This article originally appeared in the May 12, 1986, edition of U.S. News & World Report.
For Beverly Nail of Kennewick, Wash., the nuclear explosion some 5,500 miles away in Chernobyl struck dangerously close to home. Says Nail, who lives 20 miles from the Hanford nuclear reactor, a technological cousin to the disabled plant in the Soviet Union: “This is the first time I’ve not felt safe. What’s happened in Russia makes me feel shaky.”
Like Nail, millions of Americans are wondering whether the events that shook Chernobyl–and the world–might one day strike at Kennewick or even New York City. The U.S. nuclear industry–one of the world’s oldest–operates 105 nuclear plants, more than any other country. And some 3 million people live within 10 miles of a nuclear reactor. While the United States as a whole relies on nuclear energy for only 16 percent of its electricity needs, Northeasterners get about one third of their electricity from nuclear reactors.
What’s more, the accident seven years ago at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility near Harrisburg, Pa.–the most recent of four serious nuclear accidents in this country–still haunts the nation.
No U.S. plant is exactly like the one at Chernobyl. Indeed, experts consider U.S. plants to be safer than those typically found in the Soviet Union. Still, future accidents seem inevitable. “In a population of 100 reactors operating over a period of 20 years, the crude cumulative probability of a [severe] accident would be 45 percent,” concluded a recent risk-assessment study by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which polices commercial reactors. Adds John G. Kemeny, who headed President Carter’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: “Something unexpected can always happen. That’s the lesson from Three Mile Island. All you can do is cut down on the probabilities.”
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All commercial reactors in the U.S., including the Fort St. Vrain graphite reactor, are housed in containment structures made of reinforced concrete. Such units helped prevent deadly doses of radioactive particles and gases from escaping at TMI. Most Soviet reactors do not have containment structures.
However, in the U.S., five government plants, including Hanford, lack containment structures, even though they produce deadly plutonium for weapons. Both the fuel and the plutonium in these plants is far more dangerous than the lower grade fuel used in commercial reactors.
But these facilities have some compensating features. Like the Soviets’ Chernobyl plant, the Hanford reactor uses graphite to moderate the nuclear reaction inside the core, and it is cooled by water. But unlike the Soviet reactor, it sits in what is known as a confinement structure. The building can be sealed off in an emergency and is fitted with vents that can release air if pressure builds up. Although the filters cannot prevent gases from escaping, they are effective in trapping radioactive particles.
Other safety features at the Hanford plant compensate for its use of graphite. Most commercial reactors use water instead of graphite, which burns like charcoal when it is ignited and is thought to be responsible for the fire at Chernobyl. The U.S. Department of Energy, which operates Hanford and the other government reactors, insists that the reactor design reduces the risks of fire by utilizing uranium metal, which–unlike the uranium oxide used in Chernobyl–helps conduct heat away from the reactor core. Hanford also is equipped with a system that will drop boron balls into a reactor if there is a fire. Boron stops a nuclear chain reaction by absorbing neutrons.
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Yet technology cannot safeguard against accidents. At TMI, human error compounded minor technical problems, resulting in a partial meltdown that nearly caused the release of deadly doses of radiation into the atmosphere.
The TMI accident spawned a whole new generation of nuclear-safety requirements. As many as half of the safety procedures now routinely conducted in the industry were born after 1979 in the wake of TMI. A utility that goes on line with a new reactor in 1992 will incur an estimated $42 million in TMI-related operating and maintenance costs, according to a DOE study.
In one important change since TMI, the NRC established emergency planning zones. “It became clear that there had to be some coordinating plan between state and local officials and the plant,” says Ron Harris, an emergency planner for the Duke Power Company in Durham, N.C. Within the primary zone, which encompasses a 10-mile radius around each reactor site, the utilities have tried to facilitate evacuation by setting up sirens and holding emergency drills. The utilities also are required to distribute brochures annually that contain emergency information, such as the location of shelters.
The industry itself has set up a self-policing body, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. INPO is credited with initiating a number of safety improvements. It certifies training programs at nuclear power plants and is reputed to have dramatically improved the know-how of reactor personnel. “INPO has done good work,” says a U.S. Senate staff adviser. “Until recently, the focus has been almost entirely on engineering. But you have to look at plumbing, maintenance and operation procedures.” To improve maintenance and operations, INPO has encouraged utilities to train personnel on simulators.
Still, serious questions remain about safety in the U.S. industry, and developing the right strategy for regulating the industry is difficult. “Regulations are a double-edged sword,” says Kemeny. “They contribute to higher safety standards, but overregulation makes it difficult to get a new idea approved.” At TMI, for example, the engineers who designed the damaged reactor strove to expedite licensing by duplicating the design of a reactor that had gone on line four years earlier. As a result, they relied on obsolete computers, which proved inadequate to handle the problems generated during the accident. TMI says it has since upgraded its computer system.
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Efforts to restructure the regulatory process center on the NRC. Several groups, including the Kemeny commission, have urged overhauling the agency. Critics charge that a bloated bureaucracy has led to the NRC’s delaying, for years, decisions on generic reactor design and maintenance problems. They also charge that the agency mishandled the TMI accident and conducted spotty inspections of some reactor sites.
The Reagan administration has not adhered to all the recommendations made by the Kemeny commission and approved by President Carter. For example, President Reagan reinstated Joseph Hendrie, the former chairman of the NRC, whom Carter had ousted following TMI. He also disbanded a blue-ribbon watchdog committee that was to help keep an eye on the industry.
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Thinking the Unthinkable: Can Chernobyl Happen Here? originally appeared on usnews.com
