Senator Sheldon Whitehouse: "We Need Nuclear Power"

Nuclear power accomplishes squat (What exact real problem does nuclear power actually solve?) until you electricate the transportation sector.

Lots of unsupported assertions are being made here that greatly reducing, or even eliminating, NRC regulatory oversight over commercial nuclear power would greatly reduce its costs and thus make nuclear fully competitive with natural gas for electric power generation.
I was working nuclear construction in the United States in the mid-1980’s and saw first hand what factors were driving costs up and were impeding the industry’s progress in preparing itself for an accelerated growth in nuclear power. A decade ago in the mid-2000’s, I was involved for a time in estimating the costs of the latest nuclear construction projects. And so I have a good deal of insight as to what the industry’s cost drivers actually are, especially for new construction.
A recitation of the history of past cost growth problems in nuclear power, and of their fundamental causes, is in order here.
In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the regulatory environment became much more complex with a series of added regulatory requirements on nuclear plant design and construction. At the same time, the large 1300 megawatt plants were being constructed for the first time; they were being built without a prototype; and there were many things in those new designs which had to be tested and proven out for the first time in operational service.
Also at the same time, the anti-nuclear activists switched tactics. They had gotten nowhere in the courts with their arguments concerning basic nuclear safety issues, and so they began to focus on emerging quality control issues with the plant construction projects. That is to say, they began to focus their efforts on the provable lack of effort on the part of the senior managers of large nuclear construction projects towards meeting the quality assurance standards those managers had committed to in their NRC license applications.
The NRC had assumed in the mid-1970’s that one utility was much like another in its ability to manage a large and very complex nuclear construction project. This turned out not to be the case. In the mid 1970’s, the NRC had given construction licenses to utilities which were not capable of managing the demanding task of building a nuclear power plant to strict quality assurance requirements while at the same time working under significant cost and schedule pressures. By the early 1980’s, the wide differences which existed among the power utilities regarding their basic competency for managing a large nuclear construction project had become painfully apparent.
Those nuclear construction projects which had weak project management systems and which suffered from a lack of commitment to maintaining high quality assurance standards were in deep trouble well before Three Mile Island occurred. Their lack of commitment to an effective quality assurance program was reflected in their tendency to place primary responsibility for quality assurance on the Quality Assurance organization, an organization which is not equipped for handling that job. The QA organization is a means of communicating to management whether or not the project’s QA objectives are being met. But it is not a substitute for management. For those projects which got into deep trouble, managers at every level of the project organization had abdicated responsibility for the project’s quality to the QA organization.
The variety of problems these late 1970’s and early 1980’s nuclear projects were suffering were compounded by other basic weaknesses in their project management systems. Matrix management systems were common at that time, but these kinds of systems do not enforce enough internal discipline to keep a complex nuclear project on track. Every nuclear project which got into trouble in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s had a matrix management system. Another issue was the lack of project configuration control and the lack of contractor interface control. Projects which lacked effective configuration control and effective contractor interface control saw their budgets being eaten by the nuclear construction contractors.
Inside those projects which got into serious trouble, middle managers and senior managers did not want to hear bad news of any kind. Managers at lower levels knew what the problems were, but by the time the message got to the senior managers, it had become so attenuated it was unrecognizable. Whistleblowers on the job became fed up with management’s lack of commitment to quality construction standards and went outside the project to the anti-nuclear activists. Those activists then made sure these very real QA problems were introduced into the NRC licensing process.
Why was it that in the late 1970’s and the early 1980’s, it was primarily the whistleblowers who were exposing these quality assurance issues, not the NRC’s own professional staff?
It was because at the time, the NRC viewed QA issues as not representing a danger until the plant was about to go operational. And so the NRC focused its oversight efforts on the last phases of the licensing process when the plant was about to go for an operating license. This meant that a project’s substandard construction practices which had been in place for years had remained unchallenged over most of the project’s life, and so the project had become complacent because it hadn’t heard from the NRC.
In other words, no news was good news for these projects. But then when the anti-nuclear activists raised issues with how the plant had been constructed, issues which had been discovered by whistleblowers on the job, these projects began asking the question, where was the NRC in the earlier phases of the project when its oversight and input was most needed?
Those nuclear projects which were successfully completed in the 1980’s were the ones which had strong project management systems and which viewed the NRC as a resource, not as an adversary. By the late 1980’s, most all of the earlier problems with nuclear construction had been resolved and the industry was well positioned to expand, had the market for nuclear power plants continued to hold up.
But this was not to be. The weight of past problems and of increasing competition from coal and from natural gas put an end to nuclear construction in the US for a period of twenty-years. More recently, the emergence of the fracking boom and severe competition from cheap natural gas is putting an end to the nascent American nuclear renaissance.
Those in the United States who say the solution to nuclear power’s lack of economic competitiveness with cheap natural gas is to remove the strict regulatory requirements government now imposes on the industry are living in a dream world.
Having been involved for a time a decade ago in estimating the costs of the latest nuclear construction projects, my best guess is that removing the NRC’s regulatory burdens might reduce US nuclear construction costs ten to fifteen percent. But that reduction isn’t nearly enough to overcome the lifecycle cost advantages now enjoyed by natural gas.
But more important than that, a decision to greatly reduce government oversight over nuclear power would greatly reduce the public’s confidence that nuclear is safe. Is that loss of public confidence worth a cost reduction of perhaps fifteen percent at best in nuclear construction costs — a cost reduction which has every probability of being completely illusory?