Panelists: Human error is cause of public's nuclear energy fear

New regulations to require backup safety measures at U.S. nuclear reactors

Barry Cox, senior director of nuclear operations at the Callaway Energy Center near Fulton, shows off the simulation control panels where reactor operators train every six weeks to hone their reaction skills in the event of a disaster.
Barry Cox, senior director of nuclear operations at the Callaway Energy Center near Fulton, shows off the simulation control panels where reactor operators train every six weeks to hone their reaction skills in the event of a disaster.

Panelists argued human error is the reason behind the public's fear of nuclear energy Friday during the Promise and Perils of Nuclear Energy workshop at the Callaway Energy Center.

The panel, "Nuclear safety in a post-Fukushima world," included employees of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), an independent government agency that protects the safety and health of the public in regards to nuclear energy, journalists and a former Ameren-Missouri employee at the Callaway plant near Fulton.

For 90 minutes, the panelists discussed matters of safety, health and waste storage following the incidents at Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

The first panelist to speak was David Ropeik. In addition to being an author and teacher, Ropeik speaks on risk perception and risk communication. During the panel, he argued the dangers of nuclear energy revolved around the public's misconception of risk relative to nuclear disasters.

"What does safe mean?" Ropeik asked, adding people are worried about stuff they shouldn't be - like nuclear energy - and not worried about the things they should- like climate change and obesity.

Ropeik admitted he didn't know much about the health effects of radiation prior to receiving awards for his work on matters concerning nuclear energy. He cited research he had done for an op-ed piece, "Fear vs. Radiation: The Mismatch," he wrote for the New York Times.

According to the research, 527 of the 10,929 people who had radiation exposure and died of cancer were the direct result of the exposure from nuclear bombs in Japan following World War II. The glaring harms of radiation exposure occurred in utero, which produced "horrible birth defects, but no permanent genetic damage," according to his piece.

"The fear is clearly doing society more harm than the actual risk of radiation as we know," Ropeik said.

However, not all the panelists were under the same impression.

Kevin Kamps is a radioactive waste watchdog for Beyond Nuclear, and as an advocate for a nuclear-free world, he believes fear is a healthy result of people listening to their instincts.

"What is healthy fear?" he asked. "It's something that protects us against danger and the risks that we're describing."

While several panelists played tug-o-war with statistics, history lessons and debate, panelist Larry Criscione said human error was what created the dangers resulting from the incidences at Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

Criscione, who now works for the NRC, used to be a nuclear engineer for Ameren at the Callaway plant. In 2007, he blew the whistle on an incident in 2003 that remained unreported concerning an unplanned shutdown at the Callaway plant, according to an article from the Associated Press.

During the incident, patrol operators at the plant failed to insert control rods, equipment that would keep the reactor shut down, Criscione briefly explained during the panel.

"People will say what happened at Callaway wasn't a risk to the public, and I'm a believer in that," he said. "Corporations like Ameren are nothing more than legal constructs on paper; the same can be said for the NRC. We just exist in a law somewhere. The utilities don't have a culture; they don't make decisions - it's the people that make up those bodies. Those people are diverse, most are honest, but time to time, you come across some who aren't."

While many are still arguing the safety of nuclear energy, the NRC is moving forward to improve safety procedures at U.S. commercial reactors following the incident at Fukushima in 2011.

Now, the Commission is requiring U.S. reactors to have safety procedures in place in the event the plant loses function of its normal safety systems.

Specifically, the order required plants to focus on improving their "flexibility and diversity" in response to natural disasters that affect the integrity of the plant and nuclear reactor. By the end of 2016, the NRC expects plants to have strategies that recover important safety functions that include maintaining a cooling system for the reactor core, preventing radiation leaks by preserving containment barriers and keeping the spent fuel pool (where used fuel is stored) cool.

To comply to the NRC's new regulations, Callaway has since completed construction of a storage facility and is working on building a hardened condensation tank for additional water storage to cool the reactor should the need arise. The tank is part of the plant's response to the Fukushima incident and started construction on it last summer - it's expected to be completed in April of this year.

The tank can hold 500,000 gallons of water and acts as a second backup system in case the plant's cooling loop, which sees 585,000 gallons of water every minute, fails. And with the Callaway plant, backups tend to be the norm.

The storage facility holds additional equipment, including two generators, onsite to keep the reactor running in case of an unscheduled shutdown, Director of Nuclear Projects John Patterson said.

"Everything in this building is redundant," he said.