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Listening to the car radio while driving home from the office,
I heard that on July 7th the Duke Energy Corporation had applied to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a forty-year extension of their license to operate
the Oconee Nuclear Station. The reactors are located in Oconee County, South
Carolina—just 20 miles from the Chattooga River. The local newsman on the radio
continued to read from the press release: “Duke’s application for the extension
is only the second such request from the nuclear industry in the United States”.
The report brought back memories of all the excitement and bustle over the concerns
for public safety when the fledgling nuclear industry entered the public utility
markets in the 1950’s. I couldn’t help but wonder about the implications of
the NRC giving the nod for Duke to continue their operations at Oconee, given
that it is old and and some would say—obsolete.
Duke Energy Corporation (Duke) began operating nuclear power plants in South
Carolina in the 1970’s, and met very little resistance from the state. But activism
against the nuclear industry here and across the nation was growing. Incidents
at Three Mile Island and later at Chernobyl prompted public scrutiny of the
industry. Specific concerns included the potential effects of exposure to radiation
from nuclear plants, both from normal operations and in case of an accident,
emergency planning, disposal of spent fuel, aging of the containment vessel,
and the public’s “right to know”.
Duke Energy’s recent re-licensing application resurrected my concerns about
Duke’s ability to operate safely at Oconee, and prompted me to conduct some
research into the matter. To a large degree, I was curious about the potential
precedent that is about to be decided in our own “front yard”. The following
is a brief account of what I found.
Duke Energy Corporation is based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is one of
the largest nuclear power producers in the Southeast. In the early years, the
nuclear industry targeted the Piedmont of the Carolinas and the Midwest as good
locations to build nuclear power plants. The Carolinas offered abundant, cheap,
non-union labor and a favorable political climate. In South Carolina, people
were already familiar with the “nuke” industry. The Savannah River Site at Barnwell
was established by the federal government in 1950 to produce special radioactive
isotopes for “national security” (plutonium-239 and tritium). South Carolina
politicians including Solomon Blatt, the “grand old” Speaker of the SC State
House, wielded great influence in paving the way for the nuclear industry in
the state. Blatt and other powerful political figures were able to sell the
nuclear industry, invoking the argument of jobs and tax revenue.
In 1974, Duke Energy Corporation finished construction of the Oconee Nuclear
Station on the Keowee River in Oconee County, at the foot of the remote Blue
Ridge Escarpment. The construction project included two man-made lakes. The
largest is Lake Keowee, covering 18,500 acres and which was built at the station
site. Lake Jocassee was built at a higher elevation to serve as a pump storage
lake for hydroelectric power generation and covers 7,656 acres, impounding the
waters of the Whitewater, Thompson, Horsepasture and Toxaway Rivers. Lake Keowee’s
function was for conventional hydroelectric power production, and to supply
water for the cooling system of the three nuclear power reactors that lie near
the Lake Keowee dam site.
Local officials welcomed Duke with open arms, in anticipation of an economic
boom and millions of dollars in tax revenue. Inspired by the arrival of Duke,
Oconee County created a logo to display their civic pride. The image was of
a Native American Indian, with a background of the whirling atom symbol and
captioned “Oconee—Arrowheads to Atoms”. In fact, Duke initially invested approximately
600 million dollars to build the Oconee Nuclear Station, which in turn by 1992
had boosted the tax base of the Oconee County school system to approximately
$225 million, one of the best-funded in the state. From the perspective of cash
flow, Duke had delivered on their promise of economic prosperity. Duke also
gained a reputation for running a shrewd and efficient operation.
Then, in 1979 the tragedy at Three Mile Island made national news. The unthinkable
occurred: the reactor’s cooling system failed, which caused a partial exposure
of the core. This accident narrowly avoided a “meltdown” of the system. The
reactor type at Three Mile Island is a nuclear steam supply system manufactured
by Babcock & Wilcox, which is the same type of reactor as those at Oconee. Consequently,
after the accident at Three Mile Island one of the first to arrive on the scene
were top executives of Duke Energy Corporation. It is believed that Duke had
a lot to do with negotiating a retrofitted design for the pressurized water
reactor at Three Mile Island, which smoothed over further questions concerning
this type of nuclear reactor.
Nevertheless, questions do remain about the potential for “breaching” in pressurized
water reactors. A breach in a pressure vessel is the worst case scenario because
the pressure vessel is the last line of defense to prevent the core, which houses
the nuclear fuel, from “spewing its guts”—and setting off a meltdown. A meltdown
would produce a cloud of potentially lethal radioactive gas that is released
into the atmosphere. According to NRC officials, one of the most likely causes
of breaching is “embrittlement” of the pressure vessel as a result of continued
bombardment of the vessel walls by neutrons radiated from the reactor core.
Embrittlement is more likely to be a factor in breaching at low temperatures.
Under normal conditions, these 8-inch thick metal vessel walls can stand temperatures
as low as 0- 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but with age and routine neutron bombardment
the vessels become more vulnerable, especially when subjected to “sudden” cooling.
Nuclear reactor core temperatures under pressure reach as high as 560 degrees
Fahrenheit. When the hot vessel walls are cooled from within, the inner face
of the wall tries to contract. However, the outer wall cools more slowly and
prevents this contraction. One expert described the process: “If the core remains
highly pressurized, the vessel experiences tensile stresses superimposed on
thermal stresses that result from the thermal gradient across the vessel wall.”
Cracks in the wall may then form. If a pressure vessel is accidentally over-cooled
in an event the NRC calls “pressurized thermal shock”, the result is disaster.
According to the records in the Oconee County Public Library, on June 22 of
this year NRC held a “pre-decisional enforcement conference” with Duke Energy
Corporation in Atlanta. The meeting’s purpose was to discuss certain regulatory
concerns associated with the Oconee Nuclear Station’s borated water storage
tanks and reactor building emergency sumps at all three of the station’s units.
These concerns are directly related to the cooling systems at Oconee and according
to the NRC, “...could have led to problems in certain accident situations.”
The NRC is the primary watchdog agency for the nation’s 140 nuclear reactors.
In a statement this spring by the NRC to the Senate Appropriations Committee,
NRC Chairman Shirley Jackson expressed concerns for recent proposed budget cuts
for the agency in which she said, “Every member of the Commission believes that
a full reduction of the magnitude proposed would limit the NRC’s ability to
adequately protect public health and safety.” Therefore, the pending budget
cuts for the NRC could become an important factor in ensuring the safety of
the aging Oconee Nuclear Station, especially in light of the very recent safety
hearings.
In case of an accident at Oconee, there is bad news and good news concerning
other significant safety and environmental issues. First, regarding removal
of spent fuel: so far all spent fuel has been kept on site due to the controversy
over potential repositories, such as the Yucca Mountain site in Utah where questions
of ground water contamination have delayed the opening of this facility. At
some point, questions concerning the adequacy of Duke’s spent fuel containment
facility will most certainly become a factor in this re-licensing decision.
The good news is the Oconee County Emergency Preparedness Office has a detailed
plan for handling an accident at the nuclear site. This strategy features a
four-tiered plan that is geared to the degree of the accident and potential
dosages of radiation to surrounding areas due to the quantity of the radioactive
release as well as atmospheric conditions at the time. This plan also encompasses
a protocol for a chain of command, and includes well thought out evacuation
routes. Yet, these plans also raise other, not so often thought of concerns
such as the potential for a breach of the reactor due to an earthquake (the
Brevard Fault runs within 10 miles of Oconee Nuclear Station), tornado, terrorist
or missile attack, and operator (human) error.
Nonetheless, Duke Energy Corporation and advocates of the nuclear industry
staunchly defend the position that catastrophes such as Three Mile Island or
Chernobyl are remote. I tend to agree. I would, however, wonder about the odds
that Oconee might be a likely candidate “if” a major accident did happen. To
date, Duke is pushing forward with their request to extend the life of its Oconee
Nuclear Station. NRC seems content to wait and see how much risk a community
is willing to accept in return for jobs and taxes. It remains unclear how much
input the public will have in the ultimate decision whether or not to re-license
this nuclear power plant.
In the Soviet Union where people once had little opportunity to speak out,
nuclear power plants were built with extremely lax safeguards. Of the 135,000
people who were evacuated from a 18.6 mile radius around Chernobyl at 8:00 a.m.
on that April morning, 36 hours after the reactor “blew”, the majority had an
estimated exposure “within the established limits” according to the official
report. The response to the disaster was reported to be “exemplary”.
The question of re-licensing the Oconee Nuclear Station is very complex. There
are some things we know. For example, we know that the odds of something happening
at Oconee that might result in a catastrophe are much less than the odds were
at Chernobyl. However, there are many questions still unanswered by the NRC
and Duke Energy concerning the long term safety of the facility at Oconee. These
questions are much too broad and important to address in one short article.
There is one question, though, which is easy to answer. This question is about
public education and the right to participate in the decision to re-license
or not. In the coming months, the Chattooga River Watershed Coalition will be
watching the process of Duke’s request to re-license the Oconee Nuclear Station.
Stay tuned.
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Ancient
History Beneath the Lakes
Beneath the lakes of Keowee and Jocassee lay some of the most ancient and significant
Native American and early European archaeological sites in the Southeast. The
sites include Fort Prince George, an early British military outpost, and the
Cherokee village site at Keowee, which during the eighteenth century served
as the capital of the Lowerhill Cherokee.
Construction of these two lakes required harvesting the wild timberlands in
the lake basins, including some of the last stands of native old growth forest
in the southern Blue Ridge Mountains. These lakes also inundated some of the
best bottomland in upstate South Carolina. When Crescent Land and Timber Company,
a subsidiary of Duke Energy, finished the clearing operation in the fall of
1969, they had harvested 17.5 million board feet of pine sawtimber, 15 million
board feet of hardwood sawtimber and 51,800 cords of pulpwood. Duke boasted
about the timber harvest in a brochure, and said that this was enough sawtimber
to build 2,350 six-room houses and that the pulpwood would load 2,250 railroad
cars. Some of the Yellow poplar trees that were harvested in the ancient forest
of Jocassee were reported to be 200 feet tall, seven feet in diameter and over
200 years old.
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