Events That Shaped The Nuclear Industry
I recall hearing of a publication developed (San Onofre?) titled "Eight Events That Shaped The Nuclear Industry". I would appreciate knowing if anyone else has heard of this document or has access to it.
Thanks!
The Nuclear Exchange put out document NX-1069 in April 2008. It was titled
" The Nuclear Industry: Shaped by the Past and Poised for the Future – A Legacy of Lessons Learned ". The San Onofre history is an attachement to this document.
I can email you a copy if you are interested. The file is less than 2 megabytes (.pdf file). It may not be as current as the INPO document that was already posted.
The newest is Robinson - read the report. If you want a copy, please email me.
Historical Perspectives and Insights on Nuclear Reactor Consequence Analyses Hossein P. Nourbakhsh, Senior Technical Advisor Office of Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, USA Abstract: 1. INTRODUCTION “As to the probabilities of major reactor accidents, some experts held that numerical estimates of a quantity so vague and uncertain as the likelihood of occurrence of major reactor accidents have no meaning. They declined to express their feeling about this probability in numbers. Others, though admitting similar uncertainty, nevertheless ventured to express their opinions in numerical terms. Estimations so expressed of the probability of reactor accidents having major effects on the public ranged from a chance of one in 100,000 to one in a billion per year for each large reactor. However, whether numerically expressed or not, there was no disagreement in the opinion that the probability of major reactor accidents is exceedingly low. …...To reduce the matter of assumed hazards to comparative numbers, let us take the most pessimistic assumptions used and apply them to a case of 100 power reactors in operation in the United States. Under these assumptions, the chances of a person being killed in any year by a reactor accident would be less than one in 50 million. By contrast, the present odds of being killed in any year by an automobile accident in the United States stands at about one in 5,000.” In 1982, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) performed a study of technical aspects of siting for nuclear power reactors. The results of this study, known as the Sandia Siting Study, were published in NUREG/CR-2239 [4]. This study used five generic source terms for analyzing the consequences and socio-economic impacts of possible plant accidents at 91 existing or proposed reactor sites. These source terms were derived from the Reactor Safety Study (WASH-1400) and subsequent evaluations. Since the publication of the Sandia Siting Study, many events have brought a new focus to this study and its results. Despite accepted arguments that the results of this study are overly conservative and do not reflect current state of the art in evaluating severe accident progression and offsite consequences, the results, in terms of predicted offsite early fatalities and latent cancers, have often been quoted by outside organizations to illustrate the potential consequences of a severe accident at a commercial nuclear power plant. The NRC staff is currently implementing its plan for developing state-of-the-art reactor consequence analyses (SOARCA) [5]. These analyses include external events; consideration of all mitigative measures; state-of-the-art accident progression modeling; more realistic offsite dispersion modeling; and site-specific evaluation of public evacuation based on updated emergency plans. This paper is based on a white paper [6] prepared by the author for use by the ACRS in its continued dialogue with the staff regarding the feasibility of using a simplified, yet systematic and defensible, approach to update results from earlier Level-3 PRAs such as the NUREG-1150 Study for comparison with aspects of SOARCA results. The paper begins with an overview of major contributions to consequence assessment to provide historical perspectives and insights on previous state-of-the-art analyses of the consequences of severe reactor accidents. It then discusses how the results and insights from the NUREG-1150 study and integrated risk assessment for La Salle together with recent advances in understanding of severe accident phenomenology and containment failure mechanisms could be used to update the results of such earlier Level-3 PRAs for comparison with aspects of SOARCA results. 2. MAJOR NRC-SPONSORED ASSESSMENTS OF REACTOR ACCIDENT CONSEQUENCES 2.1. Reactor Safety Study (WASH-1400) The Reactor Safety Study (WASH-1400) [2], was the first systematic attempt to provide realistic estimates of risk to the public from potential accidents in commercial nuclear power plants. This 1975 study included analytical methods for determining both the probabilities and consequences of various accident scenarios. Calculations were performed for a number of accident sequences and the results of these calculations were used to define a series of release categories into which all of the identified accident sequences were placed. The probability and offsite consequences of severe reactor accidents have been the subject of considerable interest and study since the earliest days of reactor development. The first estimates of consequences of severe accidents were published in the 1957 U.S. Atomic Energy Commission report (WASH-740) [1]. This study was an attempt to provide upper bounds of the potential public hazards resulting from certain severe hypothetical accidents. Conservative values were used for many factors influencing the magnitude of the estimated accident consequences. At the time, the state of knowledge of severe accidents had not progressed to the point where it was possible to estimate the probabilities of such accidents. However, there was a general agreement that the probability of occurrence of severe accidents in nuclear power reactors was exceedingly low. The following is quoted from the March 22, 1957 letter, from Harold S. Vance, Acting Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, to Carl T. Durham, Chairman, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Congress of the United States, transmitting an advance copy of the WASH-740 report.
INPO has produced a document "Top Industry-Shaping Events" update January 2010. It briefly details 24 events that have occured after 1975 that caused reaction across the industry. They could not be ignored, and industry leaders consider themselves vulnerable to similar occurances. The events wer significant enough that to allow them to happen again for lack of response was unacceptable. Hence, remarkable actions were taken to prevent recurrence.