Local environmental groups could take the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant to court this spring. The organizations say the aging plant near South Haven wants to lower its safety standards to keep running past its latest expiration date of 2017.
In order to understand why environmentalists are trying to shut down Palisades, you have to understand a little bit about how nuclear reactors work. For example, when there’s an emergency at a plant, workers might send cold water rushing into the boiling hot container that holds the uranium.
In a newer plant, the container would cool down—crisis averted. But in an old reactor like Palisades, that mix of hot and cold could cause its uranium-filled metal container to crack. This is called “pressurized thermal shock” or PTS.
“Because you’ve dropped the temperature so much that you’re in the range where the material would act in a more brittle…it doesn’t want to bend, it wants to break instead," says Dan Depuydt, a senior lead engineer at Palisades.
Because PTS could cause leaks or even meltdowns at a nuclear plant, the NRC has requirements in place to prevent it. The only problem is, the NRC says the Palisades won’t be able to meet those standards two years from now.
But fortunately for the Palisades, there’s a new set of requirements. It’s a new rule the NRC calls 50.61 alpha or 50.61a. Right now, the Palisades is the only plant that’s applied to use it. But the NRC hasn’t approved its application yet—which is why groups like Beyond Nuclear are choosing to intervene now.
NRC senior materials engineer Mark Kirk says the new rule isn’t that much different from the one Palisades is following now. It’s just more precise than the current standard.
“Because we couldn’t be precise, we did what regulators are trained to do—if you can’t be precise, be conservative," he says. "So the old rule, which was developed in the mid ‘80s, has more if you will embedded or inherent conservatisms in it than the new rule, but the safety standard has actually been increased.”
Beyond Nuclear spokesman Kevin Kamps says the new rule does the opposite—it loosens safety restrictions on the Palisades. Kamps says, to him, the new rule relies too heavily on probability and not enough on scientific testing.
“What was the risk of Fukushima Daiichi happening the day before it happened? Let’s say one in a million per reactor year. They had three meltdowns on one week at Fukushima Daiichi. So a million times a million times a million is one in a quadrillion. It’s a lot of zeros," says Kamps. "That was a very low risk event. It should never of happened, but it did happen. We all know it did happen.”
Inside most nuclear reactors, there are these pieces of metal called coupon samples. They’re made from the same material as the reactor vessel itself—so that every few years, the plant can pull out a sample and test it to get an idea of how brittle the reactor has become over time.
It’s been about 12 years since Palisades last pulled a sample and the plant isn’t scheduled to test another one until 2019. Terry Lodge is the attorney representing Beyond Nuclear and other local environmental groups. He says the NRC has let Palisades put off testing samples for far too long.
“Our central argument is: You have some scientific evidence that you could analyze. You won’t—for reasons that we can fathom—do that, instead you want to do a damn computer projection. And that is illegitimate, it’s unscientific,” says Lodge.
Dan Depuydt says Palisades is following all of the NRC’s rules.
“The capsules testing schedule is in accordance with an industry standard," says Depuydt. "It’s called an ASTM standard. And that was established specifically so you would taking these capsules out and testing them per a schedule and that schedule is approved by the NRC.”
The NRC will decide if Beyond Nuclear and other environmental groups have the right to intervene in Palisades new toughness requirements sometime in May. Lodge says if they don’t get what they want from the NRC, the organizations will likely take Palisades—and the NRC itself—to court.
