Fukushima
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A failure of the main power line and a loss of backup power were at the heart of the second worst nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power generation (after Chernobyl)—a partial meltdown in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi (“Number One”) plant in Japan. That facility, located on Japan’s Pacific coast in northeastern Fukushima prefecture, was made up of six boiling-water reactors (BWRs) constructed between 1971 and 1979, three of which were operational and one of which was under maintenance, its fuel having been stored out of the core in the reactor’s spent fuel storage pool. A powerful earthquake shook all units at the plant, initiating an automatic shutdown, or scram. Immediately after the earthquake, all safety systems in each unit were operable, though a few were slightly damaged. However, less than one hour after the earthquake, a tsunami struck the shoreline where the reactor units were built. The tsunami reached heights much greater than the reactors were designed to withstand, and ultimately it cut off the main power supply to the facility and damaged the backup generators by flooding their housing structures. Although the reactors withstood both an earthquake and a tsunami beyond their design requirement, the prolonged power outage drained backup batteries incorporated into the emergency core-cooling system, which led to a loss of capability to remove decay heat. Despite the best efforts of the reactor operators and emergency responders, rising temperatures within each reactor’s core eventually caused a partial meltdown of the fuel rods, a fire in the storage reactor, explosions in the outer containment buildings (caused by a buildup of hydrogen gas), the release of radioactive steam into the air, and the leakage of radioactive water into the ocean. As workers struggled to cool and stabilize the three cores by pumping seawater and boric acid into them, government officials established a 30-km (18-mile) evacuation zone around the plant. Approximately one month after the initiating event, the reactor cores were stabilized, cracks in the foundations of the containment vessels were sealed, and irradiated cooling water began to be pumped to a storage building until it could be properly treated.
The Fukushima accident made it all too clear that another type of risk can arise from external events: earthquakes and tsunamis may not be two separate events but rather be two successive events in which an earthquake will cause structural damage to a reactor and will also initiate a tsunami. The risk associated with an earthquake of plausible magnitude is minimized by building plants away from faults and by making use of earthquake-resistant mechanical design and construction features. Furthermore, the addition of dikes and water barriers reduces the risk of damage by a tsunami. Added construction features such as water barriers must be able to withstand both an earthquake and a tsunami, as these are likely to be coupled events.
In contrast to the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents, which were largely blamed on staffing issues, the “weak link” in the Fukushima accident seemed upon immediate observation to be the physical plant itself rather than human error. However, because the plants were not designed to handle the natural disaster that took place, fault can be found with the design process, in a sense pointing out human error once again as the most failure-prone component in the nuclear industry.
Emergency response
Each regulating body that oversees the operations of a country’s nuclear power has its own methods for identifying and responding to emergency conditions. In the United States, the NRC has an emergency classification system that identifies four levels of severity in conditions at a nuclear power plant:
- Notification of unusual events. Potential degradation in the level of safety of the plant, but no release of radioactive material requiring off-site response or monitoring.
- Alert. Actual or potential substantial degradation in the level of safety of the plant, with a release of radioactive material from the plant expected.
- Site area emergency. Actual or likely major failures of plant functions needed for protection of the public, with radioactivity levels potentially above acceptable thresholds at the boundary of the power plant.
- General emergency. Actual or imminent substantial core damage or melting of reactor fuel with the potential for loss of containment integrity; radioactive material is released and may be above acceptable thresholds beyond the boundary of the power plant.
On a worldwide scale, the IAEA has developed the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), to be applied to any event occurring in the agency’s signatory states that is associated with nuclear facilities and with the transport or storage of nuclear materials and radiation sources. The INES offers a common event scale for all parties that interact with nuclear power or radiological sources in any part of the world. The scale includes seven independent event levels; the lower three are referred to as “incidents” and the upper four as “accidents.” A declaration of a specific level is determined by identifying specific criteria that have an impact on defense-in-depth of the nuclear power plant, radiological barriers and controls, and people and the environment. The seven levels and some of the important criteria are as follows:
- Anomaly. Minor problems with safety components, with significant defense-in-depth remaining.
- Incident. Significant contamination within the facility into an area not expected by design, with exposure of a worker in excess of the statutory annual limits.
- Serious incident. Severe contamination in an area not expected by design, with a nonlethal health effect such as a burn on a worker from radiation.
- Accident with local consequences. Fuel melt or damage to fuel resulting in more than 0.1 percent release of core inventory; release of significant quantities of radioactive material within an installation, with a high probability of significant public exposure and at least one death from radiation.
- Accident with wider consequences. Severe damage to reactor core; release of large quantities of radioactive material within an installation, with a high probability of significant public exposure and several deaths from radiation.
- Serious accident. Significant release of radioactive material likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures.
- Major accident. Major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures.
Under the INES, Three Mile Island is classified as Level 5, an accident with wider consequences, whereas both Fukushima and Chernobyl are Level 7, major accidents.
The nuclear fuel cycle
No discussion of nuclear power is complete without a brief exposition of the nuclear fuel cycle. The whole point of a reactor is, after all, to initiate and control the process of fission on a very large scale in nuclear fuel, and the low cost of fueling is the chief reason for the economic competitiveness of nuclear power. The principal steps of the fuel cycle include uranium mining and extraction from its ore (processing), uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication, loading and irradiation in the reactor (fuel management), unloading and cooling, reprocessing, waste packaging, and waste disposal.
The nuclear fuel cycle also is an integral step in the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons, and the technologies of enrichment and reprocessing in particular have been key factors in the proliferation of these weapons around the world. For this reason and also for a host of other political, environmental, and economic reasons, the various steps in the nuclear fuel cycle are closely regulated and frequently observed under terms of international treaties. Conflicts between some countries’ nuclear ambitions and various international conventions have sometimes generated great controversy.