Nuclear safety is NOT our overriding priority

Figure 1. No. It is not.

EDF is building a nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point in England. EDF proudly requires that each of its plants have a tombstone like Figure 1 at the main entrance, a point it emphasizes in its advertising. EDF is not alone, you will find the phrase "safety is our overriding priority" in various forms repeated over and over again by the NRC, INPO, and the rest of the nuclear establishment. For example, INPO has a monomanical focus on safety culture which it defines as “an organization’s values and behaviors that serve to make nuclear safety the overriding priority.”

Hinkley Point C(HPC) will cost at least $18,000/kW and take over 12 years to construct. From society's point of view, there is a strong argument for discounting projects like HPC at the social cost of capital, which is around 2.5% real. At that discount rate, Figure 2 shows Hinkley Point will come in around 12 cents/kWh (2024 USD).

Figure 2. Hinkley Point Naieve LCOE assuming a 12 year construction period

Table 1 shows the overnight cost in 2024 USD and build times of the six lowest overnight cost plants built in the USA. When I lived in the Florida Keys, I enjoyed some of the cheapest electricity in the country, thanks to Turkey Point 3 and 4.

Table 1. Six lowest overnight cost US nuclear power plants.\cite{lovering-2016}

If you repeat the Figure 2 calculation for Turkey Point 3 at $795 per kW, the LCOE is just under 3 cents/kWh, about 4 times less than Hinkley Point 3.¹ A higher discount rate would increase this difference.

Over the 3 year, 2022-2024 period, the EIA finds that Turkey Point 3 had a capacity factor of 95.2%, about 5% above the USA average, and ranking it 15th among 92 reactors, In 53 years of operation, Turkey Point 3 and all its elderly brethren have harmed exactly zero members of the public. Most of these plants will still be operating in 2050. Turkey Point 3 and the other five plants in Table 1 were designed and built before the current regulatory apparat became organized. There was no independent regulator.

The Atomic Energy Act does not make nuclear safety the "overriding priority". Quite the opposite. Here's Section 1, the first paragraph in the Act, in its entirety. Nuclear safety is not even mentioned.

SECTION 1. DECLARATION.—

Atomic energy is capable of application for peaceful as well as military purposes. It is therefore declared to be the policy of the United States that—

a.) the development, use, and control of atomic energy shall be directed so as to make the maximum contribution to the general welfare, subject at all times to the paramount objective of making the maximum contribution to the common defense and security; and

b.) the development, use, and control of atomic energy shall be directed so as to promote world peace, improve the general welfare, increase the standard of living, and strengthen free competition in private enterprise.

In Section 2, you will find "protect the health and safety of the public" in a list of goals, but there is not a hint that nuclear safety is our overriding priority. In fact, the health and safety goal is always listed last. Not to mention the fact that one of the ways of protecting the health of the public is to replace fossil fuel with cheap nuclear. The AEA even gives a shout out to "free competition in private enterprise" before it even mentions public health and safety.

The Energy Reorganization Act or 1974 which set up the NRC by transferring the existing AEC licensing and regulatory functions to a separate agency lists "public health and safety" last among eight goals in its Declaration of Purpose.

Sec. 2. Declaration of Purpose (a) The Congress hereby declares that the general welfare and the common defense and security require effective action to develop, and increase the efficiency and reliability of use of all energy sources to meet the needs of present and future generations, to increase the productivity of the national economy and strengthen its position in regard to international trade, to make the Nation self-sufficient in energy, to advance the goals of restoring, protecting, and enhancing environmental quality, and to assure public health and safety.

Nuclear safety was clearly not Congress's overriding priority. So how did we get from Turkey Point 3 and its sisters to Hinkley Point C?

We made a disastrous, tragic, colossal, brobdingnagian blunder. We set up an omnipotent bureaucracy whose overriding priority, as it so clearly states, is nuclear safety. While Congress declared "public health and safety" to be just one one of its goals, it created an apparat for which nuclear health and safety was effectively the only goal. The NRC would be judged on its ability to prevent a release. Period.

Bureaucrats are not saints. They reacted according to the incentives they have been given, just as we would. And since we have given the last word to these souls we have misguided, it is their priorities that rule, not society's. The regulatory structure that the AEA/ERA setup is inherently inconsistent with the stated goals.

The result has been an auto-genocidal increase in the cost of nuclear power for no apparent benefit. There is nothing in the actual harm data that suggests the oldest plants are less safe than the newest. When Three Mile Island 2 melted down in 1979 and produced the biggest release in the US so far, it was the youngest plant in the US fleet, and subject to the most stringent regulation.

No rewording of Preambles and Declarations of Purpose will change bureaucratic behavior. The AEA and ERA language is quite clear. Nuclear safety is not society's overriding priority. Our overriding priority is a better world for our kids. We must choose a regulatory system that is consistent with our overriding priority.

1. The OPEX in the list of cost assumptions underlying this number is based on present US NRC/INPO dictated practice. If the plants were operated efficiently, the 3 cents/kWh would drop to close to 2 cents.