The quiet catastrophe in the French nuclear fleet

When a mega-earthquake and tsunami caused the unplanned and rapid decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi NPP, the world awoke to the dangers of an over-reliance on electricity generated from nuclear fission. There are unacceptable hazards involved in operating just one nuclear reactor, but when a nation, state or province relies on nuclear for the majority of its electricity (for example, South Korea, Ontario, Ukraine, France), it risks having a dangerous shortage of electricity during a nuclear reactor meltdown. The disaster causes not only the loss of the affected reactors, but it also causes a political crisis, and it forces a precautionary shutdown of all reactors until regulators can investigate whether the fatal flaw exists elsewhere in the nuclear fleet. But in fact a major meltdown disaster is not required to force a nuclearized state into this situation. The discovery of heretofore unknown risks, such as seismic fault lines, tsunami risk, threat of terrorism or war, could force regulators to shut down all reactors until the problem is resolved, if it can be resolved—and if one follows the logic of nuclear risks, they can’t be solved. A case in point is the situation occurring in France this season. The report that follows describes how the recent discovery of manufacturing defects in French nuclear power plants has forced the national regulator to shut down one third of the nuclear fleet as peak demand season approaches. During its period of nuclearization, France encouraged people to consume electricity, promoting electric heating while doing too little to promote conservation and efficiency. Now, on top of all the political and social turmoil France has to deal with, it faces a metaphorical meltdown of its nuclear industry as regulators take precautions to avoid a literal meltdown.

Towards a French “Nucleargate”?

by Benjamin Desssus and Bernard Laponche, Altereco+Plus, October 25, 2016

Translation by Dennis Riches of Vers un nucléogate français?

Recent weeks have revealed much about the actual state of the French nuclear power infrastructure.

It was known already that the reactor pressure vessel for the EPR in Flamanville was flawed in a way that made it unusable: the concentration of carbon in the vessel head and the vessel base made the steel susceptible to cracking during an instance of thermal shock. This evidently crucial issue for the future of the EPR in Flamanville is under consideration by the Autorité de sûreté nucléaire (ASN) which will release its diagnosis and prescription next March (2017).

18 Defective Reactors

However, in recent weeks we have also learned that this defect in manufacturing affects 18 reactors that are presently in service, either in the pressure vessels or in steam generators. The ASN has thus ordered a provisional shutdown of these reactors in order to diagnose the gravity of the situation. The order also halts the planned restart of the steam generator of one of the reactors at Fessenheim. At fault is the manufacturer Creusot, owned by Areva, and a Japanese manufacturer which may not have sent its best products to France.

A catastrophic situation

This is clearly a catastrophe at several levels. Firstly, almost one third of the nuclear fleet (parc nucléaire) is now stopped as winter approaches, which is 20% of total French production capacity. It is a conundrum for EDF (Électricité de France) which the government has tried to solve by renouncing its solemn commitment to establishing a floor price applicable to fossil fuel generating stations. This would have been too costly financially for the already weakened national enterprise (EDF) which has hastily restarted all the fossil fuel generating stations that it still possesses.

Furthermore, this discovery of defects in parts as important as reactor vessels, steam generators and pressurizers is all the more serious because they had been formally excluded from various hypothetical scenarios of possible accidents. These parts were excluded from consideration as “possible sources of rupture.” The discovery of these defects in fabrication casts doubt on the philosophical structure and the calculations that support judgments about the probability of major accidents occurring. What are these calculations worth if we find that serious and irreparable defects exist in the most critical parts that we had once assumed to be perfect?

Areva might have quietly falsified the required safety certifications

But there is worse to come. The ASN, concerned by this avalanche of discoveries, investigated Areva to verify whether hundreds of other parts conform to the required specifications. This led to a new surprise, the discovery of hundreds of “locked files” within which Areva might have quietly falsified the required safety certifications. This practice seems to be so common that it is hard to imagine that it is a matter of an isolated occurrence.

The unimaginable has occurred

Anomalies and falsifications of materials once supposed to be perfect: it’s all there. As we were told by Jacques Repussard in 2011, then general director of the Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire (IRSN), “We have to imagine the unimaginable.” With half of the French nuclear fleet in a state of degraded safety, we are in an unimagined situation, and it is very serious. Before these “discoveries,” the president of the ASN declared, “A major nuclear accident is possible anywhere.” In the present situation, it is more and more possible in France.

A parallel situation to dieselgate comes to mind

The comparison to dieselgate in Germany comes to mind: technical norms not respected on materials critical for safety, numerous falsified certificates in order to get approval from authorities. It’s all there, but with a crucial difference. This wasn’t like in Germany where the scandal occurred under the direction of a dictatorial head of a multinational corporation. In France it occurred in enterprises that were quasi-nationalized, led by the aegis of the technocratic elite who pride themselves in their honesty and devotion to the nation. And all this occurred with total impunity for the managers responsible.

The situation should make all citizens reflect on the limits of our democracy…

__________

For more on this story, see the Greenpeace report  

JAPANESE STEEL AT CENTER OF FRENCH NUCLEAR CRISIS – MAJOR QUESTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR JAPANESE REACTOR SAFETY (2016/10/25)

and the power industry magazine:
 
Lee Buchsbaum, "France's Nuclear Storm: Many Power Plants Down Due to Quality Concerns," Powermag, November 1, 2016.

What's Frightening? Trump with Nukes, or Anyone with Nukes?

(This post was updated on 2016/11/24)

If I can’t work up to you,

you’ll surely have to

work down to me someday.

-Bob Dylan, Narrow Way (2012)

Donald Trump’s critics have made much of the fact that he is too erratic, inexperienced and ignorant to be given the responsibility of holding “the nuclear football,” that briefcase of launch codes that is always in the presence of an American president. An article on Thinkprogress.org listed the terrifying things that Donald Trump has said about nuclear weapons, but his statements point more to the fact that nuclear arsenals are terrifying in themselves, regardless of who has the power to use them. The sum of all fears doesn't change that much when new leadership comes to power. Compared to some other world leaders who have had their fingers on the button, Trump may not be the most dangerous. Compared to a true believer who would want to go down in flames, or to the paranoia of Nixon in his final year, Trump may be a safer bet because he would prefer to cut a deal, or maximize the land in Russia that might be available for future Trump hotels and golf courses. In any case, the overall risk of nuclear war may depend largely on other factors besides who the final decider is. Furthermore, we should not forget the fundamental problem of having the nuclear launch decision left up to only one person. It doesn't have to be this way. It is a little-known fact that this was not always the norm in all nuclear-armed states:

In the United States, where the president has sole authority to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike, only the president has access to the football. The Soviet system, in contrast, divided that authority among three senior government leaders—the president, the minister of defense, and the chief of the general staff—who were required to respond together to authorize action. To make such a coordinated response possible, not only the president but also the other two senior leaders were issued chemodanchiki [the equivalent of the American “football” — the suitcase containing the nuclear launch codes.][1]

What follows are some of the points raised by the Thinkprogress article (in italics), with an explanation of why there is nothing new or shocking in what The Donald has had to say on the topic. Much of what he says is exactly what a naïve time traveler from the 18th century would say when told about the bizarre paradoxes that arise from possessing nuclear weapons. His terrifying statements are best understood as the ugly reflection of the actual nuclear doctrines that have been in place during the nuclear age.

1.Trump said he might use nuclear weapons and questioned why we would make them if we wouldn’t use them.

Most media outlets ignored the question he asked next, which made the logical anti-nuclear point: “If we can’t use them, why do we have them?” As a businessman, he seemed to be implying we should stop wasting money on them if they can’t be used.

2. Trump said he was open to nuking Europe because it’s a “big place.”

If we understand Europe to be the land between Portugal and the Urals, Europe has been a potential nuclear battlefield since the 1940s. For the 45 years of the Cold War, thousands of tactical nuclear weapons were in Europe. The INF Treaty of 1987 and subsequent policies abolished them, but the threat is still there now with NATO’s recent positioning of ABM units in Romania and Poland. Other NATO countries have US nuclear weapons, and Britain and France have their own. It is implicitly understood that these are all aimed primarily at Russia, for reasons that are never explained. The ideological enemy of communism is gone, but Russia has been resurrected as the primary strategic threat. Because of this, Russia has frantically tried to renew its arsenals and maintain parity over the last fifteen years. So Europe is and always has been a nuclear target. The basic logic applies: if you possess nuclear weapons, you are targeted for pre-emptive nuclear attack by adversaries. If we are not open to nuking Europe, why are nuclear weapons still there?

3. Trump said that “you want to be unpredictable” with nuclear weapons.

This is standard nuclear doctrine for every nation that has nuclear weapons. In August 2016, President Obama floated the idea of declaring a “no first strike” policy, but it was quickly shot down by almost all officials in his administration. China and India have promised no first use, but it’s a promise that could be readily broken. Afterwards, there would be no one left to give or receive an apology for the broken promise.

4. Trump said he wasn’t that worried about more countries getting nukes since “it’s not like, gee whiz, nobody has them.”

It’s hard to not concede that Trump has a point here. The continued possession of nuclear weapons by certain nations has been the greatest cause of nuclear proliferation. In addition, the Non-Proliferation Treaty has permitted signatories to pursue the development of nuclear energy, and every nuclear reactor produces fissile material. The UN’s record on non-proliferation is a patchy record of successes and failures, yet there has been no official international initiative to shut down uranium mining, and thus the nuclear industry, as a way of controlling proliferation.

5. Trump had no idea what the “nuclear triad” was.

At the Republican candidates debate in December 2015 only Marc Rubio knew what the triad was, and knowing about the triad wouldn’t necessarily make someone an expert or a reliable person to have a finger on the button. Most of the American public doesn’t know what the nuclear triad refers to, most government employees don’t know, journalists who laughed at Trump had to look it up, and most elected officials don’t know, either. Trump’s answer to the question about the triad was juvenile and incoherent, but then again it isn’t possible for the superpowers to make a rational argument as to why the lesser nuclear powers should disarm first, or smaller nations should not try to obtain their own deterrent force.

6. Trump said he’d be OK with a nuclear arms race in Asia.

India, Pakistan, China, Russia and North Korea have nuclear weapons. US submarines patrol the Western Pacific with nuclear-armed submarines. South Korea and Japan live under the American nuclear umbrella, so this makes them essentially nuclear-armed as well. Japan has a large stockpile of plutonium from its nuclear reactors that it could turn into bombs on short notice. If Trump “would be” OK with a nuclear arms race in Asia, he is mistaken only in not knowing that the international community already is OK with it.

7. Can I be honest with you? It [proliferation] is going to happen, anyway. It’s only a question of time. They’re going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely.

He is probably right here. This is the stark warning that the anti-nuclear movement has been repeating for decades. Proliferation will continue if the countries that have nuclear weapons don’t start to disarm. It is hard to predict what Trump would actually do in a crisis, based on his contradictory statements on many issues, but here he should get some credit for talking some plain common sense about nuclear proliferation. So far, Hillary Clinton’s only discussion of nuclear issues has been to denounce Trump as too dangerous to have his finger on the button. Otherwise, we have no idea whether she has serious ideas about moving forward with strategic arms reduction in the midst of a tense relationship with Russia, one that she seems eager to intensify.

The satirical Trump proposal below is a sarcastic way of pointing out that no political leaders anywhere want to discuss the toxic and expensive legacy of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. If we really understood what we have already done to the planet, in addition to what we might do, people might feel more urgency about shutting down the entire nuclear enterprise. The statement imagines in Trumpese language what Trump would say if he wanted Americans to worry about this issue as much as he wants them to get frightened about border security and foreigners.

If we have nukes, why can't we use them? And if we can't use our nukes, why do we have them? And let me tell you something about these nukes. They're expensive, and they've left a hell of a mess in this country. One hell of a mess, folks. A mess all down the ages, my friends, let me tell you. You probably don't want to know. Unbelievable. But I'm gonna do something about it. Only I can do it. It'll be a huge cleanup, folks. Yuge! Rocky Flats, that old dump outside of St. Louis, Hanford. All that radiation spilling into the Columbia River! And don't even get me started on the Nevada Test Site, all that fallout that came down on our beautiful casinos. Washington's been trying to clean it up for decades, but they can't. They can't. It's that simple. Only I can clean it up. And let me tell you how I'm gonna do it. The Russians and the Chinese with their communism! Because of them we had to build all those nukes to fight communism, so they're gonna pay. And believe me, they'll pay. We're gonna dig a hole--and nobody digs holes better than me, believe me--and they're gonna pay for it.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not an American citizen. I didn't vote in the American election. This is not an endorsement of Donald Trump, but I felt I had to acknowledge his powers of persuasion and the way his rhetorical style have connected with millions of people. If he were willing to focus Americans’ outrage on environmental crimes rather than racial discord, he would accomplish more in a day than I have done in five years with this blog, but then he would probably find a way to blame foreigners for the ecological damage. With all my highfalutin’ “fag talk” (as such polysyllabic talk was called in the film Idiocracy) I haven’t raised awareness as much as The Donald could do with this single imaginary Trumpesque statement on the legacy of the nuclear project begun in the 1940s. This year the voices of the dis-empowered and neglected are speaking up, whether they be those of “low-information” voters or the “basket of deplorables,” as Hillary Clinton referred to them. They are voicing the challenge to the coastal big city elites laid down in Bob Dylan’s Narrow Way: If I can’t work up to you, you’ll surely have to work down to me someday. 

For a more serious review of this topic, including both Donald Trump's and Hillary Clinton's handling of nuclear security questions, see Andrew Bacevich's excellent essay entitled The National Security Void.

Note

[1] Richard Rhodes, Twilight of the Bombs (Random House, 2010), p. 85.  

Idiocracy, nucleocracy

Donald Trump’s infamous campaign for president has coincided with the 10th anniversary of the crude satirical film Idiocracy, an event which prompted its co-writer Etan Cohen to comment on twitter “I never expected Idiocracy to become a documentary.” Indeed, some to the utterances of Donald Trump and his supporters rival the stunning idiocy portrayed in the film.

Mike Judge (director), Idiocracy, Twentieth Century Fox, 2006

The story begins with army private Joe Bauer who has been chosen for a special military project because he is perfectly average, having an IQ of exactly 100. Along with a female specimen, the army puts him to sleep for a year in a suspended animation experiment, but the program is shut down after he is put in the box, and he is forgotten. When his container falls from a garbage heap 500 years later and pops open, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world where all the intelligent work is done by machines and humans have gone through an extreme dumbing-down process. Everyone Joe encounters finds him to be suspiciously much too smart, talking way too fancy with his “fag talk.” But he eventually comes to the attention of the president, who is also a moron but just smart enough to realize that Joe might have an idea about how to make the crops grow again. They nourish the crops with sports drinks promoted by agribusiness, and Joe helps them figure out they should use water, “like they use in the toilet.” He’s the smartest person in the world.

The story’s resemblance to the Trump campaign has been picked up by numerous writers who have recently celebrated the virtues of the sleeper hit that went straight to DVD in 2006, after a short run in cinemas, and went on to earn millions of dollars for 20th Century Fox.

One commentary on Alternet took exception to the film’s suggestion that the dumbing-down of society was due to the declining frequency of genes for intelligence. The opening sequence shows a couple with high IQs explaining their reasons for delaying having children, and then failing to have children later when they eventually wanted them. This is contrasted with characters living in poverty who are breeding like rabbits, and thus the decline of civilization is put down to the reversal of the traditional rule of the survival of the fittest and the most intelligent.

However, if one listens carefully to the narration and dialog, a more sympathetic interpretation is possible. Genes for intelligence are never mentioned, and we could assume that the high-IQ couple became intelligent because of the social capital of their families and the society they grew up in. The theory of evolution includes the theory of cultural evolution that holds that those whose heritage is good education and a developed social consciousness will thrive and contribute to building a thriving society. Genes play only a small part in human potential.

The critique expressed by the film could be that the highly educated and intelligent have squandered their cultural capital through laziness and individualism, while those who have lost advantages have been left in ignorance to become slaves to their baser instincts. From this perspective, the story is not an endorsement of eugenics. It fits very well within leftist theory. When the perfectly average protagonist (Joe) thinks that his partner in the adventure (Rita), will have an opportunity to time travel back to the past, he tells her, "Go back. Tell people to read books. Tell people to stay in school. Tell people to use their brains, or something. I think maybe the world got like this because of people like me. I never did anything with my life." This point is clear by the end of the film when he concludes, very intelligently, that even the idiots in the idiocracy just have to use their brains and figure out how to solve their problems. It is a matter of communal effort and struggle, not natural endowment.

One of the most poignant, cutting and unfunny jokes in the story comes toward the end when Joe announces he wants to look for a time machine that he assumes might have been invented sometime before everything collapsed. He wants to go back and leave behind the friends he has saved from big agribusiness’ electrolyte drinks but...

Idiot 1: But we still got all these problems.

Joe Bauers: Look, you’re just going to have to solve them yourselves.

Idiot 2: What about the nuc… nucular reactor in Florida? It’s broke and leaky and something’s happening.

Idiot 1: I thought it was in Georgia.

Idiot 2: Georgia is in Florida, dumb ass.

Idiot 1: Hey, I know. Let’s put toilet water on it, huh? Like we did on the crops.

Idiocracy 1:14:50~

Until this point, the characters have been shown to be extremely ignorant of the civilization that preceded them. They think something called the UN (which they pronounce like the word prefix un) “un-nazied the world forever.” But the one thing they do know is that the “nucular” plant built in Florida 500 years ago is still a serious problem they need to deal with. This is only slightly funny because one thing the nuclear industry is seriously concerned with these days is the “loss of competence” within the industry.

As the nuclear industry seems to have no prospects for future growth, it cannot attract young people into nuclear careers. Furthermore, hundreds of nuclear plants in the Western world are to be decommissioned in the coming decades, but who will do this work and who is going to pay for it? There is consumer demand for the electricity produced by a power plant, and this makes it a viable business, but there is no consumer demand involved in cleanup operations. Finally, nuclear accident sites and nuclear waste repositories pose questions about how to inform people of the deep future about what we have left for them. We may easily laugh at the cretins in Idiocracy, but we in contemporary society have nothing to feel smug about. The handling of the Fukushima catastrophe has been pathetic, and recent headlines about “the nucular reactor in Florida” provide their own grim humor:

Scuba diver somehow survives being sucked into Florida nuclear power plant through pipe

Florida nuclear plant that sucked in scuba diver has violated law for a decade
"A Florida nuclear power plant that sucked a scuba diver through its unprotected cooling intake pipe is in ongoing violation of the Endangered Species Act... the plant’s intake system has for decades routinely captured, harmed and killed thousands of marine animals, most notably endangered and threatened species of sea turtle as well as manatees and other protected species."

Study confirms FPL nuclear plant canals leaking into Biscayne Bay
"According to a study released Monday by Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, water sampling in December and January found tritium levels up to 215 times higher than normal in ocean water."

Other sources:

David Lauchbaum, “Turkey Point Nuclear Plant in Hot Water,” Fission Stories #179, January 6, 2015.

David Lauchbaum, “Hurricane Andrew vs. Turkey Point,” Fission Stories #48, July 12, 2011.