Live Blogging a Senate Briefing on Nuclear Safety

Philip Scott Andrews/The New York TimesDavid Lochbaum, left, director of the Nuclear Power Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Anthony R. Pietrangelo, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute, testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on Tuesday.

¶On Tuesday, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee heard from four experts on Japan’s nuclear crisisand efforts to limit risks at nuclear plants in the United States.

11:49 A.M. Wrapping Up Testimony

¶The briefing concluded at 11:45 a.m.

11:42 A.M. The U.S. Backup-Battery Situation

¶After the tsunami knocked out power at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that American reactors had batteries that would last for four or eight hours. David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Power Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the committee that this was true, sort of. Only 11 of the American reactors have eight-hour batteries, and 93 have four-hour batteries, he said.

¶“When the event lasts longer than our assumptions, either four or eight hours, we shouldn’t leave operators with no choices,” said Mr. Lochbaum, a nuclear industry veteran who is among the most technically proficient of the industry’s opponents. If the batteries run out, power from the grid is not restored, and the diesel generators stop running, leaving operators with no options “other than a miracle,” he said.

¶“Miracles are great, but you can’t rely on them,” he said. “Japan showed the price of not doing that.”

¶Testifying with Mr. Lochbaum was Anthony R. Pietrangelo, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade association. “To get to 48 hours, or 72 hours, pick a number,” he said. “We’re going to have to take a hard look and see what resources would be required.”

¶He said that extending battery capability was “one of the obvious places we’ll have to look.”

¶But he emphasized that a natural catastrophe that wiped out the grid, the diesel generators and other plant equipment was highly unlikely. “It’s hard to postulate that here,” he said. “It’s very, very unlikely for that to occur and destroy the entire infrastructure around the plant.”

11:26 A.M. U.S. Workers Keep a Distance From Japan’s Radiation

¶The State Department has told American citizens to stay 50 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and it turns out that American government personnel who have been sent over to help are keeping their distance as well.

¶Mr. Lyons described radiation levels at a radius of 2.5 miles from the plant. He said levels were much higher at the plant itself, but “our flights are not going closer than that.”

¶The maximum level of radiation observed on the ground 2.5 miles away is 30 millirems per hour, he said. One hour of exposure to that level would subject someone to roughly what the average American gets in a month from background radiation. Exposure at that rate for a day and a half would put a person around the threshold at which the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission advise evacuating or taking shelter.

¶But Mr. Lyons said exposure rates had dropped since that peak reading.

¶(As he left the hearing room, Mr. Lyons said that the robots the United States is sending to Japan, mentioned earlier in the briefing, could take pictures as well as measure radiation fields. They could go places where “you certainly wouldn’t send a person,” he said, adding that they have been used in cleanups of Energy Department weapons manufacturing sites.)

¶7:47 p.m. | Updated 
The United States is shipping a “Talon” robot, built by Qinetiq, equipped to take pictures and provide a radiation map of areas with high radiation. The military uses them in war zones.

11:02 A.M. Franken Asks About Flood Risks in U.S.

¶So far there has not been much sharp questioning of the witnesses, but Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, did some probing. “We have a plant in Monticello, Minn., that is the same design as the Fukushima reactors,’’ he said. An earthquake there is unlikely, and “if we have a tsunami there, we’ve probably got bigger problems,’’ he said, drawing laughter from the room.

¶“But we do have floods,’’ Mr. Franken said. “Any chance that the backup generators at places like Prairie Island in Minnesota or Monticello could get overwhelmed by flooding?”

¶Mr. Borchardt responded that the plants were designed and built after a careful consideration of historical records of floods and other natural phenomena.

¶Senator Franken asked, “And do they do those kinds of reviews in Japan?”
“I really can’t speak to that,” Mr. Borchardt replied.

“Wouldn’t that be a good thing to know?” Senator Franken said. “Certainly, yes, sir,” Mr. Borchardt said.

¶Senator Franken added, “I would suggest you hop right on that.” Then he pushed a bit further. “Are any reactors in the U.S. built near faults, or oceans?”

¶“Or just one ocean?” he amended, to further laughter.

10:45 A.M. U.S. to Send Robots to Japan

¶The Energy Department is preparing a shipment of radiation-hardened robots and personnel to show the Japanese how to use them, Mr. Lyons said. “A shipment is being readied — I don’t know if it has left yet,” he said. “The government of Japan is very, very interested in the capabilities that could be brought to bear from this country.”

¶Mr. Lyons, responding to a question from Senator Murkowski, said the robots could help collect some but not all of the information needed on the state of the reactors.

¶Both he and Mr. Borchardt declined to predict when conditions would stabilize enough for a thorough evaluation of the reactors’ condition. “I can’t even hazard a guess,” Mr. Borchardt said.

¶Senator Bingaman, the committee chairman, asked what effect the action would have on re-licensing reactors in the United States. More than half the 104 reactors in service have won 20-year license extensions, and all or nearly all of the others are expected to as well.

This was a question Mr. Borchardt could answer unequivocally: none, he said. “If there was a design change necessary in order to adapt the plants to what we’re learning from Japan, we would take that action absent or outside the license renewal process,’’ he said. “We would take that action without hesitation.”

¶There is “no technical reason I’m aware of that this would impact the license renewal process,” he said.

¶Some senators and many opponents of nuclear power have called for a moratorium on re-licensing.

¶Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, asked about the storage of spent nuclear fuel since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Some engineers have said it would be safer to move more of the older fuel from pools to dry casks, which require no mechanical cooling.

¶Mr. Lyons, who noted that he was a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when spent fuel storage was reviewed, replied, “Using the best info we had at the time, both storage systems were deemed to be safe.”

¶The spent fuel pools at Fukushima, while adding yet another problem to the travails of the nuclear complex, are not nearly as heavily loaded as American spent fuel pools, however.

10:04 A.M. ‘A Slow Recovery From the Accident’

¶Seawater cooling, a desperate measure, has ended at the three Fukushima Daiichi reactors that were running at the time of the earthquake, and freshwater cooling has resumed, William Borchardt, the top staff official of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told the committee.

¶And the Energy Department official in charge of promoting that technology, Peter Lyons, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that there was progress in Japan but still a long way to go.

¶“Current information suggests that the plants are in a slow recovery from the accident,” said Mr. Lyons, who was appointed as assistant secretary of energy but is “acting” in that role because the Senate has not confirmed him. “However, long-term cooling of the reactors and pools is essential during this period and has not been adequately restored to date, to the best of my knowledge.”

¶The session is officially not a hearing but a briefing. At a hearing, witnesses are supposed to file their testimony 72 hours in advance. “Things are changing rapidly at the Fukushima nuclear power plant,” said the committee chairman, Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico.

¶Mr. Lyons was vague on some points. He stepped back slightly from the statement two weeks ago by Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that one of the spent fuel pools was empty, or nearly so. “Water levels in the spent fuel pools were also a concern, with some reports that at least one was empty for some time,’’ he said.

¶He said his department had deployed 40 people and 17,000 pounds of gear, including some that measure radiation from aircraft.

¶The committee’s ranking Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, pointed out that among the problems for the plant workers is that the earthquake and tsunami may have killed relatives and destroyed their homes. 

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Thursday, February 7, 2013