The Human Race- destined to be Saved by Nuclear Power ?

To the few antinuke stragglers still lost in the 1980's, it seems that a great sellout has occurred--- the old "anti" passion is not around anymore, and a few words to the left-behinds may be in order.

Something very important has happened.The modern world is about to need nuclear generated electricity in a big way, just to survive. Most of the major players, on both sides of the old issue realize this now.....

Even Al Gore........

Wall Street Journal, 3-28-07
By William Tucker

Al Gore recognizes that any solution to global warming is going to require a revival of nuclear power. He was edging toward that in his House of Representatives testimony last week -- yet downplayed the idea on the following grounds: "Nuclear power plants are the costliest to build and they take the longest time and at present they come in only one size -- extra large."

This is a curious notion. At present, the U.S. Navy has 10 giant aircraft carriers and 50 submarines that run on nuclear power; the average reactor generates about 200 megawatts (MW). The French Rubis class of submarines still operates on 48 MW. Although these reactors are enough to provide power for the lifetime of a submarine or drive a 100,000-ton aircraft carrier, they are small by commercial standards.

When Adm. Hyman Rickover "beached" a submarine engine at Shippingport, Pa., in 1957 to create the first country's civilian nuclear reactor, it produced only 60 MW of electricity. Dresden 1, built privately in 1960, was 210 MW and Indian Point 1, built by Con Edison in 1961, produced 275 MW.

Once the technology was established, reactors quickly grew to the 500-1000 MW range for one simple reason -- bigger is better. The principles of thermodynamics dictate that a single 1,200 MW generating station operates much more efficiently than two 600 MW plants. The same thing holds true for coal plants, nuclear power's chief rival in the electricity field. Both coal and nuclear plants are now built to the 1,200-1,500 MW range for economic reasons.

Yet all this hardly suggests that nuclear reactors "come in only one size -- extra large." Many research reactors produce only 5 MW. We've never reached the point where nuclear electricity runs cars or airplanes -- as early dreamers suggested -- but in theory it's possible.

"Mini-reactors" are now being suggested in many remote locations -- just as wind and solar energy are thriving where other power sources are not available. In Galena, Alaska, far up the Yukon River, Toshiba has proposed a 10 MW reactor to replace the town's diesel generators, which now produce electricity at ten times the normal price. The Russians have started building "floating reactors" as small as 3 MW to transport into isolated outposts of Siberia, where weather conditions make construction of power plants impossible. Both Canada and Venezuela are considering small reactors to cook the oil products out of the ground at remote tar sand deposits.

One of the most promising technologies is the "pebble bed modular reactor," in which nuclear material is reposited in tennis ball-sized graphite-coated spheres that sit in the reactor vessel as in a giant gumball machine. Each pebble is a "mini-reactor" with all the necessary components and a collection of them produces enough power. "We've found the optimum size to be around 250 MW," says Prof. Andrew Kadak, who has been working on a design at MIT.

Since balls can be inserted and withdrawn individually, the reactor never has to shut down for refueling. Temperatures do not climb high enough to cause a meltdown and proponents say this eliminates the need for an expensive containment structure -- although environmentalists dispute this. South Africa is scheduled to complete a 200 MW pebble bed reactor by 2012.

In his public testimony Mr. Gore seemed to be convoluting several things, suggesting somehow that nuclear plants are too expensive and take too long to build because they only come "extra-large." This is not true.

Nuclear plants take more time to build and are more expensive than comparative coal plants, but they are not prohibitively expensive. The Japanese are now building reactors in five years at competitive prices. Higher construction costs are more than compensated by lower fuel costs and higher capacity ratings. America's existing nuclear plants are now operating so profitably that Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal recently proposed a windfall profits tax because the state's reactors were making too much money.

And this is all before environmental considerations are factored into the equation. In three years of operation, a 1,500 MW coal plant will spew three million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- the prime source of the world's carbon emissions. An identical nuclear reactor will produce only a few bundles of highly radioactive fuel rods that can be safely stored in a nearby storage pool. Yet coal currently pays for none of these environmental damages. A carbon tax of roughly $10 per ton would level the playing field and make nuclear power far more competitive.

The reason building nuclear plants has been expensive and time-consuming is because of exaggerated popular fears of the technology. The public is now coming around. Seventy percent now consider nuclear plants acceptable, meaning new plants will probably not become bogged down in endless court delays.

The only reasonable scenario for avoiding global warming is to substitute nuclear power for coal as our prime source of base-load electricity, supplementing it with wind and solar electricity for our spinning reserve and peaking-power needs. If Al Gore were to support a nuclear-solar alliance -- a joint effort by the carbon-free technologies to impose a tax on carbon emissions -- we could take giant steps toward solving the problem.

Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How a Nuclear-Solar Alliance Can Rescue the Planet," forthcoming by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Tags Indian Point Entergy Green Nuclear Butterfly Riverkeeper Al Gore An Inconvenient Truth Robert F Kennedy jr Solar Nuclear Renaissance

NO ANNOUNCEMENTS

THE FUTURE WILL NOT BE ANNOUNCED

Socially, there will never be a perfected system. Therefore, any argument from a social ideal is an argument based on delusion.
The empirical, the factual, tell us that multiple modalities interact moment to moment, and their intent is as unknowable as the inner content of all humans, taken as a single data instance. It is orders of magnitude too large to compute. It cannot be summed up, shortened, or simplified, unless absolute freedom and absolute human rights are to be quashed. Therefore the greater good is to always have an imperfect, mixed system. In such a system family, tribe, ethnos, religion, philosophy, commerce and raw passion must all have a place, for it is to be a best fit for the human animal, who resonates to all these modes. As far as science, there can never be a social science, for the reasons exposed above. All social science is tyrrany.
All knowing implications that assign value to certain acts, certain interactions, and proscription to other acts, other interactions are pleadings to mold the innately paramount human spirit into an innately inferior single modality. This is cultural imprisonment, with a pseudo-science delusive theory as its nightstick.

Therefore the very stance of the left, that there is a form to human interaction, and that the form can be studied, improved, or perfected, is a defacto wish to truncate the human spirit, foisted as a projected curse outward on to the vibrant chaotic amalgam which is all human life. It is a cult of false knowingness. It is a church without a god. It is a studious delusion, and a neurotic avoidance of the basic human duty---full engagement with all humans, equally.

Were progress to be possible, it could not be planned. It must of needs be struggled for. The new model will emerge only from the full engagement of all, energized even through conspiracies, criminalities, fixes, arrangements, and all the multitude of steering techniques outside the dry planner's board room. The one proscription which is valid, stems not from social science, but from deep inner human craving-- there must be no hate. But in the imperfect, hate will exist, so we may say-- let many work to the elimination of hate at all times. Other than this, all must be tolerated. All must be glorified. Spirit in Man is Godhood emerging. For Godhood to manifest, the full complement of living humanity must be in the mix. Therefore, no classes, no aristocracy, no intelligentsia, no hubris-of-the-word, no ethnic cleansing, no mass eliminations, no great wars, no barriers, no boundaries, no limit on the meeting, spirit to spirit, human to human, all to all.

The man has not been born , who could understand this, and engineer its coming. But every mind alive can make it come.
If a step forward can be made, it will be accidental, or seem so. It will be over before it is known about. Omega will not be announced.

ALICE IN PR HACK WONDERLAND

Jim Knubel's article in TJN recaps some points made over the weeks here about the press-burst spewed by local Democratic party notables last month, talking about an "Independent Safety Assessment" at Indian Point. One spot where Knubel and I disagree, is when he asserts that all the Demo-clique members want to simply close Indian Point. If and when positive press can be gained by spouting a "Shut it down" line, I'm sure any one of these professional issue hoggers would say exactly what would help them the most, in the public eye.

I find the fact that they are NOT saying "Shut it down" very telling.

The public wants the benefits of having Indian Point on line, and our savvy politicoes are aware of this want, based on an undenied general need. However, having been elected partly via the efforts of paid green and NIMBY groups, the Dems are hoist on the horns of a service dilemma.

If they appear to serve the public, they lose their partisan support.

If they serve the activists, they lose, bigtime, for the region and the public at large.

Their Solution?
Call for Alice in Wonderland to step in.

By banding together to demand an unneeded and obsolete ISA, they can appear reasonable to the public, while at the same time appearing to their contributing activist foundations to at least be "punishing the demon".
It's PR magic. They get to do nothing, and look green doing it.

What is truly needed, is a re-assessment of the Luddite myth-mongering cartel that has been employing long term paid PR hacks to cook up astroturf pseudo-grassroots "concern", spewing distortions, and attempting to set society against itself, to benefit their purely private no-nukes agenda.

Democratic researchers might start with the names Helene Heilbrunn Lerner, Alice Slater, G.R.A.C.E., Tamarind Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, along with Amsterdam Based N.I.R.S./WISE. A veritable crap-storm of fear-drenched nonsense has been put on the street for at least a decade by these oligarchs-in-camouflage, pawning their social-engineering experiment as "grassroots" concern. Google it for yourself. They total maybe 50 people. (but wield a billion PR dollars). That's who is "concerned", not anybody else. Don't let paid PR footsoldiers claim to represent the public. They do not.

Ironically, all our local Democratic officeholders
inadvertently admit they know this to be true,
by calling for an ISA.
.
.
.

HYENA-BAIT ANYONE?

It's a funny thing about physics. There is basically one, single, unitary physics, that has been true from the first picosecond of existence, and will remain true until the end of time. Therefore, there is no such thing as "nineteenth century physics", or "twentieth century physics". What was true in 1837, is still true today, 100% unchanged.

Which brings up a further realization. Any knowlege unearthed by Bohr, Fermi, Einstein and others in the 1930's, was as true in the time of the pharaos as it will be in the year 9595. We just remained ignorant until WWII. It existed just the same, all along. Also, the process of U235 fission,the so-called nuclear process, is the process which heats the earth's core, and has continually heated the earth's core for 14 billion years. So we see that nuclear science is not "twentieth century science". It is the way nature itself is arranged, forever. There is no possibility of an alternative system. Physics is not swayed by politics. Whether it is the Iranians doing nuclear engineering, or the North Koreans, or the Chinese, or the South Africans, or the Israelis, or the Pakistani's, or the Indians, or the Brazilians, or the Russians, or the French, or even the Americans, the discovery of nature's eternal truths is not an evil plot hatched by Dr. Strangelove to provide Helen Caldicott with a lecture career, it is the inevitable compilation of knowlege upon former knowlege that has made man unique among the animals, the first animal destined, it would seem, to eventually penetrate every hidden secret the universe has embedded within it, for some grand racial or planetary destiny as yet unknown. ( For more on that note, read the works of Teilhard de Chardin, or the Koran.)

I myself truly hate fire.

I loath its destructive properties. I shudder at the thought of the WWII Tokyo firebombings, and the Hamburg & Dresden firestorms, literal maelstroms which killed far, far more than all the atomic explosions that have ever happened. I hate the witchburnings of Massachusetts, and the middle ages, I hate the christmas tree fires related to be by my fire-chief father, telling of entire families wiped out in a few minutes. I hate the branding of slaves by the Romans, I hate Nero's burning of Rome, I hate the crude witless fire religions of Baal and the wicker-man druids. I hate the fire that claims the lives of thousands of poor people each year in kerosene heater mishaps, eradicating entire families in horrific scenes of pain and loss. I hate the intentional east Indian kitchen fires, which horribly take the lives of lower caste brides once their dowrys have been paid. I hate the huge industrial fires which now choke our atmosphere, and kill 1,000,000 people per year, mainly the very young and the very old. I hate the cleverly constrained fire knowlegeably packed into each bullet, each artillery shell, each improvised explosive device, and maliciously packed within each rocket propelled grenade shot at our young people in harm's way, maiming, killing, reducing their humanity to cooked, torn, useless meat.

But fire, a natural reaction of heat, air, and fuel, does not care that I hate it.

As historical evidence will show us, fire has been here without man, before man, and not requiring man, to burn entire continents in repeat forest fires, and prairie fires whose imprint remains today in carbon layers unearthed by archaeologists.

So mankind, it seems, as mankind now exists, cannot be imagined in the absence of fire. Without cookfires and hearthfires, how can man inhabit anything but the fruit-laden tropics? Man without fire cannot live in Canada, Germany, Poland, Russia, Manchuria, Japan, most of North America, all of Scandinavia, and vast stretches of lower south America. Man cannot exist above 1000 feet elevation, without fire at his side, and so is further constrained to just the bottomland.

Since I loathe the destruction attached to fire,.... must I now condemn humanity to retreat from Europe and Asia, back into the tropical bottomland of Africa's rift valley, to cringe in fear without metal, without adequate tools or weaponry? Should I orchestrate a vast removal of all things human from the Americas, from all the mountain areas, a vast voyage of revulsion back to the paleolithic haunts of our distant forebears? Would all fire's evil be left behind by this tactic?

Could all future witch burnings, slave brandings, and bride burnings be prevented by making this move? Could all the evil done by steel weapons, swords, guns, hatchets, maces, lances & daggers be forever prevented because without fire, we have no means to smelt the evil equipment of death?

And without steel, and bronze, and fire, will the "New Humanity" become a sainted race, living in harmony by nurturing Christian Science principles and eating a vegan diet, somehow overcoming our defenselessness by close cooperation, perhaps selecting a few victims to throw to the hyenas , appeasing them each time they appear , rather than using the old, crude, failed and disproven masculine method, of fashioning weapons, and thus eating hyena, rather than the other way around?

And what about "The Next Fire"?
What about the next physical truth discovered that unleashes great energies into man's use? With 98% of all the academic study ever done in all of history being done today, and 98% of all scientists who ever lived being alive right now, and 98% of all high energy-producing equipment ever fashioned being built even as we speak, there is a very high likelihood that a new craft, a "Power-Beyond-Nuclear" is glimmering right now in the first data taken by CERN's new Atlas device, just constructed high in the frigid uplands at the French-Swiss border.

Should we "Take the Moral Course" , and immediately shut Atlas down , before something so problematical comes leaping out of its data streams, that all the innate competitiveness in the human race finds even more powerful ways to kill hyenas, and lower caste dowry brides? How many child care centers can be built within its 20 mile circular annulus? How many homeless shelters? How many refugee intake compounds, instead of a single megalomaniacal atom smasher, doomed to start a new round of proliferation, and a hateful arms race?

But thinking a bit more calmly, the question arises---- Yes, once we have shut Atlas down, and built all the nurture centers in its shell..... How do we heat the place? How do we feed the refugees? How do we transport them there? How do we enforce order, and prevent cliques turning into gangs? How do we weed out the malicious "Jihad Refugees" taking advantage just to kill kaffirs when the opportunity arises? How do we power simple waste removal? What about bears?

For that, we are going to need fire.(and thus all that comes with it).

So despite my noble hopes, and my millennial aspirations, ..... it seems we are doomed.
Doomed to a hostile world, where fire makes steel, which kills. Doomed to a world where men defend themselves, and think, and experiment, trying to approach heaven via knowlege, seeking always "The Next Fire".

And if we reject that fate, and seek to return to being hyena-bait, as of old... those proposing the move should remember full well, that giving up all fire's bad attachments means giving up all of fire's good attachments along with it, and choosing a child or old person each day, to throw to the hyenas, who were here before us, and who rightly view us , in full environmental justice, only as food.

If you are skilled in handling analogy as a learning tool, it might have occurred to you by now that each thing I write here about the phenomenon of fire, is also applicable to the equally neutral physical phenomenon of U235 fission.

Have a nice day.

CARBON CREDIT HOT DOG DINNER (?)

Considering John Hall's Hydro Plan
(Al-Gore-Two-Faces-NIMBY-Trickle-Down-Award-of-the-year)

Because I'm priced and taxed out of the Hudson Valley in considering housing for my retirement years, I've developed an affinity for Windows Live Local, which has a wonderful "Bird's Eye View" feature, letting you view major portions of the USA, from about 1000 feet up. It beats Terraserver's satellite views, and Google Earth's false perspective views, by letting you actually see that chicken farm right down the road from your Arkansas dream house, or that huge car body dump just behind that bargain priced Vermont farmhouse. I've noticed a lot of active sand & gravel quarries throughout western Massachusetts, in fairly close proximity to new upscale development, and it started me thinking about Saint Lawrence Cement, Scenic Hudson, and low-head hydropower.

I have duly sent in my contributions to Scenic Hudson every year for decades, and a "Stop the Plant" sign graced my front lawn until the rain turned it to paste on a stick. I considered an open-pit cement mine with a 500 foot stack to be an unneeded monstrosity on the Hudson, seeing as it would have only brought about 60 jobs to the region.

But low head hydropower, on a scale to meet the expected 5000 new megawatt demand, (or the shortfall from closing IPEC), would require concrete production on a scale to match the construction of the New York State Thruway 50 years ago, (the event that originally brought the St Lawrence cement plant to the area). The clearing of all the damsites, the terraforming, the actual construction, and the re-gridding of the area with hundreds of new transformer step-up stations, towers, high tension poles, and, ultimately, the new widely-dispersed electric power maintenance operation, one that will have the effect of taking the now-invisible prime mover generation assets sequestered in Indian Point, Bowline, & other brownfield campuses, and scattering them willy nilly in everybody's backyard, all this could very easily transform the region negatively, in ways not yet envisioned by those dreaming only of a forest paradise, and not realizing that a forest paradise generates no electricity.

For one thing, a multiplicity of generating stations, is a multiplicity of terrorist targets, or even just vandalism targets, and is also a multiplicity of workers' trucks, paved parking lots, trash collection, maintenance spills, stacking yards, restricted razor wired compounds, dangerous high voltage high energy-containing structures by their hundreds, or even thousands, of necessity respecting no neighborhood, no mountainside, no trout stream, and bringing opportunistic eminent domain landgrabs by the hundreds for sure, industrializing the very woods we love so much, because that's where the water flows.

So my pristine hike, with my springer spaniel Murphy, just might find us waving to those hydro guys in their truck, (as they toss their coffee cups by the road), smelling the waft from the maintanance crew's Port-O-San, just as we are blocked by that razor wire and its armed guard, right near that pile of pipes, under that transmission tower that didn't used to be there, before New York's 2800 new low head hydro generating stations were built.

Moreover the concrete for the dams has to come from somewhere. So if we blocked St Lawrence Cement at Greenport, and patted ourselves on the back for it, immediately prior to requiring twice the amount of cement the place would have produced, thus dooming some folks in Massachusetts to bear the dust, the smoke, the trucks, and the scarring above and beyond their existing ugly gravel quarries, wouldn't we then qualify in spades for the "Al-Gore-Two-Faces-NIMBY-Trickle-Down-Award-of-the-year", for screwing everybody in Pittsfield, to make Beacon's concrete for them?

I don't know. I can't say for sure. But it does give me pause.

DEMOCRATS MARCH IN LOCKSTEP

I was amazed to find the entire 2006 evaluation of Entergy's Indian Point Energy Center publicly available at the following NRC website urls:

http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/IP2/ip2_chart.html

http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/IP3/ip3_chart.html

Linking on to the public site, I was able to see that both units had all "Green" ratings for 2006, where green is performance within acceptable safety parameters, and a further list of all the coaching points NRC had brought to advise the units how to do better.

These are known as "findings" A finding is an area that NRC wants to see improvement on. A green finding has no safety impact, and is NOT a violation, simply a coaching point, on how to improve.

By reading through the green findings for IP2 & IP3, I was able to gain a feel for how the plants were coping. As in the GAO-2006-1029 report quoted earlier on this blog, it seems to the interested reader, to be fairly clear that things are going well at Indian Point.

So two separate agencies of the United States Federal Government agree on this. The NRC, a quasi-judicial agency of the executive branch, and the General Accountability Office, a pure investigative agency of the Democrat-dominated Legislative branch. The GAO report covers the years from 2001 through 2005, and the NRC report covers 2006.

How deflating it must be, for agendist local politicians to read that these two prestigious expert agencies both agree that Indian Point is completely safe, and running well, in dovetailing reports done at separate times by separate agencies, agencies with widely differing missions to serve.

It ought to be a clarifying experience, allowing politicians and the public to determine just who is bullshitting whom, vis-a-vis Indian Point. What part of "Safe" do they not understand? What part of "Well Run" do they not understand?

And as far as "Fine-'em" Feiner, who declared he wants NRC to take money from Entergy, it also answers his big attention grabbing media stunt-question of last week. When Feiner ingenuously asks "Why is Indian Point not being fined?" the NRC answer is: "Indian Point has no findings greater than Green".--- in plain words---There's nothing to fine. Read the two reports, and it will be explained to you, and to Feiner, and John Hall, Hillary, and Chuck-the-cluck Schumer, too.

NRC does not fine plants that are running safely. NRC does not interrupt its valuable & deeply revealing Reactor Oversight Inspections, to do uncalled-for, attention-grabbing Independent Safety Assessments.

So where does that leave the Gang-of-Six? It leaves them waving their little red books as they march around their little Tien Anmen Square mockup in the local press in Mao-like lockstep,
shouting their antinuke red guard slogans, to display their proper political orientation to all their papparazzi in media, who have always liked a communal demonstration, with slogans, even better than reality.

GAO Report---ignored by Hall?

HAVEN'T YOU READ YOUR OWN GAO REPORT?


In response to Several Democrats' call for an Independent Safety Assessment at Indian Point, I decided to see what resources were out there, if I were a congressperson, and just wanted to know how well NRC was managing Indian Point, without passing a special law, or holding a lot of wasteful press conferences.

And Whaddya know! I didn't have to believe NRC. I didn't have to ask Entergy. And I didn't have to pass a new law, either! The GAO, Congress' own investigative arm, had already published a report in September, 2006, describing just how well NRC was doing, managing the oversight of Indian Point.

I couldn't believe it! Had the anti-nuclear staffers of these Democrats hidden the GAO report from them? Probably, is my own conclusion.

Anyway, the report contains tables, showing Indian Point's safety rating improving continuously, since 2001. (2001 was the year that Entergy bought the place, by the way). The same charts show Indian Point firmly "In the Green". I guess that ought to reassure Hillary, and Mr Hall, Schumer & Hinchey.

All they have to do is read this post, or link to:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d061029.pdf
They don't have to even bother Congress with a useless new brouhaha, attracting a lot of attention, and wasting $20 million doing it! Of course, you don't get any media coverage, reading a report!



GAO-06-1029
September 2006


NUCLEAR
REGULATORY
COMMISSION
Oversight of Nuclear
Power Plant Safety
Much Improved

(these are exerpts, the whole report is much longer).

NRC provides an overall assessment of each plant’s performance through assessment letters issued to plants at the end of each 6-month period describing their specific performance and the level of oversight that will result. In addition, NRC has mechanisms to make available its oversight results, such as an Internet Web site devoted to the ROP that provides detailed summaries of each plant’s performance.

In the area of performance indicators, there were 156 instances out of more than 30,000 reports, or less than 1 percent, in which data reported for individual indicators were outside of NRC’s acceptable performance category. NRC assesses overall plant performance and communicates the results to licensees and the public on a semiannual basis.

Since 2001, the ROP has resulted in more than 4,000 inspection findings concerning nuclear power plant licensees’ failure to fully comply with NRC regulations and industry standards for safe plant operation, and NRC has subjected more than 75 percent (79) of the 103 operating plants to increased oversight for varying periods.

In addition, the nuclear power industry formed an organization, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), whose mission is to “promote the highest levels of safety and reliability, to promote excellence, in the operation of nuclear electric generating plants.” INPO provides a system of personnel training and qualification for all key positions at nuclear power plants, and workers undergo both periodic training and assessment. INPO also conducts periodic evaluations of operating plants, focusing on plant safety and reliability, in the areas of operations, maintenance, engineering, radiological protection, chemistry, and training. Licensees make the results of these evaluations available to NRC for review, and NRC staff use the evaluations as a means to determine whether its oversight process has missed any performance issues.


NRC increased its inspection resources by 9 percent in 2004, and then by another 5 percent in 2005, and was able to fully implement its baseline inspection program at all plants for both years. NRC reports show that resources expended in 2005 were almost 20 percent higher than those expended in 2002.With its current resource levels, NRC program officials believe they will be able to continue to implement all program requirements.


Physical plant inspections are the main tool NRC uses to oversee plant safety performance. NRC defined specific inspection areas by developing a list of those elements most critical to meeting the overall agency mission of ensuring nuclear power plant safety. These safety elements—or key plant inspection areas—are known as cornerstones.


During fiscal year 2005, NRC reported that inspectors spent 411,490 hours on plant inspections, which consist of baseline, supplemental, and special inspections. About 73 percent of this time was devoted to baseline inspections, which are conducted on an almost continuous basis. Baseline inspections are conducted by the NRC inspectors located at each site and specialists who travel to each site from NRC’s regional offices. These inspections are designed to detect declining safety performance in each of the cornerstones, and to review licensee effectiveness at identifying and resolving its safety problems. There are more than 30 baseline inspection procedures conducted at intervals that range from quarterly to triennially. Each of the baseline procedures specify a range of sample activities to inspect. Inspectors then select the type and number of activities to review on the basis of factors such as the sample activities available; their risk significance; the amount of time since a particular system or component was last inspected; and the inspector’s judgment, which is based on information such as reviews of the licensee’s corrective action program, allegations, or plant employee interviews. Risk is factored into the baseline inspection procedures in the following four ways: (1) areas of inspection are included in the set of baseline procedures, in part, on the basis of their risk importance; (2) risk information is used to help determine the frequency and scope of inspections; (3) the selection of activities to inspect within each procedure is informed with plant-specific risk information; and (4) the inspectors are trained in the use of risk information in planning their inspections. In addition to the more than 30 baseline inspection procedures, inspectors spend an average of 750 to 1,100 hours per year, conducting plant status reviews. These reviews are to ensure that inspectors are aware of plant conditions on a routine basis and include such activities as reviewing control room activities and status, attending licensee meetings, and conducting walk-downs of various plant areas.


Whether NRC takes enforcement actions in response to plant performance problems depends on whether there is a violation of a specific regulatory requirement.


When NRC issues greater-than-green inspection findings at a plant, it conducts supplemental inspections. One plant was subject to NRC’s highest oversight level in 2001 & 2002 because of a red finding for the failure of a steam generator tube. NRC conducted its most intensive supplemental inspection 2 months after the red finding was determined The licensee prepared a plan to address its deficiencies, and determined that a multiyear effort was necessary to develop and implement all corrective actions. Once the corrective actions were in place, NRC inspectors conducted follow-up inspections to examine the adequacy of the licensee’s efforts. Supplemental inspections, performed by regional staff, expand the scope beyond baseline inspection procedures and focus on diagnosing the cause of the performance
deficiency. There are three levels of supplemental inspections that are increasingly expansive in the breadth and depth of their analysis. The lowest level of supplemental inspection assesses the licensee’s corrective actions to ensure they were sufficient in both correcting the problem and identifying and addressing the root and contributing causes to prevent recurrence. The second level of supplemental inspection has an increased scope that includes independently assessing the extent of the condition for both the specific and any broader performance problems. The highest level of supplemental inspection is even more comprehensive and includes determining whether the plant can continue to operate and whether additional regulatory actions are necessary. The highest level of supplemental inspection is usually conducted by a multidisciplinary team of NRC inspectors and may take place over several months. Also, as a part of this supplemental inspection, NRC inspectors assess the adequacy of the licensee’s overall programs for identifying, evaluating, and correcting its performance issues, among other things.



In addition to its various inspections, NRC also collects plant performance information through its performance indicator program, which it maintains in cooperation with the nuclear power industry. On a quarterly basis, each plant submits data for 15 separate performance indicators—quantitative measures of plant performance related to safety in the different aspects of plant operations. Working with the nuclear power industry, NRC set thresholds for acceptable performance and assigned colors to each of the indicators to reflect increasing risk. In contrast to inspection findings, a green indicator does not indicate a performance deficiency but instead reflects performance
within the acceptable range, while white, yellow, and red represent decreasing levels of plant performance. NRC inspectors review and verify the data submitted for each performance indicator annually through their baseline inspections



On the basis of the results of its oversight process, NRC provides plant licensees and the public with an overall assessment of each plant’s performance. At the end of each 6-month period, NRC issues an assessment letter to each plant to describe its placement on the action matrix, what actions NRC is expecting the plant licensee to take as a result of the performance issues identified, any specific enforcement actions NRC has taken, and any documented substantive cross-cutting issues. If a substantive cross-cutting issue is identified, the letter will describe what actions NRC intends to take to monitor the issue and how the licensee is expected to respond to NRC with the corrective actions it intends to take. NRC also holds an annual public meeting at or near each site to review its performance and address questions from members of the public and other interested stakeholders.

In addition, NRC reviews the conclusions of independent plant assessments, such as those conducted by INPO. The purpose of this review is to selfassess the NRC inspection and assessment process to ensure that NRC is identifying similar performance issues.

NRC communicates the results of much of its oversight process to members of the public through an Internet Web site devoted to the ROP. This Web site makes available plants’ inspection reports and assessment letters, and other general materials related to NRC’s oversight process. NRC also provides a quarterly summary of every plant’s performance, consisting of its inspection findings, the color of each performance indicator, and its placement on the action matrix. NRC also provides a
short description of each inspection finding issued during the quarter.


In addition to its plant-level assessments, NRC assesses the results of its oversight process on an industry-level basis. NRC management holds an annual meeting to (1) discuss any significant performance issues identified at specific plants and (2) analyze the overall results of its inspection and performance indicator programs and compare them with other industrycollected and reported performance data. NRC program officials said that if they identified any negative trends or inconsistencies, they would take action to better understand and address the cause.
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The report , as are most GAO reports, is long, hard, dry reading. That should not have been an obstacle for a congress person truly dedicated to truth-finding, and his/her staff, PROVIDED NO BIAS, OR PRESET AGENDA WAS CARRIED INTO THE OFFICE WITH THEM.

The report clearly shows, in chart form, the vast improvements undertaken by Entergy, since buying Indian Point, as each year's successive NRC rating from 2001 thru 2005 (the last year looked at), ascends into higher & higher categories.

The report clearly mentions ACRS --the advisory committee on reactor safeguards, and mentions its role in taking an "outside look", at NRC's internal activities, as a kind of internal affairs department, as an impartial or independent referee. This function was brought out several weeks ago , in earlier posts on this blog, as fulfilling Mr. Hall's desire for an independent view.

True, Hall was not in office when this report was written, but I found it, so Mr. Hall's office ought to be at least as able to locate it as me.

So what are the choices?

1) read the report.

or

2) pass a law, to spend $20 million re-creating the report a year from now.


THE CORRECT CHOICE SEEMS OBVIOUS TO ME.