The Gordian Knot News "A" List

Unsolicited Advice to New Subscribers

CORRECTION. The Leave Town or Hunker Down piece had a bad error in the fraction of inventory released at Fukushima. This has been corrected in the version on the substack site. Mea maxima culpa. Fortunately, the error did not change any of the conclusions.

Gordian Knot News just turned two. The number of posts is over 100. Way too many. Our new subscribers need to understand that most of these posts are redundant detail. If they are truly interested in solving the Gordian Knot, they should focus on the A List.

The core argument is simple. Humanity needs cheap nuclear power. Cheap nuclear power is the only way the species can prosper. If and only if we have cheap nuclear power, can we lift billions of humans out of poverty. If and only if we have cheap nuclear power, can we stop polluting out planet's atmosphere and conserve its land.

It is a simple argument based on dispatchability, energy density, natural resources required, and the amount of CO2 and other pollutants generated. The numbers are so overwhelmingly obvious, they beg the question: why is nuclear not our totally dominant source of electricity? Why has nuclear power been such a tragic flop?

You do not need 100 posts to answer this question. I need twelve. Everything else is redundant detail.

The Necessary Background

Firstly, we must understand the key features of radiation, including the difference between penetrating and non-penetrating particles, and why our bodies can repair radiation damage from dose rates 100 times higher than normal background. That takes two posts:

1. 600 year old Spent Nuclear Fuel is Just Another Poison.

2. The Case for 2 mSv per day.

Secondly, we must understand where we went wrong. That's covered in three posts.

3. LNT is Nonsense.

4. The Two Lies that Killed Nuclear Power.

5. ALARA.

Thirdly, we must understand how cheap nuclear could and should be, and why nuclear's did-cost is five to ten times the should-cost. That's also covered in three posts.

6. Nuclear Power is Too Dear.

7. What is Nuclear's Should-Cost.

8. Nuclear and Wind/Solar.

The core problem is a regulatory system which assumes regulators are self-sacrificing saints, and therefore can be given unbridled power. This regulatory system cannot be redeemed. I've run out of ways of describing how pernicious and harmful an NRC-like regulatory system is. The best I can do is pull some quotes from old posts.

Quote 1

Another example was the acceptance in 1972 of the Double-Ended-Guillotine-Break (DEGB) as a credible failure. In this scenario, any section of the primary loop piping instantaneously disappears. Steel cannot fail in this manner. As usual Ted Rockwell put it best, ``We can't simulate instantaneous double ended breaks because things don't break that way."\cite{walker-1992}[p 179] Designing to handle this impossible casualty imposed very severe requirements on pipe whip restraints, spray shields, sizing of Emergency Core Cooling Systems, emergency diesel start up times (11 seconds to load), etc, requirements so severe that it pushed the designers into using developmental, unrobust technology.\cite{okrent-1981}[page 138]

The impossible DEGB is still with us. It is the main reason that drove mPower, NuScale, GE, Westinghouse and Holtec to come up with designs that use integral pressure vessels to virtually eliminate primary loop piping. It is easier and cheaper and more robust to manufacture smaller, separate pressure vessels for the reactor, pressurizer, and steam generators, and connect them with pipes, than to cram everything into a single, tall vessel. But under the DEGB, the more expensive and much harder to maintain single vessel wins.\cite{adams-2023} A far saner approach is Leak Before Break by which the designer ensures that a stable crack will penetrate the piping before larger scale failure.

Quote 2

In NRC's world view, making people poorer is unimportant. Global warming is not their business. Harm from alternate sources of electricity is not a consideration. Evacuation and exile costs can be disregarded. The only thing that counts is radiation harm, based on a harm model that defies biology. It is a preposterously blinkered outlook; and it is costing humanity dearly.

Quote 3

When we build a nuclear plant, we give an omnipotent regulator control over the project. The regulator sees no benefit from the electricity produced by the plant, but he owns any problems. To escape that responsibility, he relies on rigid procedures and voluminous paperwork, which documents that all procedures have been followed religiously. So whatever happens, it's not his fault. By stifling technical progress, squashing competition, demoralizing workers, diverting management, and diluting responsibility, this perverse set of incentives often results in shoddy quality.¹ It always results in additional costs and delays. If unchecked, those costs explode and the delays become interminable, as happened at Vogtle and elsewhere. This is not a problem for the regulator; and it's his incentives that control the project.

Quote 4

When we asked a group of Indonesian regulators to balance nuclear versus coal, one of them had the honesty to stand up and say ``I don't care what the problems with coal are. I'm a nuclear regulator. My job is to make nuclear power as safe as possible".

Recently the Japanese prime minister called for rapid start up of the plants shut down after Fukushima to avoid a crisis this winter. The head of the Japaneses regulatory agency responded that this was not going to happen. His view is ``Our goal as a regulator is to not be influenced by an ongoing debate on whether or not to use nuclear." In other words, we are in charge and we ignore the benefit side.

Quote 5

Nuclear power never escaped from its government sponsored and controlled birth. We set up a omnipotent regulatory apparat from which there is no appeal; a bureaucracy which ignores the benefits of nuclear power while focusing only on the potential hazards, and its own survival; a tribunal whose only rule is we set the rules and we can change them whenever we feel like it.

Here's just one example. In February 2022, the NRC by a 2 to 1 vote rescinded previously approved license extensions for the Turkey Point and Peach Bottom plants. The NRC had approved the extensions after an 18 month long process costing the applicants tens of millions of dollars. To justify the reversal, the two unelected commissioners claimed the word ``initial" in the NRC regulations did not mean ``initial". There is no appeal from such arbitrary, inconsistent behavior.

Quote 6

In 1979, during a period in which the nation was suffering gasoline lines, the NRC shut down five East Coast power plants, when one plant discovered a bug in the NRC approved software which might result in some pipe supports failing if the plants experienced the largest earthquake in the historical record for the region.

The NRC almost gloated over its action. Look how safe we are. We do not hesitate to inflict great harm on the American public to avoid a tiny chance of a pipe support failure. Chairman Joseph Hendrie told a Senate hearing, the ``shutdown will cost consumers an arm and a leg". ``We didn't even need a phone to hear the shrieks from the Energy Department over this thing", Hendrie added. Under questioning Hendrie said no attempt had been made to calculate the price since the NRC's responsibility was safety without regard to economic and social costs.

So to prevent a possible pipe support failure, which might occur only if the plants got hit with the largest earthquake on record, the NRC cost the American public at least $350,000,000 and untold hours in gas lines. Any sane benefit-cost analysis would keep the plants running; and, if necessary, beef up the pipe supports at the next planned outage.

Quote 7

In a bit of exquisite irony, Mattson, the NRC manager who created the bogus hydrogen bubble panic at Three Mile Island, was put in charge of the TMI-lessons-learned team, completing a rare quadfecta: judge, jury, executioner, and perpetrator.

Quote 8

There was one establishment guy who both saw what was going down, and had the guts to try and do something about it. His credentials were impeccable. He was Rickover's right hand man, Ted Rockwell. In a 2000 letter to the NRC, Rockwell let it all hang out:

The short-term benefits to regulators and industry by the current commitment to waste massive public resources by fabricating public fears of radiation are ethically and morally untenable, as well as legally questionable.\cite{rockwell-2000}

Rockwell knew the NRC would deny their motives were anything but saintly concern for human safety, so he ended the letter with an anecdote.

As the head of one national radiation protection program hissed to me at the BRPS Conference: ``We know your agenda; to kill the golden goose."\cite{rockwell-2000}

The Solution

Identifying the problem is not enough. We must have a solution. The solution starts with a radiation harm model that recognizes our ability to repair radiation damage. This harm model is outlined in two posts.

9. A Sigmoid No Threshold Primer.

10. SNT versus LNT at Fukushima.

Finally, we propose a regulatory system that channels our selfish impulses in a manner that is efficient in its use of resources and consistent with overall social well being. This system does not always find the perfect balance between economy and safety, but it cannot stray too far from the sweet spot. It has proven itself in regulating high pressure steam and ocean transportation.

11. Implementing Underwriter Certification of Nuclear Power.

12. Market Based Regulation of Nuclear Power.

To the newcomers, I suggest reading those 12 posts in that order. I know it’s a lot to ask, but we are talking about the future of humanity here. More importantly, it gets you a seat in the choir.

Some of the other posts do add some important detail. In Table 1, I've graded them:

A. The A List. Must read if you are interested in solving the Gordian Knot.

B. Probably should read this piece when you have time.

C. Read if you have nothing better to do.

D. Do not waste your time.

In most cases, there is an eponymous PDF of the piece at gordianknotbook.com. The PDF's have the references properly expanded. You will also find the current version of the Flop book, Why Nuclear Power has been a Flop which goes into all of the above in excruciating detail. The book can be downloaded for free.

1. The solution to the resulting problems and screw ups is still more rigidly proscribed procedures, more detailed paperwork, more time consuming sign offs and approvals, and the downward spiral continues.