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***Please
see the action alert at the bottom of this release!***
NEWS RELEASE
August 20, 2003
Contact: Jim Warren
919-416-5077
Chance of Nuclear Accident 34% at U.S. Plants
Scientists show risk exists at NC plants and cite
regulators’ negligence
DURHAM, NC – “According to government reports, the odds that
one of the nation’s nuclear power reactors will have a serious accident in
the next three years is about 1 in 3,” begins a report released today by the
Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety
engineer at UCS wrote the brief, and points out that the US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) identified the dangerous deficiency in 1996 but
will not order repairs until 2007.
“A decade to solve a single safety problem affecting 68 pressure water
reactors. The absurdity of this pace is evident,” said Lochbaum.
“The NRC’s priority is on the financial health of the nuclear
industry, not on public safety.”
The UCS report, entitled “Pressurized Water Reactor Containment Sump
Failure,” lists three North Carolina reactors, and two more just across the
South Carolina line near Charlotte, as among the at-risk facilities.
Included are Progress Energy’s Shearon Harris near Raleigh, and Duke
Energy’s McGuire and Catawba plants. Harris has been the subject of much
concern, with eight system failures in the past four months, including one
last Sunday.
Lochbaum explains that a loss of cooling through a valve failure, or a hole
in a reactor or its piping, would cause high-pressured water to escape into
the reactor building, triggering safety systems, including back-up cooling.
But the 2,200 psi water would act as a sandblaster, loosening paint flakes
and other residues that can then clog a fine-filtered drain, called a
containment sump, in the building’s floor. This would block recirculation
of emergency cooling water in up to 77% percent of such accidents, leading
to a 1 in 3 chance of a radiological emergency, based on NRC studies.
North Carolina public interest group NC WARN today insisted that state
attorney general Roy Cooper must order Progress and Duke to immediately
correct the sump deficiency. The sump problem was corrected by a Ohio
utility on its own last year.
Lochbaum points out that the NRC approved license extensions for 12 nuclear
plants in only three years. He and NC WARN are also urging Congressional
action on the NRC.
“Mr. Cooper is the only person with clear state authority to intervene
immediately with these corporations – Duke and Progress,” said Stan
Goff of NC WARN today. “It is his job to act in our interests,
especially when the federal NRC has proven unwilling to put public safety
before corporate profits. Attorney General Roy Cooper needs to step into
the void right now and order this problem corrected, not wait until this
becomes tragic international front page news.”
“This is a problem the industry can fix now,” added Goff.
“Not
to do so, especially with such a plagued pressure water reactor as Harris,
leaves us facing a possible China Syndrome.”
See the UCS report at www.ucsusa.org
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