A Letter to Vivek

Vivek Ramaswamy is the first presidential candidate to advocate the abolition of the NRC. While his heresy is as welcome as it is unexpected, his replacement --- splitting NRC ``missions" between DOE and EPA --- will not make things better, and probably will make them worse. The same anti-social regulatory incentives will be in place. A guided market is the only way to balance nuclear's promethean benefits against the potential harm. Unfortunately a full on form of Underwriter Certification is not yet politically feasible in the USA. Is there a halfway house that might work? Probably not. But here are some organizational and legislative changes that would move us in the right direction.

Firm Emission Triggers

Pass legislation whereby Congress sets firm, numerical radiation emissions limits and the fines and penalties for violating those limits. Table 1 shows an example. A portion of managment compensation would be deferred. Any fines would be paid out of these funds, until they are exhausted and then from shareholders. Enforcement would be strictly pass/fail. No judgement calls, no ALARA. Limits are fixed for at least [10] years. Regulatory stability is a must.

Compensation System

Pass legislation that sets up a fixed compensation system in the event of a release. The compensation must depend on each individual's dose rate profile and nothing else. The compensation system must be based on a radiation harm model that recognizes our ability to repair radiation damage. The legislation must make clear that this compensation replaces any tort claims.

Insurance

Pass legislation

1) requiring liability insurance to cover the compensation;

2) requiring very large deductibles on property insurance;

3) requiring deferred management compensation which compensation would be forfeit in the event of a release;

4) mandating shareholders then bondholders would be wiped out before ratepayers are asked to pay for the costs of a release.

Move NRC to FERC

Replace the NRC with a much smaller Federal Nuclear Authority (FNA), which would be part of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It would look a lot like the Federal Aviation Authority, focused on test results rather than process.

1) The FNA would oversee the testing and certification of new designs, running the protopark, setting the test bonds, and setting the requirements for the bond writers. This is the weak point in the whole scheme. In approving a design, the FNA people have close to the same anti-social incentives that have proven tragically expensive at the NRC.

But the FNA will report to the FERC Commissioners, and must justify their decisions to that group. The hope is that the FERC's broader set of responsibilities will lead to more balanced regulation.

The underwriters and their certification societies would be encouraged to witness the tests and would have the right to request whatever tests they need in order to insure/certify a design. If the underwriters are prepared to insure a design which the FNA has not approved, the developers have the right to appeal the decision to the FERC commissioners.

2) After rigorous, full scale testing, a design would be issued a Type Certificate. Any plant built to that design would require no further federal approvals.

3) If the FNA makes any regulatory change after a design has received a Type Certificate, either plants that are built to that design shall be grandfathered or the full cost of that change shall be borne by the taxpayer. This would force the FNA to justify the change to the body politic or its representatives. And it would eliminate the intolerable backfit risk from the investors' calculus.

4) A division of the FNA would be responsible for ensuring there is a grid of dosimeters around each plant.

5) In the event of a release, this division would enforce the compensation scheme, computing each person's payment, collecting the funds from the underwriters and distributing them.

FNA does NOT approve individual plants.

The FNA issues Type certificates, enforce emissions limits and compensation scheme; but they do not approve individual plants. Each community would decide whether it wants a nuclear plant or not. Towns would negotiate with the plant owner and the owner would go with the best deal offered. The FNA's responsibility would be similar to the FAA's. The FAA certifies a design, but does not approve Boeing's decision to build an individual aircraft. That's up to Boeing and its customers.

Used Fuel Recycling

Set up [N] used fuel recycling vaults. The basic plan is:

1) Used fuel is stored at the plant for something like 50 years.

2) It is then moved to a centralized recycling vault.

3) The fuel is stored in the vault, until it is economic to extract the valuable isotopes including the U-238 which makes up most of the spent fuel.

4) The residue is stored until it can be diluted and landfilled as Low Level Waste, at most a total of 600 years. At this point the penetrating radiation is gone and the stuff is just another poison. It has to be swallowed to do any harm.

Forget about deep geologic disposal. The recycling vaults will probably be on Federal land such as Hanford or INL. The Feds would lease the sites to contractors and encourage competition among the vaults.

Clean Up

Pass legislation outlawing spending federal money on cleanup of any contamination resulting in dose rates below 0.16 mSv/day. Half-trillion dollar taxpayer rip offs must be replaced by productive fuel recycling.

Export Controls

Eliminate export controls of nuclear power plant equipment. Eliminate the NNSA. Be the first p[resident to abide by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Depend on the IAEA to enforce the treaty. If it is deemed necessary to stop a rogue nation, that's a military issue, not a nuclear power issue. You will have to use force.

Nuclear NTSB

Set up an independent body to investigate nuclear (and other) power plant mishaps and casualties. The entity would function like the National Transportation Safety Board. In fact, it could be part of it. Like the NTSB, it would have no regulatory power. It's job is to simply report to the body politic what happened and why. This entity would replace the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards.

Exempt Essential Facilities on Federal Lands from Environmental Impact Statement Requirements

NEPA has been abused by wealthy, selfish, and sometimes misanthropic special interests in a way that Congress could not have imagined in 1970. As a first step in correcting this abuse, pass legislation allowing FERC to exempt power generation and distribution facilities on Federal lands from EIS requirements.

Honesty.

But the most needed reform is not organizational. It is honesty. We must stop telling the Two Lies. Nuclear power plant releases are both inevitable and tolerable. In fact, most nuclear power plant releases, while enormously expensive industrial losses, are not even a big deal from a radiation harm point of view. Unless you level with the electorate, whatever you are able to accomplish by organizational shuffling will be wiped out when the next big release happens.