U.S. nuclear plants similar to Fukushima spark concerns

By Matt Smith, CNN

updated 8:41 AM EST, Fri February 17, 2012

 

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• U.S. OKs new nuclear reactors a year after Japan disaster
• 23 GE Mark I reactors in U.S. share same design as Fukushima Daiichi plant
• Many are aging, but have undergone safety improvements
• GE says design is proven, reliable technology that is safe to use

Programming note: Join CNN's Amber Lyon for a Special Investigations Unit report on America's aging GE Mark I nuclear reactors, including the 40-year-old Vermont Yankee plant this Saturday and Sunday night at 8 ET/PT on "CNN Presents."

 

(CNN) -- As the United States prepares to build its first new nuclear power reactors in three decades, concerns about an early generation of plants have resurfaced since last year's disaster in Japan.

The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant -- the subject of a battle between state authorities and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over its continued operation -- uses one of 23 U.S. reactors built with a General Electric-designed containment housing known as the Mark I.

It's the same design that was used at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, where three reactors melted down after the station was struck by the tsunami that followed Japan's historic earthquake in March 2011. The disaster resulted in the widespread release of radioactive contamination that forced more than 100,000 people from their homes.

GE says the Mark I design has operated safely for more than 40 years and has been modified periodically to meet changing regulations. No nuclear plant could have avoided a meltdown after being swamped by a tsunami and losing power to cooling systems for an extended period of time, the company says -- and at least one expert CNN spoke to agrees.

But concerns about the Mark I's ability to contain the consequences of a severe accident have been raised for decades, and critics say the Fukushima Daiichi accident shows it can't survive a real-world disaster.

Concerns over aging nuclear plants

Georgia county embraces nuclear reactor

New nuclear reactors approved

 

The structure was designed so steam that builds up in an overheating reactor can be diverted into a doughnut-shaped water tank known as the suppression pool, or torus, where it condenses back to water to reduce pressure inside the reactor containment building. That allows utilities to build a much smaller containment structure -- as little as one-sixth the size of those used at some U.S. plants.

Stephen Hanauer, a former top safety official at what was then the Atomic Energy Commission, warned in 1971 that in an accident in which the core slowly loses coolant and overheats, the Mark I containment "would overpressurize. That could lose the torus water source, hence ECCS [emergency core cooling system] as well as leak out fission products."

Read the 1971 Atomic Energy Commission document (PDF)

In 1978, the NRC, which replaced the AEC, decided that the design was safe. Hanauer agreed with that decision, which GE and plant operators have pointed out.

But the following year, there was a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, and the NRC began an extensive safety review that resulted in several changes to the Mark I design.

One of those was a 1989 push for utilities to install a vent system that would release steam from the containment during an emergency. But as critics point out, that also raises the odds that radioactive material will escape the containment -- even with a "hardened" vent, one that tries to filter out the reactor byproducts.

Read the 1989 NRC recommendation for U.S. nuclear plants to install vents (PDF)

"A hardened vent is just a way of saying we're going to uncontain the containment," said Ken Bergeron, a former physicist at the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico, who took part in the NRC review. "The question comes up now -- and this is a really important question -- can the Mark I containment be made better?"

A Fukushima Daiichi reactor building is covered by a steel frame to prevent dispersal of radioactive materials.

Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear engineer and a leading critic of the Vermont Yankee plant, says the Japanese accident shows the Mark I containment system can't prevent a release of radioactivity in a meltdown.

Watch an excerpt from this weekend's CNN Special Investigations Unit report on Vermont Yankee
In an October hearing before the NRC's Petition Review Board, he said the vents were a "Band-Aid fix" for the design that failed "not once, not twice, but three times" at Fukushima Daiichi.

"True wisdom means knowing when to modify something and knowing when to stop," said Gundersen, who leads a state commission set up to monitor the Vermont Yankee plant.

Half of U.S. reactors are more than 30 years old

The GE Mark I containment structure design is a proven, reliable technology.

Michael Tetuan, GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy

 

The NRC has rejected a petition by anti-nuclear groups to immediately shut down all reactors using the GE Mark I containment. But it said it would examine several of the issues the petitioners raised as part of its review of the Japanese disaster.

Bergeron called the Mark I containment the smallest and weakest of those used in American plants. But he said the NRC "punted" in the face of industry resistance by calling only for utilities to install vents.

As for GE, he said, "They got the rule book from the federal government, and they said 'This is all you have to design it for.' The real question is: What should have been done after 1979, when you found out the rule book was flawed?"

GE says it has made several changes to the Mark I design since 1980 aimed at improving safety in the event of an accident. The manufacturer, which has a partnership with Japanese industrial giant Hitachi, stands by its product and says the tsunami that struck Fukushima Daiichi would have devastated any plant.

In Georgia this month, the U.S. OK'd building new nuclear reactors for the first time in over 30 years.

"There is no nuclear plant operating today that would have performed differently," GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy spokesman Michael Tetuan told CNN.

Bergeron agrees that no power station could have survived the long-term loss of power that occurred at the Japanese plant without a meltdown. But he noted that at Three Mile Island, the worst U.S. accident to date, there were "essentially zero emissions" from its much larger containment structure.  "From the point of view of public safety, that's a home run," he said.

Tetuan said the nuclear industry is still studying what happened in Japan, "and there will undoubtedly be lessons learned that will need to be implemented across the industry and across all types of nuclear plants, including the Mark I." But he added, "The GE Mark I containment structure design is a proven, reliable technology. It fulfills all regulatory requirements in one of the most highly regulated industries in the world."

Commission: U.S. nukes are safe, but ...

Japan will need decades to clean up after Fukushima Daiichi, the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986. About 110,000 people are still displaced from homes, a Japanese government commission reported in December.

We need still a little bit more time to find out what really happened John Lee, University of Michigan

A 20-kilometer (12-mile) radius around the plant remains off-limits. Workers have peered only briefly into the damaged reactor buildings, and experts say a full damage report may take years.

"We need still a little bit more time to find out what really happened," said John Lee, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Michigan. "It took three years at Three Mile Island to be able to open up the pressure vessel," Lee said. "So we're not quite there yet."

2011 nuclear power report: No changes needed

Michigan nuclear plant cited for safety violations

The U.S. nuclear industry hasn't built a new reactor since Three Mile Island. But on February 9, the NRC approved two new reactors at the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia.

The reactors are of a different design than the GE plants at Fukushima Daiichi and in the United States.

CNN's Todd Schwarzschild and Curt Merrill contributed to this report.

Correcting Corrections Worldwide: Best Practices Reforming Prisons

By Carolyn Cosmos
Written on February 2, 2012

Also See: Worst Offenders Worldwide

When Pope Benedict XVI visited one of Italy's biggest prisons shortly before Christmas, he called its overcrowding and degradations a "double sentence," Reuters reported. The Italian government had announced reforms to Rome's Rebibbia Prison only two days before the pontiff's visit.

The Italian government is hardly alone in its struggle to instill order behind bars: As of January 2011, 10 million people were incarcerated worldwide, an all-time high, according to the Global Commission on Drug Policy, and overcrowding is "the biggest single problem facing prison systems" around the world, including the United States. It endangers inmate health and prevents prisons from functioning as they should, added an October 2011 report by the nonprofit Penal Reform International.

In short, civilian prisons everywhere are packed and problematic — and it's not just an issue of treating criminals humanely; it's a larger issue of ensuring that the entire corrections system works, keeping both inmates and society safe.

But even the best prisons don't currently work that well. For example, Norway's prisons are highly rated by the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index, but a fifth of those incarcerated in that country wind up behind bars again. The recidivism rate in the United States is more than double Norway's. And one of the worst offenders is Mexico, whose jails, recently profiled in The Diplomat, are in "a state of shambles and oftentimes a haven of crime" (also see "Locked Up But Let Loose: The Sorry State of Mexican Jails" in the January 2012 issue).

Fixing up the state of prisons worldwide is gaining steam on the back of rigorous science and data. These "best practices" rely on research, evidence-based operations and measurable outcomes — and while such academia-laden reforms may not sound especially exciting, they may be key to improving and strengthening criminal justice systems, an ugly but integral part of any functioning society.

And the issue is a huge one for the United States, home to the most prisoners on the planet. As former President Jimmy Carter pointed out in a New York Times op-ed last summer, "At the end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000 people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3 million. There are 743 people in prison for every 100,000 Americans, a higher portion than in any other country and seven times as great as in Europe. Some 7.2 million people are either in prison or on probation or parole — more than 3 percent of all American adults!"

Photo: Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services

The flag from the nation of Georgia joins the lobby of Maryland's Police and Correctional Training Commissions Public Safety Education and Training Center. After an international graduation, each country that trained with Maryland officials puts its flag on permanent display there.

The burgeoning prison population is a significant drain on taxpayer money, especially if not managed properly. So the United States has been turning to this notion of best prison practices to revamp its corrections mindset, while also reaching out to international partners and finding a unique niche for bilateral cooperation.

The best practices approach is rooted in Canada, but over the last decade it has spread across the United States and been adopted by major corrections and government organizations, according to one of its developers, Canadian Paul Gendreau, founder of the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of New Brunswick-Saint John.

Gendreau told The Diplomat that best prison practices are well known in Britain and New Zealand, where he was asked to introduce the idea to corrections officials in the late 1980s. "The Scandinavian countries have always had progressive policies," Gendreau noted.

Complementing this approach are standards set by the United Nations, starting with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the adoption of rules for the treatment of prisoners in 1955. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime also helps countries build and reform prison systems with a special focus on community-based "restorative justice" efforts, and since 1999, U.N. peacekeeping operations have provided support to prison systems using a best practices model.

The United States has also embraced the paradigm: The National Institute of Corrections (NIC), part of the Department of Justice, provides training and technical assistance to corrections agencies throughout the United States and since the late 1990s has incorporated "evidence-based practices" into its efforts.

However, Gendreau and his longtime colleague Francis Cullen of the University of Cincinnati's School of Criminal Justice caution that these evidence-based interventions have practical limitations.

"It is important to realize that a 'best practice' is not a panacea," Cullen told The Diplomat. "There are no magical pills in corrections. That said, the research is clear in showing that programs that conform to best practices achieve substantial reductions in recidivism, upward of 20 percent, and that nearly all punitively oriented corrections programs are based on no empirical evidence that they work."

Examples of punitive approaches include prison "boot camps," humiliation strategies and the overuse of solitary confinement.

While the "punitive era" in corrections that started in the 1970s in the United States "may have peaked," Gendreau said, there is a lingering "lack of respect for scientific knowledge." Nevertheless, best practices are generally accepted today in professional circles — but the bigger problem now is implementation: finding the funds, the political will and the managerial savvy to put proven approaches into practice.

Interestingly, several local systems are doing just that, aided by the State Department and its international partners in a little-known diplomatic collaboration to improve criminal justice both at home and abroad.
The State Department has teamed up with local law enforcement institutions in five states — Maryland, Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and California — under programs run by its Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL).

The goal is two-fold: enhance state-level law enforcement capabilities through federally funded corrections training, while also helping other nations such as Mexico, Haiti and Afghanistan achieve greater security through the professionalization of their police and corrections officers.

International partners tour corrections sites in the United States and learn about best practices at certain standout facilities. INL's focus on state prisons in the United States started around 2009, when the office began examining facilities with particular strengths, in consultation with the American Correctional Association and various international partners. The training is aimed at middle and upper management, an INL corrections official told us — people who can return to their own countries, adapt what they learned to their needs, and train their own staffs.

More than 20 different countries have already taken part in the INL state-prison training programs. International guests have said they found the hands-on immersion experiences valuable. Training includes facility tours, team-building exercises, and the sharing of ideas.

For example, California, though recognized as having a highly troubled prison system, was nevertheless chosen by INL for its expertise in emergency preparedness and managing prison populations during manmade or natural disasters such as earthquakes, as well as its experience dealing with prison gangs. It's already offered corrections professionals from other countries flood-simulation training exercises.

New Mexico has a prison training academy, and Colorado provides best practices in transporting prisoners securely as well as in job training. Nebraska has an innovative female offender program, while Maryland specializes in probation and parole issues, according to the State Department.

Maryland's Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services has a number of innovative programs, in fact, that attract international visitors for tours and training, reported the department's director of public information, Mark Vernarelli. "We do a lot of training for parole and probation agents," he said, noting recent delegations from Mexico and the country of Georgia.

A new maximum-security prison in Cumberland, Md., has also hosted delegations from Saudi Arabia, Georgia, the Palestinian territories and Canada, while Baltimore's city jail and pretrial division have hosted delegations from Russia and Ukraine. Vernarelli said a number of groups have been particularly interested in programs that give low-security inmates meaningful community work projects.

"We have inmates doing oyster repopulation and tree planting, cemetery restoration, and Habitat for Humanity home building," Vernarelli explained. "Our K-9 unit was the first in the nation to breed and train its own cell-phone sniffing dogs, and we have trained a number of foreign nations' K-9 units," he added, noting that one British group wanted to learn about Maryland's special prison programs for war veterans.

Gene Farmer is a Maryland instructor and the community supervision administrator for the state's Police and Correctional Training Commissions. He headed a 10-day probation and pre-release training for Mexican prison officials last July that highlighted topics such as risk assessment and HIV/AIDS, as well as incorporating evidence-based practices. Maryland's corrections system has been noted for its commitment to science-based drive to reduce recidivism and substance abuse while increasing the employability of inmates.

Farmer's training program started at 9 in the morning and ended at 10 p.m. It featured field trips to prisons where visitors could practice new skills in real-world simulations, as well as visits to notable tourist sites and some shopping stops in downtown D.C. The training is followed by a delegation's graduation ceremony, whereby officials place the flag of the guest nation on permanent display in the training center's lobby.

To prepare for a delegation from Georgia, Farmer met with representatives in D.C. and then traveled overseas to visit Georgian prisons and "see what their needs were" in a visit funded by the State Department.

Important aspects of the programs for both Georgian and Mexican delegations, he said, were methods to identify and supervise high-risk versus low-risk offenders emerging from prison and how to make "non-intrusive" home visits to someone on parole.

Farmer and his team advise delegates "to take the ideas and concepts of what research shows has worked and make them yours" because "every country has its distinctive history, philosophy and traditions."

Also under INL's aegis, a delegation of nine female corrections professionals from Afghanistan traveled to Nebraska last October as part of a cooperative agreement between the State Department and the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, which has also hosted groups from Costa Rica and Tunisia. The Afghan contingency studied areas of particular concern to that country's women's prisons, including nursery care, prisoner classification, educational and vocational programming, as well as reintegration programs.

The training included ways to search visitors, setting up systems for keeping track of keys, religious activities among inmates, and women's health and infant care. The Nebraska Correctional Center for Women in York is one of only about nine in the United States that has an infant nursery on site, a practice more common in other countries. The prison screens pregnant inmates for nursery use and babies are limited to 18-month stays, "so we try to select mothers who'll be released by then so they won't be separated," explained the facility's warden, John Dahm.

The delegation also visited the city of Lincoln for shopping and relaxation, and the local Afghan community there hosted a dinner for the group — as did, later, the warden and his wife. Dahm, a former history professor who eats lunch with inmates every day, said: "We learned a lot too, and the visit was good for our staff — an eye opener for some of them."

Meanwhile, Colorado has turned the site of a former women's prison in the south central part of the state into a new international training center that has hosted INL-sponsored delegations from Mexico, Brazil, Honduras and Afghanistan, among others.

Colorado's new corrections director, Tom Clements, recently told The Diplomat that he hopes to make "evidence-based practices the focus of the entire Colorado prison system. We're in transition right now, as we focus on data analysis," he said, noting that no one-size-fits-all approach works and that best practices must be adapted to individual facilities.

One of the areas of expertise for which Colorado has already earned distinction is the so-called field of prison industries, which teaches offenders work skills to find jobs after their release. Jack Laughlin, a manger with Colorado Correctional Industries, said the system aims to give jobs to 20 percent of its inmates, though it doesn't always reach that goal.

Colorado's international visitors are typically senior corrections officials interested in the state's job-training incentives system, Laughlin said. Programs such as the furniture shop unit offer such incentives: If an inmate-made item is returned by a customer, for example, the whole shop team loses money, but that same team can jointly earn a "production bonus" for exceptionally good work, Laughlin explained. Other programs train inmates to be fire crews or do website work. There are even a number of farm initiatives, including a large goat dairy and cheese-making site and a water buffalo program.

Another area of shared expertise is high-risk transport: getting inmates to a hospital or another prison. "We also cover case management, various custody levels and general incentives for positive behavior," Laughlin told us in a phone interview — with everything based on best practices.

Worst Offenders Worldwide

The World Justice Project's 2011 Rule of Law Index is a quantitative assessment tool of the American Bar Association that is put together by 2,000 experts worldwide, with a long list of funders that includes the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and LexisNexis. Part of the drive in the corrections industry to create more reliable data (see main story above), the index ranks countries on eight factors, such as "absence of corruption," "order and security," "fundamental rights," "open government" and — factor eight — "effective criminal justice."

According to index rankings, the criminal justice "top 10" nations are, in order, Norway, the Chinese territory of Hong Kong, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Germany and Canada. The United States is number 20, behind the Czech Republic, Japan, Britain, Estonia, Australia, Italy, Poland, Belgium and Spain. (The United States is faulted for discrimination against minorities and lower-income populations.)

In the bottom rung of the 66 nations ranked for criminal justice effectiveness are Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan, followed by Bolivia, Mexico, Bulgaria, Liberia and Venezuela.

---

About the Author

Carolyn Cosmos is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

Girls with Wings adds 'Dreams Take Flight' scholarship

Girls with Wings, an organization that promotes girls' interest in aviation, has added a second opportunity to its 2012 scholarship offerings. 

The $500 "Dreams Take Flight" scholarship is intended to fund introductory flight training to encourage achievement of a stated goal, whether as a pilot or in another field of study in aviation. 

There is no prerequisite for flight training to apply. 

Also available is a $1,000 scholarship for a woman who has soloed but has not completed private pilot training. 

The deadline to apply is March 31. For more information, see the website.

Student Volunteer Opportunities: 15th Annual Emergency Management Higher Education Conference Update

15^th Annual Emergency Management Higher Education Conference is scheduled June 4-7, 2012. 

v  STUDENT VOLUNTEER POSITIONS FOR THE HI ED CONFERENCE: 

Students currently enrolled in a college/university emergency management program are needed as student volunteers for the 15^th Annual Emergency Management Higher Education Conference.  Students will be given reporting assignments and general conference duties.  The reports will be incorporated into the post-conference proceedings posted to the FEMA Emergency Management Higher Education Program website -- Conferences section. 

Generally graduate students will be assigned primarily to take detailed notes during the concurrent breakout sessions and to write summaries of those breakout sessions for incorporating into the post-conference “proceedings”.  Reports will be 3-4 pages per session and will highlight the most significant aspects of the session.  Graduate students will be assigned at least one breakout session to report but may be assigned up to three reports during the conference. 

Generally undergraduate students are assigned various aspects of the conference i.e., passing microphones during plenary sessions, assisting with conference registration, passing out conference notebooks, taking hard copies of presentation materials to classrooms, posting breakout session classroom assignments and various other duties. 

In addition one or more students will be assigned to assist the Higher Education Program Manager and as well as the Hi Ed Program Assistant through out the week.   

Student volunteers are required to attend 100% of the conference beginning with Monday workshops and ending on Thursday afternoon with the last breakout sessions.  The typical volunteer obligations comprise about 20% of the conference.  When not acting in a volunteer capacity students are free to attend breakout sessions at their leisure. 

Student volunteers are encouraged to participate in all conference activities. 

Student Volunteer Criteria:  

Student must be enrolled in a collegiate Emergency Management program listed in the Emergency Management section of "The College List" on the FEMA EM Hi Ed Program website --    http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu/collegelist/.   

·         Student should have the recommendation of a faculty member or department chair 

·         Students must be at least 18 years of age. 

·         Student volunteers must pay own transportation to and from the conference.   

·         Student volunteers must be able to participate in the entire four day conference. 

·         Student volunteers will receive from the Higher Education Program reimbursement of the NETC meal ticket for the week and a no-cost, on-campus dorm room (International students can not be reimbursed for the meal ticket and will be required to pay $40.00 per night for the dorm room and must go through a 8-12 week security clearance.)  

·         Students currently employed in any capacity by FEMA, receiving funding of any sort from DHS or another federal agency are not eligible for reimbursement of the meal ticket.

·         Student should be capable of taking good detailed notes.

·         Student will need to prepare a comprehensive report based on notes from the assigned breakout session.  These reports will be incorporated into the Higher Education Program website conference proceedings. 

·         In the event we do not have enough graduate volunteers students may be asked to participate in additional breakout sessions.   

·         Student will be contacted by the Student Volunteer Coordinator for their respective assigned break out session and to collect the final reports.  

·         Students must submit a conference application form and must return all requested information to the Mitigation secretary in a timely manner in order to be reimbursed for the meal ticket.

·         If you have questions about the Higher Education Conference Student Volunteer positions please contact the Higher Education Program Assistant Barbara Johnson at Barbara.Johnson3@fema.dhs.gov or (301) 447-1452.  More information will be available on the Hi Ed website conference section at http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu/educonference12.asp. 

v  STUDENT RESEARCH BREAKOUT SESSION: 

Each year during the Annual Emergency Management Higher Education Conference a breakout session is reserved for graduate and doctoral students currently enrolled in an emergency management program. The reserved breakout session is an opportunity for students to present thesis or dissertation research.  In past years this has proven to be a very popular session with conference attendees.  Students wishing to present their research must be graduate or doctoral students currently enrolled in an emergency management program and have the recommendation of a faculty advisor.  Presentation is “one student only” delivery.  We do not allow group presentations for this session.  Presentation should be 10 minutes or less in length. For more information contact Barbara Johnson, Barbara.Johnson3@fema.dhs.gov or Shannon Cool, Shannon.Cool@associates.fema.dhs.gov. 

Scholarship Opportunity: 2012 Governor's Hurricane Conference

v  2012 Governor's Hurricane Conference Scholarship

Any student interested in receiving a scholarship to attend the 2012 Governor’s Hurricane Conference^® must complete their application by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 15th in order to be considered.  You will have no further access to your application after that time.  No late applications will be accepted under any circumstances.  Competition is fierce this year, so we encourage you to put forth your best effort in creating your application. 

P.S. Did you know that the Governor's Hurricane Conference - Student Scholarship Program has a page on Facebook?  Join now to get reminders, tips, and updates during the application process.  If you are selected to receive a scholarship, this will also be a good place to meet your peers before the conference, get logistical questions answered, and more tips for making your conference trip a success. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Governors-Hurricane-Conference-Student-Scholarship-Program/253780511324650

Rene' Daines

Governor's Hurricane Conference^®

P.O. Box 279

Tarpon Springs, FL 34688-0279

(727) 944-2724   (727) 944-2687 Fax

(800) 544-5678

ghcrene@verizon.net

www.flghc.org