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]]]]]]]]]]]] THE CHICKEN LITTLE REACTOR [[[[[[[[[[[[[[
(12/1988)
Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 13 December 1988, p. A20:1
[Kindly uploaded by Freeman 10602PANC]
Maybe they should just flip a coin. Heads and the government
immediately restarts Savannah River Nuclear Plant, the so-called
K-reactor, that produces tritium for the U.S. arsenal of nuclear
warheads. Tails and the Department of Energy's bureaucrats get
to keep the reactors shut down indefinitely for ``safety
upgrades'' while the country's nuclear deterrent falls apart.
This approach sounds like a substitute for serious thinking, but
since little serious thinking about this issue is going on in
public anyway, there isn't much to lose by turning the problem
over to chance.
Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen that is integral to
the proper functioning of nearly all the U.S.'s nuclear warheads.
Because it degrades over time, the government must routinely
reinsert freshly made tritium into each warhead. Du Pont Co. has
produced America's tritium at a federal plant in South Carolina
that it designed, build and has operated without profit and with
no significant accidents since the early 1950s.
The Department of Energy has kept the three tritium reactors
run by Du Pont shut down since April. In August, technicians
restarting the K-reactor made a miscalculation and the reactor's
power intensity increased above normal. Ever since then, the
Department of Energy, Congress and the New York Times have been
running around the land squeaking, ``The sky is falling! The sky
is falling!'' By implying that doom, disease and destruction
will follow if the K-reactor is restarted, the Chicken-Little
school of policy making and journalism has indefinitely stopped
the production of tritium -- arguably one of the most important
functions performed by the U.S. government.
In the columns nearby, Forrest J. Remick, who is Vice Chairman
of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on
Reactor Safeguards, puts the K-reactor's August ``power surge''
incident in perspective. The issues he describes should lend
themselves to a resolution that would meet both the needs of
defense and of safety. But in Washington, nothing so sensible is
possible.
The Department of Energy's safety bureaucrats, led by Deputy
Assistant Secretary Richard Starostecki, have just produced a
document describing some 160 ``fixes'' for the K-reactor. The
DOE flowchart reprinted here is described in the report as a
``simplified diagram denoting the various activities leading to a
restart decision.'' There is a page called ``K-Reactor Restart
Strategy Acronym List,'' which in part includes: ACC, ACNFS, CS,
CW, DOE/EH, DOE/SR, DOE/SR (ES&H), HS&E, INPO, ORE, QA, ROD,
RPMT, RSAC, RSED, TA, TPC, TV and, lastly and not surprisingly,
USQ for Unresolved Safety Question.
The report gives a fair idea of why the department's
bureaucrats said that Energy Secretary John Herrington's planned
spring restart of the tritium reactor would most likely take
place sometime next Christmas. Meanwhile the New York Times is
continuing its daily series of stories along the lines of its
weekend headline, ``Blowing, Flowing and Crawling, Nature is
Spreading Nuclear Waste.'' Echoes of this barrage are staring to
appear in other publications as well.
The problem, of course, is that the Beltway's little opera
bouffe is liable to ``unresolve'' the country into disarmament as
the tritium decays (which some of the tritium reactor's critics
are now saying is the explicit goal of their opposition).
Credible experts exist who believe the K-reactor can be restarted
now to produce tritium while safety work proceeds on the other
reactors, but the national media coverage has made essentially no
effort to include their opinions. ``I don't believe the rector
is unsafe, or I'd say that,'' the ACRS's Forrest Remick said in
an interview. A Defense Department spokesman commenting on the
delays says: ``We're starting to lose slack time. The margin for
error has slipped to almost nothing.''
We will hold for another occasion the story of how a matter
critical to U.S. security could become so mismanaged and
misrepresented. The immediate task is for President-elect Bush
to appoint a strong Energy Secretary. The government needs
someone who understands the order of importance between a
``safe'' reactor as defined by Richard Starostecki's 160-criteria
restart flow chart, and the public's expectation of a healthy
nuclear deterrent.
K-Reactor Restart Strategy
[This rendering slightly modified to accomodate it to the page.]
+---------+ +-------------+ +------------+ +-------------+
| | | Development | | Definition | | Reactor |
| Safety | | of DOE Long | | of Long | | Safety |
| Needs |--->| Term Safety |->| Term |-o->| Improvement |
| Defined | | Enhancement | | Schedule & | | | Program |
| | | | | Budget | | | (RSIP) |
+---------+ +-------------+ +------------+ | +-------------+
| | |
v v v
+------------+ +-------------+ +---------------+
| DOE | | ACNFS Review| | DOE Secretary | Restart
| Restart | | of Criteria | | Review | Decision
| Criteria |-o->| and |---->| ------------- |--------->
| Development| | | Enhancement | | EH, DP, SRO |
| | | | Program | | |
+------------+ | +-------------+ +---------------+
| ^
v |
+-----------------+ +----------------+ +-----------+
| Restart | | Disposition of | | Readiness |
| Implementation | | Issues |->| Decisions |
| Plan & Schedule | | | | |
| Development | +----------------+ +-----------+
+-----------------+ ^ |
| | | |
v v | |
+----------------+ +----------------+ | |
| Contractor | | DOE | | v
| Implementation | | Implementation | +---------------+
| | | |->| DOE |
+----------------+ +----------------+ | Verification |
^ ^ | and |
| `------------------------>| ACNFS REVIEW |
| +---------------+
| ^
| |
| +----------------------+
| | Contractor Readiness |
+---------------------------------->| Decisions |
+----------------------+
Source: U.S. Department of Energy
* * *
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