A 50 million dollar hairline crack
On January 28, 1975, a worker at the Dresden Unit 2 in Illinois noticed a hairline crack in the emergency core cooling unit. The crack was so small that it did not leak any moisture. If it had leaked, the automatic monitors would have detected it. If the leak was large, the plant would have been shut down.
The plant reported the crack to the NRC. The next day the NRC ordered all reactors of the same type shut down for inspection. That turned out to be 23 reactors. No cracks were found in the other reactors.
Shutting down a large nuclear reactor is a big deal. We are talking a week to two weeks for the round trip. Let's call it 10 days. 23 900 MW reactors for 10 days is about 5 billion kWh. Presumably this electricity was replaced by the least most expensive alternative. Suppose that power cost just a penny more. The cost to society for this shut down was at least 50 million dollars.
This is not a one-off. Shutting down all similar plants whenever a defect is found is standard practice at NRC, basically an automatic reflex. If 23 plants can be shut down nearly simultaneously by a minor problem in one plant, what does that say for grid reliability? It materially reduces nuclear's Capacity Credit, requiring more backup.
Nonetheless, the shutdowns make perfectly good sense from the point of the NRC. The NRC does not have to pay for the more expensive electricity. The NRC does not have to bear the loss in reliability or the extra cost of backup. But if there had been a problem at any of the plants after they had been alerted, there would have been hell to pay. The NRC is simply responding to the incentives that we have given it.
Imagine what would have happened under Underwriter Certification. Dresden 2 would have reported the crack to its insurer and its Certification Society. They would have alerted all the other plants, including the plants that had this type of reactor, to the issue.
Each underwriter on the advice of the Certification Society would then make a decision what to do. Almost certainly, they would say watch this area, make sure your moisture detector is working, and inspect it at the next outage. If one of the insurers decreed a shutdown and inspection as a condition of keeping the insurance, the plant would then have a choice:
a) comply,
b) change insurers.
If another insurer was willing to take on the risk at a reasonable price, the plant would switch. This would keep the first insurer honest.
It's this kind of checks and balances that is an absolute requirement for an economic, efficient grid. We have it everywhere except nuclear.
Proposing competition for the government? Careful, they might just send the IRS to your door unannounced to make sure you get the message...
This kind of insanity is exactly why the government should be removed from all regulatory oversight. They assume that people are too stupid or reckless to look at the risks and benefits involved with any undertaking. That has not been my experience. And if the risks taken by any organization are too great (by a reasonable standard) to insure the safety of the general public, then and only then the government can step in and put a stop to it. But they would then be required to prove their case in court just like any citizen who takes a self-defensive action that causes harm. If such a standard were in place, we would have just about everything powered by nuclear engines because it far and away makes the most sense efficiency-wise, and cost-wise while affecting the environment the least. When you look hard at any 'problem' we have, it is my experience that it always traces back to the government causing it.