As long as the truth about the real effects of radiation remains hidden, nothing will change. If the right experts are chosen, they will quickly conclude that high- and low-dose-rate radiation do not have the same effects at all, and it will become clear that there was a criminal cover-up involving the Departments of Defense and Energy. They are desperate to avoid accountability.
Within our constitutional system, the third way is to have the arbiter be the duly elected President.
The system that you describe was purposely created during the Watergate era when there was a powerful reaction to a somewhat overreaching President. One action was to establish "independent" agencies who ended up not answering to anyone, including the voters.
Many of the Commissioners and the staff decided that their independent mission was to provide paternal protection of the population from radiation and to ignore the words in the Atomic Energy Act about using nuclear energy and radioactive material to benefit the United States.
We might be getting close to a reasonably balanced system. Not too much time will be needed to see if the steps being taken have real meaning. My sense if that they will.
Youre right about one thing. It should not take time much time to see if there is any real change. Wasn't NEIMA passed in 2018?
There will be no balance until there is a real penalty for over-weighting safety. I believe 'nuclear safety is our over-riding priority' is still the mantra.
Such alternatives may exist- Up in the sky as one example. High reward, high risk industry of aviation. Several parties interested in safety- FAA for one(and other regulators), manufacturers interested in delivering safe products in a still competitive market. Airline companies are interested in not paying insurance claims and costs, so eager enough to learn from past incidents(improvements on maintenance, operations). The most important difference from, for example, the reliable power industry is that the public intuitively knows the benefits of affordable air travel and that there is no real alternative for it.
Should someone in the FAA fantasize about making airliners safer by equipping every passenger with a personal parachute or even better- personal ejection seat- absurdity of such an idea would be clear and obvious. By looking at past incidents- conditions in which a parachute could save a singer passenger life are next to nil, price, complications, induced unnecessary fear and weight increase would make it clear to be ridiculed. Manufacturers would sue should absurdity like that proceed toward real world regulation. There is no such intuition or real resistance for NPPs. Airliners flying into reactors- "sure, must be considered and acted on", bunker busters- "not an exaggeration, must be considered too".
Should public get intuition that "radiation is not that scary"(2lies), and benefits of reliable, inflation resistant, sustainable, emission free power are great(public should identify themselves which of these matters, climate change skeptics should like at least 2 of these anyways, so there is carrot for everyone)- maybe current system could get the balancing force? -Marcin
The FAA style system has been brought up before. I'ts really a form of (1). The FAA's job is making air travel possible via providing a range of services, most importantly air traffic control. Certifying designs is just one of those services. It's a bit like the AEC before the split but very importantly without the two lies.
The FAA does not claim or imply that it will prevent crashes. Quite the contrary. It says ``We are so certain that there will be more deadly disasters that it's worth installing two expensive orange boxes on every commercial aircraft. These boxes are designed to survive a crash that kills everybody on board. The only purpose of these boxes is to help us figure out what cause the horrific casualty so we can make intelligent fixes." Welcome aboard. Now shut up and sit there while we tell you what to do when the aircraft crashes.
The FAA's overriding priority is not safety. Just one example. That shiny tube you sit is is about 1.2 mm thick on average, about the thickness of a toothpick.
If we want an FAA-like nuclear regualtory system, we would have to repeal the Energy Reorganization Act, dump the NRC, and totally rewrite the Atomic Energy Act. I'll post a piece on this in the near future. But one things for sure, changing commissioners won't cut it.
Jack - Chris Hanson's removal from the Commission by the President – and the precedent setting nature of that action – is not news that only an insider can access.
I am losing it. Your joke went over my senile head.
I say again. Changing commissioners won't cut it. In the 1970's we had strongly pro-nuclear Commissioners such as Joe Hendrie of TMI fame and an order of magnitude increase in regulatory costs.
I won’t debate the “pro-nuclear” nature of the NRC under Joe Hendrie or even the “pro-nuclear energy” nature of Hendrie himself.
My point about Hanson was not about any specific Commissioner, but about the precedent of a Commissioner being fired from what he thought was a secure 5 year job.
When commissioners remember that the law says they can be removed by their superior for an undefined cause like “inefficiency” they MIGHT behave differently.
Some related and collected thoughts on this, and my 2 cents.
Regulatory reform is one of, if not the most, important requirement for a truly global nuclear buildout. We need at least 100 GWe/year of new nuclear construction, forever. No way this can be achieved under the current glacial system. The preferred system these days of the omnipotent national regulator who has no benefit from clean power but owns all the problems of a casualty, and (in the US case) profits from delays by milking applicants, is truly an affront to common sense, good regulation, and the principles of trias politica. Following game theory the regulator is incentivized to drag out te licensing process as long as possible so as to both not own problems (paper reactors are the safest reactors) and to maximize revenues ($300/h for our time with no limit) this creates the predictably disappointing situation of lots of applicants and no running reactors. The incumbents that have survived this bureaucratic onslaught are not any better, as they take their hard-won moat for granted, again following standard game theory rules. But even the incumbents aren't building anything anymore. Everyone is simply operating according to the rules of the game and that game leads to stasis.
Not entirely sure where Jack's newfound love for the EPA comes from. They are very much anti-nuclear and use their influence as part of the licensing process (via the environmental impact statement) to stall progress. They literally make you write reports as to why this nuke has to be built, why couldn't it be a wind turbine or a solar farm, or a pretty rainbow. It is like applying for a building permit to build a shed in your garden and the municipality makes you hire an expensive engineering consultant firm to explain in great detail why it can't be a a haystack, a skyscraper, or a road-side restaurant. EPA is clearly not functioning properly.
As Jack has noted the heart of the matter is to find the balance between benefits and risks, so as to maximize societal gain. The present day system of the omnipotent regulator is exactly wrong here, completely lop-sided on the risk side of things, and to make matters worse, to employ endless red tape to achieve it. Ironically this not only pushes cost out to the point of nuclear build extinction as was already proven 40+ years ago, it also weirdly leads to lots of safety problems and lack of progress and innovation. Safety problems are created both because real safety and paperwork are not always in sync, and because the drowning in red tape disparages anyone, even utilities, from fixing real problems as the license amendment would be so draconian as to preclude it.
The hardest part is to have the powers that be acknowledge that this problem exists and that the rules of game theory don't allow progress, thus necessitating rather radical changes. If it is realized that the gold standard goes nowhere then we are there most of the way already.
What is left is what to replace it with. We seem to have options.
1. Underwriter certification as Jack prefers. Seems to work very well in ships.
2. Nationalist style regulation a la French. This worked well, the French kept cost at bay even as late as the 90s, only recently have costs escalated due to abandoning this process (privatizing and breaking up the power structure). This has proven to work. A key legal strength is people aren't opposed to each other, the same government that licenses the plants is the one that has to run them so they better make it work. It helped that the French did not allow litigation during construciton. But this approach runs into political problems. It could be palatable in some left leaning countries like Spain. In more right-bent areas like the US under Trump and now also here in Holland under the nationalists, it would be quite problematic.
3. Aviation style regulation. Better than NRC but as Jack noted there are problems.
4. Regulate it like we regulate coal plants. In most places that means BAT style regulation.
For me, the fourth way would be the most obvious way - to drop the massive double standard around nuclear that pretends it is uniquely dangerous, and treat it like any other dangerous industry. LNG terminals and oil refineries are objectively more dangerous than modern LWR designs, so in our case we should drop the national nuclear law and bring it under the fold of the EU Sevilla process. It is a bit of a palaver but the process works as all stakeholders are involved in putting the BREFs together. This is where the balance comes from - the regulator doesn't make the BREFs, it is a co-operative effort between government, industry, suppliers, engineering firms, etc. Importantly it is not possible to make changes during construction - that'd require a new round of negotiations.
Licensing would be the same as a coal plant - it'd fall under the regional government jurisdiction, or in our case recently their detachments, the industrial regulator wings (Omgevingsdiensten). I worked for one for 4 years as an industrial permit officer. They'd need to hire some nuclear engineers and safety analysts but it's not a big deal. A nuke is actually a lot simpler than a modern coal plant.
We would need to write a BREF for nuclear power. It could probably be just one document, with various subsections for the various types - water cooled, metal cooled, gas cooled, salt cooled. It would be of high importance to keep all requirements functional and precise, no focus on crippling paperwork or ALARA. So e.g. there could be a requirement for a pressure-tight containment with no more than x % leakage per day, and that it be pressure tested, and then it's up to the permit seeker to show how they will comply with the requirement. We could always deviate from the BREFs, if there was a good reason, such as a better new technology with lower emissions but that isn't in the BREFs yet. I thought it was a good system, and our industry is very safe. I would love to volunteer to help draft the BREF but the hard part is to abolish the national absolutist regulator.
Thanks a lot. Now I've got to fight my way thru 26 MB of bureaucratese. This may take a while.
I will say I am not a fan of BAT (Best Available Technology). BAT was used by the EPA to outlaw once-through cooling, and is inherently biased against new ways of doing something. Tell us what the "acceptable" risk is and allow up to pick the technology that complies with that requirement.
The important aspect is to have it be a co-op. The BAT is made by industry and regulators, suppliers, engineering co's, etc. Everyone and their grandmother sends people to Seville. That's the palaver element. It does bring balance. It's a kluge I admit, but it does work reasonably well here. No clue on how this is done outside of europe.
As long as the truth about the real effects of radiation remains hidden, nothing will change. If the right experts are chosen, they will quickly conclude that high- and low-dose-rate radiation do not have the same effects at all, and it will become clear that there was a criminal cover-up involving the Departments of Defense and Energy. They are desperate to avoid accountability.
Corcos,
This comment is off topic and will be erased shortly.
Within our constitutional system, the third way is to have the arbiter be the duly elected President.
The system that you describe was purposely created during the Watergate era when there was a powerful reaction to a somewhat overreaching President. One action was to establish "independent" agencies who ended up not answering to anyone, including the voters.
Many of the Commissioners and the staff decided that their independent mission was to provide paternal protection of the population from radiation and to ignore the words in the Atomic Energy Act about using nuclear energy and radioactive material to benefit the United States.
We might be getting close to a reasonably balanced system. Not too much time will be needed to see if the steps being taken have real meaning. My sense if that they will.
Rod,
Youre right about one thing. It should not take time much time to see if there is any real change. Wasn't NEIMA passed in 2018?
There will be no balance until there is a real penalty for over-weighting safety. I believe 'nuclear safety is our over-riding priority' is still the mantra.
Such alternatives may exist- Up in the sky as one example. High reward, high risk industry of aviation. Several parties interested in safety- FAA for one(and other regulators), manufacturers interested in delivering safe products in a still competitive market. Airline companies are interested in not paying insurance claims and costs, so eager enough to learn from past incidents(improvements on maintenance, operations). The most important difference from, for example, the reliable power industry is that the public intuitively knows the benefits of affordable air travel and that there is no real alternative for it.
Should someone in the FAA fantasize about making airliners safer by equipping every passenger with a personal parachute or even better- personal ejection seat- absurdity of such an idea would be clear and obvious. By looking at past incidents- conditions in which a parachute could save a singer passenger life are next to nil, price, complications, induced unnecessary fear and weight increase would make it clear to be ridiculed. Manufacturers would sue should absurdity like that proceed toward real world regulation. There is no such intuition or real resistance for NPPs. Airliners flying into reactors- "sure, must be considered and acted on", bunker busters- "not an exaggeration, must be considered too".
Should public get intuition that "radiation is not that scary"(2lies), and benefits of reliable, inflation resistant, sustainable, emission free power are great(public should identify themselves which of these matters, climate change skeptics should like at least 2 of these anyways, so there is carrot for everyone)- maybe current system could get the balancing force? -Marcin
Marcin,
The FAA style system has been brought up before. I'ts really a form of (1). The FAA's job is making air travel possible via providing a range of services, most importantly air traffic control. Certifying designs is just one of those services. It's a bit like the AEC before the split but very importantly without the two lies.
The FAA does not claim or imply that it will prevent crashes. Quite the contrary. It says ``We are so certain that there will be more deadly disasters that it's worth installing two expensive orange boxes on every commercial aircraft. These boxes are designed to survive a crash that kills everybody on board. The only purpose of these boxes is to help us figure out what cause the horrific casualty so we can make intelligent fixes." Welcome aboard. Now shut up and sit there while we tell you what to do when the aircraft crashes.
The FAA's overriding priority is not safety. Just one example. That shiny tube you sit is is about 1.2 mm thick on average, about the thickness of a toothpick.
If we want an FAA-like nuclear regualtory system, we would have to repeal the Energy Reorganization Act, dump the NRC, and totally rewrite the Atomic Energy Act. I'll post a piece on this in the near future. But one things for sure, changing commissioners won't cut it.
Maybe Chris Hanson can give a report on the differences at the NRC between 2018, 2024 and 2025.
Rod,
If only an insider can see the changes, they are not real changes.
You're an insider who I suspect has had a lot of contact with the NRC. Perhaps you can tell us what changes you've seen?
Jack - Chris Hanson's removal from the Commission by the President – and the precedent setting nature of that action – is not news that only an insider can access.
I am losing it. Your joke went over my senile head.
I say again. Changing commissioners won't cut it. In the 1970's we had strongly pro-nuclear Commissioners such as Joe Hendrie of TMI fame and an order of magnitude increase in regulatory costs.
I won’t debate the “pro-nuclear” nature of the NRC under Joe Hendrie or even the “pro-nuclear energy” nature of Hendrie himself.
My point about Hanson was not about any specific Commissioner, but about the precedent of a Commissioner being fired from what he thought was a secure 5 year job.
When commissioners remember that the law says they can be removed by their superior for an undefined cause like “inefficiency” they MIGHT behave differently.
But time will tell.
Some related and collected thoughts on this, and my 2 cents.
Regulatory reform is one of, if not the most, important requirement for a truly global nuclear buildout. We need at least 100 GWe/year of new nuclear construction, forever. No way this can be achieved under the current glacial system. The preferred system these days of the omnipotent national regulator who has no benefit from clean power but owns all the problems of a casualty, and (in the US case) profits from delays by milking applicants, is truly an affront to common sense, good regulation, and the principles of trias politica. Following game theory the regulator is incentivized to drag out te licensing process as long as possible so as to both not own problems (paper reactors are the safest reactors) and to maximize revenues ($300/h for our time with no limit) this creates the predictably disappointing situation of lots of applicants and no running reactors. The incumbents that have survived this bureaucratic onslaught are not any better, as they take their hard-won moat for granted, again following standard game theory rules. But even the incumbents aren't building anything anymore. Everyone is simply operating according to the rules of the game and that game leads to stasis.
Not entirely sure where Jack's newfound love for the EPA comes from. They are very much anti-nuclear and use their influence as part of the licensing process (via the environmental impact statement) to stall progress. They literally make you write reports as to why this nuke has to be built, why couldn't it be a wind turbine or a solar farm, or a pretty rainbow. It is like applying for a building permit to build a shed in your garden and the municipality makes you hire an expensive engineering consultant firm to explain in great detail why it can't be a a haystack, a skyscraper, or a road-side restaurant. EPA is clearly not functioning properly.
As Jack has noted the heart of the matter is to find the balance between benefits and risks, so as to maximize societal gain. The present day system of the omnipotent regulator is exactly wrong here, completely lop-sided on the risk side of things, and to make matters worse, to employ endless red tape to achieve it. Ironically this not only pushes cost out to the point of nuclear build extinction as was already proven 40+ years ago, it also weirdly leads to lots of safety problems and lack of progress and innovation. Safety problems are created both because real safety and paperwork are not always in sync, and because the drowning in red tape disparages anyone, even utilities, from fixing real problems as the license amendment would be so draconian as to preclude it.
The hardest part is to have the powers that be acknowledge that this problem exists and that the rules of game theory don't allow progress, thus necessitating rather radical changes. If it is realized that the gold standard goes nowhere then we are there most of the way already.
What is left is what to replace it with. We seem to have options.
1. Underwriter certification as Jack prefers. Seems to work very well in ships.
2. Nationalist style regulation a la French. This worked well, the French kept cost at bay even as late as the 90s, only recently have costs escalated due to abandoning this process (privatizing and breaking up the power structure). This has proven to work. A key legal strength is people aren't opposed to each other, the same government that licenses the plants is the one that has to run them so they better make it work. It helped that the French did not allow litigation during construciton. But this approach runs into political problems. It could be palatable in some left leaning countries like Spain. In more right-bent areas like the US under Trump and now also here in Holland under the nationalists, it would be quite problematic.
3. Aviation style regulation. Better than NRC but as Jack noted there are problems.
4. Regulate it like we regulate coal plants. In most places that means BAT style regulation.
For me, the fourth way would be the most obvious way - to drop the massive double standard around nuclear that pretends it is uniquely dangerous, and treat it like any other dangerous industry. LNG terminals and oil refineries are objectively more dangerous than modern LWR designs, so in our case we should drop the national nuclear law and bring it under the fold of the EU Sevilla process. It is a bit of a palaver but the process works as all stakeholders are involved in putting the BREFs together. This is where the balance comes from - the regulator doesn't make the BREFs, it is a co-operative effort between government, industry, suppliers, engineering firms, etc. Importantly it is not possible to make changes during construction - that'd require a new round of negotiations.
Licensing would be the same as a coal plant - it'd fall under the regional government jurisdiction, or in our case recently their detachments, the industrial regulator wings (Omgevingsdiensten). I worked for one for 4 years as an industrial permit officer. They'd need to hire some nuclear engineers and safety analysts but it's not a big deal. A nuke is actually a lot simpler than a modern coal plant.
We would need to write a BREF for nuclear power. It could probably be just one document, with various subsections for the various types - water cooled, metal cooled, gas cooled, salt cooled. It would be of high importance to keep all requirements functional and precise, no focus on crippling paperwork or ALARA. So e.g. there could be a requirement for a pressure-tight containment with no more than x % leakage per day, and that it be pressure tested, and then it's up to the permit seeker to show how they will comply with the requirement. We could always deviate from the BREFs, if there was a good reason, such as a better new technology with lower emissions but that isn't in the BREFs yet. I thought it was a good system, and our industry is very safe. I would love to volunteer to help draft the BREF but the hard part is to abolish the national absolutist regulator.
https://eippcb.jrc.ec.europa.eu/reference
Thanks a lot. Now I've got to fight my way thru 26 MB of bureaucratese. This may take a while.
I will say I am not a fan of BAT (Best Available Technology). BAT was used by the EPA to outlaw once-through cooling, and is inherently biased against new ways of doing something. Tell us what the "acceptable" risk is and allow up to pick the technology that complies with that requirement.
The important aspect is to have it be a co-op. The BAT is made by industry and regulators, suppliers, engineering co's, etc. Everyone and their grandmother sends people to Seville. That's the palaver element. It does bring balance. It's a kluge I admit, but it does work reasonably well here. No clue on how this is done outside of europe.
Disolve the NRC.
I was an original badge 100 at Comanche Peak.
The NRC was nothing but an ipediment.
They contributed NOTHING to quality and therefore safety.
The federal government declares energy a national security issue and builds the plants on military sites.
We are out of time. It has to be done now and this is the only way to move forward rapidly.