Nuclear Info Kept From Congress and the Public

Thermite writes "On March 6, 2006 an accident occurred at Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin, Tennessee. According to reports, almost 9 gallons of highly enriched uranium in solution spilled and nearly went into a chain reaction. Before the accident in 2004, the NRC and The Office of Naval Reactors had changed the terms of the company's license so that any correspondence with Nuclear Fuel Services would be marked 'official use only.' From the article: 'While reviewing the commission's public Web page in 2004, the Department of Energy's Office of Naval Reactors found what it considered protected information about Nuclear Fuel Service's work for the Navy. The commission responded by sealing every document related to Nuclear Fuel Services and BWX Technologies in Lynchburg, Va., the only two companies licensed by the agency to manufacture, possess and store highly enriched uranium.' The result was that the public and Congress were both left in the dark for 13 months regarding this accident and other issues at the facility."

Fscking Congress (YES this is a rant)

[DoofusOfDeath (636671)]

Congress' approval ratings are tied with the historical low. Do they even know why?

I'm a conservative and typically voted Republican, and even *I* wanted the Dems to come into power to repair the damage of Bush's administration. But on any issue involving something the DoD / DoE marks as classified, they just shrug and say, "Bush's people called it classified. I guess we can't exercise oversight after all."

I know this post will likely cost me some karma. I just wish I could spend *all* my karma on it and actually get my congressmen and senators to DO THEIR FSCKING JOBS and stop this crap.

Re:Fscking Congress (YES this is a rant)

[benhocking (724439)]

1. On March 6, 2006, the Republicans were still in charge of Congress.
2. How would Congress know if information was being kept from them? (Perhaps I'm missing something here.)

Not that I dispute your overall point that Congress could do even more oversight than they're already employing. You should note, however, how many pundits keep bemoaning this oversight as "witch hunts" or "fishing expeditions".

Re:One thing is different in Britain

[jd (1658)]

Although the Liberal Democrats in Britain are a relatively minor party in government, the opposition (the party that came in second in the general election) cannot win a vote without the help of the Liberal Democrats. Likewise, the party in power needs only a handful of Liberal Democrats to side with them to guarantee winning a vote, even allowing for party defections. Thus, both sides regard the Liberal Democrats as a little bit of a wildcard. It can't do much on its own, but can wield quite a bit of influence.

(It is also worth noting that the Lib Dems control a very large number of local authorities. Pissing them off can therefore have interesting consequences. It would be most unfortunate if a new sewer had to be installed in the road... right outside an MP's house... Terrible... Don't know how that could have happened...)

Both the opposition and the third party have other weapons that do not exist in America. Either can call for a motion of no confidence, in which the Prime Minister MUST appear to answer questions. As indeed they must for Parliamentary Question Time. Although it has not been used this way for years, it used to be standard practice to use no confidence motions to force the other party to turn up for important debates, as the Prime Minister must resign if the motion passes. It is vital to that party that it can guarantee as large a majority as possible. Question Time is also important, as it creates a much greater sense of accountability. It's not perfect, but it gets better answers than subpoenas seem to be in America.

I remember this episode....

[bladel (104002)]

...where Homer falls asleep at the control panel:

FTA:

The leak was discovered when a supervisor saw a yellow liquid ``running into a hallway'' from under a door, according to one document.

Re:I remember this episode....

[jez9999 (618189)]

Actually, I think the appropriate quote is from 'Homer at the Bat': :-)

  At the plant...

      Mike Scioscia: [pushing a wheelbarrow of glowing green goop]
      Karl: [pulls up beside him with his own wheelbarrow of glowing green goop]
                    Hey, Scioscia. I don't get it. You're a ringer, but you're here every
                    night in the core, busting your butt hauling radioactive waste.
      Mike Scioscia: Well, Karl, it's such a relief from the pressures of playing
                    big-league ball. I mean, there, you make any kind of mistake, and
                    boom, the press is all over you. [accidentally spills his goop]
                    Uh oh...
      Karl: Ah, don't worry about it.
      Mike Scioscia: Oh man, is this ever sweet...

Second most serious violation

[dontthink (1106407)]

FTA:

McIntyre defended the commission's decision not to fine Nuclear Fuel Services, even though the agency rated the uranium leak last year as its second most-serious violation.

(Emphasis mine) Personally, I would be interested to know what the most serious violation was...

Re:Second most serious violation

[ShaunC (203807)]

Leaking the uranium was the second most serious violation. Leaking the fact that there had been a uranium leak was the most serious violation...

Near chain reactions shouldn't be disclosed

[by Anonymous Coward]

Only actual chain reactions need be disclosed and the mushroom cloud should serve as public notice. Anything more would be a waste of taxpayer dollars.

That's the Risk of Privatization

[mpapet (761907)]

In the mad rush to privatize government, the broader issue of a serious lack of oversight will become quite common.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/0 6/murphy200706 [vanityfair.com]

Chain reaction? I'm skeptical

[MobyDisk (75490)]

The commission said there were two areas, the glovebox and an old elevator shaft, where the solution potentially could have collected in such a way to cause an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.

I am not a physicist, but I don't think that packing enriched uranium into a glovebox could cause a nuclear reaction. With the elevator shaft -- are they imagining something crushing the uranium under great pressure? Is that enough? This sounds very unlikely to me. Nuclear material isn't "explosive" in the typical sense. Can someone qualified chime-in on this?

Fissionables in solution are weird.

[Tackhead (54550)]

> A lot of nuclear materials can under-go a chain reaction if a significant mass is accumulated. It has to do with production versus escape of neutrons and scales as volume-to-area. So, if two sub-critical masses were combined, they could become critical. I am somewhat leary of a "spill" making something go critical, unless the mass was over-critical and the container provided some damping effect.

Actually, the "spill" makes it more likely, not less likely.

Fissionables in solution are tricky things to deal with. Consider the following four cases:

1) Homer Simpson drops a subcritical hunk of a water-soluble U235 salt into a swimming pool. No big deal. It's a single subcritical mass of U235, and the neutrons fly straight out of it and into the surrounding water, and not enough bounce back into the mass to present a problem. Homer reaches in with a net, and pulls the chunk of salt out of the net. "No problemo."

2) A little while later, as the harmless chunk dissolves into the huge pool, there will be localized spots near the chunk, with both sufficiently-high concentration of fissionable materials and the right amount of moderating material between them for a criticality incident. "D'OH!"

3) "Aha! I'm smart! I'll prevent that scenario by dissolving it, a bit at a time, by adding it to the pool by using a salt shaker near the pump intake!" Congrats! The U235 atoms are, at all times, sufficiently widely-dispersed, that there is no criticality risk. "Woohoo!"

4) A few weeks after your swim, the place is shut down and everyone gets fired. The maintenance guy forgets to drain the pool. The water gradually evaporates, and concentrations in the remaining water begin to rise... and a few years later, some guy spraying graffiti by the abandoned poolhouse wonders WTF that blue flash was. "D'OH!" again.

I'm on a roll here, so I may as well close off the "security by obscurity" issue. There are places where security by obscurity works, and this is one of them.

The deal here is that criticality incidents, especially involving fissionables in solution are a function of degree of enrichment (in the case of uranium as the solute), nuclear properties of the solvent, local concentrations of the ions in solution, and a whole boatload of other things, in order to build cool toys, you often have to deal with them all, simultaneously. I'm not in the building-of-cool-toys industry, and have mercifully I've never had a need to know.

Some of these things are public domain, but others (particularly those things pertaining to the design of shipborne Naval reactors, which use HEU because there simply isn't enough space on all types of ships to permit the use of LEU-based designs) are classified. Given a description of an incident, however, it may be possible to place upper and lower bounds on some of the classified parameters - bounds that are narrower than the published numbers, and there are plenty of adversaries who would be delighted to deduce things about our Naval capabilities (a lot more interesting/useful than even our bomb designs), given just a few more missing puzzle pieces. The math is hard, and denying adversaries the pieces of the puzzle that they can use to derive the whole picture isn't security by obscurity, it's just good security practice.

While I'm for oversight, what would Congress do?

[xC0000005 (715810)]

Your average congressman/woman is not fit for the types of duties we already allow them - allocating money. Let's say this had all been open, and it was brought up before an oversight committe in Congress. What exactly is a congressman going to bring to the table at such a discussion?
CongressMan A: "I'm outraged at this. You stored Uranium in plain gray containers, spilled them, and then didn't buy cleanup services from my home state. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Uranium Dude: "We acknowledge that we were wrong to spill the uranium, and promise to paint the containers yellow, AND buy the yellow paint from your home state."
Congressman A: "That's damn right you will! Yellow paint and pork in one day. That's congressional leadership."

We need people with experience in handling such materials on the oversight committe - congresspeople can go off and write some vision law or national spotted insect day - in other words, what they are good at. And we need some sort of realistic expectations on what punishments would ever be meted out. I doubt we would ever ditch a uranium supplier because it's in our best interests for security to keep the number of entrants in the field small. And we wouldn't want disgruntled employees deciding to contract out.

This is why there are legitimate concerns

[cliffski (65094)]

about nuclear power. I'm opposed to it. not on any technical grounds, or any dogmatic or spiritual bollocks, just because I do NOT trust private companies with this stuff, nor do I trust them to handle GM food responsibly either. If we had decades of perfect safety records on existing reactors, combined with absolute transparency on what goes wrong and who is to blame and what happened if something does fail, then maybe I'd be convinced that this is a technology that you can trust private companies, or for that matter, the government, to use safely.
This is not currently the case. here in the UK, we even falsified documents to show the japanese we had carried out safety procedures on their reprocessed fuel. Not surprisingly, they sent it back.

The risk of nuclear accidents is VERY small, but the potential worst case effect of one if it does happen is massive. With other forms of power like tidal, solar, wind, the worst case scenarios tend to be very very benign. As a result, I'd rather we spent the same cash investing in those technologies than one with so many potential downsides, including the leak risk, the theoretical meltdown, the security risks, potential health problems, need for uranium, centralised nature of the technology, need to be near large supplies of water, yada yada yada...

nuclear is great in theory, so is GM, but in practice, I don't vaguely think we are there yet in terms of safety.

Standard reporting cycle

[pyro101 (564166)]

Keep in mind that this event's worst case result from this would have been:
"If a criticality accident had occurred in the filter glovebox or the elevator pit, it is
likely that at least one worker would have received an exposure high enough to cause acute
health effects or death." Keep in mind that the result of the second worst event for nuclear facilities for the year. Compare that with the coal industry or oil industry where there are multiple deaths annually.

Also this is fairly old news since it was in the NRC's "Report to Congress on Abnormal Occurrences - Fiscal Year 2006 (NUREG-0090, Vol. 29)". Which has a release date of April 2007. Take a look for yourself its on page 14
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nure gs/staff/sr0090/v29/sr0090v29.pdf [nrc.gov]

The information is available to congress is not notified everytime an incident occurs. Unless the accident could cause things to happen off site the public isn't notified until the annual list of inccidents, primarily because it would just create unneeded hystaria as seen by this FUD while the engineers review the facts and figure out REALLY happened. As far as the company trying to hide it. If it is not reported to the NRC within 24 hours of the event they would likely lose their license.

Yes, we should

[benhocking (724439)]

Unfortunately, I can't tell if you're being serious. If so, how would terrorists benefit from knowing, after the fact, that we had a nuclear accident? If you're being serious (and I hope you're not) this sounds a lot to me like "OMG! Think of the terrorists!"

Sad Times are these...

[Mateo_LeFou (859634)]

Sad Times are these... when
1. passing ruffians can say `nee' at will to old women
2. the sarcasm in my post is not obvious as all hell.

Re:Oh Please

[nonsequitor (893813)]

We're supposed to be outraged, because we can't see the documents about an accident that *almost* happened?

The chain reaction *almost* happened, a spill of highly enriched uranium in solution *DID* happen. The fact that this involves the safety records of a major DoD supplier being hidden from congress is troubling. This prevented congress from taking actions like mandating increased at the facility. You better believe that a solution of highly enriched uranium is a carcinogen, if that stuff were to be spilled more often or even to pollute the water table *AND* the company knew it had happened, then still nobody else would know. This is not about the next Chernobyl, think Simpsons Movie.

Re:Oh Please

[sumdumass (711423)]

This isn't a situation where they hid the facts from congress. It is a situation where a paperwork processing change from before the incident cause the incident's paper work to go unnoticed by congress. The reporting became classified and out of direct sight.

I'm sure this can be fixed. It isn't like carelessness is rampant and they sought out to hide the incident.

I guess the big surprise here is that a company is able to change classifications of certain paperwork without talking to the agencies with oversight. It should be that the classifications should be mandated by a set of guidelines and maybe some notification system to oversight panels when something happens. The government agency automatically assume one thing and marked the reports classified where even if they should be classified, the people overseeing them should stil be aware of them.

Re:Oh Please

[Jon Luckey (7563)]

We are supposed to believe that 9 gallons of enriched Uranium won't go into chain reaction but if you spill it onto a floor where it spreads out the chances of a chain reaction increases?

No, we're supposed to believe that an improperly sealed transfer line could allow sufficent uranium to accumulate in two possible places over the course of multiple transfer operations.

Report PDF [nrc.gov]

Re:Oh Please

[jimstapleton (999106)]

if its anything like this one, we wouldn't be left in the dark...

We'd glow in it.

This seems a little overblown.

[raehl (609729)]

It does not appear that anyone's intent was to hide accidents - the original problem was that sensitive Navy information that shouldn't have been released was getting released, so instead of doing the narrow fix and just not releasing the sensitive documents, the (extremely through/lazy, you pick) step was taken and all the documents from the Navy fuel supply companies were restricted.

As an apparent unintended consequence (or a willfully accepted consequence) of the policy change to make sure that sensitive documents stopped ending u on websites, non-sensitive documents regarding safety incidents ended up being restricted as well.

But, even when the accident occurred, the regulatory commission apparently even made a point of having a special vote to make sure the party responsible for the incident was properly, and publicly, identified.

There is a definite difference between changing a policy to hide safety accidents and safety accidents not getting disclosed as well as a result of a policy change. The latter is the case here. The policy will be adjusted.

On the flip side, imagine the uproar if the policy had originally only specified that sensitive documents got restricted, and sensitive information was released anyway because someone mistakenly labeled a sensitive document as non-sensitive? It's a trade-off - and while the current policy made it harder for the public to find out about an accident, it's also true that a different policy would increase the risk of accidental release of sensitive material.

Either way, there's no reason to assign nefarious intent where apparently none is due.

Re:"Almost" a chain reaction ?

[Waffle Iron (339739)]

I'm sorry, but I missed something. If it's in the container, it's safe, but if it's loose on the floor, it's liable to start a chain reaction?

Any container designed to hold enriched uranium would be carefully shaped so as to avoid coming anywhere near to creating a critical mass. In this incident, the risk was that the liquid would flow into the elevator shaft, where it would pool into a compact shape that could create a critical mass.

Re:How do they keep a straight face

[Sans_A_Cause (446229)]

The magic depends on how you pronounce the word "nuclear". If you pronounce it "New Cle Ur", it is very frightening and you are likely a mad scientist or hippie liberal. Then it's a black magic word. But, if you pronounce it "New Kuh Ler", you are a down-home, folksy kind of guy and people like you and will believe what you say. Then it becomes a white magic word.

Re:How do they keep a straight face

[iamlucky13 (795185)]

Well, obviously it wasn't [Chernobyl]. The question is how close was it?

Chernobyl had a lot more mass of fuel, already hot, contained in a pressurized vessel. When the reaction got out of hand, it superheated the water causing a steam explosion that blew the top off the vessel, spewing part of the reactor contents into the air and also causing a graphite fire that released even more radioactive material. Since the fuel was in solid form, the bulk of it was not easily mobile, allowing it to stay at a critical mass and density while it heated to a lava-like state and melted it's way downward into the ground while keeping the graphite fire burning.

This incident involved 9 gallons uranium and an unspecified solvent at an unspecified concentration and occurred at a processing plant, not a reactor. Had a critical mass pooled, it would have started heating up as the reaction rate increased. This would have caused the solvent to boil, mobilizing some of the radioactive particles but keeping the pool somewhat dispersed, in turn reducing the reaction rate...a sort of natural moderation effect. Actually, this is pretty much the main challenge to overcome in detonating a fission bomb. They like to sputter themselves apart before you get an effective yield.

Because of the self-moderating effect and the lack of any way to build up pressure, there could be no explosion from this spill. It might start a fire, however, which could be expected to increase the amount that becomes airborne, and of course cause additional hazards if the fire spread. A fire can be fought, by the way, although you want to take extra care not to spread the uranium to places where it's harder to clean up.

The increased radiation and perhaps irradiation from the reaction would be a hazard to anyone working in the immediate area. The NRC said there was a possibility of one worker receiving a fatal dose of radiation had it gone critical. The actual uranium that might become airborne is a surprisingly minor hazard. In fact, the wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] has a picture of someone holding U-235 pellets in their hand. It is highly toxic and this is the main threat, but you still need to get a sufficient dose to cause problems. Its radioactivity is actually very low when not in a chain reaction, with a half life of 700 million years. The bigger concern is the daughter isotopes created by its decay with shorter half lives, like radon, but these of course only form at the rate the uranium decays, so it's typically only a problem with very large deposits.

Also, if you read the article in full, you will see that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission already did an investigation (part of what was classified) and gave the company a list of required operational changes to help prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future and mitigate damage if it does.

Re:It is NOT that they were trying to hide it

[WillAffleckUW (858324)]

How do you think we get the nuclear fissile material in the first place?

We mine it.

To mine it we release toxic chemicals into the environment, heavy metals that poison rivers, cause early deaths for mine workers, and release radon gas.

You need to look at nuclear from a total life perspective - from source (mining) to use (fission) to eventual neutrality (a few tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years).

In my state alone, many hundreds of people have died from this "cycle".

Stop trying to gin the numbers by restricting it to the input into the reactor to output from the reactor - this is a fraction of the total bykill.

Now, don't get me started on coal. And, in case you wondered, I've owned Peabody shares (IPO) so I am aware of the risk factors of that. People always underestimate the lethality of energy generation - I worked in power generation when I started my career, so I am keenly aware of who dies and from what. I have lived in mining towns. People have a way of hiding the truth from themselves about the impacts of their favority power source, to justify it in their minds. No matter WHAT it is.