NEI Nuclear Notes

When a new president takes office, there is always a lot on the White House’s plate. But recently 93 members of the House of Representatives sent President Trump a letter asking him to move one particular issue higher on the list: picking new members for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, so that body can resume its crucial work of overseeing energy infrastructure. The members of Congress are correct about that agency, known as FERC, but it is not the only part of government that is short-handed. FERC is supposed to have five members, but the number had dwindled to three, and recently one of the three quit, so FERC is not able to muster a quorum . FERC does many jobs. The one most important to the nuclear industry is oversight of the Independent System Operators, the non-profit companies that run the electricity markets and operate the electric grid over most of the country. Those markets have serious problems but, with FERC out of action, proposed reforms will have to wa...

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."   Mahatma Gandhi Change has come fast and hard to the nuclear industry, indeed to the entire energy sector.  We are in a race to adapt to new realities: abundant, cheap natural gas; little or no growth in electricity demand; mixed signals about the importance of controlling carbon emissions; and market rules tied to the old world order that inadequately reward 24-7 reliability, fuel supply diversity, and carbon-free baseload generation.  In the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, the U.S. nuclear industry is pursuing a thoughtful and ambitious program to simplify how we work together to ensure safety and reliability remain the clear and constant focus of our efforts.  It is inspiring to see how teams of experts from across the industry are, through the Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative, sharing experience, good ideas and best practices to identify better ways to accomplish the myriad tasks required to ma...

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Rod McCullum The following is a guest post from Rod McCullum, senior director of used fuel and decommissioning programs at NEI. In November 2015, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) to consider potential new regulations governing the decommissioning of nuclear power reactors. This action came at a time of increasing interest in decommissioning as many reactors are reaching the end of their operating lifespan. Yet, while interest in this topic may be peaking, it is certainly not a new subject. Industry and NRC have, over several decades, established a proven track record of safely taking power reactors out of service. Interest in new regulations at this time stems mainly from a desire to improve efficiency – and not from any identified safety need. This interest will be a topic of discussion at NRC’s upcoming Regulatory Information Conference (RIC) , with an entire session on Thursday morning devoted to the potentia...

Timothy Rausch The following is a guest post by Timothy Rausch, Talen Energy’s Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer Companies that operate America’s nuclear energy facilities today have made significant progress in their evaluations of  seismic safety  as part of a series of actions the industry is taking to implement  lessons learned from the 2011 Fukushima accident . The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2012 required energy companies to reevaluate potential seismic hazards for each of America’s 99 reactors. Nuclear energy facilities were designed and built with extra safety margin, in part  to be able to withstand an earthquake even beyond the strongest ever at each site . Nonetheless, over the past decades, the industry has re-evaluated the seismic safety of its facilities. Each time new seismic information became available, plant operators have confirmed, and in many cases, enhanced the facility’s seismic protection.  The nuclear indus...

Jim Slider Fifteen years ago, the NRC and industry cooperated on reforming the way in which NRC decided where to focus its attention across the U.S. fleet of power reactors.  Among the guiding principles of the reform was to make NRC decisions on operating reactor oversight more transparent and predictable, and ensure that additional NRC resources were applied where they would have the greatest benefit to safety.  Combining performance indicators and inspection results, the Reactor Oversight Process ( ROP ) is widely regarded as far superior to the largely subjective and non-public method it replaced.  Over its 15 year life, the ROP has evolved.  As NRC and industry learned from experience, adjustments were made in various features of the ROP to ensure the program continued to meet its objectives and adhere to its guiding principles.  Two years ago, at the Commissioners' direction, the staff undertook an independent review of the ...

Government shutdown has been all the rage in Washington lately. Appropriations run out at the end of September, also the end of the fiscal year, and the government cannot fully function without them. Well, it can – it’s not like the treasury is empty aside from moths and dust – but without passing appropriation legislation, none of that money can be divvied among government functions, thus shutdown. Now, obviously, essential activities continue regardless. When the government last shut down in 2013, the Department of Homeland Security furloughed about 15 percent of its workforce. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sidelined about 90 percent of its staff. Nothing “bad” happened, or was expected to, but it’s not a good situation. There is a notable difference between DHS (and many other government agencies) and the NRC. NRC is 90 percent funded by the industry it oversees; in many ways, it’s a fee-for-service entity and one where the key goal, like that of DHS, is to protect p...

Marcus Nichol and David Young The following is a guest post by Marcus Nichol and David Young of NEI. In a recent decision, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission directed the agency staff  initiate a rulemaking to revise e mergency preparedness (EP) regulations and guidance for Small Modular Reactor (SMR) facilities. Small, scalable nuclear energy facilities are anticipated to become an important addition to the nation's electric power grids. However, in order for SMRs to fulfill this promise, it is important that an EP framework for these facilities recognize their advanced design characteristics and safety features. Nuclear power plants must have plans in place to cope with any possible emergency. For the current fleet of large light water reactors (LWRs), these plans include two Emergency Planning Zones (EPZs) around each nuclear power plant facility – one of about 10 miles for actions to protect from a possible radioactive plume (a plume exposure pathway EPZ) and the ot...

Sue Perkins-Grew The following is a guest post by Sue Perkins-Grew, Senior Director, Emergency Preparedness and Risk Assessment at the Nuclear Energy Institute. “ Preparedness ” is at the core of the nuclear energy industry culture, one reason why reactor operators have a half century of safe operations in the United States. Part of the job of every licensed plant operator involves training to ensure they are prepared to address a spectrum of unlikely events that do not occur during normal operations. In fact, plant operators essentially work their entire careers without experiencing such events. Yet they still practice on simulators regularly, where they are tested with redundant failures of plant systems to gain proficiency in their response to various accident scenarios . This way, they are skilled in taking actions to control and correct any abnormal event. A qualified, multi-disciplined emergency response organization completes annual training and performance evaluations ...

Maria Korsnick The following is a guest post by Maria Korsnick, NEI’s Chief Operating Officer. During the five years that I was chief nuclear officer at Constellation Energy , my first priority was to ensure that our plants operated safely and reliably in order to protect public health and safety. On a day-to-day basis, I wanted to make sure that our operating crews and emergency personnel had multiple tools available to combat any situation that might arise. And when we identified gaps, we made sure to address them promptly. It’s this bias for action -- together with the oversight of a strong independent regulator, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission  -- that has helped the American nuclear energy industry become the safest and most reliable in the world. Following the tragic accident at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan on March 11, 2011, the U.S. nuclear industry followed that same bias for action to ensure that our plants would continue to protect the public should a simil...

Steven Kraft The following is a guest post by Steven Kraft, senior technical advisor at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). For 26 years, at the close of each NRC Regulatory Information Conference (RIC), I have blocked my calendar for the following year’s RIC. The RIC (click here for this week’s agenda) has proven to be the most important and most interesting U.S. nuclear conference on the annual calendar and always worth the time invested. Participants learn from all the viewpoints presented. It is refreshing to see the deep technical commitment to safety expressed by all participants regardless of where they stand on any regulatory issue. Beginning tomorrow morning, the 27th edition of the RIC will bring to together all four NRC Commissioners and over 2,000 attendees in a professional yet convivial atmosphere to openly discuss civilian nuclear regulatory issues in both the formal sessions and informal hallway discussions. The highlight of the conference is always ...

Jim Slider The following guest post is by Jim Slider, NEI's Senior Project Manager, Safety-Focused Regulation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently announced disposition of several regulatory issues from Oyster Creek Generating Station’s fourth quarter inspection report . Without context, one might be alarmed by multiple violations in one reporting period, however a thorough understanding of the NRC’s Reactor Oversight Process provides the right amount of perspective. In the United States, the safety of commercial nuclear power plants is assured by several layers of protection. Beginning with robust designs and stringent procedures, plant owners like Exelon enforce high standards on the hundreds of professionals who contribute to the design, maintenance and operation of their plants. Those standards demand compliance with federal safety requirements and more. Constant scrutiny and continuous learning are important parts of those high, self-imposed expectations. Wh...

The following guest post comes from Victoria Anderson, senior project manager for risk assessment at NEI. Since the NRC published the Probabilistic Risk Assessment Policy Statement in 1995, both the industry and NRC have worked to use risk information to better focus implementation of regulations at our country’s nuclear reactors. Risk information has helped advance maintenance efforts, routine inspections and testing procedures to ensure that licensees direct resources to the equipment and practices that are most important to safe, reliable operation of their plants. In one such effort, in 2004, the NRC published a voluntary rule – 10 CFR 50.69 , Risk-informed categorization and treatment of structures, systems and components for nuclear power reactors – that would allow licensees to refocus their equipment special treatment requirements on the structures, systems and components that are the most important to protecting the plant. Specifically, licensees implementing this volunta...

Dale Klein The following is a post by Dale Klein, former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and now Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at The University of Texas System. All nations with nuclear energy programs share the same goals of protection of the public health and safety along with the efficient operation of their commercial reactors, implemented in accordance with their own policies, laws and regulations. Never more so than since the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi site three and a half years ago. Recent reports from both Bloomberg News and Reuters have shed new light on differences in approaches to enhancing safety at nuclear power plants in the international community. With that in mind, I’d like to take a closer look at the post-Fukushima actions the U.S. industry has taken to make plants that are already safe even safer. Each U.S. plant site is procuring additional equipment such as portable pumps and generators to perform key safety ...

This morning in a conference call with nuclear energy bloggers , NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane, in response to a direct question about the safety of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, said "[We] believe the plant is safe ... Otherwise it still wouldn't be operating." For the why behind that conclusion, you ought to review two reports that were released yesterday afternoon. On Wednesday, PG&E released a report confirming the seismic safety of Diablo Canyon Power Plant . The report, the Central Coastal California Seismic Imaging Project , is 14 chapters long, but the bottom line is delivered succinctly by The Tribune , the paper of record in San Luis Obispo. The report will now be peer reviewed by an NRC committee that includes Neal Driscoll , a professor of geology and geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego . When asked about the report after its release yesterday ... [Driscoll] said PG&E marshaled many state-of-the-art tools f...

Just a few minutes ago, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a statement rebutting a story that appeared yesterday at the Daily Caller concerning security at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant: There have been several recent news stories contending that security is lax at the nation’s nuclear power plants. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, they are among the best-protected sector of our national infrastructure. NRC requires nuclear power plant owners to take a graded approach to physical protection focusing on the areas most important to safety. For example, the area encompassing a nuclear power plant and its safety equipment is the Protected Area. NRC regulations require stringent access control measures before personnel and vehicles can enter a Protected Area. Within the Protected Area are the Vital Areas, which have even more access barriers and alarms to protect important equipment. All plants are required to have security checkpoints into the Protected...

Scott Peterson The following is a guest post by Scott Peterson, NEI's Senior Vice President of Communications. Companies that operate America’s nuclear energy facilities today will submit new information regarding seismic safety as part of a series of actions the industry is taking to implement lessons learned from the 2011 Fukushima accident . This comes at a time of heightened interest in earthquakes given the Los Angeles-area temblors this past weekend . However, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2012 required energy companies to reevaluate potential seismic hazards for each of America’s 100 reactors. Nuclear energy facilities were designed and built with extra safety margin, in part to be able to withstand an earthquake even beyond the strongest ever at each site . Nonetheless, over the past decades, the industry has re-evaluated the seismic safety of its facilities. Each time new seismic information became available, plant operators have confirmed, and in many ca...

Steven Kraft The following is a guest post by Steven Kraft, senior technical advisor at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). Last September, Kraft traveled to Japan with U.S. chief nuclear officers to meet with their Japanese counterparts to discuss lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi accident. A nuclear industry veteran of over four decades, Kraft recently marked his 35 th anniversary working at NEI. The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011 left over 16,000 people dead and 3,000 missing.  While none of these lives were lost due to the nuclear plant accident at Fukushima Daiichi caused by the tsunami, we mourn the loss of these lives to forces of nature that we are striving to better understand to better protect our facilities and avoid future accidents. Last September, it was sobering to see the towns ravaged by the earthquake and tsunami now suspended in time. The residents cannot return to recover and rebuild their homes and busine...

Nils Diaz Last week, we saw the Site Vice President at the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant step up to debunk a story in the Tampa Bay Times concerning the safety and efficiency of the plant's steam generators in the wake of a power uprate. Now, former NRC Commissioner Nils Diaz is stepping into the fray, writing his own piece for the newspaper buttressing the plant's reputation for safety and reliability : The public health and safety of people who live within 50 miles of St. Lucie and beyond are protected by the demanding safety framework established by the nuclear power industry and confirmed by its regulators. No member of the public in the United States has ever been exposed to a radioactive hazard detrimental to their health from an operating nuclear power plant. I am convinced that the NRC and the plant operator have rigorously reviewed the safety of the St. Lucie Plant prior to and after the power upgrade and concluded that the public health and safety is protected. That...

We haven’t talked much about the partial government shutdown because it isn’t our brief – and honestly, who hasn’t been bloviating about it lately? But it did lead the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to depend, at least for awhile, on money described as “carryover” funds to fully operate. Now, that’s gone, too, so the agency has suspended many of its activities : Beginning on Thursday, we will not conduct non-emergency reactor licensing, reactor license renewal amendments, emergency preparedness exercises, reviews of design certifications or rulemaking and regulatory guidance. Also suspended for now will be routine licensing and inspection of nuclear materials and waste licensees, Agreement State support and rulemakings, including Waste Confidence. This is just a short list of the actions we are prohibited from performing under Anti-deficiency Act restrictions. Obviously, the NRC will continue to fund the resident inspectors at the individual facilities, because they’re safe...