23 Nuke Plants In US Share Design With Japanese Ones

By Steve Hynd

John and Ron have been following events at the Japanese nuclear plants as the crisis has largely split the difference between the hopes of pro-nuclear pundits and the fears of those less confident about nuclear safety. Still, it's the second or third worst nuclear incident in history, behind only Chernobyl and perhaps Three Mile Island.

Which should perhaps be a call to investigate safety at the 31 boiling water reactors in the United States, especially the 23 GE Mark 1 reactors.

In 1996, a report by anti-nuclear pressure group the Nuclear Information and Resource Center alleged:

even basic questions about the the GE containment design remain unanswered and its integrity in serious doubt. For example, eighteen of these BWRs use a smaller GE Mark I pressure suppression containment conceived as a cost-saving alternative to the larger reinforced concrete containments marketed by competitors. A large inverted light-bulb-shaped steel structure called "the drywell" is constructed of a steel liner and a concrete drywell shield wall enclosing the reactor vessel. The atmosphere of the drywell is connected through large diameter pipes to a large hollow doughnut-shaped pressure suppression pool called "the torus", or wetwell, which is half-filled with water. In the event of a loss-of-coolant-accident (LOCA), steam would be released into the drywell and directed underwater in the torus where it is supposed to condense, thus suppressing a pressure buildup in the containment.

However, as early as 1972, Dr. Stephen Hanuaer, an Atomic Energy Commission safety official, recommended that the pressure suppression system be discontinued and any further designs not be accepted for construction permits. Shortly thereafter, three General Electric nuclear engineers publicly resigned their prestigious positions citing dangerous shortcomings in the GE design.

An NRC analysis of the potential failure of the Mark I under accident conditions concluded in a 1985 report that Mark I failure within the first few hours following core melt would appear rather likely."

In 1986, Harold Denton, then the NRC's top safety official, told an industry trade group that the "Mark I containment, especially being smaller with lower design pressure, in spite of the suppression pool, if you look at the WASH 1400 safety study, you'll find something like a 90% probability of that containment failing."

None of the reactors of this type in the US are in places where they're likely to face a combined earthquake and tsunami, but as David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and the director of the Nuclear Safety Project of the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the NY Times:

�The Midwest has tornadoes, parts of the gulf experience hurricanes. There are places in the North where severe ice has caused problems. They all share the common thread of Mother Nature challenging the plants.�

Congress should immediately act to ensure safety invesigations are carried out - in particular, to ensure that these reactors have sufficient battery power available, a shortcoming at the Japanese plant. However, given how well the nuclear energy lobby and its corporations have their claws into Congress, on a bi-partisan basis, I expect they'll simply accept the industry's platitudes.