Nuclear powerCritics: post-Fukushima nuclear power may be safer, but it is still not cost effective
The Southern Company wants to show its customers that it has learned from the Fukushima disaster in Japan and has protected its nuclear reactors to make sure the same thing does not happen in the United .States’ critics of nuclear power are not convinced – and also, they say, alternative energy sources, such as natural gas, are much cheaper to produce
There is a saying that goes: if we do not learn from the past we are doomed to repeat it. The Southern Companywants to show its customers that it has have learned from the Fukushima disaster in Japan and has protected its nuclear reactors to make sure the same thing does not happen in the United States.
“We learned a lot from Fukushima, and all that has been taken into account,” Cheri Collins, general manager of Atlanta-based utility, one of the largest electricity distributors in the United States told attendees of the France-Atlanta 2012 conference. “Our uncompromising focus is safety and quality.”
CNN reports that at the annual conference, Collins told an audience how the Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia will feature new safety measures specially to prevent a situation like Fukushima.
The features include reactors not needing electrical power to shut down safely and relying more on natural heat than on pumps and valves. Another feature the digital operation for which a human controller is not needed for up to seventy-two hours, while the main core will stay cool because of a containment cooling system.
Southern’s nuclear engineering programs manager Mike Altizer said that tests involving floods, earthquakes, fires, and tsunamis were conducted in order to ensure a natural disaster will not affect the reactors.
Roger Hannah, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC)spokesman, told CNN that the agency is taking a number of actions in response to Fukushima, which involve equipment, training, procedures maintenance and fire protection.
“The Vogtle reactors are an advanced design that has more passive safety features,” Hannah said. “The NRC does not allow a plant to operate if it does not meet the agency’s stringent safety regulations.”
According to NRC, the commission passed a series of regulatory requirements in March which include strategies to respond to extreme natural events that could result in the loss of power to the plant, steps to ensure the safety and reliability of venting systems designed to release pressure, and the enhancement of spent fuel pools.
The NRC also created the Japan Lessons Learned Project Directorate, a group that works exclusively on implementing regulations based on the lessons learned at Fukushima.
Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, is not convinced about the the tests and safety features.
“In my judgment, the AP1000 design does not have any safety advantages compared to currently operating reactors and, in fact, may be less safe,” Lyman told CNN. “The features described are only designed to function in the event of [a] so-called ‘design basis accident’ — not the type of severe accident that occurred at Fukushima.”
Lyman noted that the Fukushima site lost power for ten days, so even if the reactors were AP1000s, they would have run into trouble after seventy-two hours. Lyman said he is not familiar with the disaster tests the NRC ran, but “certain components of the AP1000 shield building were tested for their structural integrity under certain stress conditions and actually failed the tests, but the NRC discounted the results because it claimed that those components didn’t need to pass those tests.”
Hanna said that all plants have some sort of backup generator that allows power to be used in an emergency, even a site as big as Fukushima.
“We have a task force specifically designed to find out what kind of backup generators will work best in these situations,” Hanna told CNN.
Safety is not the only challenge nuclear power faces. Many critics are wondering why new reactors are being built when other sources of energy, such as natural gas, are much cheaper
Collins says that while natural gas is “the right choice of energy in terms of cost” at this time, it has been volatile lately and that using nuclear energy is a better option as a long-lasting energy source.
Lyman’s main issue is the $14 billion price tag for the two reactors, which according to some estimates may be up to $1 billion short of the actual cost. “The enormous price tag of new nuclear power projects, such as Vogtle 3 and 4, means that nuclear power is not cost-effective, especially given the low price of natural gas,” Lyman told CNN.
