NUCLEAR DANGERS REVEALED

Safety issues revealed at nuclear facility; Contractors used substandard materials
James Rosen, May 3, 2009 (McClatchy Newspapers via The State)

SUMMARY
The Savannah River Site (SRS), one of the most important U.S. nuclear energy facilities, was built with imadequate, unsafe materials while the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) looked the other way, according to a U.S. Department of Energy investigation.

One of the substandard materials could have resulted in a 15,000-gallon spill of highly radioactive waste, according to Gregory Friedman, DOE’s Inspector General. The contractors and subcontractors who supplied, built and installed equipment at the SRS facilities, where tritium, plutonium-239 and other nuclear weapons materials were produced from 1954 to 1991 and where dangerously radioactive contamination is still being cleaned up, ignored safety regulations developed by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

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The 5-month investigation, detailed in an April 23 email to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu by Friedman, revealed the purchase of 9,500 tons of substandard reinforcing steel as well as piping, steel plates, an unusable $12 million “glovebox” used to handle contaminated materials, furnace module doors and robots used to eliminate human exposure to radiological and chemical materials at the SRS site that failed to meet federal safety standards

The faulty steel was discovered because a piece broke during construction. It was part of a facility where spent weapons plutonium and uranium would be converted into civilian reactor fuel. It necessitated the replacing of 14 tons ($680,000 worth) of substandard reinforcing steel and delayed completion of the $4.8 billion facility.

Although the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s ended the manufacture of nuclear weapons at the SRS facility, it continues to provide tritium for the existing U.S. nuclear stockpile. It employs 10,000 people in clean-up and weapons materials work. As a result of its decades of weapons work, it is a nuclear hazard site.

The radioactivity leached into the groundwater. Thirsty? (click to enlarge)

Officials at DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the agency responsible for maintaining and securing the nation’s nuclear weapons, said they had done their own investigation and found the problems identified by Friedman “of low significance…” though it did describe the problems as “violations…”

DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, which manages hazaerdous waste cleanup at U.S. nuclear complexes, did not object to the findings.

Great care was taken - with everything but construction. (click to enlarge)

COMMENTARY
There are advocates of New Energy who believe nuclear energy is the only way to create emissions-free energy on the scale needed. This is simply not true. Nuclear plants get built in a 10-to-12 year timeframe. The anticipated demand for energy in the U.S. would require something on the order of a new nuclear plant everyday for decades. Ain’t gonna happen. Why? Safety takes time. Case in point: SRS. Doing it fast means cutting corners and cutting corners is unsafe at any speed.

New Energy can be built much faster and much more safely.

Another problem with nuclear power is that it is too expensive to make it practicable, especially at current financing costs. Some nuclear advocates say making nuclear plant design more uniform will cut costs. Yes, it will. Will that make nuclear power more affordable? No. Why? Safety costs money. Doing it cheap means cutting corners and cutting corners is unsafe at any price.

New Energy can be built much more affordably.

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The SRS plant converts weapons grade radioactive materials to civilian plant fuel. It is precisely that activity which makes it a mistake to go on building a nuclear energy industry. As Professor Mark Jacobson of Stanford has pointed out, there is an irresolvable co-dependency between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy that it is not healthy to enable.

The clean-up of the SRS site already employs thousands and $1.6 billion from the recent stimulus bill will go to pay for more work and hundreds more workers. The risk of such dreadfully irresponsible construction is first of all to them but, secondarily, it is a risk to the entire region.

DOE Inspector General Friedman’s investigation turned up cases of subcontractors who sold commercial-grade materials instead of the military-grade materials that meet rigorous testing standards. It found at least one subcontractor who sold goods purchased through retail catalogues.

The failure was attributable as much to poor DOE oversight as to shoddy practices. In the real world, it is often the case that the 2 go hand-in-hand, along with the natural human impulse toward greed. It all adds up to a perfect example of why, as NewEnergyNews columnist Anne Butterfield put it, humans aren’t really adequate to the responsibility of nuclear energy.

Shoddy materials were used in the construction of these robotic operatives. (click to enlarge)

The investigation was conducted at the SRS site from September 30 of last year until April 8. It looked at 10 procurements (government purchases). There were safety problems with every one.

The NNSA response admitted to violations but said they were of low significance. That’s where the human factor comes in. How can unsafe practices involving radioactive waste be of low significance?

As this is being written, there is breaking news about an out-of-control turbine in California’s Tehachapi Pass. It is one turbine. The many others there go on generating emissions-free, fuel-free energy. No waste spill, no alerts about radioactivity, no dangers of terrorism. Just a normal human mechanical failure. A 2-lane highway was shut down for a few hours. It happens.

But when it happened at a nuclear facility in Pennsylvania, they had to close down part of Pennsylvania for a while. When it happened at a nuclear facility in Russia, they had to close down part of Russia - and it’s still closed down.

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QUOTES
- The Friedman memo: “We identified multiple instances in which critical components did not meet required quality and safety standards…”
- The Friedman memo: “The Department did not provide adequate oversight of the prime contractors’ quality-assurance programs at Savannah River…Particularly, the Department did not adequately establish and implement processes to detect and/or prevent quality problems.”
- William Ostendorff, deputy administrator, NNSA: “NNSA agrees with the recommendations presented in the report but does not agree with the stated conclusions concerning the safety of the facilities, related cost impacts or with the tone of the report,”
- Ines Triay, acting assistant secretary for environmental management, DOE: “The issues identified in this report represent a failure of contractors and subcontractors to properly implement existing requirements and policies…Environmental Management agrees that current practices can and should be enhanced to provide greater federal and contractor oversight…”