Studying Cancer Near Nuke Plants

  • The NRC tells people that living near nuclear power plants does not pose extra risk for cancer, and it points to a particular study, finished twenty years ago.(Photo courtesy of the Rancho Seco Reactor)

For decades, the federal government has said it’s safe to live near nuclear power reactors and it points to a particular cancer study to back that up. Shawn Allee reports, lately, the government worries that study’s out of date and it wants scientists to take another look.

Transcript

For decades, the federal government has said it’s safe to live near nuclear power reactors and it points to a particular cancer study to back that up. Shawn Allee reports, lately, the government worries that study’s out of date and it wants scientists to take another look.

The federal agency that’s looking for an up-to-date cancer study is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC.

It’s asked the National Academy of Sciences to do that study, but the Academy hasn’t made up its mind. The academy asked the NRC, the nuclear power industry, and the public to explain why a new study’s even needed.

It broadcast the hearing over the Internet.

“Our first speaker is Sarah Sauer, private citizen.”

Sarah Sauer is 16, but looks much younger.

“I am one of the statistics you’ll be studying. When I was seven years old, I was diagnosed with brain cancer. I hope in this study you will remember who you’re doing this for.”

“Thank you Sarah, let me invite your parents to say something if they’d like to.”

“I am Cynthia Sauer, Sarah’s mom. For my family and i this study is long overdue. nine years ago today, Sarah was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. The pain has been so shattering that we still cannot give it words.”

Cynthia Sauer tells the National Academy how her family once lived near the Dresden nuclear power station, about 50 miles Southwest of Chicago.

She’d learned that power plant leaked radioactive water years ago.

Cynthia Sauer can’t say for sure the plant caused Sarah’s cancer, but she wonders … because other kids were diagnosed with cancer, too.

“I began searching for answers to my questions regarding the leaks and the numbers of children diagnosed with cancer in our small town.”

Cynthia Sauer turned to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The NRC tells people that living near nuclear power plants does not pose extra risk for cancer, and it points to a particular study, finished twenty years ago.

“The scientists in the ad hoc committee statement clearly stated the study was flawed and that further monitoring and investigation was needed.”

What are the flaws? For one, the old study concluded people living near nuclear power plants do not face extra risk of dying from cancer … but it didn’t answer whether they’re at risk of getting cancer.

It ignored cancer survivors or people who moved before dying of the disease.

Sauer tells the academy that … this is why we need a new cancer study – we just can’t be confident in the old one.

And that’s a problem because at least three million people live within ten miles of a nuclear power plant.

Some US Congressmen want the safety issue settled, and in fact, so does the nuclear power industry.

Ralph Anderson is with The Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group.

He says other studies suggest power plants are safe … so the industry has nothing to worry about from a new study – unless the Academy misinterprets results:

“There have been studies where people simply collect the data and let the computer go to work to bend the data in a wide variety of ways. We have been the victim of a number studies that have done precisely that. So, you end up with weird age groups and things like that because the data’s carefully selected to prove the point. That’s what we’d like to see avoided.”

So the public, the government and industry want some kind of follow-up study on cancer rates near nuclear power plants.

But that might not be enough for The National Academy of Sciences to move forward.
Many scientists say we can’t begin good studies, because it’s hard to collect the necessary data.
In fact, one group that says that … is the same group that conducted the original cancer study twenty years ago.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Renewing the Nuclear Past (Part 2)

  • Cooling units at the Vermont Yankee power station. Radioactive tritium (an isotope of hydrogen) has leaked into the ground near the center of the plant. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Power companies hope to extend the working life of old nuclear reactors because it’s cheaper to run them than it is to build new reactors.
But old reactors require federal approval to renew their licenses.
For the past decade, power companies have been on a winning streak.
They’d gotten reactor licenses renewed every time they asked.
Shawn Allee reports one of the industry’s most recent bets went wrong:

Transcript

Power companies hope to extend the working life of old nuclear reactors because it’s cheaper to run them than it is to build new reactors.
But old reactors require federal approval to renew their licenses.
For the past decade, power companies have been on a winning streak.
They’d gotten reactor licenses renewed every time they asked.
Shawn Allee reports one of the industry’s most recent bets went wrong:

Vermont’s only nuclear reactor, Vermont Yankee, is likely to shut down in 2012.
The story of how that happened is unique in the nuclear biz.

Vermont Yankee’s license was set to expire in 2012 but eight years ago, a company called Entergy bought it anyway.

Entergy gambled the federal government would renew that license so Vermont Yankee could run another twenty years.

It seemed a safe bet, since the federal government never rejected a renewal application.

But Entergy also asked to expand Vermont Yankee, to produce more power.

That’s when Vermont’s state legislature stepped in.

The legislature said, if you want to expand, we want some say in whether you operate past 2012, regardless of what the federal government says.

No other state legislature has given itself this kind of authority.
This was an opening for anti-nuclear activists.

This video’s from a protest back in January.

Activists took it during their week long winter-time March to Vermont’s statehouse.

The protesters stopped for potlucks, speeches, and church songs.

Protester say they felt they were winning some support, but then they got an unexpected boost.

Here’s protester Bob Bady:

“We got a call that there was migrating plume of tritium under the plant and it was going to hit the press the next day.”

Bady says tritium is a kind of hydrogen that makes water radioactive.

In other words, Vermont Yankee was leaking radioactive water.

Protesters asked themselves, didn’t Entergy say these kinds of underground leaks couldn’t happen?

“The plant owner, Entergy, has incredibly low credibility particularly because they went before the legislature and vehemently denied there were even pipes underground, so that created a problem for them.”

The details are fuzzy, at least according to Entergy.

Here’s PR-guy Rob Williams.

“Clearly there was some kind of a miscommunication and then, uh, once we have a handle on it, we want to set the record straight.”

Entergy says its own investigation found employees did not lie about piping that could cause tritium leaks.

Vermont’s Attorney General is still determining that.

Regardless, some state senators said they felt they were lied to. Or Entergy did not know the plant could leak tritium. Either would be bad, so the state senate voted to shut the plant.

And that’s all Vermont law requires, so now Vermont Yankee’s slated to close in 2012.

But what happened with the tritium leaks?

PR-guy Rob Williams gives me a tour of Vermont Yankee.

From Entergy’s point of view, the system worked. It detected tritium in underground water.

“Right. Now, this is three wells we installed to specifically look for tritium. It gives you a good early warning that you’ve got a leak back in the piping.”

State health officials say tritium probably leaked near the center of the plant.

The state hasn’t found contaminated wells or other drinking water supplies.
Tritium is likely to move into the nearby Connecticut River, where it’ll be diluted.

As for the federal government, it’s unfazed.

The U-S Nuclear Regulatory Commission says Vermont Yankee leaked tritium before – several times.

At least 26 other reactors leaked tritium, too, but the NRC says the public’s safe.

In fact, the NRC has approved applications for license renewal at plants that had leaks just like Vermont Yankee’s.

The NRC is still reviewing that plant’s license renewal application … regardless of what the State of Vermont has to say about it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Tomorrow, Shawn Allee looks at tritium leaks at one power plant that is across the river from a desalinization drinking water plant.

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Renewing Aging Nuclear Reactors (Part 1)

  • Watts Bar Unit 1 was the last nuclear power reactor to receive a new operating license in the U.S. in 1996. Reactors are licensed to operate for 40 years. After that, the utility has to apply for a 20 year renewal. (Photo courtesy of USNRC)

President Barack Obama has been stumping for nuclear power lately.
He announced loan guarantees to kick-start construction of the first new reactor in 30 years. Those guarantees might lead to just a handful of new reactors in the next decade. Shawn Allee reports the real action in the nuclear industry is in old reactors we already have:

Transcript

President Barack Obama has been stumping for nuclear power lately.

He announced loan guarantees to kick-start construction of the first new reactor in 30 years.
Those guarantees might lead to just a handful of new reactors in the next decade.

Shawn Allee reports the real action in the nuclear industry is in old reactors we already have:

To run a reactor, you have to have the federal government’s permissison, but that permission lasts 40 years.
If a company wants more time, it’s got to renew that license – for twenty years at a pop.
Companies are flooding the government with renewal applications.

To understand why, I talk with Don Kreis. He teaches environmental law at the Vermont Law School.

“Think about an automobile that you owned for a really long time, but it’s still working fine.”

OK. You’ve got two choices …. you can bet your car repair costs will be low … or you fork over a hefty wad of cash for a new car.

“Which of those two things are you going to do? Well, you’re goiing to run your old machine … and run it for as long as something can possibly run. Nuclear power plants run exactly the same way. ”

This is an understatement; it’s MUCH cheaper to run an existing nuclear reactor than to build a new one.
In Kreis’ home state of Vermont, a company bought an old reactor in 2002.
It paid 180 million dollars.
To build the same-sized plant new would cost 2.4 billion dollars today.

That’s the industry’s motivation for license renewal, but only the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can give the final O-K.

In the past decade, the NRC’s approved renewal at 59 reactors … more than half the nuclear fleet.

This is too fast for critics.

“We haven’t been happy with the process and I think there are issues with license renewal and the NRC needs to address those.”

That’s Edwin Lyman.
He’s a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group.

Lyman worries the NRC downplays risk from old reactors.

Take the case of the Crystal River reactor in Florida.

Last year, workers tried to replace old steam turbines.

“To do that you have to cut a hole in the containment building, when they did that, they found there was a huge gap that had developed in the containment building that you couldn’t see or detect from the outside and they only saw it when they cut through it. and so, the question is, was this an age-related issue that people didn’t know about.”

The containment building keeps the public safe from radiation during accidents.
The power company caught the problem after it submitted an application for renewal.
Lyman also worries about corroding pipes and reactor vessels.

“So, there are uncertainties and these will probably only grow as the fleet of power plants gets older.”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says critics like Lyman shouldn’t worry about aging reactors.
Samson Lee oversees renewal applications at the NRC.
He says old reactors meet the same safety standards new ones do, plus, companies have to show they’ll manage aging parts.

“So if they continue to meet the requirement to ensure the plants are safe, and if they continue to meet that, then you know, we can issue a renewal license.”

But as for the charge the renewal process is too quick or easy?

Lee says the NRC can say “no.”

“NRC has returned one application for license renewal.”

“What was that for?”

“That was because of poor quality of application. It was how they put together the application.”

“Did that reflect on the plant or the application process?”

“It’s the application process. This is how they chose to prepare the application.”

So, for now … the biggest problem the NRC has seen during license renewal has been in the paperwork.

Right now, the federal government’s handing out renewal licenses, allowing nuclear power plants to run up to 60 years.

But there’s more to come.

The government’s prepared to evaluate renewals to let plants run up to 80 years.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Tomorrow Shawn Allee will have
a report on one state that has said “no”
to re-licensing a nuclear power plant.

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Nuclear Loans Guaranteed

  • If all goes according to plan, the nuclear reactors will go up in six to seven years and cost around 14 billion dollars. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

The Obama Administration
announced that it will back
the cost of constructing two
new nuclear reactors. Mark
Brush reports, if they’re
constructed, they’ll be the
first reactors built in the
country in nearly three decades:

Transcript

The Obama Administration
announced that it will back
the cost of constructing two
new nuclear reactors. Mark
Brush reports, if they’re
constructed, they’ll be the
first reactors built in the
country in nearly three decades:

The Southern Company plans to build the reactors in Georgia. They say, if all goes well, they’ll go up in six to seven years and cost around 14 billion dollars.


Investors have seen nuclear energy as a risky bet. But now that the President says the government will guarantee the loans, Wall Street might be enticed back to nuclear energy.

And then there’s the question of safety. President Obama’s Energy Secretary is Steven Chu. He says these new generation reactors are safe.

“We expect that the newer generation reactors will be ideally completely passively safe. Which means that, uh, you don’t actually need to control the reactor. If you lose control of it, it will not melt down.”

Some environmentalists say nuclear energy is not worth the costs – and there’s still no permanent place to store nuclear waste that’s radioactive for thousands of years.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

What to Do With Nuclear Waste

  • 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.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

New Nukes Stalled

  • 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.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Government Meeting on New Nukes

  • 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.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Drilling for Radioactive Gas?

  • 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.

For The Environment Report, I’m Conrad Wilson.

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Nuclear Careers to Heat Up?

  • 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.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Your Power Bill in the Future

  • 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.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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