ML050880013: Difference between revisions
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The scientist also rejected Brenner's reassurance that the classified report had been seen by relevant decision makers. Governors of states with nuclear plants need to see the report, he said, and the public had an important role as well. | The scientist also rejected Brenner's reassurance that the classified report had been seen by relevant decision makers. Governors of states with nuclear plants need to see the report, he said, and the public had an important role as well. | ||
"The way our political system works, when politicians hear from their constituents, they are motivated to take action that they don't when the public is unaware," he said. | "The way our political system works, when politicians hear from their constituents, they are motivated to take action that they don't when the public is unaware," he said. | ||
Mail Envelope Properties (42482F00.D29 : 17 : 27945) | Mail Envelope Properties (42482F00.D29 : 17 : 27945) | ||
Latest revision as of 01:13, 15 March 2020
ML050880013 | |
Person / Time | |
---|---|
Site: | Nine Mile Point, Oyster Creek |
Issue date: | 03/28/2005 |
From: | Gunter P Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS) |
To: | Tam P, Tracy G, Zimmerman R NRC/NRR/DLPM/LPD1 |
References | |
2.206, G20040549, TAC MC4051 | |
Download: ML050880013 (5) | |
Text
From: "Paul Gunter" <pgunter@nirs.org>
To: "Tam/Peter" <PST@nrc.gov>, <RPZ@nrc.gov>, "Tracey/ Glenn"
<gmt@nrc.gov>
Date: 3/28/05 11:21AM
Subject:
Correction-GE Mark 1&2 fuel pool vulnerability Supplement Material 08102004 Petition 2.206 Please make to following correction-the referenced 2.206 petition was submitted "August 10, 2004" not 2005
- Thanks, Paul Gunter, NIRS From: Paul Gunter Sent: Monday, March 28, 2005 11:01 AM To: 'Tam/Peter'; 'Zimmerman/Roy (RPZ@nrc.gov)'; 'Tam/Peter'
Subject:
GE Mark 1&2 fuel pool vulnerability Supplement Material 08102004 Petition 2.206 To: Peter Tam, NRR/NRC Petition Manager, Roy Zimmerman, NSIR/NRC, Glenn Tracy, NSIR/NRC Re: Supplemental Material to August 10, 2005 Petition for Emergency Enforcement Action on Mark I & II Fuel Pool Vulnerability
- Hello, I am submitting supplemental material to the Nuclear Security Coalition's August 10, 2005 emergency enforcement petition under 10 CFR 2.206 regarding the vulnerability of the Mark I & II Boiling Water Reactor irradiate fuel pools.
Attachments provided include the March 28, 2005 front page story in the Washington Post regarding the dispute between the National Academy of Sciences and the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the public release of a redacted summary of the NAS report to congress on the vulnerability of pools.
The second attached file is a copy of the March 14, 2005 letter from the Commission to NAS as featured in the Post story.
Please include this information as attachments to our petition.
Peter, I will call you to confirm receipt.
Paul Gunter, Director Reactor Watchdog Project Nuclear Information and Resource Service 1424 16th St. Suite 404 Washington, DC 20036 Tel. 202 328 0002 Washington Post Monday 28 March 2005 Storage of Nuclear Spent Fuel Criticized Science academy study points to risk of attack.
A classified report by nuclear experts assembled by the National Academy of Sciences has challenged the decision by federal regulators to allow commercial nuclear facilities to store large quantities of radioactive spent fuel in pools of water. The report concluded that the government does not fully understand the risks that a terrorist attack could pose to the pools and ought to expedite the removal of the fuel to dry storage casks that are more resilient to attack. The Bush administration has long defended the safety of the pools, and the nuclear industry has warned that moving large amounts of fuel to dry storage would be unnecessary and very expensive.
The report was requested by Congress following the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, as homeland security officials sought to understand the potential consequences of a 9/11 scale attack on a nuclear facility.
Because it is classified, the contents of the report were not made public when it was delivered to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) last summer. Even a stripped-down, declassified version has remained under wraps since November because the commission says it contains sensitive information.
However, the commission itself made excerpts of the report public when Chairman Nils Diaz sent a letter to Congress on March 14 rebutting some of the academy's concerns. His letter also suggested that the academy had largely backed the government's views about the safety of
existing fuel storage systems.
E. William Colglazier, executive officer for the academy, said the letter was misleading and warned that the public needs to learn about the report's findings.
"There are substantive disagreements between our committee's views and the NRC," he said in an interview. "If someone only reads the NRC report, they would not get a full picture of what we had to say."
Although the commission said it is keeping the report under wraps for security reasons, some officials who have seen the document suggest that the NRC is merely suppressing embarrassing criticism.
"At the same time that the NRC is saying that the National Academy's study is classified and not releasable to the public, it has somehow managed to send a detailed rebuttal of the report's conclusions to Congress in unclassified form," said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.),
who has seen the report.
"I am concerned that the totality of the Commission's actions reflect a systemic effort to withhold important information from . . .
the public, rather than a genuine effort to be protective of national security," said Markey in a March 21 letter to the Commission's inspector general.
NRC spokesman Eliot Brenner countered that the commission is "a very open agency" and that regulators are working with the academy to make the report public. "Our core concern is making sure that information that could reasonably be expected to be available to a terrorist is not publicly available," he said. "We are continuing to work with them on finding the right balance."
The report was solicited by Congress to study how best to store spent nuclear fuel - tons of rods containing radioactive byproducts of nuclear fission reactions are produced each year by the nation's 103 electricity-generating nuclear reactors. Spent fuel rods generate intense heat and dangerous long-term radiation that must be contained.
Most of the spent rods are currently stored in large swimming pool-like structures called spent fuel pools, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the science and advocacy group, Union of Concerned Scientists, who has worked at several plants. The pools are about 45 feet deep and 40 feet square and are filled with about 100,000 gallons of circulating water to remove heat and serve as a radiation shield, he said.
After cooling for about five years, the rods can be moved to dry storage - heavy casks of lead and steel. But the casks are expensive, and commercial reactors have elected to leave the rods in the pools until the polls fill up. Lochbaum said some pools now hold 800-to-1,000 tons of rods. In the event of a terrorist strike, Lochbaum said, the dry casks would be much safer, because explosions could drain the pools and set off fire and radiation hazards.
The nuclear industry wants the fuel moved to a storage site in Nevada, but that project has long been plagued by delays and opposition.
Steven Kraft, director of waste management at the Nuclear Energy
Institute, an industry group, said studies had shown that the pools are as safe as the dry casks - the same position adopted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Risk of Attacks Called Slight Kraft said the risk of catastrophic attacks is minuscule and modeling analyses have shown that even plane crashes are unlikely to affect the integrity of the pools. And even if they did cause damage, he added, there would not be catastrophic consequences because of safety systems already in place.
"If the pool is safe and the casks are safe and they both meet the requirements, there is no justification for going through what is a huge amount of expense and worker exposure" to move the rods to dry storage, he said. In his letter to Congress, commission Chairman Diaz said the academy's recommendation to move fuel to dry storage was based on "scenarios that were unreasonable."
But Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear engineer with the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that supports underground dry storage of the rods, said the commission had been lax.
"There is no question that any terrorist who wants to know about spent fuel has plenty of information already," he said of the withheld report. "Publication of a report on security will not help terrorists.
The only thing it is hindering is discussion of public safety."
Diaz's letter to Congress shows that the academy recommended that the government reevaluate "the vulnerabilities and consequences" to storage pools of "attacks using large aircraft or large explosives." The academy also called for a review and upgrade of security measures to prevent theft of spent fuel rods by insiders and an assessment of security by "an independent organization."
The commission letter defended measures it has already put in place and said "the likelihood an adversary could steal spent fuel . . . is extremely low." The letter said the additional analyses demanded by the academy study was "more than is needed" and rejected the call for an independent security analysis, saying its own assessments were "sound and realistic."
To keep the report secret, the federal agency used a classification called "Safeguards Information" that it applies to data that is unclassified but reveals sensitive details about nuclear facilities and security procedures. Brenner, the spokesman, emphasized that the academy's report and the commission's response had been seen by the Department of Homeland Security and members of Congress charged with oversight: "The full report is there with those with the appropriate clearances."
The academy's Colglazier said the science organization had produced many classified reports but had never encountered such hurdles in creating a public version.
"We don't want to provide information in our report that could be used by terrorists to exploit vulnerabilities," he said. "But we also
want the public and decision makers to know what things need to be addressed."
The scientist also rejected Brenner's reassurance that the classified report had been seen by relevant decision makers. Governors of states with nuclear plants need to see the report, he said, and the public had an important role as well.
"The way our political system works, when politicians hear from their constituents, they are motivated to take action that they don't when the public is unaware," he said.
Mail Envelope Properties (42482F00.D29 : 17 : 27945)
Subject:
Correction-GE Mark 1&2 fuel pool vulnerability Supplement Material 08102004 Petition 2.206 Creation Date: 3/28/05 11:27AM From: "Paul Gunter" <pgunter@nirs.org>
Created By: pgunter@nirs.org Recipients nrc.gov TWGWPO02.HQGWDO01 GMT (Glenn Tracy) nrc.gov twf2_po.TWFN_DO RPZ (Roy Zimmerman) nrc.gov owf4_po.OWFN_DO PST (Peter Tam)
Post Office Route TWGWPO02.HQGWDO01 nrc.gov twf2_po.TWFN_DO nrc.gov owf4_po.OWFN_DO nrc.gov Files Size Date & Time MESSAGE 9674 03/28/05 11:27AM TEXT.htm 20899 Mime.822 33567 Options Expiration Date: None Priority: Standard Reply Requested: No Return Notification: None Concealed
Subject:
No Security: Standard