Once again the nuclear industry, having banged on for years about what it likes to call "gaining public acceptance", has been thrown off course by problems of its own making, brought to light by a whistleblower. And this damage from within is proving more severe than anything that the industry's traditional opponents could throw at it.
As with the BNFL quality assurance data debacle of a couple of years ago, the transgressions of TEPCO maintenance personnel (see p3), from what we currently know of them, do not seem to have had any direct impact on reactor safety. But they betray a deep-seated and problematic corporate culture of secrecy and dishonesty that is unacceptable for a company engaged in the demanding job of running nuclear power plants.
Unlike the BNFL fiasco, where laziness and boredom appear to have led to the "recycling" of QA data (to avoid the bother of actually carrying out some rather tedious and repetitive measurements) for a few batches of MOX fuel, the TEPCO people and others in the Japanese nuclear industry, seem to have been engaged in a deliberate cover-up of a much more serious kind. Although some of the incidents, which go back to the late 1980s and early 90s, look relatively trivial, one being described, for example, as involving a "missing Allen wrench", others involve concealing of cracks, falsification of inspections and maintenance records and even the carrying out of unauthorised repairs.
In its recent report on the matter, TEPCO admits that "there has been systematic and inappropriate management of nuclear plant inspections and repair work for a long time." But the culture was such that "for employees in charge of the inspection and maintenance work, the most important concern was to complete periodic inspections and to bring their own generating plants on line as scheduled." TEPCO concludes that "the responsibility lies with the nuclear power stations as a whole, and with the nuclear power sections of the head office, and, finally, the top management of these sections." Heads have already rolled (although in some cases seem to have been reappointed as advisors), in some cases salaries have been reduced and, in the Japanese style, abject and grovelling apologies have been proffered to the nation.
There appears to have been lack of clarity about the level of problems to be reported to the safety authorities and the idea seems to have taken hold that the regulator did not need to be informed of problems if the maintenance staff judged there were no safety implications. This reluctance to report was exacerbated by concerns about the public response to problems at nuclear plants and "overconfidence that they understood nuclear power best" - the all too familiar arrogance of the "nuclear priesthood".
Astonishingly, records of problems, and subsequent repair work were deleted in inspection records, apparently to avoid any subsequent controversy over lack of reporting, and this entailed "further misconduct to falsify the dates of discovery, as well as to conceal things which occurred in the past." According to TEPCO, "An organisational climate was fostered in the nuclear sections in which no one could express his/her own opinions because the sections comprised a homogeneous society with a limited number of members." Unfortunately this kind of thing doesn't seem to be confined to the Japanese nuclear industry. A recent investigation by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission into reactor vessel head corrosion at First Energy's Davis-Besse plant found, among other things, that the reactor had been operated with a prohibited pressure boundary leakage, that there had been failure to take action to correct multiple identified safety concerns, that there were inadequacies in the boric acid corrosion control procedure and that there were multiple examples of inaccurate or incomplete information in letters to the NRC or records required by the NRC to be maintained on-site.
Then there's British Energy. This nuclear generator accounts for about a fifth of the UK's electricity and yet in recent months its share price has been in free fall, valuing the company at next to nothing (but presumably creating interesting opportunities for overseas purchasers with deep pockets, a strong nerve and a penchant for long term thinking). BE's boastful entry in the current Nuclear Trade Directory of the British Nuclear Industry Forum has unfortunately been somewhat overtaken by events. "British Energy's record of improving the performance of power generating assets is outstanding," it says. "The company has proved its ability to operate successfully in a privatised electricity market and is proving to be a major trader under the new electricity trading arrangements (NETA)." In fact, NETA, coupled with some unplanned shutdowns, has proved to be the company's undoing. But it is not just nuclear plants that have been feeling the strain of low wholesale electricity prices under NETA. The summer has seen several non-nuclear plants closed while recently TXU Europe has been on the brink and PowerGen has announced plans to mothball a quarter of its generating capacity (including an oil plant and a CCGT station).
It should also be borne in mind that there are still some nuclear plant operators around the world who are managing to keep their noses clean.
Exemplary in this regard is the Finnish utility TVO, which has maintained a consistently good track record over many years and is now in the unusual position of seriously planning to build a new reactor. It has just issued a call for bids to light water reactor vendors - a rare event indeed for the nuclear industry. Such operators tend to be those with the most rigorous and transparent approach to safety (which TEPCO and FirstEnergy would do well to reflect on), but they are also often somewhat cushioned from the vagaries of the stock market, which is useful if you are engaged in a long term and rather difficult enterprise like nuclear energy.
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