Hurricane Sandy Brings Wind, Rain and Irony to US Nuclear Plants

--- by Gregg Levine (originally published today at firedoglake)

With Hurricane Sandy projected to make landfall hundreds of miles to the south and the predicted storm surge still over 24 hours away, New York City completely shuttered its mass transit systemearly Sunday evening. By 7 PM, all subway service was halted for only the second time in history. The fear, according to state authorities, is that heavy rainfall or the expected six-to-eleven-foot increase in tide levels would flood subway tunnels, stranding trains at various points across the 842 miles of track.

Fearing similar flooding, the Washington, DC, Metro is also expected to suspend service for all of Monday.

Twelve hours after NYC shut down its subways, at 7 AM Monday, with Hurricane Sandy lashing the Mid-Atlantic coast with heavy rain and 85 mph winds, at least a half-dozen commercial nuclear reactors lie in the storm’s projected path–and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has yet to issue any specific orders to the facilities it supposedly oversees. In fact, check out the NRC’s twitter feed or look at its website, and the only reference you will find to what has been dubbed “Frankenstorm” is the recently posted cancellation notice for a public hearing that was supposed to convene on Tuesday, October 30.

The subject of that meeting? The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station.

Fort Calhoun nuclear plant, flooded in 2011, still offline

The Fort Calhoun plant sits on the Missouri River, on the eastern edge of Nebraska, near the town of Blair. Fort Calhoun’s single pressurized water reactor was shut down for refueling in April of last year, but floods during the summer of 2011 encircled the facility and caused a series of dangerous incidents. A breach in water berms surrounded transformers and auxiliary containment buildings with two feet of water. Around that same time, a fire shut down power to Fort Calhoun’s spent fuel pools, stopping the circulation of cooling water for 90 minutes and triggering a “red event,” the second most severe classification. Outside of its reactor, the Nebraska facility is home to approximately 800,000 pounds of high-level radioactive waste. To this day, Fort Calhoun is offline and awaiting further evaluation by the NRC.

That a hearing on a flooded plant has been postponed because of the threat of flooding near NRC offices seems like the height of irony, but it pales next to the comparison of safety preparedness measures taken by New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority for a subway and the federal government’s approach to a fleet of nuclear reactors.

That is not to say that the NRC is doing nothing. . . not exactly. Before the weekend, regulators let it be known that they were considering sending extra inspectors to some nuclear facilities in Sandy’s path. Additionally, regional officials stressed that plant operators were doing walk downs to secure any outside equipment that might become a sort of missile in the event of high winds. It is roughly the equivalent of telling homeowners to tie down their lawn furniture.

And it seems to be understood, at least at the nuclear plants in southern New Jersey, that reactors should be shutdown at least two hours before winds reach 74 mph.

To all that, the NRC made a point of assuring the public that reactor containment buildings could withstand hurricane-force winds, or any odd piece of “lawn furniture” that might be hurled at them.

That’s nice, but hardly the point.

Containment breech is always a concern, but it is not the main issue today. A bigger worry are SBOs–Station Black Outs–loss-of-power incidents that could impede a plant’s capacity to cool its reactors or spent fuel pools, or could interfere with operators’ ability to monitor everything that is going on inside those areas.

As reported last year, Hurricane Irene caused an emergency shutdown at Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant when aluminum siding torn off by high winds shorted out the main transformer and caused an explosion, damaging structures and equipment. Calvert Cliffs was one of the facilities that had chosen not to reduce output or shutdown in advance of Irene–especially alarming because just days before that storm, plant operators had reported trouble with its diesel backup generators.

Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant

Irene caused other problems, beyond loss of electricity to millions of consumers, public notification sirens in two emergency preparedness zones were disabled by the storm.

In sum, storm damage triggered a scram at a plant with faulty backup generators. If power had not been restored, backup would have failed, and the rising temperatures in the reactors and fuel pools would have necessitated an evacuation of the area–only evacuation would have been hampered because of widespread power outages and absent sirens.

The worst did not happen last year at Calvert Cliffs, but the damage sustained there was substantial, and the incident should serve as a cautionary tale. Shutting down a nuclear reactor doesn’t prevent every problem that could result from a severe storm, but it narrows the possibilities, reduces some dangers, and prevents the excessive wear and tear an emergency shutdown inflicts on an aging facility.

Calvert Cliffs is again in the line of fire–as are numerous other plants. Hurricane Sandy will likely bring high winds, heavy rain and the threat of flooding to nuclear facilities in Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. Given last year’s experiences–and given the high likelihood that climate change will bring more such events in years to come–it might have been expected that the NRC would have a more developed policy.

Instead, as with last year’s Atlantic hurricane, federal regulators have left the final decisions to private sector nuclear operators–operators that have a rather poor track record in evaluating threats to public safety when actions might affect their bottom line.

At the time of this writing, the rain in New York City is little more than a drizzle, winds are gusting far below hurricane strength, and high tide is still over ten hours away. Hurricane Sandy is over 300 miles to the south.

But Gotham is a relative ghost town. The subway turnstiles are locked; city busses are nowhere to be seen.

At the region’s nuclear facilities, however–at North Anna, Hope Creek, Salem and Oyster Creek, at Calvert Cliffs, Indian Point and Millstone–there is no such singular sense of better-safe-than-sorry mission.

In New York, it can be argued that the likes of Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have gone overboard, that they have made decisions based not just on safety, but on fears of political fallout and employee overtime. But in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s northeast region, there is no chance of that kind of criticism–one might even say there is no one to criticize, because it would appear that there is no one in charge.

Sandy From Space - Pretty Impressive

The Stranded Trumpeter Swans of Neklason Lake

Last September, I wrote about the family of Trumpeter swans that spent the summer on Neklason Lake, between Palmer and Wasilla, where we live.  In our 17 years on the lake, this is the first one where a Trumpeter swan pair hatched and raised cygnets.

From late September until a few days ago, they flew further and further afield from the lake, even as hundreds of other traveling Trumpeter swans and tens of thousands of visiting, migrating birds, visited the lake briefly.

Last week, isolated and shallow portions of the lake started icing over.

Early this week - Monday night - most of the rest or the lake froze, as the temperature dipped to 8 degrees F.  We were sure the swan family was gone, but yesterday afternoon, Judy saw them, at the end of the lake where Cottonwood Creek comes in.  It is still ice free, but getting smaller by the hour.

Early this afternoon, they walked from the ice free place near the creek, over to another, very small open hole in the ice, where some warm springs come upwelling out of the bottom muck.  Little freshwater clams and other food abounds there.

Then, a couple of hours later, they all walked the 120 yards back to the bigger pool.

There are mallards and a few other visiting birds in the bigger pool too.

Should I be worried about these swans?

Thoughts on Last Week's Arrest and Shackling Outside Debate of Green Party Presidential and VP Candidates

2012 Chinook Crisis Meetings in Anchorage Webcast

The two-day set of meetings and symposia on the crisis in Chinook salmon catch in Alaska got going in Anchorage this morning at 8:00 am.  It is being held by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Here is a link to the conference agenda.

Here is the link to the the live streaming provided by ADF&G.

Bill Moyers Interviews Matt Taibbi and Chrystia Freeland on The New Gilded Age - for the 1%

I'm Disillusioned by the People Who Are Disillusioned by the People Who Are Disillusioned With Obama

The above ad, by Anti-Republican Crusaders, featuring actor George Clooney, is aimed at progressives who feel betrayed by Obama's policies.  As in other pushes to draw people who had once supported Obama back into the fold, it is - to borrow the term Obama has been using on the stump this past week - Sketchy.

Has anyone yet caught Clooney openly and ardently defending the NDAA and its onerous indefinite detention provisions, that Obama is now defending to the hilt?

Or the secret kill list? The secret kill list article:

Or the position of his Justice Department that the banksters are unprosecutable?

Or Obama's stepped up program against medical marijuana clinics and users of medical marijuana, many of whom are Veterans and extremely ill?

Or his full-speed-ahead support of Shell Oil's Arctic offshore drilling?

Or his rubber stamping of Department of Energy policy regarding nuclear power in the post-Fukushima world?

Or his scuttling of the Copenhagen climate conference?

Or his intentional torture of Bradley Manning?

Or his unprecedented war on whistleblowers?

Of course they haven't

Clooney and his ilk cannot defend those policies, so he and the others avoid them or plead ignorance, like Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz.

They are wearing blinders.

So, yes, Romney is the worse of two evils.

Unfortunately, my spiritual beliefs preclude me from voting for war criminals, so nothing Clooney says will influence me.  Perhaps others.

Meanwhile, I'm content working hard to convince people NOT to vote for Mitt Romney.

And getting ready to vote for some Democrats.  Just not the war criminal one.

Green Party Candidates Arrested Shackled to Chairs For 8 Hours For Trying to Enter Debate

This Land is Mine

Nina Paley, the creator of the animation, explains the characters here.

What Really Happened When Shell Oil’s Containment Dome Failed in Puget Sound Last Month? PEER Seeks to Find Out

The damaged containment dome on the Arctic Challenger

Four weeks ago, on Saturday, September 16th, in clear, calm, warm summer weather on Puget Sound, something happened while Shell Oil was testing its new, post-Deepwater Horizon oil blowout containment dome.  The dome system was being deployed during a certification test being performed by Shell, its agent in the refurbishment and system makeover of the 35-year-old barge, Arctic Challenger, Superior Marine Technical Services, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).

Something happened.  The test failed miserably, and the containment dome was severely damaged.  At the time, the Los Angeles Times reported the following:

The refurbishment was completed last week and the vessel underwent sea trials in Washington’s Puget Sound, and a series of tests were successfully completed on the newly designed Arctic containment system, Op de Weegh said.

“However, during a final test, the containment dome aboard the Arctic Challenger barge was damaged,” she said.

Sources familiar with the testing said the mishap occurred when one of several clump weights was placed into about 160 feet of water to mark the area of a theoretical oil spill, to see if the containment dome aboard the barge could be lowered over it.

“When they came back to find it, it [the weight] was lost, submerged into the silt,” said one source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the operation.

Engineers launched a mini-submarine known as a Remotely Operated Vehicle, which is part of Shell’s plan for putting any oil spill containment equipment into place, to help get the oil containment dome carried aboard the Challenger set over the “leak.”

“They got some of the weights set to hold the dome, then one of the eight winches on the dome became inoperative,” the source said. “They attempted to discover what was wrong by using the ROV, and got it tangled in the anchor lines of the dome and it sank into the silt.”

Divers were then dispatched to the sea floor to try to recover the dome without damaging the high-tech umbilical that controls it, he said.

It was not clear how much damage the dome ultimately suffered, but it apparently was enough to prompt Shell to abandon its well-drilling plans for the current season.

One of my confidential sources at the test site that day reported to me:

I’ve got more information from a tugboat skipper who was there, but he doesn’t want me to print it. He’s the one, based on being able to listen to the encrypted radio chatter when they were all tangled up, that called it a “clusterfuck.”

He assured me that this crew isn’t ready for a water park, let alone the Chukchi or Beaufort Seas.

On October 10th, Sen. Mark Begich held a hearing in Anchorage:

The overflow crowd also heard specifics on what happened to a Shell oil spill response system damaged during testing.

With only weeks to go before Shell Alaska wraps up its first exploratory drilling offshore Alaska in two decades, key players told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that the work went well and Shell has done an exemplary job despite some glitches and setbacks.

When the hearing got to finding out what happened aboard the Arctic Challenger on September 16th, a strangely different story emerged on what happened in the accident:

The barge-based containment system, including a massive dome that would be lowered over an out-of-control well, is the first of its kind and was on fast track for completion, [Shell Oil Alaska Vice President Pete] Slaiby said. It only became part of Shell’s required oil spill response after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

Shell and Superior Energy Services, the contractor that owns and will operate the 38-year-old retrofitted barge, investigated how the dome was damaged during testing Sept. 15 off the coast of Washington state.

“Our investigation determined that a faulty electrical connection associated with one of the valves caused the valve to open, which caused the rapid descent and ultimate damage to the dome,” Slaiby told Begich.

Safety tethers prevented the dome from hitting bottom, he said. The dome was nowhere near the side of the barge and didn’t bang against it or hit anything else, Slaiby told reporters during a break in the hearing.

“But buoyancy chambers were damaged,” he said.

During the rapid descent, the water pressure “deformed the side of the dome itself,” he said. Shell and Superior are working together to improve the technical aspects of the system as well as procedures.

“The design concept, however, is solid,” Slaiby said in the hearing.

The oil spill containment barge is the fourth line of defense, he said. Crews would first try to stop a blowout with drilling mud, then turn to a blowout preventer already in place, then a capping stack, a special blowout preventer like what eventually stopped the oil from flowing from the Deepwater Horizon blowout.

The story as related to the LA Times in September, and Shell VP Slaiby’s testimony don’t match at all.  Nor does Slaiby’s account match with what I’ve been able to find out from informants.

Others are concerned too.  Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a Freedom of Information Act request directed toward BSEE on October 10th, immediately after the discrepancies between the post-accident story and Slaiby’s later testimony on the subject became apparent.   Here is PEER’s FOIA request in entirety, as mailed to me last week:

                                                                                    October 10, 2012

BSEE FOIA Officer

Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement

Ms. Debbie Kimball

Atrium Building; HE 2204

381 Elden Street

Herndon, VA 20170

RE: FOIA REQUEST                                                VIA E-MAIL, FAX & MAIL

Dear Ms. Kimball:

In mid-September, 2012, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (Shell) announced that its containment dome, said to incorporate all the lessons learned from capping the Deepwater Horizon spill, was severely damaged while being tested on Puget Sound.   Shell’s oil spill response barge, Arctic Challenger, carried the containment dome.

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 552, as amended, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) requests information concerning this incident, its significance, the role of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and what lessons were derived from it.  Specifically, we request the following:

1. Any documents related to the failure of the containment dome test from the Shell spill response barge Arctic Challenger in Bellingham in  2012, including any after-incident alterations or adjustments that Shell proposes to make or has made;

1. Any other deficiencies or compliance issues noted concerning the Arctic Challenger and the containment dome by any state or federal regulatory or marine conservation agency;

1. Any after-incident analysis BSEE has performed following this containment dome failure;

1. Information concerning the nature, timing and standards for future containment dome  testing or exercises, including the role played by BSEE personnel and the role, if any, for independent third-party monitoring or participation;

1. Information regarding BSEE requirements or permit conditions relating to containment domes in permits issued to Shell during calendar year 2012; and

1. Information relating to BSEE policies, standards or other requirement regarding the capacity or reliability of containment domes in spill response plans.

In a January 21, 2009 memo, President Barack Obama declared the following policy for the Executive Branch:

“The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption:  In the face of doubt, openness prevails.  The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.  Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve…  All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government.  The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”

For any documents or portions of documents that you block release due to specific exemption(s) from the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, please provide an index itemizing and describing the documents or portions of documents withheld.  The index should, pursuant to the holding of Vaughn v. Rosen (484 F.2d 820 [D.C. Cir. 1973]cert. denied, 415 U.S. 977 [1974]), provide a detailed justification for claiming a particular exemption that explains why each such exemption applies to the document or portion of a document withheld.

PEER requests that all fees be waived because “disclosure of the information is in the public interest . . . and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requestor” (5 U.S.C. 552 (a) (4)(A)):

1. The records concern the operations or activities of the Government.

The FOIA request is, by its terms, limited to identifiable activities of BSEE.

2. The disclosure of the requested records is likely to contribute to public understanding of these operations or activities.

The requested material concerns measures of the effectiveness of safety measures designed to contain or mitigate the enormous environmental damage from an oil spill in Arctic waters.  The requested information concerns a recent highly-publicized containment dome failure during routine testing, what lessons have been learned, countermeasures planned and the rigor of BSEE regulation in this area.  All of this information would greatly enhance public understanding of how BSEE is, or is not, fulfilling its core mission.

3. The release of requested records will contribute significantly to public understanding of the governmental activities

The nature of the information will shed direct light on the quality and extent of spill response measures required by BSEE and how those requirements are enforced.  These documents will help the public to understand the reliability of spill containment equipment slated for deployment in sensitive Arctic waters.

PEER believes that the disclosure of the requested information will offer the general public a clear picture of the rigor, prudence and efficacy of BSEE actions and policies on the single greatest challenge facing the agency since its creation

PEER intends to provide the requested information to the general public through —

• Ø Release to the news media;
• Ø Posting on the PEER web page which draws between 1,000 and 10,000 viewers per day; and
• Ø Publication in PEER’s newsletter that has a circulation of approximately 20,000, including 1,500 environmental journalists.

Through these methods, PEER generates an average of 1.5 mainstream news articles per day.  Moreover, PEER has demonstrated the ability to generate nationwide news coverage concerning related BSEE activities.  Moreover, as noted above, the Shell dome failure at the heart of this request has generated national and international media interest.

4. Disclosure would not serve a commercial interest of the requestor.

Disclosure is in no way connected with any commercial interest of the requestors in that PEER is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest organization concerned with upholding the public trust through responsible management of our nation’s resources and with supporting professional integrity within public land management and pollution control agencies.  To that end, PEER is designated as a tax-exempt organization under section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue code.

If you have any questions about this FOIA request, please contact me at (202) 265-PEER. I look forward to receiving the agency’s final response within 20 working days.

Cordially,

Jeff Ruch

Executive Director

Cc. BSEE Alaska Regional FOIA Coordinator

The Arctic Challenger itself has now been certified as seaworthy by the USCG.  Shell’s drilling rigsKuluk and Noble Discoverer are drilling in the Arctic as I write:

At Begich’s October hearing, Rear Adm. Thomas Ostebo, the commander of the Coast Guard in Alaska said:

“You’re talking about a first-of-kind vessel that in less than six months they took a Arctic class barge … perfectly flat, half the size of a football field, and built an entire production facility on it, berthing for 70 people, and the ability to raise and lower a dome above a loss-of-well control that allowed them to … flare gas, process oil and clean the water and put it back in the ocean.”

The Coast Guard, which earlier had identified a number of issues with the vessel that had to be addressed, just issued a certificate of inspection for the barge, clearing it to operate at sea. The American Bureau of Shipping has classified the unique barge as well. The issues are all normal evolution for a new vessel, Ostebo said. Nothing really went wrong, he said.

David Hayes, deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior, said that Shell is complying with regulations that he called the government’s “gold standard for safe and environmentally sound exploration activities.”

Shell’s two drilling rigs are still at work drilling the time-consuming initial stages of wells. The Noble Discoverer is 70 miles offshore in the Chukchi Sea, and the Kulluk is offshore, but not as far out, in the Beaufort Sea.

Each are excavating cellars to hold a blowout preventer and drilling holes some 1,500 feet down as the first stage of a well. Slaiby said they will return to finish those wells and more next year.

I’m a lot more skeptical about how ready for an emergency this operation really is than is Admiral Ostebo.