* I’ve seen several of these stories crop up this week since the Japan disaster. Are Illinois nuke plants safe?…
“We are on a slippery slope,” says Mary Olson, director of the Southeast Office of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a networking center founded in 1978 for activists and environmentalists concerned about nuclear power. She notes that Illinois is in the seismic zone of the New Madrid fault that some say is overdue for a major earthquake, is prone to tornadoes and has 11 nuclear reactors, a handful of which are of the same 1970s design as the troubled reactors in Japan.
But Farmer said the age of the reactors wasn’t a factor in the disaster caused by the “double whammy” of a record earthquake and historic tsunami.
And a statement released Monday from John Rowe, chairman and CEO of Exelon Corp., the parent of Warrenville-based Exelon Nuclear, one of the major owners and operators of U.S. nuclear plants, says, ”Our plants are safe, particularly given the different seismic patterns in our regions and the absence of tsunami-type events where we have operations.”
He says the plants are protected against earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters, but “still we watch, we learn, and we will work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other policymakers, as well as industry colleagues, on what, if anything, should be done to apply what can be learned from this unprecedented situation.”
* Our oldest four reactors have the same design as the failed Japanese nukes…
Four of the Illinois reactors have the same design and manufacturer as the first reactor to fail Saturday at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant northeast of Tokyo, said the Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. trade group for the industry.
Those reactors, produced by General Electric Co. and with the model name Mark I, also are in place at Exelon’s two reactors at Dresden, near Joliet, and at its two Quad Cities reactors.
* Exelon’s claims that the plants are safe ring hollow to some…
Some residents who live near the power plant in Braidwood re-evaluated their confidence in Exelon when they discovered in 2006 that the company had allowed water contaminated with radioactive tritium to leach outside the plant boundaries toward neighboring homes.
* And the IEPA has had its troubles as well…
Kraft also referred to an Illinois auditor general’s report last month that found the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency missed quarterly inspections at two nuclear plants in each of the last two fiscal years.
Oy.
* So, what about it. Are they safe? Well, the biggest earthquake fault line is pretty far from the nearest nuke plant…
Kraft told the Beacon that the impact of earthquake on the Japanese reactors can give experts “a rough idea of how these reactors would respond to, say, the New Madrid fault” if a major earthquake would strike the region. Even though the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12 struck mainly in southwestern Illinois and southeastern Missouri — relatively far from the sites of the four Mark I reactors — Kraft contended that, because quakes inside continents can cause “soil liquification,” that can impact wider areas.
That’s true. That big New Madrid quake rang church bells in Boston and reversed the flow of the Mississippi River.
* And Exelon’s Rowe isn’t the only person I’ve seen say the tsunami, not the earthquake itself, is what did the biggest damage to the Japanese plants…
Damage to Tokyo Electric’s nuclear stations in Fukushima prefecture was primarily from the tsunami, not the earthquake, Exelon Chief Executive Officer John Rowe said today in a statement.
“Our plants are safe, particularly given the different seismic patterns in our regions and the absence of tsunami-type events where we operate,” Rowe said.
From the New York Times…
Critics of nuclear energy have long questioned the viability of nuclear power in earthquake-prone regions like Japan. Reactors have been designed with such concerns in mind, but preliminary assessments of the Fukushima Daiichi accidents suggested that too little attention was paid to the threat of tsunami. It appeared that the reactors withstood the powerful earthquake, but the ocean waves damaged generators and backup systems, harming the ability to cool the reactors.
* Still. the Japanese crisis is having an impact on Wall Street…
On Monday, Exelon’s stock fell 27 cents, or 0.63%, to $42.89 on three times its average volume. The stock was down about 2% earlier in the day before recovering most of its loss.
And in DC…
In a letter Monday afternoon ,Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush, ranking member of the House Energy and Power Subcommittee, asked for hearings on nuclear plant risks, saying, that “we should not accept the industry’s assurances without conducting our own independent evaluation.”
And at the Illinois Statehouse…
A chief sponsor of legislation lifting the 1987 ban [on nuclear plant construction] said Monday the effort is on indefinite hold after the catastrophic events at a nuclear power station in Japan. But state Rep. JoAnn Osmond said the question remains of how to best meet future energy demands. […]
Osmond said she was inclined to leave the bill in committee this year over the issue of nuclear-waste storage, even before the events in Japan.
“We’ve had many discussions, and the big thing is waste and how do we establish a (storage) facility. We’re looking for a better angle on that,” said Osmond. “We have to learn from Japan and look at things that we could do better.”
Waste is my biggest concern. But these power companies have been running their plants at very high levels since the industry was revamped here. They’re doing everything they can to squeeze every last bit of juice out of those nukes, so it’s something to think about.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 7:03 am:
“Our plants are safe, particularly given the different seismic patterns in our regions and the absence of tsunami-type events where we operate,” Rowe said.”
I’m sure Rowe’s counterpart in Japan would have said the same thing a week ago.
No official is going to say that there is any risk in operating nuclear plants. Which is dead wrong.
I have no problem re-evaluating the Illinois nuclear situation in light of last week’s events.
- techboy - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 7:28 am:
The fact is that the 40-year-old Japanese plants have held up remarkably well. What I mean by that is that the safety systems worked well, and significant radiation leakage was contained. The cores in the three reactors most affected are cooling down and the danger lessens each day from this point on. The steel containments are still secure. The small amounts of radiation released during pressure venting are in the micro-sievert range. You get as much radiation standing outside in Denver Colorado, or getting a TSA airport scan, as from these venting events. Typical coal plants release more radiation in a week by burning coal, than these venting events. Natural gas plants, exposied to the same level of quake, would have exploded for sure, and the fracking process of busting rock strata for natural gas extraction is doing FAR more damage to water and air than reactor operations ever could. Watch Gasland on HBO and tell me that natural gas is a better option than nuclear.
These old Japanese plants, designed in the 60’s and built in the 70’s, stood up to earthquakes an order of magnitude higher than design max. It WAS poor planning to put the backup onsite power generators where a tsunami could get at them. Then again, it was also a tsunami greater than any imagined. Illinois plants are not going to be subject to the same chain of failures regarding on-site backup power as Japan.
What I take away from the events is that the efforts of anti-nuke folks over decades have suppressed modernization and improvement efforts on reactors that can make them even more safe, and that we could have been moving towards more inherently foolproof and anti-proliferation designs like thorium-based plants, or high temp gas-cooled plants that are physically incapable of melting down, even if you remove all coolant. Being afraid of the wrong things has stalled progress in safety.
- Dead Head - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 7:57 am:
No
- amalia - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 8:19 am:
all safety and backup measures must be checked and amended where needed in the plants in Illinois. If the anti nuclear power folks have been preventing this, their bad. we need to make a sober analysis and if a plant is still in operation, make sure it is safer in light of the latest crisis or take it out of commission.
but you cannot say that the system almost worked in Japan. As we all type, the level of radiation is increasing in Tokyo and there are widening evacuations. The backups failed because the plant was not designed to deal with a tsunami, being too close to the sea that it uses to cool. planning was not amazing. how are 6 reactors placed together? what is the plan if the last backup cooling measure, the batteries, fail? how do you plan to fuel up the trucks that run out of diesel fuel as they pump into the core?
also, the Japanese nuclear industry has faced several crises in last few years. substituting a fake tape of an accident would have made my entire island angry and suspect. instead, the Japanese people do not have administrations that provide as much information as ours do. they are led in the dark. now quite literally.
the prayers of my family are with the people of Japan, who face terrible sadness and struggle.
- wordslinger - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 8:30 am:
– Kraft also referred to an Illinois auditor general’s report last month that found the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency missed quarterly inspections at two nuclear plants in each of the last two fiscal years.–
Seriously? Couldn’t find a parking space those quarters or something?
Waste is the concern for me, too, but I think nuclear has to remain a viable option. We demand a lot of energy to fuel our civilization, and it’s not like there aren’t safety and health risks plus environmental degradation to obtaining and burning fossil fuels.
- Dirt Digger - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 8:37 am:
If Illinois gets hit by a tsunami we will have bigger things to worry about than the backup generators for nuclear reactor cooling systems.
- MrJM - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 8:40 am:
I’d hold off on trumpeting that “the safety systems worked well” until Japan has gone a full 24 hours without a nuclear reactor exploding.
– MrJM
- JN - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 8:43 am:
If anything, the events in Japan signal that we need to build more reactors, not less. The Onagawa plant, built in the 1980s, is half the distance from the epicenter of this quake, but suffered very little damage and remains in operation. Still safer reactor designs are available, but the current ban prohibits the industry from replacing our current reactor. For these reasons, banning nuclear reactor construction has made the industry more dangerous, not less.
On the same vein, the fuel storage argument is also flawed. New reactor designs are much more efficient than the old Mark 1 BWRs that are currently in use. Using this talking point is akin to banning the production of new fuel-efficient cars because even if it burns 40% less fuel, it still causes global warming, math be damned.
- John Bambenek - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 9:04 am:
You never know when a tsunami from the Mississippi could swamp the state.
If they have problems, it isn’t because they have a few reactors like the ones in Japan, which would have worked under the assumptions they were built under. They actually withstood a higher intensity earthquake and still functioned correctly (began the emergency shutdown process), it is the tsunami that knocked out the power to the cooling systems which is why they are having all sorts of problems now. The tsunami was far greater than what was designed for. To make matters worse, the eastern sea board dropped 2 feet after the earthquake which let the wave come in higher and faster, something which wasn’t anticipated.
And at this point, it is unlikely any reactor will have a Chernobyl-style explosion. The radiation COULD leak out of the plant and cause a local environmental disaster, but we aren’t going to have a radiation cloud circling the globe.
I also echo JN’s comments… the latest generation of nuclear reactor (still filtering through the bowels of nuclear regulatory approval) use passive energy (i.e. no electrical power) to cool a reactor. If they were in place in Japan, we wouldn’t be having this discussion likely.
- John Parnell - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 9:13 am:
At the least, we should have the spent fuel rods stored in Illinois moved to a safe place, like Yucca Mountain in Nevada. This is a risk we can lessen without a big debate in Illinois.
- Excessively Rabid - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 9:20 am:
I feel safer knowing Bobby Rush is going to review the operation of nuclear power plants. Maybe he can design a replacement for the space shuttle too.
- amalia - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 9:22 am:
it’s interesting that Germany, (Chancellor Angela Merkel in discussion with the governors of states with nuclear power) made the decision to take 7 plants off line today. Germany, the country that prides itself on the production of amazing products with a high level of functionality and beauty, decided to take the safe route. The plants are ones built before 1980.
I’m sure the governor of this state is busy checking and double checking.
- MrJM - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 9:33 am:
I’m stumped. The bright assurances from the “more nukes now” crowd remind me of somebody, but I can’t decide who.
Is it 1) the Iraq-hawks promises of the necessity of a short, cheap and bloodless invasion to thwart WMDs, or 2) the wise men of Wall Street who told us that system-wide, global financial catastrophes were a thing of the distant past?
– MrJM
- Old Shepherd - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 9:38 am:
Coal-to-synthetic natural gas. No.
Nuclear power. No.
I’ll have some more foreign oil, please.
- OldIllini - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 10:10 am:
There were at least two safety issues we have found out so far re the Japanese nuclear plants. One is that the reactor may have been designed for an 8.1 earthquake. The strength of the EQ at the reactor may have been over that. The other, more easily remedied issue was that the plugs for the backup diesel electric generators did not match the connectors at the plants. Which says both bad design and a lack of emergency drills.
- Going nuclear - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 10:17 am:
I think nuclear plants are largely safe, but I don’t believe the nuclear power industry was going anywhere before the earthquake in Japan. This is due to relatively cheap natural gas and the failure to deal with global climate change, which would have put a price on carbon emissions and boosted all non-carbon forms of energy. In my opinion, the biggest stumbling blocks to nuclear power are high capital costs; production bottlenecks in producing key components; long construction times, concerns about uranium availability and waste storage; and high electricity prices from new plants. I think there is a role for a very modest amount of nuclear capacity, but most utilities will avoid this technology and look for lower-cost approaches to meet energy demand, including load reduction (i.e., efficiency), better grid management and a mix of renewable energy resources.
- ZC - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 10:25 am:
I say we all wait a week and then resume this thread.
The story about how well Japanese nuclear safety precautions have performed, given the earthquake and tsunami, seems to be melting down more by the hour. We’ll know soon enough, either way.
- John Bambenek - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 10:51 am:
I agree with Old Shepherd, it’s time to learn how to chuck spears and move back into the caves. Civilization is overrated.
- MrJM - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 10:56 am:
I’m not against nuclear power. I think it is a necessary part of any intelligent energy plan going forward.
I’m just against empty promises that terrible things could never, ever happen here, when the same people would have promised the same thing about Japan only last week.
The people of Japan are facing the world’s biggest nuclear crisis in decades — three nuclear reactors have exploded in the last four days and its far from over — so I have curiously little regard for such happy talk.
– MrJM
- dupage dan - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 11:25 am:
The combination of the earthquake, tsunami and failure of the backup generators is what is causing the problem in Japan. Not the age of the reactors. That combination is not likely to repeat itself in Illinois as a tsunami is unlikely, don’t you think?
- Irish - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 11:28 am:
I watched several interviews/discussions with the regulators, industry professionals, and the politicians from Illinois and the at the federal level They are making the same mistake the Japenese did. They are concentrating on how the nuclear reactors will survive an earthquake. And not the necessary systems that allow a safe shutdown.
It was stated that our plants would not have to worry about a tsnami, just an earthquake. The tsnami knocked out the water supply that allows for the safe shutdown of the reactor. We don’t have to worry about a tsnami because our plants are not near oceans or seas. However for that very reason the water supplies that cool the reactors are man made in most instances. We are not pumping out of an ocean but we are pumping out of man made lakes that could drain if the berm around them was fractured by an earthquake. Some of the lakes have what is called a “sink”. Those are secondary berms built in the lake bed that “save” enough water to safely shut the plant down in case an outer dike or berm is compromised and the main lake drains away. If an earthquake fractures the outer dike what keeps it from fracturing the inner or “sink” dike? These plants pump water from local rivers to the man made lakes through concrete pipes that are over six foot in diameter. Sometimes those pipes blow out and the ability to pump is lost until the pipes are repaired. It is very logical to assume that an earthquake of the magnitude that could reach these plants could fracture the dikes, and shift these pipe systems enough to not allow the pumping from the rivers. If that happened there would be no water to cool the reactors enough to allow them to be shutdown. We would be in the exact same position as the Japenese find themselves now.
One of those interviewed stated that even though the New Madrid fault had the potential for a magnitude 8+ earthquake it would not be that strong as far north as most of the nuke plants are. Is that a guarantee? Emphatically not! The Japanese plants were designed to withstand, I believe, an earthquake in the 7 magnitude range because they didn’t think they would ever have an 8+. They were wrong. Why didn’t the Exelon people answer the question when they were asked what magnitude earthquake our local plants were designed for? What magnitude quake are the cooling towers at Byron designed for? What about the dam at Clinton?
The answer to the question is, no our plants are not safe .
- Not So Quick . . . - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 11:40 am:
Here’s the best objective anlaysis of nuclear power I’ve come across: http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/ucs-position-on-nuclear-power.html?utm_source=SP&utm_medium=link4&utm_campaign=SP-japan-nuke-link4-3-14-11
I can’t reasonably support investing in additional nuclear power absent attention to UCS recommendations and cocnerns - including what to do with the waste. Blind faith in technology, i.e., “We don’t know how but someday we will . . .”? That’s a policy as sound as issuing debt to cover operating expenses; no, it’s much worse than that.
- hisgirlfriday - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 11:50 am:
I support nuclear power, but I have become convinced by this event that nuclear power in Illinois and everywhere could be made a lot more safer by increasing the generator capacity for backup power for its cooling systems.
In light of terrorist threats and our aging power grid infrastructure (an infrastructure that could be zapped and rendered useless instantly by a huge solar flare like that we had in the mid-1800s “Carrington Event”), we need to ensure our cooling systems will remain fully functional even after loss of power even if we don’t have the tsunami risk to that power system in Illinois.
- Illinois Geologist - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 11:59 am:
==The tsunami was far greater than what was designed for. To make matters worse, the eastern sea board dropped 2 feet after the earthquake which let the wave come in higher and faster, something which wasn’t anticipated.==
The height of the tsunami and the nearby land subsidence are actually both fairly well understood phenomena and are included in planning along the NW coast (CA-OR-WA) of the US which has a similar tectonic situation to Japan. If these were not included in the planning in Japan, they should have been.
The design earthquake for Illinois has been assumed to be an earthquake of similar magnitude to the 1811-1812 New Madrid events. Seismologists currently view those earthquakes as an absolute maximum. Recent studies indicate that using that event is a very conservative approach. Some researchers have concluded that the 1811-1812 quakes were much larger than anything we would expect to see in the next several hundred years.
- techboy - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 12:26 pm:
If a 1971 car crashes an has bad injuries, because it doesn’t have all the safety features of a 2011 model, we should therefore park our 2011 cars and walk away from them? I think not.
I’ll add that it would take a much smaller quake to cause a petroleum distillation plant or a gas plant to explode and burn, releasing a LOT of known carcinogenic material into the air.
- Ghost - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 12:49 pm:
Just out of curisoity, why not build these things underground in some kind of cncrete/sand/lead lined vault to minimize the damage from a failure?
- MrJM - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 1:14 pm:
@techboy - If an industry drives a 1971 car into the ditch right before our eyes, should we just take their word for it they’d keep the 2011 model between the lines?
There are very valid arguments for nuclear power. “Trust us — this time will be different” isn’t one of them.
– MrJM
- Loop Lady - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 3:31 pm:
II guess nuclear energy is not sustainable in an ever changing climactic world. Especially if they are located near a fault line or near the ocean. Nuclear power is very expensive to build, maintain. Manageent of the facility is a crapshoot after a disaster, ecological or otherwise. This should be blindingly clear after Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now Japan.
God help the people of Japan and others who deny the drawbacks of this energy source.
- Demoralized - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 4:29 pm:
I grew up 10 miles from the nuclear power station in Clinton and I never gave it a second thought. I personally would prefer nuclear energy to the pollution spewing coal plan that graces the skyline here in Springfield.
- Ain't No Justice - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 5:47 pm:
Demoralized I bet you would have thought about it if it was leaking radiation and they told you to wear a “cloth” mask and take the iodine tabs. The NRC is not going to give you the truth because it would excite world wide panic. The Chernoble radiation made its way to the US and it was a level 7, where Japan is a level 6 now. Which way is the wind blowing? During 9/11, when the National Guard was “guarding” the Clinton plant 3 fishermen rowed up to the back of the plant and no one was protecting the rear of the plant. Terrorists could easily wipe us out on all the US plants. As for 3 mile island, the news reported there were no deaths or public contamination. I bet Bruce Ingersoll’s family would beg to differ with that. Many of you that are pro had better do research on what radiation can do and the effects that last for generations. The waste is another issue. Several “nuke” semis run through our state yearly. It only takes one accident. Nuclear energy is not bad, but when the government runs it …..just saying.
- Park - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 7:11 pm:
Illinois EPA has almost nothing to do with nuclear safety. Maybe checking the discharge pipes for contaminants, that’s about it. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulates the State’s Nukes out of a region office in Lisle. They’re good…really good, and are in the units all the time.
- amalia - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 10:12 pm:
If the Clinton plant is of the same design as the 5 of the 6 reactors at the plant in question, time to check things out…..three GE scientists resigned over the design in 1975 saying that the procedure for cooling in case of a “Blackout” (systems fail) was flawed. read this on an ABC feed via a link on Drudge. they saw it coming and now we are watching it live in all the horror.
may god be with the 50 who remain trying to fight the meltdown.
- Kasich Walker, Jr.'s Consultant for Spiritual Fitness & Universal Hemp - Tuesday, Mar 15, 11 @ 10:13 pm:
Turn to ganja.
Both fuel and cars can be made from hemp.