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Nuclear officials in Washington and Nebraska said Wednesday that there's no need to shut down the nation's pre-1980s nuclear power plants, even though Germany is doing so in the wake of the crisis in Japan.
Both of Nebraska's nuclear plants opened in the 1970s. But officials of the utilities that operate the plants said both plants are safe and their emergency plans are stringent.
Gary Gates, president and CEO of the Omaha Public Power District, said metro-area residents can have confidence in the level of preparedness at OPPD's Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station. OPPD has trained for years to handle a disaster that exceeds the plant's designed capabilities, he said.
“We will protect the health and safety of the public and the OPPD employees who work there,” Gates said.
John McClure, interim president and CEO at Nebraska Public Power District, said people living around its Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville “should feel safe.”
“Cooper is conservatively designed, and that is part of the inherent safety of the plant,” he said. “We believe Cooper performs better today than it ever has. That's a reflection of the reinvestment in the physical facility, the level of training” and other upgrades made in the past five years.
NPPD's Cooper plant, about 60 miles south of Omaha, is a modified version of the type of nuclear power plant now suffering partial meltdowns in Japan.
OPPD's plant, about 20 miles north of Omaha, is of the same vintage but a different design.
In Washington, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials said that if a nuclear accident similar to Japan's were to occur in the United States, the commission would advise an evacuation of an area within 50 miles of the plant.
However, NRC executive director Bill Borchardt told a congressional panel, there are no plans to close the nation's pre-1980 plants because construction standards, modernization and worker training give him confidence that they can operate safely.
That assessment also was voiced by Gates, who is chairman of the board of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's professional association, and serves on the board of the World Association of Nuclear Operators.
Gates said older U.S. plants have been extensively updated through the years, especially because of the NRC's re-licensing process.
Both Nebraska plants have received federal approval to operate an additional 20 years beyond their original licenses. OPPD and NPPD each have spent about $350 million modernizing their reactors in recent years.
In other testimony to Congress Wednesday, a top nuclear industry official said the industry is not naive about the “remote possibility” of a catastrophic accident occurring in the United States.
Anthony Pietrangelo Sr., vice president and chief nuclear officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the industry also understands the depth of Americans' concern.
“People are seeing what's happening in Japan. ... We could never say that could never happen here. There is no such thing as a probability of zero,” he said.
Gates conducted a safety briefing Wednesday, saying numerous measures ensure that OPPD could handle a catastrophic series of events “in an efficient way and in a way that would not in any way present a danger to the public.”
Gates and Dave Bannister, OPPD's chief nuclear officer, described protective measures that include:
» Training. Nuclear plant operators spend one week out of every six training in a control room identical to the one at Fort Calhoun. Training is critical to the safe operation of nuclear plants because operator errors at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania played a role in its partial meltdown in 1979.
» Worst-case training. The plant conducts drills for catastrophes, which include a total blackout and loss of access to cooling water from the Missouri River. A combination of those factors — loss of power and cooling water — have crippled the Japanese plants, Gates said.
» Redundant systems. Fort Calhoun has extra access to electricity, with transmission lines coming in from north, south, east and west. If those wires went down, the utility has diesel generators to power the station for seven days and access to fuel to continue beyond that. If those generators failed, backup batteries could power the plant.
» Self-contained emergency responses. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S. nuclear plants have expanded their emergency capabilities and now require no outside help to continue functioning, at least in the short term.
» Hardening against worst-case natural disasters. Fort Calhoun is designed to withstand a 6.0 magnitude earthquake with an epicenter at the plant; 500 mph winds driving an object the size of a utility pole into the reactor building; and at least a 1,000-year flood.
» Collaborative drills. The utility trains with local, state and federal agencies in responding to emergencies. Included in the collaborations is a direct line between the OPPD nuclear plant's control room and the NRC.
NPPD officials said similar measures are in place at the Cooper facility.
The Brownville plant can withstand 300 mph winds, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake and was built to a 1-in-1 million-year flood standard.
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