From the Annals of the Entirely Unsurprising

The NY Times reports today that the Japanese government is about to declare a significant area around the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant as uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.  It's not going to buy the properties in the no-go zone, however.  The Japanese government will rent them instead.  That's a good way of putting off the day of reckoning, which would cost a pretty penny.  (I'm likely off with all of these numbers but the scale is what is important here.)  If we use a price of $200,000 per home, every 5,000 homes condemned would cost about $1 billion to buy.  That's not much compared to Japan's GDP, but renting would only cost about $90 million per year if the monthly rent is $1500.  That adds up quickly, of course, but in 11 or 13 years, when the rental costs surpass the cost of outright purchase plus interest, none of the politicians in charge will be around.

I think what is likely to happen in somewhat cramped Japan is that the worst affected areas will be bought in 5 or 10 years, partially cleaned, and then converted into large industrial districts.  The population of Japan is already declining, so the housing units won't be missed that much (from an economic perspective).  In the meantime, tens of thousands of people will be left in limbo, not able to sell and move on, or go home.  And so the crisis will continue for years, even after the reactors are brought under control.

Having A Nuclear Blast

This is an entirely expected development.  The current storm may well miss the Fukushima area, but at some point this hurricane season a part of a storm will move across it.  TEPCO has been spraying the grounds of Fukushima Dai-ichi with a resin that should, if it operates as claimed, reduce the amount of radioactive material transported by the wind and rain.  It probably works okay in a normal rain, but even cyclones that are only tropical storms can bring very heavy rainfall to an area.  It won't matter if the surface is sealed when large sections of ground are washed away, as happened on Thursday night here in Vermont.

Another issue of concern is the structural integrity of the unit 4 containment building, which seems to be leaning to the right a bit.  If it is seriously compromised, a big wind gust could create a crack in the spent fuel pool.  TEPCO announced that it had started shoring up the structure on May 9, but I am unaware of further updates on that matter.  Earlier speculation that the fuel pool had drained due damage was wrong, fortunately, but it could still happen.

On top of the existing technical problems at the site is this little incident (which will probably be resolved in a few hours, but still).

The most significant development in the Fukushima crisis over the past few weeks is the revelation from TEPCO that the fuel in units 1-3 melted down shortly after the quake and (and!) they knew it, at least for unit 1.  Given that pattern of lying, and the Japanese government's servile attitude towards TEPCO, I think it's advisable to heavily discount anything they say.

Finally, this presentation by Arnie Gundersen for the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards is very important for everyone to see, despite a few technical annoyances.  It wasn't until a few weeks ago when he first mentioned it that I realized that the NRC assumed that there was zero probability (0.0%) that the containment structure at a nuclear reactor could fail.  Containment isn't the reactor pressure vessel; failure is assumed for that, even if the probability is low.  Instead, it is the larger structure built around the reactor pressure vessel.  For PWRs, it is usually the entire volume of a large, circular concrete building with a domed top.  For BWRs, it is usually a substructure within a large, square building, just like the ones at Fukushima.  (There are exceptions to each, of course, and other types of reactors, but not in the US.)  Gundersen has documented several instances where there were cracks or other penetrations in the containment at US reactors.  Now, in the first real-world tests of the GE BWR Mark I containment design, there has been 100% failure.  Three out of the three units that were online at Fukushima immediately prior to the earthquake and tsunami are compromised.  Those results should cause the NRC put any action such as license renewal or power up-rates for the 23 operating Mk.I reactors in the US on hold until what happened at Fukushima is fully analyzed and any lessons extracted.  That is unlikely to happen, unfortunately.  We seem to be living in a post-fact world, where only money and power can change people's minds.  The ACRS is likely to blow off Gundersen, as they have before.

ETA: Just after posting I found a report saying cooling has been restored.

Added 2011/06/01: Shoring up the unit 4 spent fuel pool started on 05/23 according to this article.

Don't Ever Believe the Hype

Elsewhere at some point(s) since the start of the Fukushima Dai-ichi crisis, I have made statements indicating that the nuclear regulatory infrastructure of Japan and France were something this country should emulate.  I was wrong, and very wrong in the case of Japan.  Stoneleigh, one of the semi-pseudonymous proprietors of The Automatic Earth, a doomer-ish economy-oriented blog, has put together an excellent, detailed post on the culture of the Japanese nuclear industry.  It is not flattering.  And, in retrospect, it is not surprising, either.  Japan's yin-yang of cohesiveness and crushing conformity are well know, as are the troubles at the MONJU experimental sodium-cooled fast reactor.  Some of the other incidents I was not aware of, but I nonetheless should have been more cynical about Japan's nuclear industry.

As with Japan, the French nuclear industry doesn't look so wonderful when examined in detail.  Mycle Schneider, an independent consultant on nuclear policy, has authored a report entitled Nuclear Power in France: Beyond the Myth.  In it he details the opaque and undemocratic nature of the nuclear power establishment in France.  Fortunately for France and its neighbors, this has not resulted in a catastrophic accident like Fukushima, perhaps because the flip side of the arrogance of the elites that run the French program is in internal culture of technocratic excellence.  But the lack of clear information does make monitoring the program difficult.  The information deficit also makes an accurate tally of subsidies and costs impossible.  While I disagree with some of Schneider's energy accounting, he does make a good argument that EdF, the monopoly electricity generator, has overbuilt nuclear generating capacity.   This has distorted electricity pricing in France and neighboring countries.

If forced to pick between the two, given the available information, I would definitely choose the French nuclear power program over the Japanese one.  I would also choose the American program over the Japanese.  In a comparison between the American program and the French one, I think I would favor the French one... slightly.  The US is more open than France, but the profit motive drives the numerous operators to a far greater degree than in France, which has led to a number of close calls.  Ominously, the US regulatory structure is looking more and more like the Japanese one, with private companies able to dominate the relevant government agencies.  This is a disturbing development.  Of course, no regulatory framework is perfect, just as no nuclear plant is foolproof.  The technology requires constant vigilance.  The open question in the US is whether the NRC can re-assert itself to make sure safety is put before profit.

Lessons That Could Be Learned

Almost immediately after problems began at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant in Miyagi, Japan, the pro/anti nuke debate flared up.  At the beginning, the two sides stuck to their long-held positions,  Opponents said look, nuclear power plants are dangerous, just like we warned.  Supporters said look, the plants shut down and everything is contained, just as we expected.  But when crisis in Japan got worse, with significant damage to the buildings housing reactors 1-4 from a series of hydrogen explosions, the pro-nuke side retreated somewhat.  Some will surely surge back with renewed vigor, because their support is more tribal than rational.  Others may never be as enthused as they once were.

I've had some more general lessons running around my head than the ones I identified in the previous post, but I haven't found a way to make it a coherent post out of them.  So below I have just listed them out, in order to capture them before some new crisis displaces them.

1. "Is" is the wrong verb.  A lot of pro-nuke cranks are fond of saying, "Nuclear power is safe."  This reveals a significant confusion on their part, because it is absolutely clear that nuclear power isn't inherently safe.  Most large industrial objects are not.  Cars, planes, trains, tanks, ore smelters, oil rigs, coal mines, oil refineries, combines, bulldozers - all of them are in fact quite risky when not taken seriously on a continuous basis.  What the supporters should say instead is, "Nuclear power plants can be run safely."   I believe that statement is true.  I also believe that it is hard to make that sentence true.
2. Tail risk is incomprehensible.  Our modern high-technology industrial civilization is a very recent occurrence in the history of our little blue planet.  As a result, accurate records about various geophysical phenomenon are very short, and probably non-existent for some types of events.  Scientists have become pretty good at teasing clues out of the geological record, but the risk to nuclear plants in many areas is still not quantified.  But even if it could be quantified, humans aren't good at assessing the numbers.  For instance, a flight on a first-world commercial airline is safer than driving, but many people still refuse to get on a plane.  Similar problems arise when talking about nuclear power plants. But in that discussion the risk is often either wildly over-estimated or completely dismissed, and neither is correct.
3. Profit is corrosive to safety.  As I've said before, here and elsewhere, I do not trust private, profit-driven corporations to run nuclear plants safely.  The reason is that safety costs money.  Resources spent on safety frequently won't translate into profits, in either the short term or the long term.  But executives get rewarded for performance on a time scale that is relatively short.  The massive mismatch between when cost-cutting might backfire and when an executive gets to drive new Porsche means that it will almost always be in a decision-maker's interest to go for short-term rewards.
4. Technology matters only somewhat.  When a safety discussion becomes heated, often people will join in to say that one reactor type or another is better, and if only that reactor had been used, this or that problem wouldn't ever happen.  But nothing can be made fool-proof, and the specifics of implementation and operation can render inoperable a safety feature in any design .  The organizational culture that surrounds the low probability, high impact nature of nuclear power plants is just as important as the technology that is in use.

A Program of Contrasts

Almost immediately after the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, Chancellor Andrea Merkel announced a temporary shutdown of Germany's oldest nuclear plants.  Counting one plant that had been shut down prior to the accident, the sixth of seven plants was shut down on Friday.  The Chancellor was accused by some of playing politics in making the decision, as there are elections coming soon in several Länder.  The current CDU-CSU-FDP government has previously stated support for keeping the currently operating reactors open longer, which is unpopular, and a reversal from the policy of phase-out that had previously been in place.

I think the shutdown was overly dramatic because of the relative geological stability of the region compared to Japan.  The seven plants represent about 8% of Germany's total nameplate electricity generation capacity, so there is the potential for shortages.  Only two plants with a total of two reactors are located on the coast: Brunsbüttel, which was already shut down, and Unterweser.  The first is a boiling water reactor built by KWU, and from what I can gather, it has a design similar to a General Electric BWR/3 with Mark-1 containment.  The other is a pressurized water reactor derived from a Westinghouse design.  Of the other five reactors, two more are BWRs of the same design as Brunsbüttel, including one that has been in long-term shutdown due to technical and safety problems.  The rest are PWRs similar to Unterweser.  They are all located inland on rivers.  Like all other coastlines, there is some risk of tsunamis on the shores of the North Sea.  But without a subduction zone nearby, massive coast flooding would only come from underwater landslides.

The French nuclear power industry is in stark contrast to the German one.  In the wake of the accident in Japan, no plants have been taken off line, despite four plants with fourteen reactors being situated on the coast.  After an early foray into building gas-cooled reactors, France switched decisively in the late 1960s to PWRs derived from Westinghouse designs, and built large plants with up to six reactors of the same design.  Germany built both BWRs and PWRs, and even mixed the types at two plants.  However, only in the former East Germany was a plant with more than two identical reactors built.  Germany experimented with more unconventional reactors types than France, though none of the plants were all that successful, and all have been shut down.  France put a lot of effort into sodium-cooled fast reactors, but the first and only commercial-scale plant of that type was a failure.  France only operates PWRs at this time.

The mostly likely explanation for the contrast between the two nuclear programs is the nature of the two countries' constitutions.  France is a unitary state, which means local and regional governments only have powers that are granted by the central government.  Germany is a federal state, and each Länder has the right to administer certain functions.  France has had one monopoly power generation company since 1946, whereas Germany currently has several companies.  (I have no insight into the history of the German power industry.)  I think the scale and centralization of EDF, combined with the French love for grand projects like the TGV, has lead to the dominant role of nuclear power in the country.  France also has two geographic advantages over Germany: it is much less densely populated, and it has a much longer coastline.  That certainly allowed greater flexibility for siting plants.  France was also never on the front line of the Cold War, so the prospect of war-damaged reactor was less likely (though I have no idea if the issue entered the minds of decision-makers in either country).

At first glance, nuclear power clearly "works" much better in France than in Germany.  But entirely left out of this discussion so far is the issue of pollution.  I have no idea how much nuclear waste exists in each country, how much has leaked into the environment, how well the high level waste is guarded, or anything else along those lines.  Without analyzing that part of the nuclear complex, no evaluation can be complete.  France has also been "lucky" in one regard, which is that the design it adopted appears to be safe at this point.  No doubt a lot of study went into the issue before the choice was made, but that was done in the 1960s, when the industry was only 10-20 years old.  The depth of knowledge was much, much less back then, and a wrong choice or a bad design could have ended up crippling the country if dozens of reactors had to be shut down at the same time.

Added 2011/03/20: Here's a list of Japan's reactors.

Added 2011/03/22: Here's an interview with the head of E.on, Germany's largest electric utility, talking about the problems the shutdown may create in the Germany grid.  Of course, it's quite possible that he's exaggerating or even lying to boost his company's fortunes.

Added 2011/03/27: Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl lays into Merkel a bit.

Will We Turn Japanese?

I really don't think so.  But that doesn't mean we shouldn't consider the possibility.  The massive earthquake and terrible, devastating tsunami that struck Japan last week are unlikely to hit the US, except in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.  Those are the only places close to the US where there are subduction zones, which are a type of tectonic plate boundary that is responsible for the largest earthquakes, and most tsunamis.  Coastlines are also vulnerable to tsunamis caused by underwater landslides, which may or may not be initiated by earthquakes.   In the immediate region of a small slide, tsunamis can still be large.  Very large slides can cause tsunamis that affect entire ocean basins.  The frequency of landslide-induced tsunamis is unknown at this point, but the risk on the entire west coast is much higher than elsewhere, again because there are active plate boundries nearby. 

Here are the nuclear power plants in the US close to a shoreline:

• On the West Coast, there are two nuclear plants with four reactors adjacent to the ocean: Diablo Canyon Units 1 and 2, and San Onofre Units 2 and 3.  Two additional reactors have been shut down and decommissioned: Humboldt Bay Unit 1, and San Onofre Unit 1.
• On the Gulf of Mexico, there is one plant with one reactor situated on the coast: Crystal River Unit 3.
• One Gulf region plant with one reactor is located in a low-lying inland region that may be affected by storm surges: Waterford Unit 3.
• On the East Coast, only one plant with two reactors is situated directly on the Atlantic Ocean: Saint Lucie Units 1 and 2.
• Six East Coast plants with nine reactors are located behind barrier islands: Seabrook Unit 1, Pilgrim Unit 1, Millstone Units 2 and 3, Oyster Creek Unit 1, Brunswick Units 1 and 2, and Turkey Point Units 3 and 4.  The islands and shallow lagoons behind them may or may not be large enough to stop a tsunami from flooding the facilities.  Millstone Unit 1 has been decommissioned.  Shoreham Unit 1 never operated at commercial levels, and has been dismantled.
• Five more East Coast plants with nine reactors are located on tidal rivers at varying distances from the ocean: Hope Creek Unit 1, Salem Units 1 and 2, Indian Point Units 2 and 3, Calvert Cliffs Units 1 and 2, and Surry Units 1 and 2.  The locations may or may not be far enough upstream to be protected from tsunami-induced flooding.  Two additional reactors have been shut down: Maine Yankee Unit 1, which has been decommissioned, and Indian Point Unit 1, which is still standing.

The only way to determine if these plants are actually at risk is to model a flood event and quantify the sea level rise.  Simply looking at the height or distance from the shoreline isn't enough.  The specifics of the coastline and bathymetry at each location can have significant effects on the run-up.  After that task is done, the containment structure and safety systems can be analyzed to see if they would remain intact and operating.  While this has certainly been done already for each plant, the question is whether it has been done with the right assumptions.  For instance, the plants on the northeast coast of Japan assumed the subduction zone offshore would not produce anything greater than a 8.0 earthquake.  That turns out to have been wrong, and the resulting tsunami was underestimated as a consequence.

Equally important as redoing analyses is actually verifying the safety systems work.  TEPCO, the owner/operator of Fukushima Daiichi, has been accused of not verifying the functionality of some of the safety systems.  Whether that is true will be worked out over the next few months.  But there should be another round of testing of each plant in the US regardless of the outcome.