Nuclear Opponents View of New Hydro in Vermont

New Hydro Power in Vermont

I blogged recently about the potential for new in-state hydro power in Vermont.  Quoting many studies, I concluded that not much new in-state hydro power is available for Vermont.  My estimate was about 25 MW possible. Please read the entire post for the justification of this number.

Vermont Yankee opponents, on the other hand, often say there is much more hydro available for Vermont.  Among the opponents, VPIRG is the most honest: their  Repowering Vermont report predicted only 15 MW expansion in hydro power.

Other opponents wave their hands in the air and claim that new hydro in Vermont can be a serious addition to the fuel mix in Vermont.  They don't state numbers and they don't state references. They don't adhere to the generally accepted rules of evidence.  They don't...

Aw heck.  I'll just quote them.

Evidence, Pre-Filed Testimony, and Loaded Questions

On February 14, I attended a Public Service Board hearing about the Certificate of Public Good for Vermont Yankee. At that hearing, Entergy presented Jeffrey Tranen as an expert witness.  You can read Mr. Tranen's resume here, and you can read his pre-filed testimony for the Board at the relicensing docket.  Tranen has held responsible positions with grid operators and utilities. Tranen testified on the need for reliability and a good fuel mix on the grid.

Vermont Yankee (620 MW)
Vernon Dam (34 MW)

In general, substantive issues are supposed to be entered into the docket as pre-filed testimony.  You can see volumes of pre-filed testimony at the relicensing docket site, above.

New England Coalition is an old-line nuclear opponent, and an intervenor in the docket.  The lawyer for the New England Coalition was Brice Simon.

Examination is supposed to be on the basis of the pre-filed testimony.  However, the Public Service Board is quasi-judicial, not a court of law, so there is some leeway.  Also, in most courts of law, while leading questions are sometimes permissible, loaded questions are not.  Loaded questions assume an answer, and the classic loaded question is described in Wikipedia as follows:

"Have you stopped beating your wife?" indirectly asserting that the subject has beaten her at some point.

Okay, cutting to the chase here.  Brice Simon's questions for Tranen seemed so inappropriate that I obtained a copy of the transcript for that day so that I could quote the exchange directly. The transcript is a public record, but it is not on the Public Service Board website.

See what you think of these questions.

I Know and You Don't--So Hah-Hah!

Context: Discussion of Vermont Yankee's role in diversifying the fuel supply mix in this area, an area which has limited natural gas pipelines.

(Questions by Brice  Simon, NEC lawyer; answers by Jeffrey Tranen, Entergy Witness; Objection by Robert Juman, Entergy Lawyer; Comment by James Volz, Chairman of the Public Service Board)

Illustration from
Renewable Energy Vermont

Q. Just to follow up on that one, isn't locally produced hydro power one type of fuel that can step in to meet that need rather than Vermont Yankee?

A. Local hydro is already factored into the dispatch.

Q. What I'm asking is increased local hydro over time could come in to meet that need, correct?

A. I question whether there's enough increased local hydro of the magnitude of a Vermont Yankee power plant, but in general any other source of power than gas which is economic -- more economic than gas to operate in the dispatch would reduce the amount of gas that's required during the operating day.

Q. Are you aware of how much untapped hydro resources there remain in the State of Vermont?

A. I don't have specific numbers, but when I was actively involved in management with regard to New England it was my understanding that there was very little economic new hydro in New England to be developed.

Q. And when was that?

A. A decade ago.

Q. A decade ago. So you're not aware of all of the wonderful improvements that Vermont hydro developers are seeing that are increasing the available economic hydro in the state, are you?

A. I am not aware of the -- to what extent there could be new hydro that would be economic to develop in Vermont.

Q. Are you aware of the recent developments in run-of-the-river hydrologic turbines?

MR. JUMAN: Objection. What developments are you referring to?

MR. SIMON: I'm asking if the witness is aware of the developments that I'm aware of that I'm not going to tell about.

MR. JUMAN: Then I object to that question. You're asking him about something you're not sharing with him.

MR. SIMON: I don't have to share it with him.

MR. JUMAN: You're asking him to read your mind.

MR. SIMON: No. I'm asking his state of knowledge. I don't have to tell him.

CHAIRMAN VOLZ: I think it's fair to ask him if he's -- we are -- what developments in hydro technology is he aware of.

MR. SIMON: I'll rephrase the question happily.

BY MR. SIMON: Q. What, if any, developments in the area of run-of-the-river hydrologic turbines are you aware of?

A. I am not aware of any hydroelectric technology developments that would make new hydro development economic in competing with gas fired generation to any great extent.

Q. Thank you. ..

My Conclusion

A fishy fish from Wikipedia

Mr Simon did not even attempt to justify his implied assertion that recent improvements had greatly expanded hydro power availability in Vermont.  He didn't enter anything about these new improvements into the pre-filed testimony. (All the NEC pre-filed testimony is about fish and cooling towers.) Instead, Simon resorted to loaded questions and "I know but I'm not telling." With this, he tried to convince the Public Service Board that there is lots of new hydro available to Vermont.

Simon seems to be claiming that there is new hydro available, on the same scale as Vermont Yankee power, but as small run-of-the-river plants, using an unreferenced new technology.  And he doesn't have to tell anything more about it.

Hopefully, the Board is smart enough to see through this type of questioning.

The Short Version: Another View of the Vermont Supreme Court Hearing

Yesterday, I posted about the Vermont Supreme Court hearing about Vermont Yankee. An anti-nuclear group asked the Vermont Supreme Court to shut down the plant though the Public Service Board hearings are on-going.

Yesterday's post is Unique Request: Opponent Wants Vermont Supreme Court to Rule Before PSB Rules.  The post includes links to many articles about the hearing. It's the long version.

Here's the short version.

I think many of the issues are encapsulated in this video clip from WPTZ.  The clip is about a minute and a half long, and worth viewing.

Unique Request: Opponent Wants Vermont Supreme Court to Rule before PSB Rules

Vermont Supreme Court

In Three Vermont Yankee Hearings: The Week of Living Lawyerly, I described the three hearings about Vermont Yankee that are happening in three different courts this week. The second hearing took place yesterday, in front of the Vermont Supreme Court.

Stepping on the Process

An anti-nuclear group, NEC (New England Coalition Against Nuclear Pollution) asked the Supreme Court to shut down Vermont Yankee even while the Public Service Board holds hearings about granting Vermont Yankee a Certificate of Public Good.  Andrew Stein of Vermont Digger wrote about the hearing in Anti-nuclear group petitions the Vermont Supreme Court to shut down Vermont Yankee.  At VPR, John Dillon wrote Entergy Asks Court to Dismiss Attempt to Shut Down Yankee.   That article ends with the comment that It's likely the high court will rule fairly quickly on Entergy's motion to dismiss.

I have blogged about this case extensively, most recently in the post Hot Potato Continued: Federal Court Turns Down Entergy Injunction Request.   I said that I thought the Public Service Board was happy to see you (NEC) and him (Entergy) fight in another venue, and leave them (the Public Service Board) out of the picture and off the hot seat.

An Appeal Before the Ruling?

But the main question is simple: groups usually appeal to the Vermont Supreme Court when a lower court or judicial board (like the Public Service Board) has ruled against them.  I have never before heard of a group jumping the gun and bringing a case to the Supreme Court while the lower court is still deliberating.  It's odd.  Actually, it's unique, as described in the WCAX video clip by Jennifer Reading.

Will the Vermont Supreme Court step in, step on, and step over the Public Service Board process?

If the Supreme Court acts now, it would be a very bad precedent for hearings before all other lower courts and judicial boards. That's my opinion, but only time will tell how the Vermont Supreme Court will rule.


WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-



Background

There are three hearings about Vermont Yankee this week.

The first hearing was Monday in federal court. This was a hearing in the Federal Court of Appeals in New York City. In this hearing, the State of Vermont attempted to convince the court that they were not concerned with nuclear safety, a federally pre-empted subject, but merely with economics.  Vermont claims that it wants to shut the plant down for economic reasons.  Since the plant contributes greatly to the state prosperity (and the state tax coffers), this argument was completely backward.  I blogged about it in Vermont Yankee: State Claims Economic Argument for Closing Plant. 

This post describes the second hearing, before the Vermont Supreme Court. Also, I have posted a few of the documents in the Supreme Court case at the Energy Education Project site.

The third hearing was today, before the Public Service Board, on the question of whether or not Vermont Yankee will be allowed to buy a back-up diesel generator.

Hot Potato Continued: Federal Court Turns Down Entergy Injunction Request

Plant Opponent Tries a New Court

On November 29, the Public Service Board (PSB) issued a "strongly worded" but "narrow" ruling against Entergy.  In this ruling, the PSB refused to take the "requirement to have a Certificate of Public Good to operate after March 21, 2012" off the original 2002 Sale Order for Vermont Yankee.  The Board also said, however, that it  did not reach any conclusions concerning the merits of modifying or extending Entergy VY's obligations under existing Orders and CPGs.

Yes, it was a confusing ruling. A long-time plant opponent, the New England Coalition against Nuclear Pollution (NEC), looked at this ruling and used it as a basis for a suit filed  in Vermont Supreme Court.  NEC filed in Vermont Supreme Court, although active hearings were on-going at the Public Service Board and in Federal Court. In other words, NEC was trying their luck with suit in a third court.

I blogged about this opponent filing in The Very Latest Lawsuit: Opponents Will Probably Lose. I had some evidence for this.  The Vermont Department of Public Service has joined other NEC lawsuits against the plant, ever since Shumlin was elected. To my surprise, the Department of Public Service asked the Vermont Supreme Court to deny the NEC request for an injunction.  Then the Public Service Board itself asked the Vermont Supreme Court to deny the NEC petition.

One of the issues is that the Public Service Board's November 29 ruling could be read as an endorsement of third-party suits against Vermont Yankee. I wrote about this in Hot Potato and the New Request: Entergy Asks for an Injunction against PSB and Shumlin in Federal Court.   In other words, the November 29 PSB ruling could be interpreted as tossing the hot potato: Let's you (NEC) and him (Entergy) fight, and leave us (the PSB) out of it!

Entergy Tries an Old Court

As I noted in my Hot Potato post, when NEC filed in Vermont Supreme Court, Entergy filed an injunction against NEC in Federal Court. Entergy filed in the same court  that ruled for Entergy in the original case about Vermont's pre-emption of the federal prerogative to regulate nuclear safety.  The same judge (Gavan Murtha) heard the request for the injunction against NEC.  Yesterday, Murtha ruled against Entergy about the injunction.

Basically, Entergy claimed that the NEC Vermont Supreme Court filing was an end-run around the Federal Court ruling that the Public Service Board should not take action to shut down Vermont Yankee during the federal appeals process.  Judge Murtha did not explicitly agree or disagree with this analysis. However, Murtha noted that NEC was not a party to the federal suit, and that the federal court does not take action against those not involved in federal suits.  Also, the federal court usually does not interfere with state court issues.  Bob Audette at the Brattleboro Reformer describes the Judge's reasoning, including the fact that NEC asked to be a party to the original suit, but was not granted standing by the federal court.

Meanwhile, Ray Shadis of NEC issued a press release that was quoted in the Reformer: "We hope this federal rebuff will serve Entergy as an inoculation of anti-arrogance serum, but we suspect that booster shots will be needed before Vermont Yankee is history and we can move to the details of decommissioning."

Other statements by NEC echo the idea that this federal ruling is not the final "shot" in these battles. Lawyer Margolis of NEC told the Reformer that he expects Entergy to "run to the district court" if the Vermont Supreme Court orders a plant shutdown.

Vermont Supreme Court 

Ignoring the rhetoric, I interpret these statements as: "It's not over till it's over."

Indeed, it is not over yet.

The Future

The next event in this saga will be the Vermont Supreme Court hearing on the NEC request.  As noted above, both the Department of Public Service and the Public Service Board have asked the Vermont Supreme Court to dismiss the request.   (UPDATE: Entergy has also asked for the NEC request to be dismissed.  I have put the November 29 PSB statement and the Entergy request to the Vermont Supreme Court on a new page Vermont Supreme Court Filings, at the Energy Education Project.) As far as I can tell, only NEC wants the Supreme Court to take the case, and the two Vermont commissions have asked it to dismiss the case.  The Supreme Court has scheduled at 30-minute hearing on this case on Wednesday, January 16, at 2:30 p.m.

Hot Potato and the New Request: Entergy Asks for Injunction against PSB and Shumlin in Federal Court

The DPS and Public Service Board Don't Join NEC

Public Service Board members David Coen, Commissioner
John Volz and John Burke (left to right in picture)
At November 7 PSB hearing

A few days ago,  the New England Coalition against Nuclear Pollution (known as NEC) sued in Vermont Supreme Court.  NEC asked the Vermont court to shut down Vermont Yankee, although there are two other jurisdictions hearing aspects of the Vermont Yankee case. In an earlier post, Vermont DPS Not Joining Opponent Lawsuit,  I wrote that the Vermont Department of Public Service (DPS) asked the Vermont Supreme Court to deny this NEC suit.

In that post, I wrote that the DPS probably asked the Supreme Court to deny the suit because if the Supreme Court undertook hearing the NEC lawsuit, that lawsuit would invalidate the Public Service Board process.  The DPS charter is to appear before the Public Service Board and take part in the Board process. Naturally, the DPS would want that process respected.

So, I was not surprised to learn that the Public Service Board itself had asked the Supreme Court to deny the NEC petition.  After all, the Public Service Board doesn't want its own process invalidated.

Hot Potato

However, there were still surprises in store for me.  I read last night in Vermont Digger that  Entergy filed a new motion in Federal Court in the against Shumlin, et al (in their official roles) and against the Public Service Board (PSB).


What? A request for a new injunction?

Yet, when I read the  Entergy motion for injunction, their request makes sense.  Not something I would have predicted, but it makes sense.  The Public Service Board has to stop  treating this Certificate of Public Good as a hot potato. "Somebody else take this, pretty please!"

Entergy notes the PSB rulings have been ambiguous. The PSB November 29 ruling pretty much invited third parties to challenge the operation of Vermont Yankee.  On page 5 of the Entergy filing, Entergy quotes the November 29, 2012 PSB ruling: it invites other parties to use the PSB ruling as a basis to bring actions against Vermont Yankee.

Aside: See Entergy quote about the ruling at the bottom of this post. Also, I wrote extensively about this recent ruling which was "strongly worded" against Entergy but also "narrow" and issued on an obsolete docket.  You can also read the ruling here. End Aside.

In other words, in that ruling, the PSB basically says: "The PSB is not going to take action, but you can. Let's you and him fight, and leave us (the PSB) out of it."

I don't understand the points of law, but I do understand that the Public Service Board has written ambiguous statements. The Public Service Board is supposed to hold hearings and issue rulings, and  I think the Public Service Board may be playing "hot potato" instead.  They have written an opinion that encouraged someone like NEC to take the docket off their hands. The Certificate of Public Good is a hot potato...quick, throw it to someone else!

Due Process

The purpose of the March ruling by Judge Murtha was to allow court cases and PSB dockets to continue in a logical and legal fashion, without the constant threat of the state attempting to shut down Vermont Yankee while the legal process is on-going.

It doesn't seem as if the concept of legal due process should be so difficult. You would think due process would be what the Public Service Board wants.  I would think the Board would want their own process to be respected. On the other hand, after a meeting this March in which the Board behaved in an unprofessional and crabby fashion (at least in my opinion), I am not sure what they want.

This Entergy docket for a Certificate of Public Good is a hot potato, politically.  But from the point of view of the law, it's a legal docket, and should be treated as one.

Ultimately, I think that is what the Entergy request is about.  The PSB should handle its dockets professionally. Instead, they issued an odd order on an old docket, and that order looks like an open-invitation to third party lawsuits.  By issuing that order, I think that the PSB hoped that someone will rescue the them from the necessity of making hard choices.

However, Judges and Boards are given the status, authority, and ability to make the hard choices.  That's why they hold the positions they hold.  I hope the PSB  realizes this.

-----
Longish quote from the Entergy filing:

The PSB did not affirmatively state that it would take action to shut down the VY Station for failure to obtain a new CPG from the Board before March 21, 2012, but the PSB did expressly invite others (such as NEC) to do so: “Entergy VY entered into a binding contract with the Department [of Public Service] and other parties not to operate after March 21 absent Board authorization. Entergy VY has not challenged the validity of this commitment in its  federal litigation.[1] Thus, any of those parties could seek specific performance ... at any time which, if granted, would bar operation after March 21, 2012.” Id. at 19.  

Non-party (to this action) NEC has now accepted the PSB’s invitation, asserting that the PSB’s March 19 and November 29 Orders require an immediate shutdown during the Interim Period despite this Court’s prior rulings.

Also note you can see many relevant filings at the Energy Education Project website, by following links from this page: Dockets for Public Service Board and Courts.
------

This is the updated post.  I took the word "Update" out of the title, because it has been updated for several days already.

The correction for the update was  the following:

Entergy brought this request for injunction in Federal Court,  on the same docket as the main lawsuit in federal court.  It was not a new suit, and it was not brought in Vermont Supreme Court.  In my original post, I said this was a new suit in Vermont Supreme Court.  The post has been changed to show that correction.  

Very Latest Lawsuit Updated: Vermont DPS not joining opponent

The Ruling and the Lawsuit

In my blog post a few days ago,  The Very Latest Lawsuit,   I described an order that the Public Service Board filed, which was strongly-worded against Entergy, but was not a summary judgment against the plant.

In response to that order, an opponent group, New England Coalition Against Nuclear Pollution (commonly called NEC), filed a suit in Vermont Supreme Court to have the Vermont Court take action and shut down the plant.

On the radio, Pat Bradley of WAMC had interviewed me and Pat Parentau of Vermont Law School.  I am a plant supporter: Parentau is an opponent.  We both agreed that this suit was not likely to get anywhere.

However, NEC hoped to have the Vermont Department of Public Service (DPS) join them in the suit, as DPS had joined them in other suits to attempt to shut down Vermont Yankee.

DPS will not join NEC in this one.

The Department of Public Service Steps Away from NEC

Yesterday, to my surprise, the DPS filed a brief asking the Vermont Supreme Court to deny the NEC appeal. Here's the Burlington Free Press article on the DPS filing  I also link to the DPS filing itself  posted at the Energy Education Project website.  The introduction to that filing:

While the Department appreciates the dedicated work of NEC and other parties over years of litigation with Entergy, the Department nonetheless respectfully requests that the Court refuse the relief requested under 30 V.S.A. $ 15. NEC's complaint does not encompass proper grounds for Section 15 relief; and other reasonable relief is available in pending proceedings before both the Board and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Well, okay, DPS isn't really stepping away from NEC: they mention "dedicated work" and all that. But DPS realizes that there is no reason to open a docket in a new court for a case that is under active review in two other courts, federal and state.

The DPS decision somewhat confirms my belief that the NEC filing in Supreme Court was more for NEC publicity than to win the case.  Indeed, looking at the DPS filing, I realize that if DPS had joined NEC in this filing, DPS would have been undercutting the authority of the Public Service Board to make a ruling on the new docket for the Certificate of Public Good.  In retrospect, I realize...of course DPS wouldn't join NEC in this one.

I am talking about 20-20 hindsight here.  A few days ago, I thought DPS would join NEC in the Supreme Court filing, since that has been DPS's reaction in the recent past: "NEC is suing--let's join!"

Pat Parentau and I agreed with each other on the radio show a week ago: this filing will almost certainly be dismissed by the Vermont Supreme Court.  Looks like DPS came to a similar conclusion.

Howard Shaffer Post at ANS Nuclear Cafe:

Howard Shaffer has a great post  ANS Nuclear Cafe today: politics, lawsuits, and trials. Vermont Weather Gets Colder.  Vermont Yankee Politics Continue Hot.  I encourage you to read it.

Howard Shaffer in Debate Today 9 a.m. EST

On NHPR today, at 9  a.m. EST, Howard Shaffer will debate Ray Shadis of New England Coalition (NEC). That's a few minutes from now.

Here's a link to the NHPR announcement, and you can listen on the web by clicking on the appropriate link in the lower left hand corner.

http://www.nhpr.org/post/vermont-yankee-debate-heats

NEC began fighting Vermont Yankee before it opened, and recently asked the Vermont Supreme Court to shut down the plant.

http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_22126411/nec-asks-vt-supreme-court-shutdown-vy

Update: you can now listen to the broadcast and comment on the program at the NHPR site.

A State of Confusion: The Suit About the Water Quality Permit

In mid-November, the State of Vermont sued the NRC, claiming that the license extension granted to Vermont Yankee was not valid because the NRC did not have proof that Vermont Yankee was in compliance with the Clean Water Act.

Actually, the anti-nuclear group, New England Coalition (NEC), started this suit, and the state joined in. Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) is acting as the lawyer for NEC. The Vermont Department of Public Service is pursuing this suit, along with NEC/CLF.

Meanwhile, several other groups have joined the lawsuit: New York State, Riverkeeper, and Scenic Hudson have asked to be friends of the court. The Brattleboro Reformer has an excellent article on the lawsuit and the various parties to it.

If you can figure this one out, please tell me. If Vermont Yankee did not have an appropriate water quality permit, why didn't the state do something directly about it? As the Reformer article notes: Under the doctrine of "cooperative federalism," states are allowed by choice to enforce standards such as those set out in the Clean Water Act. In fact, states are allowed to impose even more stringent standards than required by federal law.

In other words, the state had the power to enforce permit requirements. A state can even enforce special permit requirements. For example, cars sold in California need to meet stronger pollution control standards than the national standards set by EPA.

For some reason, though, Vermont is suing the NRC, claiming it was the NRC's obligation to make sure that Vermont Yankee had an up-to-date permit. Apparently, the state didn't care about the permit, except that the state wanted to be sure that the NRC cared.

I don't understand it. Or maybe I do.

Scuttlebutt

Okay. I am not a lawyer, and I don't understand this one. However, the scuttlebutt I have heard is that the state extends water quality permits routinely, unless something is changed, because it costs everybody an arm and a leg to actually reapply and re-assess such a permit. Apparently, the state made the decision (sometime in the past) that nothing much had changed at Vermont Yankee, and the water quality permit could be extended. Then, just a few months ago, with the change of governor, the state suddenly had a change of heart. The state was shocked, shocked to discover Vermont Yankee was operating on an extended water quality permit! As a matter of fact, they sued the NRC about it.

As I said, I am not a lawyer, and I am in state of confusion about this one. I thought I might try calling lawyers about it, but decided that even the lawyer's answers would be beyond me. If Vermont Yankee didn't have an appropriate permit, why did the state let them operate? If Vermont Yankee did have an appropriate permit, why is the state suing the NRC?

It doesn't make any sense, but at this point, "not making sense" is what I expect from the current state administration in its dealings with Vermont Yankee.

--------

The Oxbow: The Connecticut River near Northampton, MA. Cole Thomas, 1836

The Casablanca graphic is free-floating around the web, shocking as that is.

Transformer Fires? Erosion-Corrosion? Recent Events at Indian Point and Vermont Yankee

Two days ago was not the best day for Entergy. Indian Point Reactors Unit 2 was taken off-line by a transformer fire, while Vermont Yankee was shut to repair a 60-drop-a-minute leak of radioactive water within the plant. In my opinion, the best description of these incidents is in the Wall Street Journal.

Quick on the trigger, David Lochbaum of Union of Concerned Scientists was on the job about the transformer fire, while Ray Shadis of New England Coalition hopped aboard to discuss the leak. You can read their remarks in the Brattleboro Reformer.

In this case, they have made statements without knowledge. On the other hand, knowledge isn't their job. They are paid for anti-nuclear activism, not for scientific or technical credibility. Unlike science, which actually looks for causes, Lochbaum and Shadis's remarks always fit this theme: "The plant is aging and can't run anymore."

Okay. Let's look at the facts, instead.

The Transformer Fire at Indian Point

Quoting Mr. Lochbaum:

David Lochbaum,

director of the nuclear safety program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said both problems were probably due to their age. As plants get older, they face more and more such challenges, said Lochbaum......Transformer explosions happen, on average, about a half dozen times a year at U.S. nuclear power plants, Lochbaum said.

Really? It happened because the transformer was old? The Wall Street Journal is pretty famous for digging deep, and they asked Entergy about that transformer. Here's the answer:

The transformer that failed was made by Siemens AG (SIE.XE) and installed in 2006, Nappi said.

The question then arises: Why would a new transformer fail?

Well, because it is new.

They Don't Build Them Like They Used To

Transformer fires are nothing new, but more transformer fires are happening. There's a company whose business is transformer fire prevention. (There are several companies in this market, but this is the biggest one I found by Googling.) Transformer Protection Corp.

Transformer Protection Corporation says on its website that they expect transformer fires to increase in the future because: .....This (regulatory) weakness, in addition to the globalization market, has opened the door to a disturbing drop in the quality of new transformers...Many experts anticipate that the number of failures will increase significantly in the near future, from 1% in 2001 to 2% in 2008 ..... In addition, the shorter lifetime of new transformers will sharply increase above this rate after 2008

The website also notes that there were around 800 transformer fires in the U.S. in one year. I have no idea if Lochbaum's "a half-dozen fires at nuclear plants" is correct. If it is correct, I can rephrase his statement as below.

• Less than 1 % of the transformer fires in the U.S. were in nuclear plants last year.
• Nuclear plants should be careful to not replace transformers unless they absolutely need to do so. The old (aging) transformers usually have better life expectancy than their replacements.

Erosion Corrosion

For years I was a member of NACE and a working corrosion engineer. Mr. Shadis's description of erosion-corrosion is accurate. It is a terrible, sometimes catastrophic form of corrosion. It breaks pipes.

In other words, erosion-corrosion rarely seeps. It busts things. It causes pipe failure. I would say "Erosion-corrosion never seeps" but I have been a corrosion engineer too long to be throwing around the word "never." Things happen, you know. Not everything goes according to form. Erosion-corrosion could make one through-wall pit, under some complex circumstances, a single pit that leaks. It would be unlikely to leak at a drop-per-minute rate, however. Also, erosion-corrosion is rarely seen in straight flows of steel pipes. It is far more common in copper, or at places where the flow in a pipe becomes turbulent.

Let's say that erosion corrosion would NOT be the first thing I would consider in a case of seepage in a straight run of pipe. Indeed, Vermont Yankee had seepage around a weld, the most common thing on earth, corrosion-wise. Mr. Shadis decided that to say that the seepage was erosion-corrosion because that was the worst thing he could think of. It was not a likely cause for the leak.

As I said, Shadis is paid to attack the plant, and that is what he does. Most of the time, frankly, he does it better than he did in this case.

Mythical Fire Salamander From Wikipedia

Zirconium and the Future: Why Research is Important

An Expected Ruling

On Friday, August 6, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) turned down a request for enforcement against Vermont Yankee by the New England Coalition (NEC). In June, the NEC had asked that Vermont Yankee be required to operate its core at a much lower temperature. The NEC claimed that zirconium alloy (zircaloy) cladding is a fire hazard at Vermont Yankee's current operating temperatures.

Why all the concern about zirconium cladding? Fuel pellets are made of oxides (mostly uranium oxide) and can't burn. However, the fuel pellets are encased in zircaloy, which is metallic. Metals don't generally burst into flame. However, unlike oxides, metals can burn. So it is reasonable to be concerned about the temperature at which zircaloy will burn.

The NRC regulation for maximum temperature of light water reactor fuel cladding is 2200 F, while Vermont Yankee plant operates at 2060 F or below. However, NEC asked the NRC to rule that Vermont Yankee must operate with fuel cladding temperatures no higher than 1700 F. Naturally, the NRC turned down this request. No reputable regulatory agency is going to tell a plant that is in compliance with regulations: "Sorry. You think you are in compliance, but you aren't in compliance. We have changed the regulations and made them far stricter, just for you."

Besides being unfair, this would be a great way for a regulatory agency to get itself sued. Of course the NRC didn't do this. After several conference calls with people from NEC, the NRC sent NEC a letter basically saying: No. We're not going to tell Vermont Yankee to operate at a lower temperature. Your concerns are more generic than anything specific to Vermont Yankee. Your concerns will be forwarded to our area for general rulemaking.

You can download the letter the NRC sent NEC here, and also read the Brattleboro Reformer article on the ruling.

But Wait, There's More!

The request above was specific to Vermont Yankee. It was filed by NEC in June of this year, and turned down at the beginning of August, as described above.

However, there was an earlier request by Mark Leyse, a nuclear engineer and the son of Robert Leyse, also a nuclear engineer. Mark Leyse lives in New York city. Mark Leyse has made many requests to the NRC for re-evaluation of safety measures. He is particularly concerned with fuel cladding, apparently believing that the NRC has ignored his father's research results on this issue.

Mr. Mark Leyse's November 2009 request for lower temperature operation of all reactors has become an NRC rulemaking docket. Leyse's November 17, 2009 petition to the NRC is the first item in this docket. Leyse claims that oxidation of cladding became a self-sustaining reaction at around 1800 degrees, and that the NRC has ignored this situation for forty years. In the petition asking for rulemaking, Leyse quotes his father's test results from forty years ago. Mark Lesye includes a letter from his father Robert Leyse about tests dated 1970 on pae 116 of his petition. Throughout the petition, Leyse also extensively discusses the test, Flecht Run 9573, reported in 1973. (For simplicity, I am referring to these references as "forty-year old data." Strictly speaking, some of the quoted data is only thirty-seven years old.)

The consequences of all this, as always, are assumed to be dire. Here's a quote from the Rutland Herald article:

The NRC earlier in spring had already agreed to consider the matter raised by Mark Leyse of New York City, but in a review track that will take years, not months. The New England Coalition wants the margin of safety increased immediately.

Leyse and Raymond Shadis, senior technical adviser to the coalition, say Vermont Yankee’s peak cladding temperature of 1,960 degrees Fahrenheit only gives the plant operators 30 seconds to react during a loss-of-coolant incident scenario.

Thirty seconds. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? And "takes years, not months" sounds perfectly awful.

But Wait, There's Less!

I decided to review Mr. Leyse's letter, because I couldn't figure out some of the comments in the press. What does reactor operating temperature have to do with loss-of-cooling accidents (LOCA)? Of course, to some extent, a hotter reactor is slower to cool, but everything about a LOCA analysis is built with huge margins of error. And how could forty-year-old lab data be ignored by everybody, when zircaloy must be one of the most-studied compounds in the world? Zircaloy it has been used for cladding since the very first reactors, and people have been studying it forever. Just Google "Zircaloy" to see the endless lists of papers and references.

And, of course, my major question. If zircaloy bursts into flame in water above 1700 Fahrenheit, and reactors routinely operate at 1900 Fahrenheit, how come they haven't all burned up already?

I reviewed the document to the best of my ability, and I welcome comments that will improve my review. Here's my analysis, with some quotes from Leyse's letter to NRC.

The Leyse request doesn't just refer to the temperature at which zirconium might burn in water. Instead, it also says that the modeling of loss of cooling accidents, the flood rate of water into the core, and the Baker-Just and Cathcart-Pawel equations non-conservative for calculating the temperature at which an autocatalytic (runaway) oxidation reaction of Zircaloy would occur in the event of a LOCA. .....Additionally, it can be extrapolated from experimental data that, in the event a LOCA, a constant core reflood rate of approximately one inch per second or lower (1 in./sec. or lower) would not, with high probability, prevent Zircaloy fuel cladding, that at the onset of reflood had cladding temperatures of approximately 1200F or greater, from exceeding the 10 C.F.R. § 50.46(b)(1) PCT limit of 2200 F.

In other words, this is not just about zircaloy. In this petition. Mark Leyse claims that just about every model used in the nuclear industry is inadequate. Zircaloy properties, LOCA calculations, reflood calculations--all wrong. In 2002, his father, Robert Leyse, said the same thing. The elder Leyse petitioned the NRC for rule-making about the Baker-Just and Cathcart-Pawel equations and LOCAs, and the NRC found his contentions to be not scientifically valid and wrote him to that effect in 2005.

This latest contention by Mark Leyse is a replay of this 2002 petition by Robert Leyse. Unfortunately, the NRC cannot just say: "Hey, we did this before. These contentions were made in a petition in 2002, and we settled these points in a ruling in 2005." No, they have to look at it again. This gives the opponents of nuclear power the opportunity to complain that it takes the NRC three years to look at anything.

Conspiracies Not Research

Robert and Mark Leyse seem to believe that all the research that has been done over the past forty years on LOCA modeling, zircaloy properties, and pretty much everything else....is part of a vast conspiracy to provide just the results the utilities want. The Leyses, and the Leyses alone, have the real facts, the true equations, the correct models. They discovered these "facts" forty years ago and have been ignored ever since.

I call this a conspiracy theory, decked out in scientific trappings.

Of course, once you buy into the idea that everything known about nuclear is wrong, then you can come up with scenarios where the entire core bursts into flame in thirty seconds and there is nothing anybody can do about it and so forth. This plays well with the anti-nuclear groups.

It doesn't play well with me. In science and technology, everything builds on what has gone before. Even the Einstein's famous breakthroughs were built on the past. He reviewed experiments that could not be explained without new ways of thinking about the speed of light. Einstein was attempting to explain the very latest experiments when he wrote his breakthrough papers.

I've done research, supervised research, and I deeply value research. Conspiracy theories that decide to ignore forty years of research should be called exactly what they are. Conspiracy theories.

I prefer science.

Update: NRC review of CORA tests, interim ruling now available here. Simplistic summary of NRC ruling: these results are in line with our other tests, and no rule changes are necessary.

Zirconium rod (not zircaloy) from Wikimedia.

Who Said?

The NRC Meeting

I attended the NRC meeting yesterday in Brattleboro, or at least, I attended most of it. I'll blog a little about it later, but you might want to watch this video for the general idea of the endless fear of tritium in the river. Of course, we had Putting Picos in Perspective from John Wheeler, and Rod Adams excellent Tritium Calculation. Dan Yurman noted that exaggeration is not a defense of the environment and I blogged with pictures of bananas. Still, Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about tritium remain alive and well in Vermont.

Perhaps devious and dumb are alive and well also.

Chasing a Quote

Last week, I went to a meeting sponsored by Entergy and blogged about it. In the blog, I posted a picture of a man from NEC (New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution). He was taking a picture of a model of a reactor. I thought it was only polite to link to the NEC website when I posted the name of the organization, and so I put in a link.

Once I was on the NEC website, I read a sentence, ascribed to Arnie Gundersen, which he supposedly stated after the Senate vote against Vermont Yankee. In this sentence, Gundersen supposedly praised NEC as being an early strong organization against Vermont Yankee, and that NEC had tied Entergy's ankles together (that "ankles" business was an easy phrase for me to remember) and other organizations had later come and pushed Entergy's shoulders, knocking them over.

Now, this sentence didn't surprise me. Before Mr. Gundersen was a consultant to the legislature of Vermont, he was a consultant to NEC. This is not a secret. His belief that VY should be shut down isn't a secret either. So I just noted that there was an interesting quote from Gundersen on the NEC website, and forgot about it. In all honesty, it didn't strike me as a particularly big deal. If I had thought it was a big deal, I would have put the exact quote on my blog.

Instant Reactions

I wish I had quoted those words and posted them.

I almost immediately got an email from NEC, stating that they had checked with Gundersen, he had never said that quote, and they had taken it off their website. I was surprised, but amended my posting.

At the Brattleboro NRC meeting yesterday, NEC had set up a table with their literature. This whole thing puzzled me, and I wanted to find out more about it. I talked to the man at the NEC table. He was very uncomfortable, and merely said that they had been asked to take down the quote, that Gundersen never said it. I asked who put the words up, if Gundersen never said them. He re-iterated that they had been asked to take it down, and that is all he knew about it. He looked completely miserable when I repeated my question.

I will never be a bull-dog reporter. I let the matter drop.

Possibilities?

I have two hypotheses here.

First possibility. Gundersen never said this. Somebody not-too-honest or not-t00-bright (okay, somebody either devious or dumb) put the sentence up, ascribed it to Gundersen and hoped Gundersen would never see it. Further, the NEC organization was not organized enough to notice this had happened. However, due to my blog, Gundersen became aware of it, and the incorrect quote was removed.

I like this possibility, because as a blogger, I strive for truth and justice, and this scenario shows me righting a serious wrong! This is my favorite possibility!

Alas, there is also possibility two. Gundersen said it, didn't mind it being posted, and then became upset when a person who doesn't buy into NEC's agenda (that is...me) noticed it. I don't like this possibility, because it shows Gundersen as being pretty naive.

Lots of people who don't agree with me read my blog, and I know it. Some reporters read it. Sierra Club members read it on occasion. Several of the walkers told me they followed my blog during the walk to Montpelier. If Gundersen and NEC think that only their supporters will read what they put on the web, they are naive beyond belief. At least, naive beyond my belief. I reject this possibility entirely.

My Vote

It's possibility-one for me. I am glad I brought this misquotation to Gundersen's attention and it got corrected. I expect Gundersen to give me a word of thanks next time we meet. (Unless, of course, the truth is possibility two, in which case he will probably be steaming mad because I made this matter public. We shall see.)