Facile bias, dressed up as news and presented by a global mainstream news organization, always annoys me. Here is a perfect example, courtesy of the Associated Press. It is titled “US nuke regulators weaken safety rules.” Obviously, the slant of the piece is clear from the get-go. The writer wants you to believe that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is letting unsafe nuclear plants operate unhindered.
The article consists of a long litany of claimed instances of neglected component maintenance through the history of civilian nuclear power in the U.S. Through this history, components like pumps, valves, and pipes have indeed worn out and been replaced. In compliance with NRC requirements, nuclear utilities reported these instances to the NRC. The NRC publishes them, which is how AP came to know about them in the first place. The AP article is based on these reports.
In the article, component failures are categorized and presented so as to give the impression that nobody in the industry or at the NRC really cares whether the components are broken or wearing out. Somehow, critical systems like steam generators—which must work perfectly or the plant cannot generate electricity—continue to work even though, as the article says, the tubes containing pressurized heated water from the reactor core can wear out.
If critical components like steam generators keep breaking down and nobody cares, how then is it possible that the U.S. civilian nuclear reactor fleet continues to provide the most reliable electricity in the country?
The U.S. Energy Information Administration publishes data on generator capacity factors, which are the measure of efficiency over time; nuclear ranked by far the highest in 2009. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobby group, nuclear capacity factors have been trending up since the 1980s.
So how is it possible that the industry keeps posting these industry-leading performance numbers with a record of maintenance that is as shoddy as the AP article claims?
Let me propose a radical new way of viewing this maintenance record:
The U.S. nuclear power industry has posted such exceptionally high performance numbers because of scrupulous maintenance, not in spite of it.
The AP writer is trying to give the impression that maintenance records indicate fundamental failure. In fact, they indicate that maintenance has been done. The aircraft that carry millions of passengers every year also undergo constant maintenance; as in the nuclear industry, this maintenance is scrupulously recorded and reported to the aviation regulator. Do those maintenance records prove that civil aviation is unsafe?
To put the issue in another way: would your 10-year-old car run better if you just pretended that you changed the oil or had brakes and spark plugs checked? Or would it run better if you actually had the oil changed and the other parts checked?
The AP article is clearly biased, and appears to be an attempt to play down an excellent industry-wide performance and safety record—more to the point, to use facile rhetorical tricks to make an industry strength look like a glaring weakness.
And why would the AP want to do this? The U.S., like many countries, is grappling with the question of how to replace ageing power generation equipment in light of growing public concern over emissions of carbon dioixide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas. There is a major business competition occurring all across the developed world, over which fuel will power the new generators that replace the old ones.
There are three types of power generators that can replace the old ones: coal, natural gas, and nuclear.
In the context of public concern over CO2, coal-fired power generation is decidedly unpopular: it puts between 900 and 1000 grams of CO2 into the air for every kilowatt-hour it generates.
Natural gas, at its most efficient, dumps between 300 and 500 grams of CO2 per kWh.
Nuclear of course produces zero grams per kWh. Nuclear would be the natural choice were it not for public fears over safety.
Now, are those fears warranted? In the 60+ year history of civilian nuclear power across the countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), two individuals have died as the result of nuclear processes. (An OECD report puts that number at zero; an AP report says two workers died in a 1999 accident at the Tokaimura plant in Japan.)
The OECD report, on page 35, compares fatalities in hydro, fossil, and nuclear energy plants between 1969 and 2000. As you can see, coal, oil, natural gas, and liquefied petroleum gas (propane) were by far the deadliest forms of generation: their casualties ranged from 1,043 (natural gas) to 3,713 (oil). Nuclear was pure goose-eggs: zero accidents and of course zero fatalities.
So how is it that nuclear is perceived by the public as unsafe?
Well, if you say something often enough and loud enough, people will eventually begin to believe it. And if “you” are a global news organization like AP, then your claims get extra heft: not only do you have global reach but you have the power of the printed word. So, if you decided to misuse that power, you can influence the debate any way you want.
If AP cared at all about human safety, it might address the actual safety record in the energy sector. Instead, AP has decided to lend its considerable rhetorical power to helping out nuclear’s competitors in the power generation competition across the developed world.
In an attempt to cover up his bias, the AP reporter described one of his sources for the story, the Union of Concerned Scientists, in this way:
“… the Union of Concerned Scientists, which does not oppose nuclear power…”
Anybody who has ever read anything published by the UCS knows what a joke that statement is. All that is missing is the laugh track. I have therefore provided one. Just click on the link above.