The environment thread

[StrangeSox]

How so?

[Balta1701]

How so?

The world of the NRC plant regulation and approval is one where neither side is willing to sit down and do the math. The NRC put out a report in the late 70's saying that the chances of a meltdown at a U.S. reactor were well less than 1%. A few weeks later, 3 mile island happened. Since then, the NRC has not put out any statement evaluating the actual likelihood of a reactor meltdown in the U.S.

 

Meanwhile, on the other side you have a group like Greenpeace, who focuses (in part correctly) on the possible level of exposure...that's the "insurance" side if you will, and it's a reason why no one would operate a nuclear plant without an explicit government guarantee..you're not going to own something if you'll face liability if 100k people wind up dead.

 

What we get are industry-based estimates of the likelihood of a meltdown given the NRC requirements. However, first of all, those estimates are always produced by the people operating/building the reactors; they're not independent. Secondly, none of them take into account things like combinations of natural disasters, reduced regulation for maintenance, and the likelihood of engineering issues that appear with age. We've been doing exactly that for the last few decades; cutting back on regulation/inspections because they cost taxpayer dollars, and pushing plants longer than they were originally planned to operate.

[StrangeSox]

Balta, as someone who works in the industry, I can say that it's the exact opposite of what you're claiming there wrt to regulations. NRC regulations have gotten increasingly strict in just about all areas of plant operation over the last decade or so, and the approval process for uprating power or extending plant licenses isn't easy, cheap or taking shortcuts. Absolutely no one wants to be left holding the "you didn't do enough" ball in the event of a nuclear disaster. Plants are spending millions every year to replace or upgrade existing equipment to meet increasingly tighter standards. Sites have resident NRC inspectors who work at that specific site full-time. Inspections have increased in frequency over time, not decreased.

 

Aging plant equipment is a problem--that's why you see the tritium leaks at Clinton and Vermont Yankee. As for evaluation of plant equipment, any new piece of equipment that gets installed on a plant is structurally evaluated for a wide variety of load factors that include seismic conditions. Just replacing a junction box requires a ridiculous mount of planning and a 4" think binder. I think, given what's happened in Japan, the NRC and the industry need to take a look at their emergency plant operation plans to check their assumptions and see how to prevent a similar loss-of-power situation. But it's not like the NRC is just turning a blind eye to egregious violations.

 

I'd still like to see your statistics showing that we're "overdue" for a catastrophic meltdown worse than TMI (where maybe one person died of cancer decades later). Oh, and anything from Greenpeace about nuclear power I immediately ignore because they still hype s*** like "the American Chernobyl?!?!?!"

Edited March 12, 2011 by StrangeSox

[lostfan]

SS you work in DoE?

[Balta1701]

Aging plant equipment is a problem--that's why you see the tritium leaks at Clinton and Vermont Yankee. As for evaluation of plant equipment, any new piece of equipment that gets installed on a plant is structurally evaluated for a wide variety of load factors that include seismic conditions. Just replacing a junction box requires a ridiculous mount of planning and a 4" think binder. I think, given what's happened in Japan, the NRC and the industry need to take a look at their emergency plant operation plans to check their assumptions and see how to prevent a similar loss-of-power situation. But it's not like the NRC is just turning a blind eye to egregious violations.

 

I'd still like to see your statistics showing that we're "overdue" for a catastrophic meltdown worse than TMI (where maybe one person died of cancer decades later). Oh, and anything from Greenpeace about nuclear power I immediately ignore because they still hype s*** like "the American Chernobyl?!?!?!"

First of all, I'd say that the things going on at those plants you cite really strongly suggest that the NRC hasn't done its job. The best group I'm going to be able to cite on that matter is the UCS....I think you and I can both agree that this is a case where there is a lot of junk tossed out by people.

 

Here's a USA Today version with some basic numbers.

There has been no meltdown of a reactor in the USA since the incident at Three Mile Island, which led to no deaths or identifiable injuries from radiation exposure but resulted in the release of some radiation from the plant.

 

However, since 1979, U.S. nuclear plants have had to shut down 46 times for a year or more, in most cases to fix equipment problems that accumulated over time and that regulators should have ordered repaired earlier, according to the UCS, which compiled the data from the NRC and other research. And the number of equipment failings that increase the risk of an accident is up since 2001, compared with the previous five-year period, NRC figures show.

 

The UCS says incidents such as occasional failures of pumps that cool the nuclear reactor core in an emergency eventually could prove disastrous if they coincide with other low-probability events, such as coolant leakages from the core.

 

"The track record on existing reactors leaves much to be desired, and until you fix that problem, it's going to carry over to new reactors," says David Lochbaum, director of UCS' nuclear safety project.

 

The NRC and the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the industry's trade group, say just one incident since Three Mile Island — a water leak at the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio in 2002 — has come close to threatening communities near any plant.

 

The NRC says that in the episode involving the sleeping guards at Peach Bottom, it didn't act sooner because it couldn't substantiate the claims with Exelon (EXC), the plant's operator. At Indian Point, Entergy (ETR) says its plan to install backup power for the sirens has been delayed by technical hurdles and the need to get permits from dozens of towns, counties and state offices.

The 2002 case is of course the case-study from recent years...if the NRC had actually been doing appropriate and required inspection levels, they should have caught that. The company should have reported it as well. But neither side did its job, and it wound up being a potential serious threat to the plant if it wasn't dealt with at the time. Add in, of course, significant budget cuts; which are, once again, on the list for this year.

Richards notes that Davis-Besse was the last plant to be shuttered for at least a year and that similar safety problems have decreased. Plants were shut down an average of 1.5% of the time because of safety lapses in 2006, down from 10% in 1997, NRC figures show.

 

NRC credits a more precise oversight system, launched in 2000, that increases inspections at poorly performing plants. However, one key safety measure — of problems that the NRC says increase the annual risk of a meltdown from an average of 1 in 17,000 to up to 1 in 1,000 — has doubled the past six years to an average of 18 a year.

 

There have been 337 such "precursors" since 1988, including failures of pumps that supply water to reactors in a crisis, the NRC says. Each plant's emergency cooling system typically has several backups, such as pumps or power generators.

 

....

Lochbaum says that such explanations by the NRC do not ease his concerns about plants' safety. He blames the increasing "precursors" on scaled-back inspections by the NRC and plant owners.

 

From 1993 to 2000, routine NRC inspection hours declined by 20%, partly because of budget constraints, the NRC acknowledges.

The report finds that:

1. The United States has strong nuclear power safety

standards, but serious safety problems continue

to arise at U.S. nuclear power plants because

the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is not

adequately enforcing the existing standards. The

NRC’s poor safety culture is the biggest barrier

to consistently effective oversight, and Congress

should require the NRC to bring in managers from

outside the agency to rectify this problem.

Adding in one more...the 2003 MIT study predicted that if nuclear power became a much larger share of our electric generation capacity, then during the lifetime of the reactors, approximately 4 core-meltdowns were anticipated in this country. Effectively, that's an estimate of 1.33 core-meltdowns during each 30-40 year block at current domestic production levels. It's been >30 years. And that was a fairly positive study towards the potential risks.

[StrangeSox]

SS you work in DoE?

 

Nope.

 

We do work for DoE and the utilities though.

Edited March 13, 2011 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

FWIW the safety culture at some plants is ridiculous. We get "safety briefings" when we have conference calls with them.

 

I'll read through that report you provided more closely later, but right off the bat I can say that security regulations have been stepped up substantially since 2007 (and it's 1000% different than pre-9/11). Plants undergo pretty stringent security drills and the NRC comes down hard on them if there's any deficiencies. In the section on security, they flip back and forth. On one hand they lament that the DBT doesn't cover aircraft strikes, but then also assert that the federal government should be responsible to protect from that. And, really, how could a plant security force be expected to stop or prevent an airstrike or a 9/11-style attack? It's an unreasonable criticism of the NRC's basis for the DBT. Security regulations have only gotten tighter since 2007 as well, and sites now need better protection for their dry spent fuel storage.

 

It's not perfect. Some parts of the DBT are a little unrealistic in favor of the plants, but the NRC also has final say over any claim or interpretation and doesn't even have to prove they are physically capable of some methods of sabotage or infiltration.

 

[StrangeSox]

Ok, I'm going to focus on the security aspects of the UCS report since that's what I know best. I've found that section to be less than convincing for several reasons.

 

Their introduction to that section is all over the place. They start out by rightly placing the emphasis on "well-trained terrorists" physically entering the plant to sabotage equipment and induce a meltdown. They give some doom-and-gloom about what would happen at Indian Point based on a study by one of the co-authors but neglect to point out that the 44k was the absolute worst possible condition and that the original report contains much lower numbers. The report also simply assumed a large release of radiation but provided no mechanism and, of course, used the scare-headline complete with reference to Chernobyl. So, right off the bat, warning signs of "bias!" are flashing out at me. In one of the concluding paragraphs, they abruptly switch from a group of well-trained terrorists physically entering the plant to a 9/11-style attack without explanation. The concluding introductory paragraph is simply wrong for reasons I will point out later.

 

The next section is, like the previous paragraph, simply not true. Plant physical security and now cyber security are both tightly and increasingly regulated and routinely tested and inspected. Nuclear facility security is the most heavily regulated security in the world. Plants around the country are spending millions of dollars to significantly upgrade their security plans. Some are more pro-active than others, going above and beyond the minimum requirements. The idea that the NRC doesn't require emergency plants for sabotage attacks is misleading--the goal of a sabotage is to cause a plant failure, for which there are emergency plans. You have a plan for loss of coolant, and it doesn't matter if that's because the pumps just broke or they were blown up.

 

The spent fuel storage is subject to the same security requirements of the rest of the plant. If they can adequately protect the reactor building or other essential equipment, they can protect the spent fuel storage. Dry cask storage security regulations have also been increased recently beyond what this report recommended.

 

For the next section regarding the DBT and FOF exercises, I'll simply point to the authors' own words: the DBT is withheld from public disclosure. They do not what it is or how it is compiled or how security drills and inspections are run. On that point alone, they have no basis to question it. Furthermore, what is their expertise that enables them to assess the effectiveness of the DBT? Do they have a background in special forces operations, counter-terrorism or other intelligence operations? Also, Wackenhut does not supply security for "nearly half," unless 1/4 is "nearly half." Aside from a vague reference to one particular incident, they have not shown the conflict-of-interest to be credible. I'll quote part of the summary of the GAO report they keep harping on and appear to distort:

 

NRC revised the DBT for nuclear power plants using a generally logical and well-defined process in which trained threat assessment staff made recommendations for changes based on an analysis of demonstrated terrorist capabilities. The process resulted in a DBT requiring plants to defend against a larger terrorist threat, including a larger number of attackers, a refined and expanded list of weapons, and an increase in the maximum size of a vehicle bomb. Key elements of the revised DBT, such as the number of attackers, generally correspond to the NRC threat assessment staff's original recommendations, but other important elements do not. For example, the NRC staff made changes to some recommendations after obtaining feedback from stakeholders, including the nuclear industry, which objected to certain proposed changes such as the inclusion of certain weapons. NRC officials said the changes resulted from further analysis of intelligence information. Nevertheless, GAO found that the process used to obtain stakeholder feedback created the appearance that changes were made based on what the industry considered reasonable and feasible to defend against rather than on an assessment of the terrorist threat itself. Nuclear power plants made substantial security improvements in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks and the revised DBT, including security barriers and detection equipment, new protective strategies, and additional security officers.

 

The GAO reports that the process gave the appearance that changes were made at the request of industry, not a finding of fact. And given the nature of what was being studied, the full report is withheld from public disclosure. So again, this group is cherry-picking information from an incomplete report about situations they do not have knowledge of and have no background expertise in.

 

Now, that said, they do raise some legitimate concerns in both the security section and throughout the rest of the document. I think it's important to have well-informed, knowledgeable (read: not Greenpeace) challenges to the NRC and the industry. But, given the inaccuracies in the report and that it's significantly dated with respect to regulation changes since 2006-2007, I think it falls short.

[StrangeSox]

For some reason Appendix 6, which details the methodology for MIT's study indicating 3-4 core damage incidents isn't included in the online version, so I can't really see what their "current technology" assumptions are.

 

Thought of something else today--what's the sample size of the MIT group's data for core damage frequency? One incident, and the report is 8 years old now. So the frequency will have gone down significantly with 8 years of safe operation for something like 100 reactors around the country.

Edited March 14, 2011 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

An article pointing out some of the differences between Japan's current situation and Chernobyl before Greenpeace runs with i

 

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News...key-differences

[Balta1701]

I have a little more time now, so it's manifesto time.

 

When I look at the nuclear industry, my biggest critique is that its an industry that only works when communism works.

 

For a nation to have a functioning nuclear industry, you need the nuclear industry to be perfectly willing to accept criticism and, to first order, never ever fight against a charge/complaint from the government. Nuclear plants are highly complex engineered systems. If history has taught us anything about engineering, it's that eventually, things always go wrong in ways we can't anticipate. If its taught us one more thing, every time there's a critical failure, its because some rule wasn't enforced correctly, and that lack of enforcement combined with an unexpected event to produce a disaster.

 

Put a nuclear energy system into an ideal political environment and it might work, but you need scenarios that are fundamentally impossible in our system. You need operators who never push systems farther than they should go. Plants that hit their designed age can't continue to be used; they should be shuttered. If something goes wrong unexpectedly, you don't patch it, you shut the plant down. If you're operating a nuclear plant and you discover an offshore fault, rather than continuing operation until you determine if there is any chance of motion, you shut the thing down and spend the money it takes to learn everything possible about that fault (san onofre). On top of that, you have constant, skeptical inspectors whose job it is to make sure that unexpected things don't happen. They need to be as well trained as the people working for the plants, as well paid as them (if not better), and certainly not overworked or overwhelmed. You need at least 1 outside group to avoid the type of groupthink that is common in engineering disasters - NASA has struggled with this problem more than any other, it's cost them 2 shuttles.

 

Problem is, none of those scenarios will ever be met in a for-profit, lobbying based industry with cost constraints. If a reactor is operating normally and is close to the end of its life, it will continue operating until serious issues crop up that force shutdowns. If it is realized that the section of the subduction zone offshore is actually seismogenic and the reason no one knows this is that it hasn't ruptured since 800 a.d. (Japan), then you need to consider shuttering the reactors. If the government starts running a deficit or wants to cut taxes, it can't look at inspection cutbacks as an option, and we've seen again and again that it always happens. It's happening right now.

 

You can criticize the anti-nuclear folks all you want, you can deservedly ridicule statements from Greenpeace...but I would counter that statements from the nuclear industry deserve exactly as much skepticism, because that's how engineering problems happen. They always happen, they happen in unexpected ways, and they're not going to stop because we have a better system.

[Y2HH]

I have a little more time now, so it's manifesto time.

 

When I look at the nuclear industry, my biggest critique is that its an industry that only works when communism works.

 

For a nation to have a functioning nuclear industry, you need the nuclear industry to be perfectly willing to accept criticism and, to first order, never ever fight against a charge/complaint from the government. Nuclear plants are highly complex engineered systems. If history has taught us anything about engineering, it's that eventually, things always go wrong in ways we can't anticipate. If its taught us one more thing, every time there's a critical failure, its because some rule wasn't enforced correctly, and that lack of enforcement combined with an unexpected event to produce a disaster.

 

Put a nuclear energy system into an ideal political environment and it might work, but you need scenarios that are fundamentally impossible in our system. You need operators who never push systems farther than they should go. Plants that hit their designed age can't continue to be used; they should be shuttered. If something goes wrong unexpectedly, you don't patch it, you shut the plant down. If you're operating a nuclear plant and you discover an offshore fault, rather than continuing operation until you determine if there is any chance of motion, you shut the thing down and spend the money it takes to learn everything possible about that fault (san onofre). On top of that, you have constant, skeptical inspectors whose job it is to make sure that unexpected things don't happen. They need to be as well trained as the people working for the plants, as well paid as them (if not better), and certainly not overworked or overwhelmed. You need at least 1 outside group to avoid the type of groupthink that is common in engineering disasters - NASA has struggled with this problem more than any other, it's cost them 2 shuttles.

 

Problem is, none of those scenarios will ever be met in a for-profit, lobbying based industry with cost constraints. If a reactor is operating normally and is close to the end of its life, it will continue operating until serious issues crop up that force shutdowns. If it is realized that the section of the subduction zone offshore is actually seismogenic and the reason no one knows this is that it hasn't ruptured since 800 a.d. (Japan), then you need to consider shuttering the reactors. If the government starts running a deficit or wants to cut taxes, it can't look at inspection cutbacks as an option, and we've seen again and again that it always happens. It's happening right now.

 

You can criticize the anti-nuclear folks all you want, you can deservedly ridicule statements from Greenpeace...but I would counter that statements from the nuclear industry deserve exactly as much skepticism, because that's how engineering problems happen. They always happen, they happen in unexpected ways, and they're not going to stop because we have a better system.

 

Manifestos usually include a proposed (and usually crazy/bordering on insane) solution. Where is yours?

 

[Balta1701]

Manifestos usually include a proposed (and usually crazy/bordering on insane) solution. Where is yours?

I don't really have one.

 

Ignoring nuclear power is a bad option, because it is carbon free, and it takes several chernobyls to do the kind of damage we're looking at from Climate Change. Shuttering nuclear plants is a bad option, because there's huge investment already in them, and we don't have infrastructure to replace them. Pretending they're safe right now only works until they become unsafe.

 

I guess I kinda feel the right response is to deal with them how NASA dealt with its shuttle program after 2003. You can't completely shutter the program for years, but you can't expand it, and you have to fight like Hell every step of the way against institutional complacency...the "it hasn't happened for x years" effect. Of course, for that to work, we still need a replacement energy source.

 

It's possible that Japan may wake people up a bit on inspections, but what's more likely, IMO, is that we're going to continue to see inspection cutbacks, lobbying in favor of inspection cutbacks, lobbying in favor of building new plants and expanding current plants, until eventually some set of engineering issues or natural disasters combines to produce a radiation release in the U.S., because that's just how it goes.

 

All of that of course ignores the 2 elephants in the room...the fact that the program is "too big to fail", in the sense that if a plant were to melt down, the plant itself couldn't handle the claims without bankruptcy, so there's a tacit government insurance whether we admit it or not...and second, the fact that the U.S. government is paying hundreds of millions of dollars to plant operators because the government promised to build a facility to store the waste and has yet to do so.

[Y2HH]

I don't really have one.

 

Ignoring nuclear power is a bad option, because it is carbon free, and it takes several chernobyls to do the kind of damage we're looking at from Climate Change. Shuttering nuclear plants is a bad option, because there's huge investment already in them, and we don't have infrastructure to replace them. Pretending they're safe right now only works until they become unsafe.

 

I guess I kinda feel the right response is to deal with them how NASA dealt with its shuttle program after 2003. You can't completely shutter the program for years, but you can't expand it, and you have to fight like Hell every step of the way against institutional complacency...the "it hasn't happened for x years" effect. Of course, for that to work, we still need a replacement energy source.

 

It's possible that Japan may wake people up a bit on inspections, but what's more likely, IMO, is that we're going to continue to see inspection cutbacks, lobbying in favor of inspection cutbacks, lobbying in favor of building new plants and expanding current plants, until eventually some set of engineering issues or natural disasters combines to produce a radiation release in the U.S., because that's just how it goes.

 

All of that of course ignores the 2 elephants in the room...the fact that the program is "too big to fail", in the sense that if a plant were to melt down, the plant itself couldn't handle the claims without bankruptcy, so there's a tacit government insurance whether we admit it or not...and second, the fact that the U.S. government is paying hundreds of millions of dollars to plant operators because the government promised to build a facility to store the waste and has yet to do so.

 

See, this makes too much sense and avoids the standard Greenpeace (and the like) tactic of shouting "doomsday is approaching", usually based on little to nothing, or flawed and often cherry picked studies which support their side, while ignoring any vetted and valid counter science.

 

This is why people aligned with groups like Greenpeace usually annoy me more than anything, as their beliefs on this sort of thing are so deeply ingrained into who they are that it poisons them. While they may never admit it aloud, I think there are more than many Greenpeace members actively hoping that reactor melts down...just so they can say I told you so.

[StrangeSox]

I don't really have objections to much of what you've said there Balta. Except inspection cutbacks. NRC inspections are orders of magnitude more than pre-9/11 standards.

[Balta1701]

A worthwhile note from the UCS...

The melting down reactor(s) in Japan have now released significantly more radiation than their "Design-basis" level...

 

Translated...when they were proposed, there was an estimate of the largest amount of radiation that could possibly have been released in any accident or combination of accidents at the plant. These estimates are standard practice in nuclear plant construction, and are part of the basis on whether or not a plant is approved. The plant has already released more radiation than that level.

 

To me, this is strong evidence that the safety projections simply cannot anticipate complex failure mechanisms.

[Y2HH]

A worthwhile note from the UCS...

The melting down reactor(s) in Japan have now released significantly more radiation than their "Design-basis" level...

 

Translated...when they were proposed, there was an estimate of the largest amount of radiation that could possibly have been released in any accident or combination of accidents at the plant. These estimates are standard practice in nuclear plant construction, and are part of the basis on whether or not a plant is approved. The plant has already released more radiation than that level.

 

To me, this is strong evidence that the safety projections simply cannot anticipate complex failure mechanisms.

 

This assumes that they've taken the same exact safety precautions that we have.

 

Even then, in light of what happened in Japan, the US is going to undergo a ton of new regulations and safety spending on our nuclear facilities -- this I guarantee.

[Balta1701]

This assumes that they've taken the same exact safety precautions that we have.

 

Even then, in light of what happened in Japan, the US is going to undergo a ton of new regulations and safety spending on our nuclear facilities -- this I guarantee.

Correction; that's not the assumption I'm making. The assumption in any comparison to the U.S. is that the calculation of risk by the engineers is done the same way. That I believe is true.

 

Both nations set a basis for the level of event the reactor has to endure without releasing radiation above a certain level. In the past 24 hours I've gotten that information from the TVA about their 5+ nuclear plants presented on my evening news. That is the standard for approval...it has to be able to take a certain level event without releasing more radiation than a specified level.

 

This plant took an event on the scale that should have been expected, and has now released significantly more radiation than the standard. That is the comparison.

[StrangeSox]

TVA has three operating plants and one that's been partially built for about 20 years. I know because I was at all three recently!

 

Anyway the US absolutely needs to do what the EU is looking at doing. And there was talk today around Plant Vogtle that construction for Units 3 & 4 will be haulted soon.

[StrangeSox]

A worthwhile note from the UCS...

The melting down reactor(s) in Japan have now released significantly more radiation than their "Design-basis" level...

 

Translated...when they were proposed, there was an estimate of the largest amount of radiation that could possibly have been released in any accident or combination of accidents at the plant. These estimates are standard practice in nuclear plant construction, and are part of the basis on whether or not a plant is approved. The plant has already released more radiation than that level.

 

To me, this is strong evidence that the safety projections simply cannot anticipate complex failure mechanisms.

 

It would be nice if Ed Lyman bothered to cite the relevant CFR's. He's the same guy that referenced a bunch of his own flawed articles or misrepresented the conclusions of those other articles in that first document you posted.

[StrangeSox]

I love agribusiness rebranding high-fructose corn syrup as "corn sugar" and saying it has no difference at all from sugar while also implying that there's nothing wrong with pumping almost all of our foods full of sugar.

[Balta1701]

SS, what can you tell us about regulation of spent fuel rods and their storage in the U.S.?

[StrangeSox]

Nothing really, for the most part. My background is security. Aside from specific details withheld from public disclosure, all of the CFR's are available online along with the NRC Regulatory Guides, basically the NRC's interpretations of what the regulations are and suggestions on how to comply.

 

Before I got into the industry, before I even finished college, I was interested in nuclear power, so I do have some knowledge in addition to what I've gained on-the-job. Spent fuel is stored in pools near the reactors until it's eventually loaded into dry casks. The dry casks are then stored on-site or in what's called an ISFSI. Security regulations around ISFSI's have been increased recently bringing them essentially to the same level as an active plant. Specific security requirements are withheld in accordance with DoE Safeguards standards, so there's not much more information to give.

[Balta1701]

In other words, it's probably pretty analogous to what is going on in Japan, with the exception that this country does have some ability to reprocess the stuff so they're not necessarily stored forever.

[StrangeSox]

eta also there's not a containment building around spent fuel for a variety of reasons. Maybe that needs to be reevaluated along with other design-basis assumptions, but the doom-and-gloom spewing from some of the anti-nuke people right now is pretty ridiculous.

 

I know you disagree, but I see nuclear power as the only feasible short-to-mid-term alternative to more coal and natural gas. The risks of ever-increasing AGW far outweigh the risks of nuclear power. Even in the face of the worst potential natural disaster that could hit an older plant of the most susceptible design, it's still not that bad right now. This could turn much worse in a hurry, of course, and I'm not diminishing the environmental impact of what's occurring in Japan right now.