46 Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power M.V. Ramana, "Nuclear Power: Economic, Safety, Health, and Environmental Issues of Near-Term Technologies," Annual Review of Environment and Resources 34 (2009), pp. 127-152. L.C. Cadwallader, Occupational Safety Review of High Technology Facilities (Idaho Falls, ID: Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, January 2005, INEEL/EXT-05-02616). Neil J. Nuniark and Robert D. MacDougall, "Nuclear Power in Deregulated Markets: Performance to Date and Prospects for the Future," Tulane Environmental Law Journal 14 (2001), pp. 465-466. Thomas B. Cochran, Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Nuclear Program, "The Future Role of Nuclear Power in the United States," Presentation to the Western Governors' Association North American Energy Summit (April 15, 2004). Paul W. Benson and Fred Adair, "Nuclear Revolution: How to Ease the Coming Upheaval in the Nuclear Power Industry," Public Utilities Fortnightly (July, 2008). D. Haas and D.J. Hamilton, "Fuel Cycle Strategies and Plutonium Management in Europe," Progress in Nuclear Energy 49 (2007), p. 575. Andrew Symon, "Southeast Asia's Nuclear Power Thrust: Putting ASEAN's Effectiveness to the Test?," Contemporary Southeast Asia 30 (2008), p. 123. A.P. Jayaraman, "Nuclear Energy in Asia," Presentation to the Seminar on Sustainable Development and Energy Security (April 22-23, 2008), p. 13. Gabriel Walt, "Is Nuclear Power a Solution?," wattwatt.com, August 3, 2007. Christian Parenti, "Nuclear Power Is Risky and Expensive," in Peggy Becker (ed.), Alternative Energy (New York: Gale, 2010), pp. 50-55. Safety and Reliability: Dealing with "Normal Accidents" An ironic moment occurred on March 31, 1979. That evening, then-US Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger was testifying before the American Congress on ways to expedite the licensing process for nuclear reactors, arguing that onerous requirements were no longer needed given the inherent safety of new designs. At the same time, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chairman Joe Hendrie was transmitting evacuation orders to Governor Richard L. Thornburgh in Pennsylvania because of the accident at Three Mile Island (TMI). Unknown to Schlesinger, the NRC had long suspected that an accident would occur at TMI, previously ordering the shutdown of five similarly designed nuclear power plants based on errors discovered in a computer program used to assess the stresses on power plant pipes and cooling systems during an earthquake. A few days before the accident in March 1979, NRC inspectors had even warned the Commissioner that the TMI design was unsafe and should be shut down immediately. The NRC was in the process of considering what to do when the accident occurred.1 The story does not end there. Rather than admit to the inherent flaws with their reactor designs, the nuclear industry ran a sleek public relations campaign a few months after the accident featuring the physicist Edward Teller in newspaper and television advertisements. In these advertisements, ■17 48 Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power Safety and Reliability: Dealing with "Normal Accidents" -19 Teller solemnly told viewers (or, in newspaper versions, expressed in very large bold-faced type) that "I was the only victim of Three Mile Island." Even though Teller was nowhere near Pennsylvania at the time of the accident, he claimed that he suffered a heart attack a few weeks later because he had been working tirelessly to refute senseless anti-nuclear propaganda.2 The lessons from this story are numerous and possibly prophetic. It reveals that various organizations promoting nuclear power do not always share information and can make mistakes (as in the Secretary of Energy believing designs to be safe when the NRC did not). It shows that some scientists and engineers involved in the industry, such as Teller, have optimistic views about atomic energy and intolerance for skepticism. It demonstrates that nuclear reactors are extremely dangerous when they malfunction. It also implies that the nuclear industry will utilize public opinion and sawy media techniques to insulate itself from criticism. This chapter explores the safety and reliability concerns with existing and new nuclear power plants. It looks at the historical record of incidents and accidents, current risks with the global reactor fleet, and future risks with new reactors. It also explores an often-ignored component, namely the scarcity of high-quality materials and skilled labor to build and operate nuclear units, and finally discusses the technical challenges related to finding high-quality uranium fuel and a declining energy payback ratio. Safety and Accidents While the Chair of the Public Information Committee of the American Nuclear Society has publicly stated that "the industry has proven itself to be the safest major source of electricity in the Western world,"3 the history of nuclear power proves otherwise. The safety record of nuclear plants is lackluster at best. For one salient example, consider that Ukraine still has a Ministry of Emergency, some 24 years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster warranted its creation. This section focuses on historical accidents at nuclear faculties, with a special emphasis on two of the most famous accidents at Chernobyl and TMI, as well as the risk of future accidents. Whenever one talks about safety culture, nuclear accidents, and reliability, it is important to be clear about the terms. Part of the confusion stems from how one defines an accident. The NRC and the nuclear community generally separate unplanned events into two classes: incidents and accidents. Incidents are unforeseen events and equipment failures that occur during normal plant operation, resulting in no offsite releases of radiation or severe damage to equipment; accidents refer to either offsite releases of radiation or severe damage to plant equipment.4 The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale communicates the significance of a nuclear and radiological event through a ranking system of seven levels: levels 1-3 are "incidents" while levels 4-7 are "accidents," with a "level 7 major accident" consisting of "a major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures."5 The Paul Scherrer Institute manages an Energy-Related Severe Accident Database (ENSAD), which takes a slightly different approach. For the ENSAD, a severe accident is one which involves one of the following: at least 5 fatalities, at least 10 injuries, 200 evacuees, 10,000 tons of hydrocarbons released, more than 25 km2 of cleanup, or more than US$5 million in economic losses.6 Under the classifications of accidents from the NRC, the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, and even the ENSAD, the number of nuclear accidents is low. However, if one redefines an accident to be an incident that results in either the loss of human life or more than US$50,000 of property damage, a very different picture emerges. One study identified no less than 76 nuclear accidents meeting this definition, totaling more than US$19 billion in damages worldwide, from 1947 to 2008.7 These accidents accounted for 41% of all accident-related property damages globally. Such accidents involved meltdowns, explosions, fires, and loss of coolant, and occurred during both normal operation and extreme emergency conditions (such as droughts and earthquakes). Another index of nuclear power accidents that included costs beyond death and property damage — such as injury to or irradiation of workers and malfunctions that did not result in shutdowns or leaks — documented 956 incidents from 1942 to 2007.8 Yet another study documented that, between the 1979 accident at TMI and 2009, there were more than 30,000 mishaps at US nuclear power plants alone, many with the potential to have caused serious meltdowns.9 Researchers at American University even calculated at least 50 Contesting the future of Nuclear Power Safety and Reliability: Dealing with "Normal Accidents" 51 124 "hazardous incidents" at nuclear units in India between 1993 and 1995.10 The 200 nuclear facilities in France, including power plants, uranium enrichment and conversion plants, reprocessing plants, fuel fabrication plants, surface repositories for waste, and experimental sites for geologic disposal, declare in total 700-800 serious incidents or significant safety events each year.11 One of the first accident studies, conducted by the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1975, looked at the performance of early nuclear plants in terms of occupational injury and death over 32 years of development. They documented 111 accidents involving unplanned releases of radioactivity that exposed 317 people to excess radiation as high as 80,000 rads ("safe" levels are fiercely debated, but are generally less than 10 rads). The study described 321 total fatalities, of which 184 occurred during construction, 212 during operations, and 16 during inspections and government functions (the sums do not match, as one fatality could fall into multiple categories), along with a total of 19,225 injuries not involving radiation for an unusually high frequency rate of 2.75 injuries per million man-hours.'2 Such incidents and accidents not only harm human beings, but also take their toll on operating performance. Using data from US, French, Belgian, German, Swedish, and Swiss nuclear power plants, one study found mean durations of continual operation from 35 to 88 days, meaning these plants saw scores of unplanned outages, half of which were related to equipment failure.13 Adato et al. also cited more than 200 serious accidents and partial meltdowns in commercial nuclear power plants from 1960 to 1980 in the US.14 Even the Paul Scherrer Institute's ENSAD, despite defining accidents differently, suggested that the latent effects of the Chernobyl disaster make nuclear power 41 times more dangerous than equivalently sized coal, oil, natural gas, and hydroelectric projects.15 The above figures tend to be conservative, as they frequently do not include accidents and incidents at research reactors and other parts of the nuclear fuel chain. Mistakes are not limited to reactor sites. For example, accidents at the Savannah River reprocessing plant have already released 10 times as much radioiodine than the accident at TMI; and a fire at the Gulf United plutonium facility in New York in 1972 scattered an undisclosed amount of plutonium into residential neighborhoods, forcing the plant to shut down permanently.16 A similar fire at the Rocky Flats reprocessing plant in Colorado released hundreds of pounds of plutonium oxide dust into the surrounding environment. When United Nuclear Corporations uranium mine tailings dam near Church Rock, New Mexico, burst in July 1979, it released 93 million gallons of radioactive water and 1,000 tons of radioactive sediment into local rivers. Outside of military weapons testing, this accident remains the single largest release of radioactive materials in the US. Almost 2,000 Navajo were directly affected with undrinkable water, while sheep and livestock were heavily contaminated with lead-210, polonium-210, thorium-230, and radium-236.17 At the Mayak Industrial Reprocessing Complex in the Southern Urals, Russia, the overheating of a storage tank with nitrate acetate salts exploded in 1957, releasing a massive amount of radioactive material over 20,000 km2 in Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk, causing the evacuation of 272,000 people. In September 1994, an explosion at the Serpong research reactor in Indonesia was triggered by the ignition of methane gas that had seeped from packages being removed from a laboratory storage room, which exploded when a worker lit a cigarette.18 Accidents have also occurred when nuclear reactors are shut down to be refueled or when fuel is to be transitioned into storage. In 1999, operators were beginning to load spent fuel into dry storage at the Trojan Reactor in Oregon when they found that the zinc-carbon coating intended to protect against borated water had started producing hydrogen, causing a small explosion. Similar hydrogen explosions have occurred at the Palisades plant in Michigan and the Point Beach reactor in Wisconsin, when operators were trying to weld casks shut. Follow-up investigations identified poor quality assessment, not following procedures, and failure to document previous repairs to casks as the likely causes.19 Onsite accidents at nuclear reactors and fuel facilities, unfortunately, are not the only cause of concern. The August 2003 blackout on the US East Coast revealed that more than a dozen nuclear reactors in the US and Canada were not properly maintaining backup diesel generators. In Ontario, during the blackout, reactors designed to automatically unlink from the grid and remain in standby mode instead went into full automatic shutdown, with only two of 12 reactors shutting down as planned. Because they must connect to another source of electricity to keep coolant circulating, all nuclear faculties maintain several backup diesel generators onsite for use in the event of a power loss. From September 2002 to August 2003, 52 Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power Safety and Reliability: Dealing with "Normal Accidents" 53 plant operators declared emergency diesel generators inoperable in 15 reported instances. In seven of those cases, a complete shutdown of the plant was required; and on four of those occasions, all backup generators failed at the same time. In April 2003, the Cook nuclear plant in Western Michigan shut down when emergency water flow to all four diesel generators was blocked by an influx of fish on cooling-system intake screens. These examples suggest that relying on backup systems to respond to blackouts presents a great likelihood of failure and can themselves create dangerous situations. More worryingly, since spent fuel ponds do not receive backup power from emergency diesel generators, when offsite power goes down, pool water cannot be recirculated to prevent boiling, evaporation, and exposure of fuel rods; the result is an increased risk of pool fires and explosions.20 Even research facilities have their own set of safety problems. Operators at the RA-2 Facility in Constituyentes, Argentina, mistakenly placed two fuel elements in the same graphite reflector, causing a critical-ity excursion that killed one person and injured two others. The Henry L. Stimson Center has documented numerous criticality accidents at research reactors to date, including 11 loss-of-flow accidents, 6 loss-of-cooling accidents, 25 erroneous handlings or failures of equipment, and 2 special events that have so far resulted in 21 deaths spread across the US, the Soviet Union, Japan, Argentina, and Yugoslavia.21 The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently found that 31 research facilities with reactors or nuclear materials were operating in the US for extended periods of time in noncompliance with nuclear safety licensing requirements.22 The GAO concluded that: The Department of Energy has structured its independent oversight office, the Office of Health, Safely, and Security (HSS), in a way that falls short of meeting our key elements of effective independent oversight of nuclear safety. ... HSS falls short of fully meeting our five key elements of effective oversight of nuclear safety: independence, technical expertise, ability to perform reviews and require that its findings are addressed, enforcement authority, and public access. First, we found that HSS has no role in reviewing the safety basis for new high-hazard nuclear facilities, no routine site presence, and its head is not comparable in rank to the program office heads. Second, HSS does not have some technical expertise in nuclear safety review and has vacancies in critical nuclear safety positions. Third, HSS lacks basic information about nuclear facilities, has gaps in its site inspection schedule, and does not routinely ensure that its findings arc effectively addressed. Fourth, HSS enforcement actions have not prevented some recurring nuclear safety violations. Finally, HSS restricts public access to nuclear safety information.23 Such trends are worrying, to say the least, as the national laboratories in the US are often prized for having highly trained nuclear specialists. If these specialists cannot conform to safety standards, it raises serious questions about how operators and researchers in other countries can. The author's own compilation reveals 99 nuclear accidents totaling US$20.5 billion in damages worldwide from 1952 to early 2010 (see Table 1). Looking at only relatively recent accidents, these numbers translate to more than one incident and US$330 million in damages every year for the past three decades. When compared to fatalities from other energy sources, nuclear power ranks as the second most fatal source of energy supply (after hydroelectric dams) and is ranked higher than oil, coal, and natural gas systems. Fifty-seven accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986; and almost two-thirds (56 out of 99) of all nuclear accidents have occurred in the US, refuting the notion that accidents are relegated to the past or to countries without America's modern technologies or industry oversight. While only a few accidents globally involved fatalities, those that did collectively killed more people than have died in commercial US airline accidents since 1982. Some of these accidents would be laughable if not for their seriousness, and include: • A maintenance worker at the North Anna nuclear plant in Virginia cleaning the floor in an auxiliary building who caught his shirt on a circuit breaker, tripping the reactor and causing a four-day shutdown; • An employee changing a light bulb in a control panel at Rancho Seco in California who accidentally dropped it into the reactor, short-circuiting sensor arrays and leading to an increase in pressure that almost cracked the reactor vessel; Table 1: 99 Major Nuclear Power Accidents from 1952 to 20102' Cost (in US$ million Date Location Description Fatalities (2006)) December 12, Chalk River, Hydrogen explosion damages reactor interior, releasing 0 $45 1952 Ontario, Canada 30 kg of uranium oxide particles October 8, Windscale, United Fire ignites plutonium piles and destroys surrounding 33 S7S 1957 Kingdom dairy farms May 24, 1958 Chalk River, Ontario, Fuel rod catches fire and contaminates half of the facility 0 $67 Canada July 26,1959 Simi Valley, California, Partial core meltdown takes place at the Santa Susana 0 $32 United States Field Laboratory's Sodium Reactor Experiment January 3,1961 Idaho Falls, Idaho, Explosion at the National Reactor Testing Station 3 $22 United States October 5,1966 Monroe, Michigan, Sodium cooling system malfunctions at the Enrico Fermi 0 $19 United States demonstration breeder reactor, causing partial core meltdown May 2, 1967 Dumfries and Galloway, Fuel rod catches fire and causes partial meltdown at the 0 $76 Scotland Chaplecross Magnox nuclear power station January 21,1969 Lucens, Canton of Vaud, Coolant system malfunctions at an underground 0 522 Switzerland experimental reactor May 1, 1969 Stockholm, Sweden Malfunctioning valve causes flooding in the Agesta 0 S14 pressurized heavy water nuclear reactor, short-circuiting control functions {Continued) Table 1: (Continued) Cost (in US$ million Date Location Description Fatalities (2006)) July 16,1971 Cordova, Illinois, United States An electrician is electrocuted by a live cable at the Quad Cities Unit 1 reactor on the Mississippi River 1 $1 August 11, 1973 Palisades, Michigan, United States Steam generator leak causes manual shutdown of pressurized water reactor operated by the Consumers Power Company 0 $10 March 22,1975 Browns Ferry, Alabama, United States Fire burns for seven hours and damages more than 1,600 control cables for three nuclear reactors, disabling core cooling systems 0 $240 November 5,1975 Brownsville, Nebraska, United States Hydrogen gas explosion damages the Cooper Nuclear Facility's boiling water reactor and an auxiliary building 0 $13 February 22,1977 Jaslovske Bohunice, Czechoslovakia Mechanical failure during fuel loading causes severe corrosion of reactor and release of radioactivity into the plant area, necessitating total decommission 0 $1,700 June 10,1977 Waterford, Connecticut, United States Hydrogen gas explosion damages three buildings and forces shutdown of the Millstone-1 pressurized water reactor 0 $15 February 4, 1979 Surry, Virginia, United States Virginia Electric Power Company manually shuts down Surry Unit 2 in response to replace failed tube bundles in steam generators 0 $12 (Continued) Table 1: (Continued) Cost (in US$ million Date Location Description Fatalities (2006)) March 28, 1979 Middletown, Pennsylvania, United States Equipment failures and operator error contribute to loss of coolant and partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor 0 $2,400 July 25, 1979 Saclay, France Radioactive fluids escape into drains designed for ordinary waste, seeping into the local watershed at the Saclay BL3 Reactor Ü $5 September 12, Mihama, Japan Fuel rods at the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant unexpectedly 0 $11 1979 bow and damage the fuel supply system March 13,1980 Loir-et-Cher, France A malfunctioning cooling system fuses fuel elements together at the Saint Laurent A2 reactor, ruining the fuel assembly and forcing an extended shutdown 0 $22 November 22, San Onofre, California, A worker cleaning breaker cubicles at the San Onofre 1 $1 1980 United States pressurized water reactor contacts an energized line, electrocuting him to death February 11,1981 Florida City, Florida, United States Florida Power & Light manually shuts down Turkey Point Unit 3 after steam generator tubes degrade and fail 0 $2 March 8,1981 Tsuruga, Japan 278 workers are exposed to excessive levels of radiation during repairs of the Tsuruga nuclear plant 0 $3 February 26, 1982 San Clemente, California, United States Southern California Company shuts down San Onofre Unit 1 out of concerns for an earthquake 0 $1 (Continued) Table 1: (Continued) Date Location Description Cost (in US$ million Fatalities (2006)) March 20, 1982 March 25,1982 June 18, 1982 Lycoming, New York, United States Buchanan, New York, United States Seneca, South Carolina, United States February 12,1983 Fork River, New Jersey, United States February 26,1983 Pierce, Florida, United States September 7,1983 Athens, Alabama, United States September 23,1983 Buenos Aires, Argentina Recirculation system piping fails at Nine Mile Point 0 $45 Unit 1, forcing a 2-year shutdown Multiple water and coolant leaks cause damage 0 $56 to steam generator tubes and main generator, forcing the New York Power Authority to shut down Indian Point Unit 3 for more than one year Feedwater heat extraction line fails at the Oconee 2 0 $10 pressurized water reactor, damaging the thermal cooling system Oyster Creek nuclear plant fails safety inspection and 0 $32 is forced to shut down for repairs Workers discover a damaged thermal shield and core 0 $54 barrel support at St. Lucie Unit 1, necessitating a 13-month shutdown Tennessee Valley Authority discovers extensive damage 0 $34 to the recirculation system pipeline, requiring an extended shutdown Operator error during fuel plate reconfiguration causes 1 $65 meltdown in an experimental test reactor (Continued) Table 1: (Continued) Cost (in US$ million Date Location Description Fatalities (2006)) December 10,1983 Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States Recirculation system piping cracks and forces the Pilgrim nuclear reactor to shut down 0 $4 April 14,1984 Bugey, France Electrical cables fail at the command center of the Bugey nuclear power plant and force a complete shutdown of one reactor 0 $2 April 18,1984 Delta, Pennsylvania, United States Philadelphia Electric Company shuts down Peach Bottom Unit 2 due to extensive recirculation system and equipment damage 0 $18 June 13,1984 Platteville, Colorado, United States Moisture intrusion causes 6 fuel rods to fail at the Fort St. Vrain nuclear plant, requiring an emergency shutdown from the Public Service Company of Colorado 0 $22 September 15, 1984 Athens, Alabama, United States Safety violations, operator error, and design problems force a 6-year outage at Browns Ferry Unit 2 0 $110 March 9, 1985 Athens, Alabama, United States Instrumentation systems malfunction during startup, convincing the Tennessee Valley Authority to suspend operations at all three Browns Ferry units 0 $1,830 June 9,1985 Oak Harbor, Ohio, United States Loss of feedwater provokes the Toledo Edison Company to inspect the Davis-Besse facility, where inspectors discover corroded reactor coolant pumps and shafts 0 $23 (Continued) Table 1: [Continued) Cost (in US$ million Date Location Description Fatalities (2006)) August 22, 1985 Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, United States Tennessee Valley Authority Sequoyah Units 1 and 2 fail NRC inspection due to failed silicon rubber insulation, forcing a 3-year shutdown, followed by water circulation problems that expose workers to excessive levels of radiation 0 $35 December 26,1985 Clay Station, California, United States Safety and control systems unexpectedly fail at the Rancho Seco nuclear reactor, ultimately leading to the premature closure of the plant 0 $672 April 11,1986 Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States Recurring equipment problems with instrumentation, vacuum breakers, instrument air system, and main transformer force an emergency shutdown of Boston Edison's Pilgrim nuclear facility 0 $1,001 April 26,1986 Kiev, Ukraine Mishandled reactor safety test at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor causes steam explosion and meltdown, necessitating the evacuation of 300,000 people from Kiev and dispersing radioactive material across Europe 4,056 $6,700 May 4, 1986 Hamm-Uentrop, Germany Operator actions to dislodge a damaged fuel rod at an experimental high-temperature gas reactor release excessive radiation to 4 km2 surrounding the facility 0 $267 {Continued) Table 1: (Continued) as o Cost (in US$ million Date Location Description Fatalities (2006)) May 22,1986 Normandy, France A reprocessing plant at Le Hague malfunctions, exposing workers to unsafe levels of radiation and forcing five to be hospitalized 0 $5 March 31,1987 Delta, Pennsylvania, United States Philadelphia Electric Company shuts down Peach Bottom Units 2 and 3 due to cooling malfunctions and unexplained equipment problems Ü $400 April 12,1987 Tricastin, France Areva's Tricastin fast breeder reactor leaks coolant, sodium, and uranium hexachloride, injuring seven workers and contaminating water supplies 0 $50 May 4,1987 Kalpakkam, India Fast breeder test reactor at Kalpakkam has to shut down due to the simultaneous occurrence of pump failures, faulty instrument signals, and turbine malfunctions that culminate in a refueling accident that ruptures the reactor core with 23 fuel assemblies, resulting in a 2-year shutdown 0 $300 July 15,1987 Burlington, Kansas, United States A safety inspector dies from electrocution after contacting a mislabeled wire 1 $1 December 17,1987 Hesse, Germany Stop valve fails at the Biblis Nuclear Power Plant and contaminates the local area 0 $13 (Continued) Table 1: (Continued) Date Location Description Cost (in US$ million Fatalities (2006)) December 19, 1987 Lycoming, New York, United States March 29, 1988 Burlington, Kansas, United States September 10, 1988 Surry, Virginia, United States March 5,1989 March 17, 1989 Tonopah, Arizona, United States l.usby, Maryland, United States September 10,1989 Tarapur, Maharashtra, India Fuel rod, waste storage, and water pumping malfunctions force the Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation to shut down Nine Mile Point Unit 1 A worker falls through an unmarked manhole and electrocutes himself when trying to escape Refueling cavity seal fails and destroys the internal pipe system at Virginia Electric Power Company's Surry Unit 2, forcing a 12-month outage Atmospheric dump valves fail at Arizona Public Service Company's Palo Verde Unit 1, leading to a main transformer fire and emergency shutdown Inspections at Baltimore Gas 8c Electric's Calvert Cliff Units 1 and 2 reveal cracks at pressurized heater sleeves, forcing extended shutdowns Operators at the Tarapur nuclear power plant discover that the reactor had been leaking radioactive iodine through its cooling structures and discover radiation levels of iodine-129 more than 700 times the normal level; repairs to the reactor take more than one year $150 S14 $120 S78 (Continued) Table 1: (Continued) Cost (in US$ million Date Location Description Fatalities (2006)) November 24, 1989 Greifswald, East Germany Electrical error causes a fire in the main trough that destroys control lines and 5 main coolant pumps, and almost induces a meltdown 0 $443 November 17, 1991 Scriba, New York, United States Safety and fire problems force the New York Power Authority to shut down the FitzPatrick nuclear reactor for 13 months 0 $5 April 21,1992 Southport, North Carolina, United States NRC forces the Carolina Power & Light Company to shut down Brunswick Units 1 and 2 after emergency diesel generators fail 0 $2 May 13,1992 Tarapur, Maharashtra, India A malfunctioning tube causes the Tarapur nuclear reactor to release 12 curies of radioactivity 0 $2 February 3,1993 Bay City, Texas, United States Auxiliary feedwater pumps fail at South Texas Project Units 1 and 2, prompting a rapid shutdown of both reactors 0 $3 February 27,1993 Buchanan, New York, United States New York Power Authority shuts down Indian Point Unit 3 after the AMSAC system fails 0 $2 March 2,1993 Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, United States Equipment failures and broken pipes cause the Tennessee Valley Authority to shut down Sequoyah Unit 1 0 $3 (Continued) Table 1: (Continued) Date March 31, 1993 December 25,1993 April 6,1994 January 14,1995 February 2,1995 Location Description Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, India Newport, Michigan, United States Tomsk, Russia Wiscasset, Maine, United States Kota, Rajasthan, Tndia The Narora Atomic Power Station suffers a fire at two of its steam turbine blades, damaging the heavy water reactor and almost leading to a meltdown Detroit Edison Company is prompted to shut down Fermi Unit 2 after the main turbine experiences catastrophic failure due to improper maintenance Pressure buildup causes mechanical failure at the Tomsk-7 Siberian Chemical Enterprise plutonium reprocessing facility, exploding a concrete bunker and exposing 160 onsite workers to excessive radiation Steam generator tubes unexpectedly crack at the Maine Yankee nuclear reactor, forcing the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company to shut down the facility for 1 year The Rajasthan Atomic Power Station leaks radioactive helium and heavy water into the Rana Pratap Sagar River, necessitating a 2-year shutdown for repairs Cost (in US$ million Fatalities (2006)) 0 $220 $67 $44 $ ! $280 (Continued) Table 1: (Continued) Date Location Description Cost (in US$ million Fatalities (2006)) May 16,1995 February 20,1996 September 2,1996 September 5,1996 September 20,1996 September 9, 1997 May 25,1999 June 18,1999 Salem, New Jersey, United States Waterford, Connecticut, United States Crystal River, Florida, United States Clinton, Illinois, United States Seneca, Illinois, United States Bridgman, Michigan, United States Waterford, Connecticut, United States Shika, Ishikawa, Japan Ventilation systems fail at Public Service Electric 0 $34 & Gas Company's Salem Units 1 and 2 Leaking valve forces the Northeast Utilities Company 0 $254 to shut down Millstone Units 1 and 2; further inspection reveals multiple equipment failures Balance-of-plant equipment malfunction forces the 0 $384 Florida Power Corporation to shut down Crystal River Unit 3 and make extensive repairs Reactor recirculation pump fails, prompting the 0 $38 Illinois Power Company to shut down the Clinton boiling water reactor Service water system fails and prompts Commonwealth 0 $71 Edison to close LaSalle Units 1 and 2 for more than 2 years Ice condenser containment systems fail at Indiana 0 $11 Michigan Power Company's D.C. Cook Units 1 and 2 Steam leak in feedwater heater causes manual shutdown 0 $7 and damage to the control board annunciator at the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant Control rod malfunction sets off an uncontrolled nuclear 0 $34 reaction at Shika Nuclear Power Station's Unit 1 (Continued) Table 1: (Continued) Date Location September 29, Lower Alloways Creek, 1999 New Jersey, United States September 30, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan 1999 December 27, 1999 Blayais, France January 21, 2002 Manche, France February 16, 2002 Oak Harbor, Ohio, United States October 22, 2002 Kalpakkam, India January 15,2003 Bridgman, Michigan, United States Description Cost (in US$ million Fatalities (2006)) Major freon leak at the Hope Creek Nuclear Facility 0 $2 causes the ventilation train chiller to trip, releasing toxic gas and damaging the cooling system Workers at the Tokaimura uranium processing facility 2 $54 try to save time by mixing uranium in buckets, killing 2 and injuring 1,200 An unexpectedly strong storm floods the Blayais-2 0 $55 nuclear reactor, forcing an emergency shutdown after injection pumps and containment safety systems fail from water damage Control systems and safety valves fail after improper 0 $102 installation of condensers, forcing a 2-month shutdown Severe corrosion of control rod forces a 24-month 0 $143 outage of the Davis-Besse reactor Almost 100 kg of radioactive sodium at a fast breeder 0 $30 reactor leaks into a purification cabin, ruining a number of valves and operating systems A fault in the main transformer at the Donald C. Cook 0 $10 nuclear power plant causes a fire that damages the main generator and backup turbines Table 1: (Continued) Cost (in USS million Date Location Description Fatalities (2006)) April 10, 2003 Paks, Hungary Damaged fuel rods hemorrhage spent fuel pellets, corroding a heavy water reactor 0 $37 August 9, 2004 Fukui Prefecture, Japan Steam explosion at the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant kills 5 workers and injures dozens more 5 $9 April 19,2005 Sellafield, United Kingdom 20 metric tons of uranium and 160 kg of plutonium leak from a cracked pipe at the Thorp nuclear fuel reprocessing plant 0 $65 May 16, 2005 Lorraine, France Substandard electrical cables at the Cattenon-2 nuclear reactor cause a fire in an electricity funnel, damaging safety systems 0 $12 June 16, 2005 Braidwood, Illinois, United States Exelon's Braidwood nuclear station leaks tritium and contaminates local water supplies 0 S41 August 4, 2005 Indian Point, New York, United States Enterg/s Indian Point Nuclear Plant, located on the Hudson River, leaks tritium and strontium into underground lakes from 1974 to 2005 0 $30 March 6, 2006 Erwin, Tennessee, United States Nuclear fuel services plant spills 35 liters of highly enriched uranium, necessitating a 7-month shutdown 0 $98 December 24, 2006 Jadugoda, India One of the pipes carrying radioactive waste from the Jadugoda uranium mill ruptures and distributes radioactive material more than 100 km2 0 $25 (Continued) Table 1: (Continued) Cost (in US$ million Date Location Description Fatalities (2006)) July 18, 2007 Kashiwazaki, Japan The Tokyo Electric Power Company announces that its Kariwa nuclear plant has leaked 1,192 liters of radioactive water into the Sea of Japan after being damaged by a 6.8-magnitude earthquake 0 $2 June 4, 2008 Ljubljana, Slovenia Slovenian regulators shut down the Krsko nuclear power plant after the primary cooling system malfunctions and coolant spills into the reactor core 0 $1 June 14, 2008 Fukushima Province, Japan A 7.2-magnitude earthquake cracks reactor cooling towers and spent fuel storage facilities, spilling 19 liters of radioactive wastewater and damaging the Tokyo Electric Power Company's No. 2 Kurihara Power Plant 0 $45 July 4,2008 Ayrshire and Suffolk, United Kingdom Two British Energy nuclear reactors (the Largs and the Sizewell B facilities) shut down unexpectedly after their cooling units simultaneously malfunction, damaging emergency systems and triggering blackouts 0 $10 July 13, 2008 Tricastin, France The nuclear power operator Areva reports that dozens of liters of wastewater contaminated with uranium are being accidentally poured on the ground and run off into a nearby river 0 $7 (Continued) Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power .g J - * B £ a S S o S 2 •§ 1 2 jf I 1 3 ft so ° a ^ 'S S3 M 5 III S cn o .3 V •S 3* Th R 4J a s £ « 21%)105 to Australia's Lake Maitland (0.04%).106 Although reserves today are comfortably above the 0.02% threshold, as high-grade reserves are exhausted, production will shift to low-grade sources at a higher cost. While technological advances may enable profitable access to these resources, doing so will inevitably need more energy and thus a larger carbon footprint. The declining availability of high-quality uranium fuel, along with other factors, contributes to nuclear energy having a low energy payback. Even utilizing the richest ores available, a nuclear power plant must operate at ten full-load operating years before it has paid off its energy debts.107 Based on this estimation, several known facts can modify the calculation: not all plants use the richest ores, plants operate at full capacity for an average of only 20 years, and most plants are decommissioned within 30 or 40 years. Accordingly, a plant using average-quality uranium and operating at full capacity for 20 years out of a 35-year life span will only generate twice as much energy as that consumed by the plant. Other studies have documented how nuclear power plants generate 16% of global electricity, but provide only 6.3% of energy production and 2.6% of final energy consumption.108 What accounts for this mismatch between generation, production, and consumption? Part of it stems from the poor consumption efficiency of electricity compared to other energy carriers as a whole (as electricity is relatively inefficient in energy terms compared to the use of oil). The other part relates to transmission losses associated with nuclear energy, usually situated far away from sources of demand, as well as the energy used by nuclear plants themselves (for cooling, management of spent fuel, operations, and refueling). Utilizing a similar technique called an "energy payback ratio" (i.e. the ratio of total energy produced compared to the energy needed to build, maintain, operate, and fuel an energy system), Luc Gagnon found that nuclear power plants score unfavorably. He estimated that hydroelectric, wind, and biomass power plants are at least 1.5-20 times more efficient from an energy payback perspective than nuclear reactors.109 Another meta-survey of hundreds of energy payback ratio studies found that hydroelectric facilities had the best performance (with ratios exceeding 170), and that biomass and wind power plants performed well (27-34) compared to ratios of below 16 for nuclear power plants and below 7 for fossil-fueled plants.110 Figure 3 shows the energy payback ratios for a broad spectrum of technologies. Why do nuclear and fossil-fueled systems have such low energy payback ratios? As the best oil, gas, and uranium reserves get depleted, they tend to be replaced by wells and mines that require a higher energy investment (located in faraway regions). This leads to longer delivery distances and more energy needed for distribution. Other estimates have also confirmed nuclear's poor energy payback ratio compared to renewables such as wind and hydro.111 — Fl ri rm rm__ Hydro with Hydro run Wind Biomass Wind Nuclear Coal Natural gas Oif reservoir of river (onshore) (waste) (offshore) Figure 3: Energy Payback Ratios for Various Technologies and Systems Note: A high ratio indicates good environmental performance. If a system has a payback ratio between 1 and 1.5, it consumes nearly as much energy as it generates. 92_ Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power These technical challenges alone — scores of incidents and accidents, a high probability of future accidents, reactor meltdowns, fuel cladding fires, an aging workforce and lack of skilled staff, and a declining energy payback ratio and uncertain reserves of fuel — might be sufficient to stop a nuclear renaissance on their own. Yet as the pages to follow will show, a nuclear renaissance must also overcome immense economic, environmental, and sociopolitical hurdles if it is to become a reality. Endnotes 1 Peter A. Bradford, "Three Mile Island: Thirty Years of Lessons Learned," Testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (March 24, 2009). 2 Ibid. 3 Denis E. Beller, "Atomic Time Machines: Back to the Nuclear Future," Journal of Land, Resources, & Environmental Law 24 (2004), p. 43. 4 Phillip A. Greenberg, "Safety, Accidents, and Public Acceptance," in John Byrne and Steven M. Hoffman (eds.), Governing the Atom: The Politics of Risk (London: Transaction Publishers, 1996), pp. 127-175. 5 International Institute for Strategic Studies, Preventing Nuclear Dangers in Southeast Asia and Australasia (London: IISS, September 2009). 6 See Stefan Hirschberg, Gerard Spiekerman, and Roberto Dones, Severe Accidents in the Energy Sector (1st edition) (Villigen, Switzerland: Paul Scherrer Institute, November 1998, PSI Report No. 98-16); Stefan Hirschberg and Andrej Strupczewski, "Comparison of Accident Risks in Different Energy Systems: How Acceptable?," IAEA Bulletin 41 (January, 1999), pp. 25-30; and Stefan Hirschberg, Peter Burgherr, Gerard Spiekerman, and Roberto Dones, "Severe Accidents in the Energy Sector: Comparative Perspective," Journal of Hazardous Materials 111 (2004), pp. 57-65. 7 Benjamin K. Sovacool, "The Costs of Failure: A Preliminary Assessment of Major Energy Accidents, 1907-2007," Energy Policy 36 (2008), p. 1807. 8 Christopher P. Winter, "Accidents Involving Nuclear Energy," available at http:// www.chriswinter.com/Digressions/Nuke-Goofs/ (last visited November 6, 2008). 9 Zachary Smith, The Environmental Policy Paradox (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2009). Safety and Reliability: Dealing with "Normal Accidents"_ 93 10 American University, TED Case Studies: Environmental Threats of Russian Nuclear Trade (Washington, D.C.: American University, 1996, Case No. 342), available at http://www.american.edu/TED/russnuke.htm/ (downloaded March 10, 2009). 11 Greenpeace, France's Nuclear Failures: The Great Illusion of Nuclear Energy (Amsterdam: Greenpeace International, November 2008), p. 10. 12 US Atomic Energy Commission of Occupational Safety, Operational Accidents and Radiation Exposure Experience Within the United States Atomic Energy Commission, 1943-1975 (US Atomic Energy Commission, January 1, 1975, WASH-1192). 13 Constance Perin, "Operating as Experimenting: Synthesizing Engineering and Scientific Values in Nuclear Power Production," Science, Technology, & Human Values2i{\) (Winter, 1998),pp. 98-128. 14 Michele Adato et al, Safety Second: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and America's Nuclear Power Plants (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987). 15 Hirschberg and Strupczewski (1999), pp. 25-31. 16 Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security (Andover, MA: Brick House, 1982), pp. 157-158. 17 Barbara Rose Johnston, Susan E. Dawson, and Gary E. Madsen, "Uranium Mining and Milling: Navajo Experiences in the American Southwest," in Laura Nader (ed.), The Energy Reader (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 132-146. 18 International Institute for Strategic Studies (2009). 19 Allison Macfarlane, "Interim Storage of Spent Fuel in the United States," Annual Review of Energy and Environment 26 (2001), pp. 201-235. 20 Public Citizen, The Big Blackout and Amnesia in Congress: Lawmakers Turn a Blind Eye to the Danger of Nuclear Power and the Failure of Electricity Deregulation (2003), p. 4. 21 Mohammad Saleem Zafar, Vulnerability of Research Reactors to Attack (Washington, D.C.: Stimson Center, April 2008). 22 US Government Accountability Office, Nuclear Safety: Department of Energy Needs to Strengthen Its Independent Oversight of Nuclear Facilities and Operations (Washington, D.C.: US GAO, October 2008, GAO 09-61). 23 Aid., p. 3. 24 Data taken from Benjamin K. Sovacool, "A Critical Evaluation of Nuclear Power and Renewable Energy in Asia," Journal of Contemporary Asia 40(3) (August, 2010), pp. 369-400. 94 Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power Safety and Reliability: Dealing with "Normal Accidents' 95 25 Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (New York: Basic Books, 1984); and International Institute for Strategic Studies (2009), p. 36. 26 Perrow (1984). 27 Ibid.,p. 37. 28 Gene I. Rochlin and Alexandra von Meier, "Nuclear Power Operations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective," Annual Review of Energy and the Environment 19 (1994), pp. 153-187. 29 »id., p. 185. 30 Perin(1998). 31 Ibid. 32 Perrow (1984), p. 304. 33 David R. Marples, "Nuclear Politics in Soviet and Post-Soviet Europe," in John Byrne and Steven M. Hoffman (eds.), Governing the Atom: The Politics of Risk (London: Transaction Publishers, 1996), pp. 247-270. 34 Benjamin K. Sovacool and Christopher Cooper, "Nuclear Nonsense: Why Nuclear Power Is No Answer to Climate Change and the World's Post-Kyoto Energy Challenges," William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review 33(1) (FaU, 2008), pp. 1-119. 35 Ibid. 36 Marples (1996), p. 255. 37 Douglas Chapin, Karl Cohen, W.K. Davis, E. Kinter, L. Loch et al, "Nuclear Power Plants and Their Fuel as Terrorist Targets," Science 297 (September 20, 2002), pp. 1997-1999. 38 Ibid. 39 David J. Brenner, "Revisiting Nuclear Power Plant Safety," Science 299 (January 10, 2003), pp. 201-203. 40 UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation: UNSCEAR 2000 Report to the General Assembly (New York: United Nations, 2000). 41 Sergey I. Dusha-Gudym, "Transport of Radioactive Materials by Wildland Fires in the Chernobyl Accident Zone: How to Address the Problem," International Forest Fire News (January-June, 2005), p. 119. 42 Ryszard Szczygiel and Barbara Ubysz, "Chernobyl Forests, Two Decades After the Contamination," Przeglad Pozarniczy (May, 2006), p. 22. 43 Sovacool and Cooper (2008). 44 Charles Perrow, "The President's Commission and the Normal Accident," in David Sills, Charles Wolf, and Vivian Shelanski (eds.), The Accident at Three Mile Island: The Human Dimension (Boulder: Westview Press, 1981), pp. 73-84; and John Kemeny et al, The Need for Change: The Legacy of Three Mile Island (Washington, D.C.: Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Government Printing Office, 1979). 45 Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island (1979), available at http://www.pddoc.com/tmi2/kemeny/causes_of_the_ accident.htm/. 46 Sovacool and Cooper (2008). 47 Lovins and Lovins (1982). 48 US Government Accountability Office, Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Oversight of Nuclear Power Plant Safety Has Improved, But Refinements Are Needed (Washington, D.C.: US GAO, September 2006, GAO-06-1029). 49 L.C. Cadwallader, Occupational Safety Review of High Technology Facilities (Idaho Falls, ID: Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, January 2005, INEEL/EXT-05-02616). 50 US Government Accountability Office, Nuclear and Worker Safety: Actions Needed to Determine the Effectiveness of Safety Improvement Efforts at NNSA's Weapons Laboratories (Washington, D.C.: US GAO, October 2007, GAO-08-73). 51 US Government Accountability Office (2008). 52 US Government Accountability Office (2006). 53 Bradford (2009). 34 Richard Webster and Julie LeMense, "Spotlight on Safety at Nuclear Power Plants: The View from Oyster Creek," Pace Environmental Law Review 26 (2009), p. 388. 35 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Future of Nuclear Power: An Interdisciplinary MIT Study (2003), p. 4, available at http://web.mit.edu/ nuclearpower/pdf/nuclearpower-summary.pdf/. 56 Bernard Papin and Patrick Quellien, "The Operational Complexity Index: A New Method for the Global Assessment of the Human Factor Impact on the Safety of Advanced Reactor Concepts," Nuclear Engineering and Design 236 (2006), pp. 1113-1121. 57 Christian Parenti, "Nuclear Power Is Risky and Expensive," in Peggy Becker (ed.), Alternative Energy (New York: Gale, 2010), pp. 50-55. 96 Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power 58 Robert Alvarez, Jan Beyea, Klaus Janberg, Jungmin Kang, Ed Lyman, Allison Macfarlane, Gordon Thompson, and Frank N. von Hippel, "Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States," Science and Global Security 11 (2003), pp. 1-51. 59 Quoted in Sovacool and Cooper (2008). 60 David Lochbaum, KS. Nuclear Plants in the 21st Century: The Risk of a Lifetime (Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists, 2004), p. 5. 61 James R. Temples, "The Politics of Nuclear Power: A Subgovernment in Transition," Political Science Quarterly 95(2) (Summer, 1980), pp. 239-260. 62 John Byrne and Steven M. Hoffman, "The Ideology of Progress and the Globalisation of Nuclear Power," in John Byrne and Steven M. Hoffman (eds.), Governing the Atom: The Politics of Risk (London: Transaction Publishers, 1996), pp. 11-46. 63 Greenpeace (2008). 64 Frank von Hippel, "Managing Spent Fuel in the United States: The Illogic of Reprocessing," in Henry D. Sokolski (ed.), Falling Behind: International Scrutiny of the Peaceful Atom (Washington, D.C.: Nonproliferation Education Center, 2008), pp. 159-219; and B. Banerjee and N. Sarma, Nuclear Power in India: A Critical History (New Delhi: Rupa 8c Company, 2008). 65 Banerjee and Sarma (2008). 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 68 Greenpeace, Nuclear Power: A Dangerous Waste of Time (Amsterdam: Greenpeace International, 2009), p. 11. 69 Matthew L. Wald, "In Finland, Nuclear Renaissance Runs into Trouble," New York Times, May 29, 2009. 70 Ibid. 71 Greenberg (1996). 72 A.E. Farrell, H. Zerriffi, and H. Dowlatabadi, "Energy Infrastructure and Security," Annual Review of Environment and Resources 29 (2004), pp. 421-469. 73 Bradford (2009). 74 Yung-Tsan Jou, Tzu-Chung Yenn, Chiuhsiang Joe Lin, Chih-Wei Yang, and Chih-Cheng Chiang, "Evaluation of Operators' Mental Workload of Human-System Interface Automation in the Advanced Nuclear Power Plants," Nuclear Engineering and Design 239 (2009), pp. 2537-2542. 75 Smith (2009), p. 181. Safety and Reliability: Dealing with "Normal Accidents" 97 76 Greenberg (1996). 77 Shahla M. Werner, "Nuclear Energy Too Risky When Efficiency Works," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 9, 2009. 78 Helen Caldicott, "The Dangers of Nuclear Power," Australian Financial Review (January 18, 2002), p. 18. 79 Louis J. Sirico, "Stopping Nuclear Power Plants: A Memoir," Villanova Environmental Law Journal 21 (2010), pp. 35-44. 80 Alvarez etal. (2003). 81 Farrell etal. (2004), p. 454. 82 The Alvarez et al. (2003) study produced quite a controversy. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission responded in "Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Review of 'Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States,'" Science and Global Security 11 (2003), pp. 203-211, that the study (1) exaggerated the probability of a spent-fuel-pool fire; (2) overestimated the release of 30-year half-life cesium-137; (3) overestimated the damage from the release; and (4) underestimated the costs of moving to dry-storage casks a large fraction of the older spent fuel currendy in spent-fuel pools. Alvarez et al. responded in Robert Alvarez, Jan Beyea, Klaus Janberg, Jungmin Kang, Ed Lyman, Allison Macfarlane, Gordon Thompson, and Frank von Hippel, "Response by the Authors to the NRC Review of Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States," Science and Global Security 11 (2003), pp. 213-223. They retorted that the NRC's critique in each of those four areas evaporated upon detailed inspection: (1) on probabilities, the NRC restated some of Alvarez et al!s observations as if they had said the opposite; (2) on cesium-137 releases from a spent-fuel fire, the NRC adopted the lower end of Alvarez et al!s uncertainty range by simply assuming that a fire would not spread from recendy discharged to older spent fuel; (3) on damage, the NRC asserted that projections of the future population density around US reactors used in a 1997 study done for it were unrealistically high without offering an alternative; and (4) on costs, the NRC not only argued incorrecdy that Alvarez et al had neglected certain costs of removing 80% of the spent fuel currendy in spent-fuel pools but also ignored lower-cost options that Alvarez et al. had urged it to examine as well. 83 Webster and LeMense (2009), pp. 365-390. 84 Nuclear Energy Agency, Nuclear Education and Training: Causes for Concern (Paris: OECD, 2000). 98 Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power Safety and Reliability: Dealing with "Normal Accidents" 99 97 98 »9 100 101 Ibid., p. 14. 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