Susquehanna boiling water nuclear power plant
(Photo: Wikipedia)
It can't happen here has pretty much been the line adopted by the nuclear power industry since the earthquake and tsunami made Fukushima a household word two months ago. Forget that some U.S. reactors were built near earthquake faults and on the coast. Forget that 31 of them are the same boiling-water design as the three in Japan whose enriched-uranium fuel assemblies melted down and are still spewing large amounts of
radiation radioactive material into the environment. America's nukes are exceptional. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Internal documents about the disaster released last week by the Fukushima power plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., tell another story.
To condense: a venting system meant to relieve a pressure build-up that could lead to a hydrogen explosion failed to work. Consequently, explosions blasted apart the outer containment structures of three of the Japanese reactors. At least in the case of reactor No. 1, the explosion may also be the reason the steel inner containment vessel has holes in it and is leaking. The failed vents are an upgraded version of the ones originally installed at Fukushima. U.S. reactors of the same design use the same vents. Hiroko Tabuchi, Keith Bradsher and Matthew L. Wald report:
One reason the venting system at the plant, which was built by General Electric, did not work is that it relied on the same sources of electricity as the rest of the plant: backup generators that were in basements at the plant and vulnerable to tsunamis. But the earthquake may also have damaged the valves that are part of the venting system, preventing them from working even when operators tried to manually open them, Tokyo Electric officials said.
In either case, regulators in the United States and Japan will now need to determine if such systems at similar plants designed by G.E. need to undergo expensive and time-consuming retrofitting or redesign to allow them to function even in severe accidents.
“Japan is going to teach us lessons,” said David Lochbaum at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “If we’re in a situation where we can’t vent where we need to, we need to fix that.”
Fukushima may teach some lessons about the emergency operation of aging nuclear power plants. But given the responses so far of the U.S. nuclear industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—nothing-to-worry-about-we're-safe-as-safe-can-be—the big lesson doesn't seem to be getting through.