.
One nuclear reactor was delayed because government regulators said they can't say whether the current design can withstand earthquakes and other disasters.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
The power industry wants to create
loads of low-carbon electricity. To
make that happen, they want to build
more than two dozen nuclear reactors.
Shawn Allee reports there could be
delays for at least half of those:
Transcript
The power industry wants to create
loads of low-carbon electricity. To
make that happen, they want to build
more than two dozen nuclear reactors.
Shawn Allee reports there could be
delays for at least half of those:
Westinghouse’s AP-1000 reactor was supposed to revive the nuclear industry. But recently, government regulators said they can’t say whether the current design can withstand earthquakes and other disasters.
Critics of nuclear power are pouncing on the news.
Henry Sokolski is with the Nonproliferation Policy Center. He says one government agency’s set to approve loan guarantees to build these reactors.
“If you do that, there won’t be much discipline in the industry to not screw up, there’ll be less.”
Westinghouse says it will provide the government with tests to prove its reactor is safe.
It’s not clear whether the government will delay final approval of the design.
Some nuclear companies envision reactors in tiny power stations or even
factories. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
Commercial nuclear reactors pretty
much come in two sizes: big and huge.
Companies want to create much smaller,
cheaper reactors. Shawn Allee reports they’re pitching their ideas
to the government this week:
Transcript
Commercial nuclear reactors pretty
much come in two sizes: big and huge.
Companies want to create much smaller,
cheaper reactors. Shawn Allee reports they’re pitching their ideas
to the government this week:
These nuclear companies envision reactors in tiny power stations or even
factories. They expect good sales because nuclear power creates almost no
carbon emissions.
But before they can sell even one reactor, they have to go through a
nuclear gate-keeper. That’d be the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
NRC spokesman Scott Burnell says, today, the government is laying out the
ground rules.
“The NRC has focused on large commercial scale nuclear power plants for
several decades. We have requirements for safety systems, for security
where these small reactor designers need to look at our requirements
closely, to make sure they can meet them.”
Burnell says some small reactor designs include technology the NRC has
never approved before.
He says it could take the government up to ten years to evaluate those
designs.
The Rulison device at insertion, 1969 (Photo courtesy of the US Department of Energy Digital Photo Archive)
There are proposals to drill for oil
and gas very close to the site of a
nuclear explosion. The device was
exploded underground in western Colorado
40 years ago this month. Natural gas
from wells near the site could be
distributed throughout the U.S. Some
experts are concerned the natural gas
could be radioactive. Conrad Wilson
reports regulators could allow drilling
closer to the blast site in the next
couple of years:
Transcript
There are proposals to drill for oil
and gas very close to the site of a
nuclear explosion. The device was
exploded underground in western Colorado
40 years ago this month. Natural gas
from wells near the site could be
distributed throughout the U.S. Some
experts are concerned the natural gas
could be radioactive. Conrad Wilson
reports regulators could allow drilling
closer to the blast site in the next
couple of years:
On September 10, 1969 the Atomic Energy Commission detonated a 40-kiloton
nuclear bomb a mile and a half under ground. It was called Project Rulison. The
bomb was three times the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima.
The idea was to find peaceful uses for nuclear weapons. The federal government
hoped that nukes could be used to free up pockets of gas trapped below.
(sound of video)
The nuke did free up gas.
The government tested the gas by flaring it – burning it in the open – over the next
year. They discovered the natural gas was radioactive.
Marian Wells is a long time resident of Rulison. Her parent’s home was close to
the detonation site and the gas flares. Both of her parents died of cancer. So did
many of her neighbors.
She spoke before the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
“My parents were given no notice that you were flaring contaminated gas. And
yet both my parents died of cancer. Cancer is prevalent in this area. And yes, no
one has studied those cause and effect. You don’t really care about us.”
There’s been no government studies connecting cancer and the Rulison blast,
but the community remains fearful and suspicious.
Gas drilling is allowed as close as three miles of the blast site. That natural gas
is piped around the country.
Now some companies say they want to drill for natural gas within a half mile of
ground zero.
The Department of Energy maintains that, for the most part, the gas near the
blast site is safe, but there’s some uncertainly.
Jack Craig heads up the Rulison site for the Department of Energy. Craig says
drilling closer to the nuclear blast site should move forward slowly.
“What we’re saying is do it in a sequential manor. So that you come in slowly
testing the wells as you go in for contaminants – specifically tritium – and, if you
don’t find anything, move in closer.”
Tritium is a radioactive substance produced by the blast. Breathing tritium can
cause cancer.
Chris Canfield works on environmental protection for the state oil and gas
commission. He heads up an annual audit on the Rulison site.
Canfield: “Simply put, everything that’s coming out of the ground is being
sampled, being analyzed.”
Wilson: “If someone were to come to you and say they want to drill within the
half mile of the Rulison blast site, would you say that’s safe?”
Canfield: “I wouldn’t really know at this time.”
Canfield says that the state would require a special hearing before it would
approve any drilling permits any closer.
Oil and gas commissioner Jim Martin says there are still too many unanswered
questions to allow drilling that close to the blast site.
“There are significant information gaps and that makes is very difficult to really
understand the risks either to the workers or to the public who live within some
distance of the drill site.”
Martin says he understands why people are skeptical. He says the United States
has made a lot of mistakes with radioactive materials. Navajo uranium miners
got cancer because of radio exposure. People downwind of above ground
detonations suffered. Martin says skepticism is warranted.
“So it’s not unreasonable to ask some pretty tough questions of the federal
government before we go further into that half mile perimeter and produce more
gas.”
Gas that could be burned to heat homes across the U.S.
Until recently, there hasn’t been an order for a new nuclear plant in 30 years.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
Some Senate Republicans want the climate
change bill to focus on building new nuclear
power plants. They’re calling for as many as
100 new plants in 20 years. But the industry
has been in decline for so many years now,
there’s concern there might not be enough
nuclear engineers to do the job. Julie Grant
reports:
Transcript
Some Senate Republicans want the climate
change bill to focus on building new nuclear
power plants. They’re calling for as many as
100 new plants in 20 years. But the industry
has been in decline for so many years now,
there’s concern there might not be enough
nuclear engineers to do the job. Julie Grant
reports:
There’s a lot of new interest in nuclear energy and technology these days. But there’s a problem.
The American Nuclear Society estimates they need 700 new nuclear engineers per year to keep up with growing the demand. It’s enough to give long-time nuclear supporters whip-lash. Until recently, things looked gloomy for the nuclear industry.
William Martin is chair of the nuclear engineering department at the University of Michigan. Ten years ago, he says no new plants were being designed or built. And he was having a tough time finding students.
“A student entering the field, what you could tell them was, ‘well, there’s a big focus on waste.’ That’s not hardly something that excites young students to enter the field.”
Martin remembers standing on the stage at graduation in the mid 1990s to call the names of his graduates. Other engineering departments had so many students, it took an hour to call them all. But Martin only had a few names to call.
“Our students trip across in about ten seconds.”
Lots of nuclear engineering programs didn’t make it through the down times. There are less than half the university programs today than there were 30 years ago.
Nuclear got a bad name starting in 1979 – with the meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. That was followed by the deadly nuclear accident at Chernobyl, Ukraine in the ‘80s.
By the early 1990s, President Clinton announced he would eliminate funding for nuclear power research and development.
Until recently, there hasn’t been an order for a new nuclear plant in 30 years.
Vaughn Gilbert is spokesman for Westinghouse Electric Company, which focuses on nuclear energy.
He says Westinghouse laid off a lot its engineers in the down years. A decade ago, those who were left were heading toward retirement. So, Gilbert says, the company started working with universities to train engineering students to run its aging nuclear plants.
“Simply because we knew we would need to attract new people to maintain the existing fleet and then also to work with our customers to decommission the plants as they came offline.”
Westinghouse and other nuclear companies started giving lots of money to maintain university programs.
And then, everyone started worrying about climate change – and looking for ways to make energy that wouldn’t create more greenhouse gases. Nuclear power has started making a comeback.
Gilbert says new plants are in the works again – and Westinghouse needs engineers. The company’s designs will be used in six new U.S. plants.
The timing is pretty good for 25 year old Nick Touran. He’s a PhD student in nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan. He knows there’s a negative stigma to nuclear power – because he’s asked people about it.
“I just say, ‘so what do you think about nuclear power?’ Just to passersby on the street. And one person said, ‘I only think one thing – no, no, no, no, no.’”
But Touran says the negative stuff mostly comes from older people. When Three Mile Island melted-down, Touran wasn’t even born yet. He says most people his age are much more accepting of nuclear power.
“It’s the people who remember Three Mile Island and remember Chernobyl and remember World War II, who have all these very negative associations with nuclear weapons and Soviet reactors that were built incredibly wrong. And stuff like that.”
Touran says much of his generation just sees a power source that doesn’t create greenhouse gases.
Of course, there are greenhouse gases created in the process of manufacturing nuclear fuel rods. And then there’s that pesky problem of that spent nuclear waste. There’s still no permanent place to dump it.
Touran says he started studying nuclear power because he was amazed by it. But as the number of students in his department grows, he says more are choosing nuclear because it’s a smart career choice.
The Energy Information Administration says power bills could also fluctuate based on whether we develop cheap low-carbon coal technology. (Photo source: Frank C. Muller at Wikimedia Commons)
The price we pay for power in the
future will depend on the kind of
power plants we invest in. That’s
according to a report that examines
proposed climate change regulations.
Shawn Allee has more:
Transcript
The price we pay for power in the
future will depend on the kind of
power plants we invest in. That’s
according to a report that examines
proposed climate change regulations.
Shawn Allee has more:
The Energy Information Administration is the federal government’s crystal ball when it comes to energy policy.
The EIA looked at the House version of a big climate change bill. The Senate takes it up next month.
Forecast director John Conti says new regulations could cost each household between $12 and $227 more each year within a decade.
Conti says there’s a range because it’s not exactly clear how much it’ll cost to switch to low-carbon power sources, like nuclear.
“For most technologies, you have a good idea of how much they’re going to cost. Of course, we haven’t built a nuclear plant in twenty or so years and, as a result, there’re varying cost estimates and people can debate, I think, for a large extent, until that first plant is indeed built.”
Conti says power bills could also fluctuate based on whether we develop cheap low-carbon coal technology.
President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sign documents on nuclear arms reduction
before their news conference at the Kremlin in Moscow Monday, July 6, 2009.
(Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
President Obama has reached what he’s calling a “joint understanding” with Russia on reducing the number of nuclear arms. But as Mark Brush reports this agreement doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be dismantling a lot more nuclear weapons:
Transcript
President Obama has reached what he’s calling a “joint understanding” with Russia on reducing the number of nuclear arms. But as Mark Brush reports this agreement doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be dismantling a lot more nuclear weapons:
As it stands now, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia will take warheads off of a delivery system, like a missile.
So, unless things go farther with this treaty, the warheads will still be kept in storage. And as it turns out, there are already thousands of these warheads kept in both countries.
Hans Kristensen is the Director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists.
He says even if the warheads get dismantled, there’s still the sticky issue of what to do with all that radioactive plutonium.
“The plutonium cores of those weapons, most of them, are still stored. We have something in the order of 15,000 warhead cores. An enormous amount of plutonium.”
The radioactive plutonium can be reprocessed and used in nuclear power plants.
Kristensen says the U.S. bought plutonium from old Soviet warheads – and that fuel is used nuclear power plants here in the U.S.
Yucca Mountain is the nation's planned repository for spent nuclear fuel (Photo courtesy of the US Department of Energy)
Politically speaking, America’s nuclear waste storage policy is a mess. Hazardous spent nuclear fuel is supposed to be buried under Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, but after two decades – it’s not finished. Congress pushed the project onto Nevada in the 80s by passing what’s known as the “Screw Nevada Bill.” Shawn Allee met a man who regrets helping put nuclear waste at Nevada’s doorstep:
Transcript
Politically speaking, America’s nuclear waste storage policy is a mess. Hazardous spent nuclear fuel is supposed to be buried under Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, but after two decades – it’s not finished. Congress pushed the project onto Nevada in the 80s by passing what’s known as the “Screw Nevada Bill.” Shawn Allee met a man who regrets helping put nuclear waste at Nevada’s doorstep:
For twenty years Nevada’s tried to scuttle Yucca Mountain.
Along the way, it’s hired Robert Halstead to create a plan to soften the blow if it loses. He’s an expert on nuclear waste truck and rail transportation.
“My job would be to craft the safest, or least-bad, transportation system so that if Nevada got stuck with a repository they would at least have some control of the transportation system because the activity that most likely to injures people and the environment is transportation.”
Halstead didn’t start his nuclear career on Nevada’s side, though. Thirty years ago, he worked for Wisconsin. He says the federal government wanted states’ help in storing nuclear waste deep underground.
In 1982 Congress came to consensus about how to test sites. He trusted it – and built political support for it.
“There was a clear statement that safety was not enough and economic efficiency was not enough. You also had to deal with regional equity.”
The gist was that there’d be at least two nuclear waste repositories: one in the West, and one in the East.
“We were pretty optimistic. Unfortunately that all began to fall apart very quickly.”
Congressmen and even the public started getting cold feet about the site selection process.
There were rowdy protests, especially in states that may have had the right geology for a repository. That included Wisconsin.
“If there was an objective approach to picking the sites, we knew that we would be in the first tier of the sites that would be evaluated.”
After a few years, Eastern politicians got frantic.
“They asked for a fix.”
Halstead decided to help with this fix, because he’d lost faith in the system, too. He says he helped cut legislative deals to stop the nuclear waste law he’d supported just a few years earlier.
It worked.
In 1987, Congress ended the government’s search for a nuclear waste repository.
Yucca would be the only candidate.
“This law was written very carefully to ensure that Nevada got screwed. And you know what, it chilled my blood.”
Halstead realized he’d passed a law that broke that early consensus about regional equity.
He was disappointed, and nearly dumped nuclear politics, but then he got a call. It was from a chief nuclear official in Nevada.
“He said aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I would really like you to come out here and help us. And I said to him, ‘I’d just got done getting Wisconsin getting off the hook and if I help you get off the hook, I think it’s likely that they’ll have to come back to Wisconsin.’”
But Halstead took the job.
I’ve asked him why several times. Sometimes he’s said guilt. Sometimes, regret. Sometimes, for a job.
Right now, Congress is considering cutting Yucca Mountain’s budget, and President Obama says he’s against the project.
But the law to make Yucca the only choice is still on the books.
I ask Robert Halstead whether that will change. He’s not sure – it’ll be tough to build a new consensus even close to what he saw thirty years ago.
“If nuclear waste disposal in a repository were safe and profitable, someone would have taken it away from Nevada years ago, so there won’t be an amicable ending to this story.”
The nuclear power plant in Braidwood, Illinois,
was started up just after the state banned new
nuclear power construction. For its entire history,
it's been operating without a permanent home for
its spent nuclear fuel. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
There’s been plenty of buzz
about dozens of proposed nuclear power
reactors in the US. Well, Wall Street’s
financial mess is making power companies
scramble to find all the investment money
for them. But, in twelve states, it won’t
matter whether power companies have cash
in hand or not; it’s illegal to build new
nuclear power plants there. Shawn Allee
reports there are efforts to repeal some
of those bans:
Transcript
There’s been plenty of buzz
about dozens of proposed nuclear power
reactors in the US. Well, Wall Street’s
financial mess is making power companies
scramble to find all the investment money
for them. But, in twelve states, it won’t
matter whether power companies have cash
in hand or not; it’s illegal to build new
nuclear power plants there. Shawn Allee
reports there are efforts to repeal some
of those bans:
JoAnn Osmand represents a state legislative district in northeastern Illinois.
Nuclear power is close to her heart – there’s an old, dormant nuclear power plant in her
district. Osmond thought, maybe that plant could be useful again. So, she sat down with
the plant owner.
”And I asked a question: ‘Why are you not taking some of the parts away and
putting them in other nuclear locations?’ They said, ‘there’s a moratorium, we’re
not building any more nuclear plants in the state of Illinois.’”
Osmond was stunned.
Illinois has six existing nuclear power plants – she didn’t know it’s illegal to build more.
She hears plenty of gripes about energy prices – so she thought, why leave nuclear energy
off the table?
“I don’t want my granddaughters to have to buy their electricity from another state.
I want to be able in 2020, 2030 to be able to plug in our electric cars.”
Osmond’s bill to lift the moratorium stalled – it’s still illegal to build nuclear power
plants in Illinois. California and Wisconsin recently had similar fights over their nuclear
moratoria.
Some veterans of nuclear politics are shocked anyone would want to life a ban on nuclear
power plants.
“It makes absolutely no logical, rational sense in any mode of analysis.”
I find Dave Kraft at a coffee shop. Kraft is with the Nuclear Energy Information Service,
a group that’s worked against nuclear power for almost thirty years.
Twelve states severely restrict or ban new nuclear power plants. Kraft says seven have
language almost identical to Illinios’.
“The moratorium simply said, no more new construction of nuclear reactors until
the federal government has a demonstrated means of dealing with the waste
permanently.”
Kraft says states tried protecting themselves from becoming dumps for the most
dangerous nuclear waste – the radioactive spent fuel.
The federal government is supposed to store spent fuel – maybe in Yucca Mountain,
Nevada. But so far, that hasn’t happened, so it’s piling up in nuclear power plants – like
this one in Braidwood, Illinois, southwest of Chicago.
(sound of a door)
Bryan Hanson manages the Braidwood power plant. He leads me to a square storage
pool. It has the bluest water I’ve ever seen.
Hanson: “This is where we store our spent fuel. It’s about thirty feet of water
between us and the top of the fuel bundles down there. So you’re looking at thirty of
water and another twelve feet down below.”
Allee: “If you look into it, it’s almost like honeycomb.”
Hanson: “Honeycomb … looks like an egg crate or honeycomb. Within those cells
are fuel bundles that have been used in the reactor, generated energy, and now
they’re waiting for eventual disposal.”
Braidwood’s pool was meant for short-term storage, but spent fuel’s been stored here for
nineteen years. Hanson says the company is planning for when spent fuel will have to be
stored on-site, but outdoors, perhaps for decades.
It’s a situation the nuclear industry’s is unhappy about, but it’s confident the federal
government will come up with a solution – some day.
So, most power companies support removing bans on new plants. This drives critics like
Dave Kraft crazy.
“To build more reactors at a time when we have no place to put the waste makes no
sense at all. The first rule of waste management is, stop producing.”
Even though Kraft says it doesn’t make sense to lift bans on nuclear power plant
construction, he predicts those bans will get challenged again soon.
Ray and Irene Zukley of Zion,
Illinois were forced to sell this Lake Michigan
beach cottage to make way for Zion Nuclear Station
back in the late 60s. The Zukley's and other Zion
residents hoped the plant would last for at least
forty years, but after fits and starts, it closed
fifteen years early. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
The Zion nuclear station is a
few hundred yards from the shoreline of Lake Michigan.
Its generators have been off line for more than a decade. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Ray Zukley was a jeweler by trade. He
created pendants with images of the nuclear station's
twin cooling stations and sold them as reminders of Zion's
biggest economic boom. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
America has a new flirtation with
nuclear power. Utility companies are fanning
out across the nation to set up shop. And
they’ve given the government more applications
for new nuclear plants than they have for
decades. Many towns fell under the spell of
nuclear power in the past, but some power plants
stopped running decades earlier than planned,
and towns are stuck with what’s left behind.
Shawn Allee profiles one town’s tarnished
relationship with nuclear power:
Transcript
America has a new flirtation with
nuclear power. Utility companies are fanning
out across the nation to set up shop. And
they’ve given the government more applications
for new nuclear plants than they have for
decades. Many towns fell under the spell of
nuclear power in the past, but some power plants
stopped running decades earlier than planned,
and towns are stuck with what’s left behind.
Shawn Allee profiles one town’s tarnished
relationship with nuclear power:
Irene and Ray Zukley have been together so long, they finish each others sentences.
Especially when I ask how things were in Zion, Illinois back in the 60s.
Zuckley: “The factories were getting downgraded.”
Allee: “What were those?”
Zuckley: “It was the curtain factory, the cookie factory, chocolates and Zion fig
bars.”
But just then, the power company said it would spend hundreds of millions on a nuclear
power plant.
Irene Zukley says most people welcomed it.
“Ray and I never worried about it, you know we just wanted progress is what we
wanted. When you think of having taxes lowered for everybody in Zion, that made
you feel, what else would come in and do that?”
Irene and Ray Zukley were forced to sell their family’s beach cottage to make room for
Zion reactor number one.
Beachfront neighbors did the same.
But, like the Zukleys predicted, taxes and jobs rolled into Zion.
It was supposed to be a forty year windfall.
But it didn’t last.
When you visit the power plant, it’s nearly empty.
“What we’ve got here is what used to be a full-fledged control room.”
Ron Schuster runs what’s left of the Zion nuclear power plant.
Once, it had more than eight hundred employees.
Now, Schuster and about fifty workers help manage the regional power grid.
They also monitor radioactive spent fuel waste.
The generators have been offline since 1997.
“There were large pieces of equipment essential to making electricity that would
have needed total replacement going forward. We’re talking significant dollars so
the economic decision by the board of directors that Zion station would go into safe-
store mode.”
That means the power plant and Zion have been in limbo for ten years.
The radioactive fuel is still on site, but the plant provides no power, few jobs and a
fraction of the property taxes.
Delaine Rogers is Zion’s economic development director. She says the town didn’t plan
on this.
“You’re in a community that has welcomed you. We haven’t had an antagonistic
relationship. They’re not going to close. But they did. And it took 17 million dollars
of our local revenues. We were facing losing all our arts and music and sports in our
schools. How do you fund police the police department. How do you fix potholes? It
was a very scary time.”
Lately, the power company’s gone back and forth about when it will decommission, or
dismantle, the power plant.
It could be done ten years from now or it could take decades more.
But even when most of the buildings are gone, there’s still the radioactive spent fuel.
“They’re just going to leave it. They’re going to put a football-sized concrete pad
filled with 80-90 casks of stored fuel on site, above ground. Tell me how you get a
private developer to think residential or retail. I’m not buying the first condo.”
Dozens of towns are stuck in relationships with dormant nuclear power plants.
Delaine Rogers says the town of Zion is in the same position.
She won’t call it a bad relationship, but says it sure would be nice to know exactly where
it’s going, or when it will be over.
A diagram of a dry storage cask for nuclear waste. (Photo courtesy of the US Energy Information Administration)
