Aging Reactors

Is the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in southwestern Michigan a dangerous, aging reactor that could spew a deadly radioactive cloud at any time, or one of the most heavily monitored and regulated institutions in the state, posing little or no risk whatsoever?
It depends on who you ask.
That’s the crux of a debate over relicensing the reactor which reclines on the shoreline near South Haven, just a few hours upwind from where you’re sitting in Northern Michigan.
Currently, anti-nuke activists are voicing concerns over “embrittlement” in the 425-ton reactor, referring to metal fatigue of its 8.5-inch-thick steel plates and the ability to withstand the stress of extreme pressures without cracking.
Activists hope to use the embrittlement issue to stop the extension of a 20-year license for Palisades, which is already near the end of its 40-year run.
To Corinne Carey, the Grand Rapids coordinator of Don’t Waste Michigan, an anti-nuke group, the Palisades plant is one of the most embrittled, dangerous power plants in the country.
And the plant has ramifications for Northern Michigan, because if it ever blew -- as activists warn -- the prevailing winds could waft a catastrophic cloud of radiation up this-a-way. In fact, Northern Michigan lies within the wind patterns of no less than four nuclear power plants: two in southwestern Michigan and two directly across Lake Michigan in Wisconsin.
Carey says that given the renewed interest in nuclear power as a source of energy, it’s up to citizens to speak out against the risks.
“It is up to we, the people, to demand thorough accountability on all nuclear issues and to stop this insanity to squeeze 20 more years from an already shaky, now even more taxpayer-subsidized, obsolete, eternally hazardous ‘energy’ plant,” Carey said in a letter to South Haven residents and the Palisades staff.

NO WORRIES
But Mark Savage, who handles media relations for Consumers Energy at Palisades, says the company has spent the past three years compiling a 1,700-page report covering every aspect of safety and aging as part of the licensing requirements for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
“All of the things that address aging management in a nuclear power plant, such as the pumps, pipes, reactors and several hundred activities have been submitted to the NRC,” Savage says.
“What this group has glommed onto is an issue that 30 other power plants have already gone through in the licensing process,” he adds. “We’ve got some very stringent safety rules to follow, but every plant has gone through them and every one has been granted a new license.”
Consumers Energy has also compiled an environmental report at the behest of the NRC, detailing how the plant will affect the area over the next 20 years. At Palisades, the chief environmental concern is not a nuclear meltdown -- it’s over the fate of a plant called Pitcher’s Thistle which grows in the vegetated dunes along the shoreline.

VOICING CONCERNS
On August 8, a coalition of area residents and environmental groups intervened before the NRC to deny a 20-year license extension for the Palisades plant which is located in the nearby town of Covert on the Lake Michigan shore.
Palisades’ current license is set to expire in 2011, but its operators, Consumers Energy and Nuclear Management Company, hope to keep it active until 2031.
Members of the coalition warned in a release that, “the severe embrittlement of the Palisades reactor vessel could cause it to rupture, risking a catastrophic release of radioactivity.”
They also claim that during the 1980s, the NRC identified Palisades as being one of the 14 most embrittled reactors in the United States. The activists plan to produce retired NRC officials to serve as expert witnesses on the dangers of extending the plant’s license if and when the NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board grants a hearing on their concerns.
One such expert is Demetrios Basdekas, a retired NRC reactor safety engineer who Don’t Waste Michigan says has “warned for decades that pressurized thermal shock in embrittled reactors could lead to catastrophic accidents.”
Basdekas feels that the plant’s record of operational problems and its embrittled reactor offer good reasons for denying its 20-year extension.
“The Palisades reactor vessel is too brittle to operate safely for another 20 years,” says Alice Hirt, a Don’t Waste Michigan member and Holland resident. “In an emergency, the reactor vessel could crack and rupture like a hot glass under cold water. The amount of radioactivity released into the environment could be catastrophic.”

MELTDOWN SCENARIO
Palisades has been generating electricity since 1971. It reportedly generates about 18 percent of the electricity Consumers Energy provides to 3.5 million customers in southwestern Michigan. According to www.nukeworker.com, the plant generates 780,000 kilowatts, enough electricity to serve a city three times the size of Grand Rapids.
In 1982, the NRC calculated the consequences of a nuclear disaster in the area and, “predicted that a meltdown and large-scale radiation release from the Palisades reactor would cause 1,000 fatalities and 7,000 injuries the first year, 10,000 cancer deaths over time, and $52.6 billion in property damage.”
Those 1982 dollars would have to be adjusted upward to account for inflation in 2005, but whatever the final cost, Consumers Energy’s liability would be limited by the federal Price-Anderson Act, which protects the nuclear power industry from such mishaps.
Another concern is that of the huge outdoor storage cask pads which hold over 20 concrete and steel silos containing high-level radioactive waste. Dr. Ross Landsman, a retired NRC regional inspector who oversaw Palisades as part of his duties in the Midwest, has warned that an earthquake striking the pad nearest to Lake Michigan could send radioactive waste tumbling into Lake Michigan.
In the mid-’90s, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Howard Wolpe tried to make the same point as a campaign issue against Gov. John Engler, producing yawns for the most part from the electorate. But with nowhere available in the country to store nuclear waste, and the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada still incomplete, the waste is still sitting alongside the beach near South Haven, not far from the aging reactor which produced it.

HOMEWORK DONE
Savage notes that the embrittlement issue was settled long ago and has been revived for its scare potential by a handful of activists who make up Don’t Waste Michigan.
“This issue is 12 years old, and if we had done nothing about it and let it go, then yeah, it’s likely we couldn’t operate the plant,” he says. “But there have been a number of things done through the years to protect against any problems.”
Those include fuel design changes along with encasing radioactive fuel rods in steel to protect the reactor.
“Whether something is even still an issue or not, we have to work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” Savage says. “We’ve done our homework and one thing for sure is that the safety of the plant is never compromised. If there’s a problem with the plant, it’s shut down.”



What it means to be
Embrittled

Aging metal structures, exposed to high levels of neutron bombardment for years and extreme shifts in temperature have a breaking point as a result of embrittlement.
Nuclear power plants use pressurized water reactors to generate electricity. Radioactive rods generate steam from water, driving the turbines which produce electricity.
Although reactors such as the one at Palisades are constructed of 8.5-inch thick metal, over time they are subject to embrittlement, or a loss of ductility, i.e., the ability to withstand stress without cracking.
Embrittled reactors are susceptible to the hazards of Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS), which occurs when the reac tor pressure vessel is severely overcooled due to a variety of mishaps, such as a broken water pipe.
If the reactor pressure vessel surrounding the radioactive fuel is destroyed by PTS, the result is a nuclear meltdown, since it would become impossible to sufficiently cool the reactor core.

Source: “Pressurized Thermal Shock Potential at Palisades” by Michael J. Keegan, Coalition for a Nuclear Free Great Lakes.

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