This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 14, 2011 - The glow from last week's intense discussions about how to pay for a possible second nuclear reactor in Missouri had barely faded away before the Japanese earthquake and tsunami brought the issue of nuclear safety to center stage.
Now there's more reason than ever to move in other directions to meet the state's energy needs. That's according to Mark Haim, a steadfast opponent of legislation that would let utilities charge ratepayers for part of the cost of seeking a permit to build another nuclear plant in Callaway County, Missouri.
"Nuclear power had priced itself out of the market even before this event," said Haim, chair of the group Missourians for Safe Energy, based in Columbia.
"The private investment community has given a huge thumbs down to investing in any nuclear plants in this country or even anywhere in the world. The only places that nuclear power has moved forward are places where there are government-operated plants, like France, or places where there are huge government subsidies."
No matter how carefully plants are designed and operated, he added, the unforeseen disaster is just that -- something that no one can predict.
"The nuclear industry's approach is that we can design these plants so well, this would never happen," Haim said. "But never is a hard thing to say. They can reduce the likelihood, but there is always the potential for design flaws, human error, earthquakes, sabotage, terrorism. These places become targets that are essentially dirty bombs.
"We've seen how unforgiving a technology like nuclear power is, and that should cause even the most ardent nuclear booster to take a little pause and think about what the consequences are of building a power plant that has in its core the equivalent of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs."
Scott Bond, manager of nuclear development for Ameren Missouri, noted that no decision has been made yet about construction of a second nuclear plant in Callaway County, but that the events in Japan will have no effect on what the utility projects to be Missouri's electricity needs in the future.
"I would hope there would not be a rush to judgment about the events in Japan," he said. "I hope we get all the facts we need to make the decisions as we move ahead."
Bond said Ameren files what is known as an integrated resource plan every three years, most recently in February of this year. It projected that the state will need additional electrical generating capacity by 2022-24.
"We don't know whether nuclear would be the choice at that time," he said, "but we certainly want to maintain that option."
He said Ameren expected to submit its application for an early site permit for a second nuclear plant by the end of this year. The application takes three years to review. A plant would take five years to build, he said, and another five or six to be licensed. The permit is good for 20 years and can be renewed for another 20.
Bond said the timeframe for a decision could also be affected by other factors. Something like cap-and-trade legislation could move the decision up, while a change in the projected need for new electric generation or efficiency efforts that are more successful than expected could move it back.
He noted that the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan are 40 years old and technology has improved over the years. He also said no decision has been made on what design would be used at Callaway if Ameren decides to move forward.
For now, he said, Missourians watching the situation in Japan do not need to worry about what might happen here. He noted that it was the tsunami, not the earthquake, that compromised the Japanese plants, and they all shut down safely.
"Callaway is a safe, reliable plant designed for the most severe natural phenomena -- earthquakes, tornadoes -- that this area has ever seen, and there are margins on top of that," Bond said.
Unforeseen Problems
Larry Criscione knows firsthand the problems that can arise with the operation of a plant like Ameren's facility in mid-Missouri. He spent five years as a senior reactor operator there before leaving in a dispute over what he considered a procedural flaw in operations there in 2003, over a failure to insert control rods during a shutdown. (Read more about the case in a story from the Columbia Missourian.)
Criscione received $550,000 from Ameren to settle a complaint he brought, claiming that he was the victim of discrimination for raising the safety concern. He now works in the office of research for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, though he emphasized that his comments are his own, as a private citizen, and not from the NRC.
In an interview, and in a letter sent to Gov. Jay Nixon earlier this year, Criscione stressed that he does not oppose the expansion of nuclear power in Missouri, and he believes a second reactor in Callaway County would benefit the state and the national power grid as a whole.
However, he noted in his letter, nuclear power requires honesty, conservative decision making, openness and a commitment to admitting mistakes -- qualities he felt Ameren lacked in his personal situation.
"Without these characteristics in the organization," he concluded, "well designed plans will slowly lose their safety margins and degrade to the point at which an accident becomes likely. It's happened in the past. It will happen in the future. I am writing to you to minimize it ever happening in Missouri."
The problem in Japan, Criscione said in an interview with the Beacon, was that the nuclear facilities were hit with "an experience that was outside of what it was designed to handle.
"When you are in that situation, you rely on operators to handle the plant and take actions outside what they have procedures to provide guidance for. To be successful at doing that, you have to have well-trained and competent operators. I did have some questions at the Callaway plant with regard to the level of competency of some of the operators."
Such unforeseen events are one reason longtime activist Kay Drey of University City worries about the possibility of catastrophic events happening in any nuclear power plant.
"It's a huge concern," she said. "I've never understood why Japan ever built even one reactor. It's such a huge gamble. I can't imagine why anyone anywhere who lives near a nuclear power plant shouldn't be concerned. I think they should all be shut down now."
Acts of Nature
Drey said that the Japanese reactors that have been affected may never be able to be used -- a situation that no one expected, given the nation's reputation.
"We think of Japan as being technologically very advanced," she said, "and yet this is totally beyond them. It's about acts of nature that we cannot control, predict or protect against.
"This is a dirty, dangerous and expensive technology. If this tragedy is happening in Japan, who would want to live near one of those facilities? It is inhumane."
As far as the legislation now being considered in Jefferson City, Drey said:
"After anyone reads about or looks at the visual reports about what is going on in Japan, if someone wants to have a second reactor at Callaway, they should not be allowed to serve in the legislature."
Haim says that the problem with the legislation to charge customers for part of the permitting process isn't necessarily the cost, which may be $40 million for a plant that would cost billions. It's what he called the "classic foot in the door, the nose of the camel in the tent." Once the process begins, Ameren will need more financing, and in the current environment, he is afraid ratepayers will end up paying the tab.
He says rather than establish a precedent that would undermine a voter-approved ban on charging customers for construction works in progress that are not yet generating power, Missouri should concentrate on energy efficiency and alternate sources of power that would spread jobs and investment around the state and would help use energy more wisely.
Will that happen? Haim says he doesn't have a crystal ball on what legislators in Jefferson City might do, but he sounded dubious.
"Money talks loudly," he said, "and Ameren contributes generously. I just hope they will think long and hard before approving this precedent."