As safety worries grow for existing U.S. nuclear fleet, proposed new reactor design faces mounting problems

A yearlong Associated Press investigation has found that federal regulators have kept aging U.S. nuclear reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards or failing to enforce them.

Coming as Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant is thought to be experiencing a worst-case "melt-through" scenario, the AP's revelation further amplifies concerns about the safety of the existing U.S. nuclear fleet.

But at the same time, the nuclear industry's plan to build a new type of reactor is also raising serious safety concerns.

The AP investigation into nuclear power plant safety appeared in media outlets nationwide this week and documented a cozy relationship between the commercial nuclear power industry and regulators at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. As the AP reported:

Records show a recurring pattern: Reactor parts or systems fall out of compliance with the rules. Studies are conducted by the industry and government, and all agree that existing standards are "unnecessarily conservative."

Regulations are loosened, and the reactors are back in compliance.

The commercial reactors now operating across the U.S. were built in the 1960s and 1970s, and were designed and licensed to generate power for 40 years. But 66 of the 104 operating reactors have been re-licensed for 20 additional years, with renewal applications under review for another 16 units.

These aging reactors are beginning to experience problems due to wear and tear: reactor vessels gone brittle, leaky valves, cracked tubing, corroded piping. The second installment of the AP investigation found that corroded piping had led to radioactive tritium leaks at three-quarters of U.S. nuclear power plants.

Of even more acute concern than the tritium leaks are cracks and holes developing in aged reactors. For example, a 2002 inspection at the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio discovered extensive cracking and an area where acidic coolant liquid had leaked from the reactor and eaten a football-sized hole in the vessel, leaving just a fraction of an inch of the inner liner intact. An NRC analysis determined that the vessel could have burst within a couple of months, potentially releasing large amounts of radiation to the environment. The plant's owner, FirstEnergy of Ohio, was fined $28 million for the incident.

But Davis-Besse was not alone in experiencing such problems: An NRC analysis found at least 10 plants developed such cracks between 2001 and 2003. They included Duke Energy's Oconee Unit 2 near Seneca, S.C.; Dominion's North Anna 2 near Mineral, Va.; Entergy's Arkansas Nuclear One in Russellville, Ark.; and Florida Power & Light's St. Lucie Unit 2 near Fort Pierce, Fla.

In the meantime, the ongoing Japanese nuclear disaster has raised concerns about the existing U.S. reactors with the same design as the Fukushima plant. There are 23 General Electric Mark 1 reactors nationwide, including three in the South: Progress Energy's Brunswick 1 reactor on the Cape Fear River near Southport, N.C.; the Southern Company/Georgia Power Hatch 1 reactor on the Altamaha River near Baxley, Ga.; and the Tennessee Valley Authority's Browns Ferry 1 reactor on the Tennessee River near Decatur, Ala.

In April, the watchdog group Beyond Nuclear submitted an emergency petition to the NRC to immediately suspend the operating licenses of all GE Mark 1 reactors in the United States. Now the Nuclear Information and Resource Service is inviting citizens to join the petition to shut down those reactors, noting that nuclear industry insiders have been raising concerns about the adequacy of the reactors' radiation containment systems for decades.

"The Mark 1's account for less than 4% of the U.S. electricity supply," NIRS points out. "Unlike the homes and livelihoods of the people near Fukushima, their power can easily be replaced. We need to close these reactors now."

New reactor design approval process "null and void"?

At the same time it's pursuing license extensions for aging reactors, the U.S. nuclear industry is also planning to build new reactors at plants across the country.

Of the 30 new reactors that have been proposed to date, 14 of them are a new Westinghouse design called the AP1000 -- and all of those are slated to be built at sites across the U.S. South: two each at Progress Energy's Shearon Harris plant near Raleigh, N.C.; Duke Energy's Lee plant near Gaffney, S.C.; the South Carolina Electric & Gas Summer plant near Jenkinsville, S.C.; Georgia Power/Southern Company's Plant Vogtle near Augusta, Ga.; Tennessee Valley Authority's Bellefonte plant in Hollywood, Ala.; Progress Energy's Levy County plant in Florida; and Florida Power & Light's Turkey Point plant about 25 miles south of Miami.

Facing South has been documenting the safety concerns surrounding the AP1000 (shown in illustration above). And now the reactor is facing a new challenge, with a coalition of environmental watchdog groups filing a legal motion last week asking the NRC to halt the design's approval process.

The groups say a mounting number of mistakes and omissions by Westinghouse -- which just submitted the 19th version of its design to the NRC last week -- render the rulemaking process "null and void."

"The AP1000 design approval process would be comical except that the public is being soaked for billions of dollars," says Jim Warren of NC WARN, which filed the motion along with Friends of the Earth and the AP1000 Oversight Group. "The NRC keeps falling further behind due to Westinghouse's failures, and all this is before they even begin incorporating safety changes in the U.S. stemming from the Fukushima disaster -- which the NRC and even industry leaders admit could be extensive."

Last month the NRC announced that its review of the AP1000 design found problems with Westinghouse's calculations for the concrete shield building that's supposed to protect the reactor from damage caused by earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and plane crashes. The shield building in the AP1000 also supports a storage tank for cooling water.

The Obama administration has approved $8 billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for Southern Company/Georgia Power to build the two AP1000s at Plant Vogtle. However, a recent report by a nuclear engineer raises questions about whether the company will be able to adhere to the approved $6.1 billion budget for the project and meet the April 2016 operating deadline.

Until the AP1000 design gets final approval, NRC can't give a full license to the company to build the Vogtle reactors.