ML19316C435
| ML19316C435 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Seabrook  |
| Issue date: | 11/05/2019 |
| From: | Pierce P - No Known Affiliation |
| To: | Spitzer R Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel |
| SECY/RAS | |
| References | |
| Download: ML19316C435 (4) | |
Text
{{#Wiki_filter:NOVEMBER 5, 2019 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD RONALD M. SPITTER, CHAIR RE: SEABROOK NUCLEAR REACTOR ASR COMPROMISED CONCRETE SIR: ENCLOSED PLEASE FIND M.I.T TECHNOLOGY REVIEW ARTICLE FROM MAY 2019 RE THREE MILE ISLAND MELTDOWN . THE CONCRETE AT SEABROOK REACTOR HAS BEEN EXPOSED TO 30 YEARS OF RADIATION AT 40,000 CURIES PER YEAR WHICH IS 1.2 MILLION CURIES . NO CONCRETE COULD WITHSTAND SUCH CUMULATIVE EMISSION WITHOUT SOME PHYSICAL DETERIORATION. ASR DEGRADATION DUE TO SALT WATER EXPOSURE AND EXCESSIVE RADIATION IS PROGRESSIVE AND NOY REVERSIBLE. FAILURE IS TO BE EXPECTED WHETHER GROSS STRUCTURAL OR PARTIAL. WAffiNG FOR THAT EVENT IS A SAFETY RISK THAT IS NOT DEFENSIBLE. AS YOU READ THE ENCLOSED ARTICLE YOU WILL SEE THAT THE LOSS OF CORE COOLANT IS ONLY ONE ASPECT OF THE CRISIS. MY FEAR AT SEABROOK IS THE MAJOR LONG DISTANCES THE COOLING WATER MUST TRAVEL FROM THE OCEAN INTAKE ENCLOSED IN CONCRETE IN THE MARSHES. FAILURE DURING THE 1.5 MILLION GALLON COOLING PATH WOULD BE HARD TO DETECT OR REMEDY. G_, . *
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PATRIICIA PIERCE 35 BROADWAY, ROCKPORT, MASS. 01966
I . 10 REC.EiVED NOV !1 -* LU l~
' I l::3oard of Sci<::ctmen Town of Rocl,port A controversial report, an MIT Predicting professor, and the most publicized nuclear disaster in US history Three Mile Island By Eva Frederick, SM 'J.9 I*
1*'.
,,,. i was still dark outside when the first thing went wrong.
miles from his hometown of Harrisburg,
- Pennsylvania.
"The human role was largely ignored and, if considered at all, the operators were At 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, In 1972, the US Atomic Energy assumed to onlyundertake actions favorable a minor malfunction caused a Commission had hired Rasmussen, a to safety;' wrote Jan van Erp in an Argonne I
r *: relief valve to open on one of father of two who had taught at MIT since National Lab report on the TMI accident. I i the nuclear reactor units at the finishing his PhD in 1956, to conduct cl: Van Erp realized that the Rasmussen
** 1 Three Mile Island power plant. study on public risk from nuclear acci- Report should have been a warning of I:
I,,'. The valve got stuck and released dents in the United States. The paper, disaster to come. But at the time it was I! cooling water from around the written by Rasmussen and a team of more published in 1975, the analysis met sub-i core, causing the reactor to auto- than 40 experts, was the first probabilistic stantial criticism and backlash- ironically, I
.1 matically shut off. study of nuclear power. largely on grounds that it underplayed the While that would not have The Rea.c tor Safety Study-,-WASH- risks. The American Physical Society said posed any harm had the situation been 1400, often referred to simply as the nuclear.,power posed far greater dangers properly managed, several instrument mal- Rasmussen Report- used probabilistic than Rasmussen and his team predicted, functions meant that the workers running risk assessment techniques to predict the . and the Union of Concerned Scientists the plant had no way of knowing it had lost likelihood of various scenarios that might published a 150-page critique of the paper.
coolant. Amid the chaos of ringing alarms unfold at nuclear power plants. Prior stud-
- Subsequent review of the Rasmussen and flashing warning lights, the operators . ies hiid used deterministic methods of risk Report by what had by then become the
'. :' a took series of actions that made condi- assessment, which focused on the disaster
'I' tions much worse, allowing the reactor outcomes of a given scenario instead of core to partially melt down. The plant's calculating their probabilities. Rasmussen's containment systems prevented a serious report pointed out that small-break loss-release of radioactive material;but a small of-coolant accidents were a more probable amount ofradioactive xenon, krypton, and threat than large-break ones. And in addi-iodine gas leaked into the atmosphere tion to conducting a general assessment and about 140,000 people were forced to of pumps and valves, Rasmussen and his I . evacuate their homes. team argued that human reliability was For many,' the widely publicized inci- a necessary factor to consider because if I
dent was a wake-up call about the poten- automatic systems malfunctioned, humans
,I
,I .
tial dangers of nuclear power. Nci new would have to intervene.
- ,,, plants were built for more than 30 years This ran contrary to the prevailing afterward. notions about nuclear power safety man-
,,
- The disaster shook the industry to its agement. The physics community at the "1, core, but Norman Rasmussen, PhD '56, time largely assumed that the built-jn safety
~I .
- , a professor in the Department of Nuclear mechanisms on nuclear power plants were Norman Rasmussen, PhD ' 56, cau -
Engineering at MIT, had warned four sufficient to safely handle any accident tioned against reJ.ying on auto-ye*ars earlier of the dariger of a very similar in a timely fashion-in other words, that matic safety systems in nuclear power plants. UnfortunateJ.y, scenario. And as fate would have it, the technical back-ups.were more important ope:cators at Three Mile Island I' meltdown he predicted happened just 13 than human actions. (right) did just that .
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. Town o'i Rockpor..
Nuclear Regulatory Commission showed reports.had envisioned.And, as Rasmussen "They basically backed away from their that Rasmussen did underestimate the had predictt!d, the incident was exacet- .. 1979 rejection [of the Rasmussen Report] uncertainties .in some situations. One bated by a series of human errors. and its methods and said, 'Use the meth-reviewer calle.d the report "inscrutable:' It turns out that Rasmussen and his ods. They can help us do a better job."' So in January 1979, the NRC decided to colleagues were nearly spot-on about a Golay says. withdraw its endorsement of the executive couple of other things as well: Rasmussen The risk assessment method that summary of Rasmussen's study. prediFted the high probability of an acci- Rasmussen pioneered was used*more and The night before the announcement dent like Three Mile Island and also cor- . more frequently, and tod~y*i t is one of the Rasmussen got a c_all late in the evening rectly predicted that the health effects of
- essential tools for evaluating nuclear safety about the NRC's plans. He later told such an accident would be negligible in all over th.e world. Rasmussen died in 2003, his friend and colleague Michael Golay, their severity. *_having lived to see his report accepted by another MIT professor, that he lay awake "[Three Mile Island] was essentially the riuciear physics community.
all night worrying.
- a vindJcation of the report;' Golay says. * "Rasmussen's strength was he was "He was truthfully upset, as you'd Over the years following the disaster at really good at integrating information expect," Golay says. "He was about to be Three Mile Island, people began to realize
- from diverse sources into .a consistent .
embarrassed nationally:' tl1e value of Rasmussen's study and its use
- approach to a problem;' Golay says. ".It's
'I\vo months later, Three Mile Island of risk assessment in the context of nuclear amazing how that first report has stood melted down. power. By 1995, the NRC came out with a the test of tirrie. People still cite it. It's The meltdown was caused by a small formal policy statement that recommended hard to get it right to such a*degree on
- loss of coolant-not a large one, as other employing such analysis; the first pass." *
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