Russian Nuclear Safety Proposal Put Focus on U.S. Reactors

Generally people don't understand that the US response to Fukushima has hidden attributes. A Fukushima style accident is very rare. For a lot of the DBA accident, these utilities have a lot of for show safety systems. Safety systems with the consistency of paper mache. Basically the systems have never been tested or ever operated in real world condition and certainly not vetted for the stress of an accident. The flex components fit into this category but there are some value for these components. So risk perspectives places a not justified value on the increase of safety with the flex components and the installed plant paper mache safety systems. Basically these fake systems "possibly used" extremely infrequency justified more violations of the rules and with broken and degraded components up at power. In other words, the increments of safety increase these systems cause in extremely infrequent accidents or never use is vastly disproportionate to the increase of risk allowed by operation with bum components and people not following the rules...meaning the risk of tolerating operating bum systems vastly outweighs the increase of safety in grossly infrequent accidents. This directly translates into unjustified capacity factor and fraudulent profits. These fake systems make tons of money and it is possible the only justification for these "never used" components and systems is to bolster capacity factor.
     

So say blades are flinging off main coolant pump impellers for decades, they put this in a computer program that comes up with risk. If they include in the program the flex system and the paper mache safety systems, then the program will put the defective impellers into the safe category. If these questionable safety systems are removed, then it would have come up us unsafe. As I said, risk perspective that nobody understand in conjunction with paper mache safety system, this allows the industry to operate with more degraded and broken safety system.

This is altruism abuse....using a veneer or the thin shell of doing good or altruism to hide enormous corruptions or increasing the chance of hurting people for selfish interes

Russian Nuclear Safety Proposal Put Focus on U.S. Reactors

 By Jonathan TironeDecember 10, 2014

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Russia scaled back opposition to European proposals to improve the safety of nuclear power, leaving the U.S. as the main dissenter to new rules intended to avoid a repeat of Japan’s 2011 meltdown in Fukushima.

Russia changed its stance at a Dec. 4 meeting of nuclear diplomats, setting out the Moscow government’s view of new rules to limit radioactive contamination in the event of a nuclear accident, according to a copy of the 13-page presentation seen by Bloomberg. The move raised the chances of a deal to strengthen the Convention on Nuclear Safety, according to three Western diplomats present at the meeting, who asked not to be identified because the talks were private.

The European Union is trying to find a path to tighter safety rules for the world’s aging nuclear reactors with its relationship with Russia overshadowed by the conflict in Ukraine.
Yet it’s the U.S., the world’s biggest nuclear-power generator, that is proving the biggest obstacle, the diplomats said, as company investments in reactor safety lag those of European peers.
U.S. resistance to the European safety proposals is a“serious concern,” Senators Barbara Boxer and Edward Markey said in a Dec. 1 letter to Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Allison Macfarlane. The Democrats urged U.S. diplomats to work with “international partners” to amend safety flaws exposed by the 2011 Fukushima Dai-Ichi meltdowns.
Two Proposals
Russia abandoned its opposition to tightening international rules on reactor safety the day after reports of a nuclear accident in Ukraine. The reported mishap -- which ultimately proved to be false -- roiled markets and sent Ukrainian bond yields to a record high. The 1986 meltdown of a Soviet-built reactor in Chernobyl, about 80 miles north of the capital Kiev, weighed on Ukraine’s budget for decades and resulted in a 2,600 square kilometer (1,000 square miles) exclusion zone.

The European proposal would compel nuclear operators to both prevent accidents and, should they occur, mitigate the effects of radioactive contamination. Most controversially, the treaty change would also force potentially costly upgrades at existing plants.

More than half of the world’s 438 reactors were built at least 30 years ago and are nearing the age when they’ll need special attention, according to International Atomic Energy Agency statistics.

The Russian plan would stop short of requiring old nuclear plants to retrofit reactors with costly infrastructure. Such measures would threaten their economic viability, according to Russia’s envoy, Yury Ermakov, who delivered the presentation.
U.S. Opposition
“Absolute achievement of this objective is economically unreal at the vast majority of existing nuclear power plants,”reads the document. Safety improvements mitigating radiation releases should “be oriented towards these objectives” without over burdening companies, it said.

Russian diplomats accredited to the International Atomic Energy Agency, host to last week’s meeting, declined to comment.

U.S. diplomats say their opposition to the European initiative is driven by concern that an attempt to amend the convention could weaken the rules, because some governments would be slow to ratify changes.

“It’s a difficult, long time-consuming process and it may actually damage global nuclear safety,” the NRC’s MacFarlane said in Dec. 3 Senate testimony. “We are heavily involved in working with the State Department who has the lead on the negotiations.”
The U.S. wants signatories to reaffirm treaty commitments that oblige them to undergo rigorous peer reviews from international nuclear regulators, said a U.S. official who asked not to be identified following diplomatic rules.
French Measures
European diplomats have rejected U.S. charges that their proposed amendment risks undermining safety by creating uneven international regulations. Uneven rules were already created in July when the EU passed legislation forcing nuclear operators to retrofit facilities.
“People in the U.S. don’t realize that in many ways our nuclear safety standards lag behind those in Europe,” former NRC commissioner Victor Gilinsky said in a written reply to questions. “The German and French containment structures are generally more formidable than ours and those reactors generally have more protection systems.”

In France, engineers are designing reinforced bunkers for back-up power and installing emergency cooling systems to avoid a meltdown. Europe’s biggest atomic-energy producer is also reinforcing the concrete bases of its oldest reactors and creating elite teams of emergency responders.
Regulators worldwide have tried to boost safety standards in response to the Fukushima meltdown, which forced 160,000 people to flee radioactive contamination after a tsunami flooded safety back-up systems.

The NRC is still working out the parameters on how it values human lives at risk from a nuclear accident, spokesman Scott Burnell said. The value helps determine how much nuclear-plant operators need to spend on backfitting reactors with new safety gear. The NRC was criticized Dec. 3 by Boxer, chairman of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee, for being slow to ensure plant safety improvements.

“Some reactor operators are still not in compliance with the safety requirements that were in place before the Fukushima disaster,” Boxer said. “This is unacceptable.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Tirone in Vienna at jtirone@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net Ben Sills, Chad Thomas