Can the NRC be Reborn?

In a recent post, I pointed out that the NRC's ability to change the rules of the game at will is incompatible with a deregulated electricity market. No rational investor can play by those rules. Under these rules, the only US nuclear will be a highly subsidized, preposterously expensive and regressive ripoff of the taxpayer. I argued we have only two choices if nuclear power is to make a real contribution to solving the Gordian Knot of energy poverty and global warming:

1) a socialized grid run by a public monopoly which is responsible for both the provision of electricity and nuclear safety;

2) Underwriter Certification, basically the same system by which we regulate ocean transportation and high pressure steam, both of which were highly beneficial and highly hazardous in their infancy. Both of which have become much cheaper and much safer over time. In nuclear's case, this would need to be combined with a firm, automatic scheme for compensating harm from a release of radioactive material.

Many if not most of the GK News readers reject both a socialized grid and market based regulation as too extreme. Both are too scary. They want to be somewhere in the pusillanimous middle. Why can't we reform the NRC they cry, and all will be well? Actually, only one reader had the guts to stand up and ask this question; but I know what is in the evil little minds of the rest of them.

So as a thought experiment, let's ask ourselves what is the minimum that would be required of this reborn NRC?

Honesty

The born-again NRC is as honest as Saint Homobonus. It loudly and proudly renounces the Two Lies. If prior to Three Mile Island the NRC had said

We are working hard to make casualties such as core meltdown very rare. But sooner or later we will have a major casualty at a nuclear plant, and, when that happens, we have taken a series of measures including the containment vessel to insure that over time nuclear will result in far fewer deaths and injuries than other sources of dispatchable power.

Then when TMI happened, the NRC would have been able to say:

Damn, we had a major casualty. Lost a brand new plant. We will learn from it just like the airlines learn something from every crash, and use that to make such casualties rarer.

But thank God, the casualty was almost entirely contained and nobody was hurt. Nuclear remains by far the safest source of electricity. This slide shows the up to date numbers.

No lies. No loss of trust.

The probability of the next big release is 1.00. It is only a question of when. Unless the rehabilitated NRC renounces the Negligible Probability Lie, public support for nuclear will evaporate when that happens. Unless the redeemed NRC renounces the Catastrophic Harm Lie, it will not be able to renounce the Negligible Probability Lie.

Compensation

The unique hazard associated with nuclear power is the potential for a large release of radioactive material. The reformed NRC must set up a firm, automatic compensation scheme based on the individual's dose rate profile and nothing else, and require insurance covering this harm. In the event of a release, the NRC will enforce these payments. This is not just a matter of equity. Such compensation internalizes this harm, ensuring that the potential harm is part of the developers' design and operating calculus.

The compensation scheme must be be based on a radiation harm model, which recognizes our ability to repair low dose rate damage. LNT is out. SNT is one possibility.

Congress must make clear this automatic compensation scheme precludes any tort claims.

Emission Limits

The recreated NRC is no longer a reactor design outfit. It is an emission enforcement agency. The NRC design requirements are simply a set of dose rate limits such as Table 1. (For now, the numbers are placeholders, suggestions.)

Violation of any of these limits triggers a pre-set penalty: fines, firings, shut downs. These trigger levels are usually not harmful dose rates. In most cases, they should be set well below the dose rates at which any radiation health effects have been reliably observed, which is at least 10 mSv/day. The resurrected NRC must make this distinction clear to the public.

The enforcement must be strictly pass/fail. No judgement calls. ALARA shows up nowhere in this enforcement system.

Rule changes

The newly humble NRC recognizes its limited power. If a limit is changed, existing plants must be grandfathered or the public pays the costs of those changes. This will force the NRC to justify any changes to the public or its representatives.

Competition

The rebaptized NRC is a champion of competition. Like St. Paul, it does a 180 and preaches competition rather than persecuting it, because it recognizes without competition, nuclear will never be cheap. It encourages guarantees, and eschews certificates. It roots out barriers to entry. It disparages subsidies and mandates. It refers monopolistic behavior to the trust busters.

Testing of New Designs

New nuclear reactor designs require rigorous, fullscale testing. The dutiful NRC provides the infrastructure for this testing, But it does not pick the testers. Instead it sets a bond and requires than any tester post this bond and pay for the services of its protopark.

If you look at this list, the set and enforce compensation, the set emission limits, the facilitate testing are also required by Underwriter Certification. What's different is the reborn NRC approach requires a bureaucratic metanoia, a total transformation of the NRC's attitude. Renounce the Two Lies, disown LNT, repudiate ALARA, champion competition. This is not going to happen.

The only way out is to abolish the NRC and set up a new, far smaller, tightly circumscribed agency to perform these functions. Maybe call it the Federal Fission Facilitation Agency. The FFFA's job is to make nuclear power work by ensuring that the cost of any harm is born by the harmers.