Copyright 2000 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
The San
Francisco Chronicle
NOVEMBER 7, 2000, TUESDAY, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 2522 words
HEADLINE:
Diablo Canyon Quandary;
Plans for open-air storage of spent fuel rods
receive environmentalists' reluctant approval
BYLINE:
David Lazarus, Chronicle Staff Writer
BODY:
Bruce
Danowski, a technician at PG&E's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, balanced
atop a catwalk as he maneuvered a long mechanical arm through the brightly lit
pool.
If Danowski were to accidentally fall into the storage pool, said
his supervisor, Harold Dicer, "he would hardly get contaminated" near the
surface of the chemically treated 100-degree water.
But if Danowski's
heavy yellow coveralls were to cause him to sink to the fuel rods 23 feet below,
"it would be lethal," Dicer said with a calm detachment that comes from spending
nearly every day in the presence of highly radioactive materials.
Such
ease around deadly substances has become commonplace at Diablo Canyon -- for the
people who work there and for the activists who have reluctantly tried to effect
a peaceful co-existence with the controversial plant, the scene of huge protests
almost 20 years ago.
Nevertheless, Diablo Canyon has reached a
crossroads. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is negotiating a multimillion-dollar
settlement with state officials to end more than a decade of disputes over the
changes the plant has caused in the surrounding marine ecosystem. Meanwhile, the
utility is drawing plans to build an above-ground, open-air storage facility for
the plant's nuclear waste as room quickly runs out in storage pools.
With construction of a national repository for spent fuel rods entangled
in red tape, Diablo Canyon officials say, they may need to keep the plant's
radioactive waste right where it is, along a panoramic stretch of Central
California coastline, for possibly hundreds of years.
"There is
definitely a danger," said Klaus Schumann, a Green Party activist who serves on
the San Luis Obispo County Nuclear Waste Management Committee. "Each spent fuel
assembly contains the equivalent of about 10 Hiroshima bombs in terms of
radioactivity."
But Diablo Canyon workers insist that the potential
hazards have been exaggerated. "Most people don't understand radiation," said
Dave Oatley, the plant manager. "Once you understand it, understand the risks,
you're much more comfortable around it."
Not necessarily. A Chronicle
reporter found himself increasingly wary of the invisible rays as he donned
protective clothing and toured the inner workings of the plant, including a rare
look inside the reactor core beneath one of the 215-foot-high containment domes.
One of Diablo Canyon's two reactors was shut down for replacement of
fuel rods and routine maintenance. The monthlong closure is scheduled to end
today.
GOOD SAFETY RECORD
Diablo Canyon, which produces
electricity for more than 4 million homes in Northern and Central California,
has one of the best safety records in the nuclear power industry.
But
for newcomers, it is still unnerving to be surrounded by signs warning of
radiation exposure.
"It's just a matter of going slow," said Ken Bych,
containment coordinator for the shut-down reactor. "Like any radiological area,
you do things slowly and methodically. Planning is everything."
Bych,
like all other workers within what the plant calls its "radiological controls
area," wore yellow coveralls, special boots, two layers of gloves, a hood,
safety glasses, a red hard hat and two separate radiation-monitoring devices.
He watched intently as a huge crane gradually lowered a four-ton steel
cover into the containment pool and atop the gaping hole of the reactor core.
Once in place, the core would be drained for repairs.
The elaborate
housing for the core's fuel rods had been raised from the pool and stood near
one of the dome's 3-foot-thick concrete walls -- strong enough, one is told, to
withstand a direct impact from a commercial jetliner.
Workers did their
best to steer clear of the large apparatus. It was heavily radioactive from the
thousands of uranium-235 pellets it normally holds in place.
Bych said
he wasn't worried about the dose of radiation he was receiving even from a
distance of about 100 feet. He glanced down at the pool of still, blue water,
lit eerily from below like a Jacuzzi from hell.
"In these heavy
clothes," Bych observed, "drowning is by far the greatest concern. You fall in
there, you're going straight down."
Needless to say, there are no
lifeguards on hand to rescue anyone who goes under, and no other worker would
dare jump in to lend a hand. You would be on your own.
No one has yet
suffered such a grim fate.
For most people, though, concerns about
Diablo Canyon's safety stem not from dangers within the plant but what is
happening -- or could happen in a worst-case scenario -- on the outside.
1981 PROTEST
More than 10,000 protesters converged on the
plant's gate in 1981 to try to prevent fuel rods from being loaded into the two
reactor cores. They said a major earthquake in the seismically active area could
lead to a catastrophe.
The nuclear power plant is surrounded by a
10-mile "exclusion zone" of rolling hills and coastline. It employs about 1,300
people and is protected by a variety of security measures, including guards
carrying semiautomatic rifles.
Today, environmentalists are focused
mainly on the 2.5 billion gallons of water discharged from the plant each day
directly into the sea.
From the bluff overlooking the concrete discharge
conduit, a river of white foam can be seen pouring into Diablo Cove. The
discharged water, used to cool the nuclear reactor, is about 20 degrees warmer
than average ocean temperatures.
This has diminished the presence of
some marine life -- certain types of fish and kelp -- that proliferate elsewhere
along the Central California coast but has attracted others that normally would
only be found farther south.
Seals, otters and the occasional whale
still can be seen offshore from the power plant. But the number of black abalone
in the cove has sharply declined as a result of a fatal disease called withering
syndrome, which might be exacerbated by the warmer water.
No one
disputes that the heated discharge has changed the ecosystem of the adjacent
coast. But a debate rages over whether the changes are within limits set when
the plant was granted its first operating license two decades ago.
The
Regional Water Quality Control Board said in a recent report that the discharge
has harmed the environment by killing fish larvae and driving away sea life
accustomed to colder water.
However, PG&E continues to insist that
such changes are only natural. "To expect everything to stay the same over 20
years is not realistic," said Oatley, the plant manager. "Ecology changes."
Kathy DiPeri, a member of Mothers for Peace, a San Luis Obispo
anti-nuclear group, challenged this perspective. "The damage that has been done
is beyond what was anticipated," she said. "They say this is natural. It's not.
A number of species out there are now nonexistent."
PG&E has sought
to defuse the situation by offering to pay $4.5 million to fund
a variety of environmental projects and to conserve about six miles of
coastline.
"Our belief is that this is a difference of opinion," said
Greg Rueger, PG&E's senior vice president in charge of nuclear power. "But
there is a value to us in resolving this difference and moving on."
The
settlement offer is still being reviewed by the water board. Roger Briggs, the
board's central coast executive officer, said a counteroffer could be presented
to the utility within weeks. A final settlement may not be reached for months,
he said.
OPEN-AIR STORAGE PLANS
In the meantime, PG&E is
moving ahead with another project that, for a change, has received the backing
of environmentalists. The proposed open-air storage site for spent fuel rods has
won reluctant support from activists -- but not because they are thrilled by
nuclear waste being preserved in the vicinity for possibly hundreds of years.
Rather, they favor the plan because if there's anything
environmentalists hate more than storing nuclear waste, it's transporting
nuclear waste. By far, the greatest likelihood of an accident, sabotage or
terrorist attack would be when spent fuel is in motion.
A 1985 U.S.
Department of Energy report concluded that only a small leak of radioactive
material during shipment "would be sufficient to contaminate a 42-square-mile
area." A similar 1995 report from the Nevada Agency for NuclearProjects noted
that exposure to accidentally leaked waste "can lead to cancer,
radiation-induced disease and death."
"The best way to deal with the
problem is to stop producing nuclear waste," said Schumann of the county nuclear
waste management committee. "But the way things are, dry storage at the site is
the least unsafe way to go."
As it stands, Diablo Canyon will run out of
room in its two storage pools by 2006. Each pool contains about 800 fuel
assemblies. Each assembly contains 64 fuel rods, and each rod contains hundreds
of uranium pellets.
The two reactors at the plant produce about 110
assemblies of spent fuel rods each year and will continue to do so for the life
of the plant, or another 25 years.
"At a minimum, we'd probably have to
keep the assemblies on-site until 2026 before they are moved off," said Rueger,
PG&E's senior vice president. "But it could be more than 100 years."
The reason is that a proposed nuclear-waste repository to be built at
Yucca Mountain, Nev. -- the world's first permanent burial
ground for radioactive materials -- has run into a firestorm of opposition from
environmentalists and Nevada residents.
Opponents say the proposed site
could leak radioactive waste into the water table, is dangerously close to two
seismic fault lines and almost inevitably would lead to accidents as more than
70,000 metric tons of waste is shipped by road and rail from the 72 commercial
nuclear power plants nationwide.
Even so, the Department of Energy,
which already has spent about $3.5 billion studying the
Yucca Mountain site, is expected to make a final recommendation
in December.
Once sealed within, canisters of spent nuclear fuel would
be left for future generations to worry about -- perhaps as long as 10,000 years
in the future, when the waste will have lost most of its radioactivity.
However, even if Yucca Mountain receives a green light
from the government, it will not be ready to receive spent fuel rods before 2010
at the earliest. For Diablo Canyon, as at many other nuclear power plants, this
presents a problem.
"The utilities have taken a position that you really
can't rely on the government," said Jearl Strickland, Diablo Canyon's program
manager for used fuel.
For this reason, he said work is proceeding on
constructing a storage facility on a hillside above the plant that would hold
spent rods in helium-filled, 125-ton containers for as long as necessary.
"It would be a passive cooling system," Strickland said. "The canisters
just sit there and the radioactivity breaks down over time.
"The federal
government, hopefully within the next 200 years, will be in a position to assume
ownership," he added.
Residents of surrounding communities know that is
an awfully long time to be storing nuclear waste in their backyard. But a
consensus is emerging that long-term storage at the site would be safer than
shipping spent rods fresh out of the reactor.
LONG-TERM STORAGE
PG&E is hoping to build a similar long-term storage facility for 390
fuel assemblies at the utility's Humboldt Bay nuclear power plant, which was
shut down in 1976. The spent rods are now in a pool within a locked building at
the site, four miles south of Eureka and near several earthquake fault lines.
All this hand-wringing over what to do with spent fuel rods underlines
the unique challenge of nuclear power. Although proponents, including senior
PG&E executives, are quick to stress that nuclear energy produces none of
the airborne contaminants common to coal-fired plants, there is that
not-inconsiderable problem of storing the industry's waste for thousands of
years to come.
Diablo Canyon workers appear generally unconcerned about
how the product of their labors will affect future civilizations. They have
enough on their minds safeguarding their own well-being.
"From a
scientific standpoint, there's no evidence that exposure to low doses of
radiation poses a health hazard," insisted Mark Somerville, the plant's senior
radiation protection engineer.
But keeping the doses low is the tricky
part. At Diablo Canyon, the work motto, posted on walls throughout the facility,
is "ALARA" -- as in, "as low as reasonably achievable."
Exposure to
radiation is measured in millirems. The average American is dosed with about 300
millirems a year in the form of background radiation from cosmic rays and
natural radiation in soil, rocks and water. A similar amount may be received
from X-rays and other medical treatments.
Nuclear plant workers face
radiation exposure beyond these levels. PG&E limits on-the-job exposure to
2,000 millirems a year, well below the federal government's prescribed annual
limit of 5,000 millirems. In fact, PG&E says its average Diablo Canyon
employee receives just 185 millirems in extra radiation each year.
One
reason for such a relatively low-dose rate is the extensive measures taken in
the plant to monitor exposure. Workers in high-radiation areas have their
dosages constantly measured by remote monitors and are instructed by radio to
back off whenever the exposure level begins to climb suddenly.
"We're in
total control of what dose you're getting," said Marty Wright, a radiation
protection technician tracking workers' dosages on a bank of computer screens.
In the event of contamination, a worker's clothes will be shipped to a
hazardous-materials facility, where they will be stored for 35 years, until safe
for disposal. The worker himself -- the vast majority of Diablo Canyon employees
are male -- will simply wipe his skin with a moist towel.
The scene upon
entering a radiological controls area is decidedly casual as workers in T-shirts
and shorts don the various layers of protective clothing required for work
around radiation.
Were it not for the yellow-and-magenta radiation signs
everywhere, the scene would resemble a gym locker room.
That is, until
you are sealed within an air lock and emerge inside the reactor's soaring
containment dome. Lead shields are in place to protect workers from the most
radioactive materials, and so-called cold areas are designated where a worker
might stop to rest every now and then.
Loitering near the core is
generally ill advised; workers are instructed by signs to keep moving.
After about an hour beneath the dome, a visiting reporter checked his
monitoring device and found that he had been exposed to 3 millirems of
radiation.
PG&E officials encouraged him to end his visit to the
reactor core, even though he was still well within the 10 millirems they had
budgeted for the day.
"You'd get a lot more from a chest X-ray," said
Somerville, the radiation protection engineer. "This is safe."
The heavy
air-lock door clanged shut behind him.
E-mail David Lazarus at
dlazarus@sfchronicle.com.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO (6), (1-2)
Above: Pat Johnson was crane walker in the reactor area (at left) at the Diablo
Canyon nuclear plant. Workers within a "radiological controls area" wear yellow
coveralls, special boots, two layers of gloves, a hood, safety glasses, a red
hard hat and two monitoring devices. / Photos by VINCE MAGGIORA/The Chronicle,
(3) The power plant includes two reactors. An open-air storage site for spent
fuel rods has been proposed., (4) Control room workers checked the reactor
coolant system. Water is used to cool the nuclear reactor., (5-6) Above: Tim
Daley, Bruce Danowski and Harold Dicer inspected the fuel rods in the storage
pool. At left: Security guards at the nuclear plant carry semiautomatic rifles.
/ Photos by Vince Maggiora/The Chronicle
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