UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS UPDATE ON JAPAN'S NUCLEAR POWER CRISIS TELEPRESS CONFERENCE
MARCH 29, 2011 2:00 P.M. P R O C E E D I N G S
OPERATOR: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Japan Nuclear Reactor Update. At this time, all attendees are in a listen-only mode, but later today, we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will follow at that time. If you should require assistance during today's conference, you may press star then zero on your touchtone telephone to speak with an operator. Finally, as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Now I would like to introduce your host for today's conference, Elliott Negin.
MR. NEGIN: Thank you, Daniel. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Elliott Negin, I'm the media director here at the Union of Concerned Scientists and I want to thank you for joining our call this afternoon. Just to remind you again, the Union of Concerned Scientists is an independent science-based advocacy group that has been a nuclear industry watchdog for 40 years. We are not for, or against, nuclear power. Our goal has always been to ensure that the industry operates its reactors as safely as possible.
Now, if we don't get to all of your questions during this briefing, please email us at media@ucsusa.org, that's media@ucsusa.org, and we will get back to you as soon as we can. If you have trouble getting everything down that you need from today's briefing, there will be a transcript and an audio file on our website later today. I also urge you to check out our Frequently Asked Questions feature on our website, and our allthingsnuclear.org blog for answers to your questions. Now, we will not be holding a press briefing tomorrow at 11:00 a.m., because the director of our Nuclear Safety Project, David Lochbaum, is testifying again on Capitol Hill. He was testifying this morning in a Senate hearing. The hearing tomorrow is being hosted by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, and will run from 10:00 to noon. Later today, we will email you information about that Senate hearing, and our plans for a press briefing tomorrow. Now, after our speaker is done this afternoon, and we open the phone to your questions, please ask only one question, and if necessary, one follow-up. And please, mute your phone after you ask your question, so the sound of your typing won't disturb everybody else. Our speaker this afternoon is Dr. Edwin Lyman, who will update us on the latest developments in Japan. Dr. Lyman is a Senior Scientist in the UCS Global Security Program. He has a doctorate in physics and is an expert on nuclear plant design and the environmental and health effects of radiation. Also on the line today is Ellen Vancko, our Nuclear Energy and Climate Change Project Manager. Ellen, who used to work in the electric utility industry, can answer any questions you might have about the impact this disaster might have on the nuclear power industry here in the United States. I will now turn the phone over to Ed Lyman.
DR. LYMAN: Thank you, Elliott, and good afternoon.
The situation today is one in which there is now an increased tension between the ability to provide adequate cooling water onto the reactor cores, Reactors 1, 2 and 3, and the ability to deal with the contaminated water, which is a particular issue in Unit 2. It was reported yesterday that there is a trench, a line tunnel on the site between the units and the ocean that has filled up with water that is so highly contaminated that even on the surface, the dose rate of 1000 millisievert per hour would be enough to induce symptoms of acute radiation exposure within an hour and could potentially be lethal after several hours. These are extremely high doses to be encountered outside of the reactor areas, and as a result, the management of this contaminated water has become a serious issue. There are tanks, some tanks available for storage of contaminated water. The reactors each have what's known as a steam condenser, with some capacity, only Unit 1 has room in the condenser tank for any contaminated water, and in Units 2 and 3, the condensers are filled. They will have to be emptied before the contaminated water can be pumped from the turbine building basements and the trench into those tanks. Then downstream there are additional storage and surge tanks which will have to be the recipient of any water from the condenser. So, in the mean time, while there seems to be a flooding issue, they've reduced flow to at least Reactor 2, and that led to an increase in the reactor vessel temperature. Unit 1 has experienced a surge in the temperature inside the reactor vessel to temperature higher than normal operating limits in the reactor, at least as of this morning, and that is a cause for concern.
So, there's a definite conflict now between trying to keep the reactors cool and managing the contaminated wastewater that's being generated in these operations. There's still contradictory information about off-site radiation doses. The Wall Street Journal is reporting radiation contamination rates are declining. This would actually be expected because there's no evidence that there's been venting for more than a week from the affected reactors. So, the bulk of the radioactivity is still contained within the reactor vessel in the containment building of the three reactors. So, it's not clear that we would see increases at this point of off-site contamination; however, there is still dosing to the persistent elevated dose rates quite far from the reactor, and in fact, the Green Peace Independent Monitor Team arrived over the weekend and started to take its own survey measurements and report them, and they do indicate dose rates well beyond the exclusion, or the evacuation zone and the sheltering zone, which would indicate cause for concern if someone is still residing in those areas for extended periods of time.
So, the situation is still very fluid, and there's still a lot of confusion. Thank you.
MR. NEGIN: Thank you, Ed, we will now open up the phone to questions.
OPERATOR: Certainly. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press the star and then the number 1 key on your touchtone telephone. If your question is later answered, or you wish to remove yourself from the queue for any reason, you may press the pound key to do so. Our first question.
REPORTER: Hi. Ed, you had indicated this tension between the contaminated water and the cooling and the implication there is that as they circulate water to keep some of the reactors cool, it adds to the contaminant water problem. So, what's the pathway between the reactor and wherever this water is accumulating, either in the tunnels or the turbine room or the trenches?
DR. LYMAN: Yeah, thanks for your question. As far as I know, the authorities in Japan are still saying they don't know. So, I wouldn't pretend to guess at this point, but I would expect that if they've really had to take this step of reducing flow rates, that they've either observed that there is some direct pathway, or they have a suspicion that there's a direct pathway. Because otherwise, to reduce the flow rate through the reactor is a major step.
So, I'm interpreting that as a sign that they actually do know and understand something, but as we discussed before, I really can't hazard a guess. You know, there are a variety of potential leak paths, and people are speculating. The Guardian just reported that the experts are saying that Unit 2, the core melted through the reactor vessel, and that would be the only explanation for the highly contaminated water. I'm not sure, but I really, I can't shed any more light on that at this point.
REPORTER: And, well, that seems to ultimately contradict the reports from TEPCO that the pressure readings inside all of the three reactors are normal. I mean, if they can hold pressure, it's difficult to imagine that they've been melted through. Ed, do you have a reaction to that?
DR. LYMAN: Yeah, I mean, a lot of their readings, you know, I don't know what you can depend on at this point, because one day they'll display a set of readings and the next day some of those readings will be replaced with an indication that they're not functioning or not trustworthy. So, you know, I don't really know how to interpret these at this point.
REPORTER: One last quick follow-up, can this water be -- I assume they're trying to figure out where to pump it and store it. Ultimately, can this water be decontaminated through precipitating out any dissolved material or filtering out suspended particulates?
DR. LYMAN: It's certainly possible, the problem is it's a soup of a variety of different isotopes, some of which are more easily filtered than others. And also, the concentrations are certainly higher than those that would be encountered during normal operation of the systems that filter the condensed water at this plant.
So, they would probably have to bring in special equipment to be able to cope with the higher concentrations of radioisotopes. In that case, of course, you would get -- well, the filters would become radioactive waste, and would need to be managed. But I guess that would be preferable to allowing it to flow into the ocean.
REPORTER: Thank you.
OPERATOR: Our next question.
REPORTER: Hi, thanks very much. I have two questions: The first is you mentioned the Wall Street Journal and The Guardian and I'm just wondering where your group is getting its information from. Are you getting direct information from anyone in Japan?
DR. LYMAN: Yes, I mean, we're taking our information from a variety of publicly available sources, but I don't think we have access to anything that isn't available to others. You know, we have those, you know, reporting by IAEA, Department of Energy from time to time, NISA, independent groups, now Green Peace, and, you know, we're just trying to stitch these together, but we don't have any special access at this point.
REPORTER: Thanks. And I was just wondering, I guess from a big picture perspective, is there anything that you think that the people handling the situation in Japan need to be doing differently than what they're doing now?
DR. LYMAN: You mean with regard to the emergency response at the plant?
REPORTER: Yes.
DR. LYMAN: Well, again, there's no playbook for this, but I mean, the overall goal is pretty simple, you just have to keep the fuel in the reactors and the spent fuel pools from overheating, to the extent that there's additional fuel damage and potential damage to the reactor vessel or containment structures. And but the challenge is how to manage and control that.
So, I think they're doing the best they can under the circumstances, but the conditions are becoming so challenging that there may not be any easy way out. And more hard choices may have to be made.
If they need to increase cooling that will increase the run-off of highly contaminated water, and they don't have any place to store it, they may have to make hard choices about releasing larger quantities of radiation to the environment, as they did to manage the pressure build-up and the containment in the early days of the accident. So, there just may not be any good choices.
I would say, though, that anecdotal evidence indicates that their radiation protection guidelines as have been reported are haphazard at best, and the over-exposure of the three workers a few days ago from contact with contaminated water was clearly a major oversight of their radiation protection program.
So, I don't know if it's the lack of equipment, or it's just a managerial confidence or panic that's going on, but I don't think that enough measures are being taken to ensure the workers health and safety are protected to every extent possible.
OPERATOR: Our next question.
REPORTER: Hi. Is the trace radiation being detected from Japan in the U.S. a threat to the public health, and has that peaked?
DR. LYMAN: Thanks for your question. I don't believe that these traces of radioactivity are of a significant threat to the public health in the U.S. Just looking at the reported concentrations, the things like iodine, those would -- any dose associated with that exposure would be hundreds of times lower than the rated background. So, on an individual basis, it would be a pretty insignificant health impact.
With regard to iodine 131, that has been -- those releases have been limited and iodine 131 has a half life of only eight days. So, the longer the plant can function and prevent any additional damage to the fuel or containment structure, the lower the amount of iodine that will be released to the environment. So, with regard to iodine, that problem is going away with time, but with regard to other isotopes that are not quite as mobile as iodine, like cesium 137, those will be around for a long time, and at least the airborne releases, again, will be eliminated if they don't have to vent any more gas, if they continue to control the pressure in the containment.
So, at this point, it looks like those airborne releases are being controlled, but in the event of an additional loss of control in one of the reactors, for example, that would lead to heating up the core and more fuel melting, it could lead to a breach of the reactor vessel or the containment, we could be seeing larger releases down the line. Only a small fraction of the total amount of radioactivity that's in the reactor cores or in the spent fuel pools has been released at this point.
OPERATOR: Our next question.
REPORTER: Thank you. Is there a point at which you would recommend that an international coalition take action to assist the Japanese government in dealing with a widening crisis? It seems at this point that the measures have been stop gapped at best. There was a report just a few hours ago that the Japanese government was considering nationalizing TEPCO and that plutonium was found in soil outside the plant. Do you think that there's a level at which a global effort needs to be taken to address the crisis? Or international effort?
DR. LYMAN: I can say something and maybe Ellen Vancko would also like to comment on this. I think what this does illustrate is that a nuclear reactor accident anywhere in the world does have global impacts. Now, in this case, impacts outside of Japan may be limited just because of the prevailing winds and the distance of the nearest downwind land masses, but you can imagine, for the countries in central Europe, for example, the international impacts of such an event could be even more extreme. So, this is an international problem, and the international community by and large has failed in its -- or hasn't really tried to come up with a global regime that would be able to deal with the international impacts of such accidents. There's no international safety watchdog that has any teeth. And as a result, nations still regard their own programs as a domestic preogative and they don't want interference from the outside.
And we see that now from Japan in that they didn't seem overly enthusiastic in seeking international support, there are some reports that they are not being cooperative with their neighbors in information sharing. So, obviously that is a misguided attitude, but it's hard, I don't know what mechanisms there are to force the Japanese to accept help that they're not asking for.
REPORTER: Is there a worst case scenario to this crisis that would threaten the health of Americans?
DR. LYMAN: I think even in the worst case, I wouldn't see dose rates increasing by more than a factor of ten, maybe, from where they are, as far as direct contamination from the plume. So, even then I would think it would still be below real health concern; however, there will be likely contaminated seafood and other agricultural products from Japan and it's going to have to be very careful monitoring of any Japanese imports of seafood or shellfish that could potentially lead to another pathway for Americans’ exposure. But I don't see it as, even after Chernobyl, the consequences were still very, very low for Americans, and I don't see that this would have a different outcome.
MS. VANCKO: This is Ellen Vancko, I think we are seeing an impact, but I think it's going to be on the nuclear industries and the nuclear plants in other countries. A number of countries, almost immediately after this fact, announced that they were re-examining their own reactor fleets for safety and of a whole variety of announcements were made by Germany, by France, by others. So, that is unfolding. You're going to see a re-examination in this country, of course, the NRC is going to take steps to examine existing reactor safety and security. That examination has already been announced. So, the impacts will be there, they just may not be fallout related. The one thing that Ed mentioned yesterday on the call was this issue of concentration, of potential concentration of isotopes in seafood as this moves up the food chain, and the one thing we do have to remember is that large fish, the fish at the top of the food chain, move great distances. So, while these fish and any potential contamination that we are talking about today is limited to the areas around Japan, there are no fences to keep those fish there.
OPERATOR: Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press the star and then the number 1 key on your touchtone telephone. If your question is later answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, you may press the pound key to do so. Our next question.
REPORTER: I did not hear what happened on Capitol Hill this morning, but one of our stories we mentioned the idea that we might send some sort of radiation detecting robots to Japan. I was wondering, Dr. Lyman, if you're familiar with those, what they're used for and if that might be a good idea. How that might be helpful, thanks.
DR. LYMAN: Actually, I haven't heard the report, so I would probably have to see exactly what they're planning, but one of the issues they're facing, of course, is the lack of access to areas where the radiation was so high that they're really not habitable. However, yeah, I would just have to look at what -- I really don't know what purpose they would serve at this point or what they're planning to use them for. So, I think I really need to look at those stories before I can tell you more.
MS. VANCKO: This is Ellen Vancko, I can confirm that Pete Lyons at this morning's hearing mentioned that they were looking into the issue, but he did not get into any detail. So, other than saying they were considering that avenue, we don't know anything more at this time.
REPORTER: Thanks.
OPERATOR: Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star, then 1. At this time, I see no further questions in the queue.
MR. NEGIN: Thank you all for participating in our press event this afternoon. Just to remind you that the head of our Nuclear Safety Project, David Lochbaum, will be testifying tomorrow morning on Capitol Hill, it's a hearing hosted by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. It runs from 10:00 to noon. We will send you information shortly about that hearing. The hearing will also feature Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the NRC, and Peter Lyons from the Department of Energy. And we will also let you know about our plans for a press briefing tomorrow. We haven't firmed those plans up yet, but we will let you know some time later this afternoon.
In the mean time, if you have any questions for any of our experts, please email us at media@ucsusa.org, that's media@ucsusa.org, and we will get back to you as soon as we can. Thank you very much.
OPERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance in today's conference. This does conclude today's program, and you may now disconnect.
(Whereupon, the telepress was concluded.)
