Nuclear Energy

In an article published in The Nation aptly titled “Zombie Nuke Plants”, Christian Parenti,
the well-known American investigative journalist, author, and fellow at the Nation Institute, gives
the example of the lifetime extension given to the Oyster Creek reactor located in New Jersey to
illustrate this lax approach of the NRC. The Oyster Creek reactor is one of the oldest plants in the
USA and was scheduled to be shut down in 2009. But before that could happen, the NRC relicensed
it on April 8, 2009, extending its life span by twenty years. Just seven days after that, workers at the
plant found an ongoing radioactive leak of tritium-polluted water. Four months later, in August,
workers found another tritium leak coming from a pipe buried in a concrete wall. The second leak
was spilling about 25,000 litres a day and contained 500 times the acceptable level of radiation for
drinking water. Obviously, radiation had made the pipe brittle, and so it had leaked. Which means
that the pipe was old. But the licensing paperwork claimed that the pipe had been replaced! How
many other mislabelled, brittle, old components remain in the plant's guts is difficult to say. Parenti
writes: “Unfortunately, stories like this are all too common: crumbling, leaky, accident-prone old
nuclear plants, shrouded in secrecy and subject to lax maintenance, are getting relicensed all over
the country.” clxvi
5. Are Generation-III Reactors Safer?
As we have discussed in Chapter 1, the bottom fell out of the nuclear reactor manufacturing
industry in the USA and Europe after the Chernobyl accident. Not only did new reactor construction
ground to a halt, plants ordered were also cancelled. Over the last decade, in a desperate bid to
resuscitate itself, the Western nuclear reactor manufacturing industry has launched a huge
propaganda offensive to usher in a “nuclear renaissance”. One of the important arguments it is
making is that it has drawn lessons from the Chernobyl accident and developed a new generation of
nuclear power plant designs which are much safer than the older designs.
The nuclear industry describes its evolution in terms of 'Generations'. Generation-I reactors
were developed in the 1950s-60s, and are primitive by today's standards. The majority of the
reactors currently operating in 31 countries around the world are Generation-II reactors.
The latest generation of reactors, the Generation-III reactors or “advanced reactors”, was
developed in the 1990s, following the Chernobyl accident. Within the Generation III, there is now
also a Generation III+ design, but the distinction between them is unclear. clxvii The World Nuclear
Association claims that these reactors are safer, with reduced possibility of core melt accidents. The
two European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) under construction in Western Europe – the first
reactors to be constructed anywhere in the USA, Canada and Western Europe in the last three
decades (excluding the Civaux-2 reactor in France which was constructed in the 1990s) – belong to
this category. The EPR is supposed to be one of the most “advanced” designs, having an improved
safety level (in particular, the probability of a severe accident is reduced by a factor of ten), and it
also has features to mitigate effects of severe accidents. clxviii
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