Nuclear Training and Questions about the Future

Vermont Yankee

Vermont Yankee Workers: The Question 

On my latest post, a comment posed a very important question about training at nuclear plants. Specifically, the comment raised questions about the future for people at Vermont Yankee.

Here's a quote from that comment:

Everyone even me is saddened about the loss of VY and that it is impossible to restart a shut down nuclear plant. One reason is because to keep the license, all the operators have to have continuous training. Why couldn't operators train at another reactor of the same brand? If the NRC won't allow that, why doesn't the industry try to change that? Entergy, for example, must have another GE reactor of theirs....Also, I read that a license is plant specific. Why is that? Why can it not go by maybe brand? That is like you get a drivers license but you can only drive 1 car. Again, why did the industry let that happen? Why is your industry taking this closures "lying down"? 

My Partial Answer: About Simulators

These are good questions.  Though I don't work at a nuclear plant, I made an attempt to answer the question as below:

Indian Point

There's an old saying that France has one variety of nuclear plant and 100 varieties of cheese, while America has one variety of cheese and 100 varieties of nuclear plants. That is the main problem. 

Even "sister" reactors are not totally alike. Though being a qualified operator on one reactor definitely gives you a leg up on being qualified on a similar reactor, you still have to go through a lot of training for that second reactor.

I was at EPRI during part of the ten years just after TMI. At that time, reactor training went from "generic" to very plant-specific simulators. This was a Good Thing for training and safety. 

That said, airplane pilots face this problem of the "new plant" all the time. (For a while, my husband worked at a company that did software for airplane simulators.) Anyhow, for a pilot qualified on a 727, after a certain number of hours in the simulator for a 737--that pilot can get into the cockpit of a 737, with passengers in the plane behind him.

Seabrook

It would be good if the nuclear industry had something similar. People get too locked into their jobs IMHO. Maybe the nuclear industry does have this....as I say, I don't work in a plant and I am not an expert on nuclear simulator training. 

However, you make a good point that such operator flexibility would be good for the industry.

I encourage people who work at nuclear plants to enter this conversation.

SROs and Others

I know people (such as Howard Shaffer) who held responsible positions at more than one

Duane Arnold

nuclear plant.  I don't know how easy or hard it is to do this.  I would think a plant chemist would need almost no re-training, but an SRO might need months or years of training to qualify at a new plant.  But I really don't know.

I hope knowledgeable people will comment on this post.

Also, if as a nuclear worker, you moved between plants in the past, it would be great if you could comment on this post.

Thank you.

Economics, Productivity, Energy and Vermont Yankee

Economic Collapse: Short Term Reasons

The short-term economic news is dreadful. First we had the Debt Ceiling wrangle, then the Standard & Poor's downgrade, and now, a continuing fall in the stock market.

Many pundits will ascribe many causes to this group of events. The causes will concern government borrowing, deficits, partisan wrangling in Congress, broken campaign promises, and so forth. I will leave those analyses to the pundits. They may be right.

Longer Term: Productivity and Growth

As a simple matter, economic prosperity and growth follows economic productivity. If the average laborer produces $10 worth of goods in an hour, she can be paid perhaps $5 and use that to buy food, transportation, medical care and flat-screen TVs. If she can only produce $5 worth of goods in an hour, her pay will be closer to $2.50 an hour, and her living standard will be less. This has nothing to do with the value of the dollar or inflation or anything like that. It is a matter of goods and services produced. Productivity matters.

This post is headed by a productivity chart for various nations (double-click to see a bigger version.) Productivity and prosperity are not completely linked: I would say that the United States is probably more prosperous than Ireland, for example. But in general, prosperous countries have higher productivity (Norway, France, U.S.) and poorer countries (Mexico, former Soviet states) have less productivity in the workforce.

When Henry Ford paid his workers enough to buy the cars they produced, cars became a consumer item rather than a rich person's toy. He could afford to pay his workers this much because the Ford assembly lines allowed them to be productive enough to warrant this pay, without bankrupting the company.

Stagflation: Reasons For the Misery of the 70s

According to traditional economics, high inflation and high unemployment rates cannot happen at the same time. However, in the 70s, both existed at the same time: it was called Stagflation. Economists are still writing about the reasons this happened. Two major theories are that the 70s stagflation was caused by:

• Cost increases of raw materials, especially energy and oil
• Slowdown in worker productivity increases in 1970s. Productivity did not rise as quickly as it had risen in earlier decades. "The productivity slowdown became the single most important event of the decade." (Quote is from Timothy Taylor, Teaching Company Course on A History of the U. S. Economy in the 20th Century).

I'm not an economist, but I think these two may be related. If you cannot use more energy, it is harder to increase productivity

Productivity in My Experience

My husband and I worked in Silicon Valley in the late 90s and early 2000s, when our companies were becoming very excited about outsourcing certain types of intellectual work (programming, map digitizing) to India. Wages were lower in India, the workers were very well-educated, the Internet was allowing excellent communications. What could go wrong?

A lot could go wrong, as it turned out. Managers very quickly realized that while wages were lower in India, productivity was lower also. Managers had to pick and choose tasks carefully to come out ahead on the "outsourcing" business.

One of the main problems was energy. India's electric grid was pathetic. Blackouts were frequent. Companies had back-up generators, used as little air-conditioning as possible, and generally had a work environment that looked plain flaky to people who were accustomed to Silicon Valley businesses. Reliable, inexpensive electricity matters to productivity. The workers in India were great: the infrastructure was terrible. There's a reason that India is building electric power plants of all kinds as quickly as it can.

What Can I Do About Economics?

I can encourage productivity.

Reading the paper recently has been no fun at all. American treasury bonds being down-rated. Stock market has been nose-diving. I see that Congress is too full of grandstanding politicians to tackle the big questions. For me to affect the financial situation in this country feels hopeless.

What I can do is what I have been doing. I can help keep productivity high in America by encouraging reliable power, inexpensive electricity, and nuclear plants. Especially my local nuclear plant, Vermont Yankee. Think globally, act locally.

When I look at the paper, it is a relief to know I am doing something about the situation, however small my contribution may be.

Productivity levels in 2007 from Wikipedia

Bangalore Palace image from Wikipedia

Productivity gains, U. S. by quarter, form Department of Labor Statistics

Tritium and Plant Management

As I noted in an earlier post, there are three questions about tritium. I repeat the questions here.
1) Are the amounts that are leaking dangerous to health?
2) Does the leak show that Vermont Yankee is being managed badly or is perhaps too old to be run properly?
3) Did Vermont Yankee staff lie about pipes and tanks that could contain tritium?

To dispose of the first question rather quickly. Two of my blog posts answered this question. I repeat the answer here. The tritium levels in the test wells are not dangerous. When I compared the levels of beta exposure from tritium to levels of beta exposure from various types of food, I determined that it was more dangerous to eat a banana than to drink the well-water. The Keene Sentinel, alone among newspapers, has also figured this out. I tried to document this lack of danger well enough to convince a person who has an open mind on the subject. A person who hates nuclear will never be convinced.

For links to many opinions of tritium, I recommend this recent post at Pro-Nuclear Democrats.

The second question. What does the tritium leak show? Does it mean that Vermont Yankee is too old, or perhaps it has terrible management, and that is why it has a tritium leak?

This question is answered in a newspaper article, but one that is not at all friendly to the nuclear industry. Dave Gram of AP notes that Vermont Yankee is one of almost thirty plants that have developed tritium leaks. Most plants, including VY, have test wells to monitor for tritium release.

You can read this article one of two ways. The anti-nuke way is, of course, "OMG, they all have leaks, we have to shut them all down!" (But they would have said this anyway, with or without the tritium.)

A more reasonable approach is that tritium leakage is a problem that arose in the 90s, and monitoring has been stepped up since around 2005. Test wells have been installed at many power plants to detect any discharge of tritium. Like twenty-six other plants, Vermont Yankee's test well detected a tritiated water release. Almost all the plants that have leaks have found the problems and corrected them. (In some cases, plants have had difficulties finding the source.)

Meanwhile, Vermont Yankee is doing all the right things. VY has been drilling more test wells, inspecting buildings and trenches, keeping in touch with the NRC and state regulators. There is nothing about this situation that shows bad management or that the plant is in terrible shape. There is nothing about these leaks that makes them particularly dangerous. This problem has occurred at other plants, been solved at other plants, and will be solved at Vermont Yankee as well.

But finally, we come to the big question. Question Three. Did Vermont Yankee staff lie to regulators about pipes and tanks that could release tritium? I will address that question in another blog post.