Disaster Plan Problems Found at U.S. Nuclear Plants

In addition, the staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission acknowledged that the agency’s current regulations and disaster plans did not give enough consideration to two factors that had greatly contributed to the continuing Fukushima Daiichi crisis in Japan: simultaneous problems at more than one reactor and a natural disaster that disrupts roads, electricity and other infrastructure surrounding a plant.

The briefing was part of a review requested by the commissioners to evaluate the vulnerability of American reactors to severe natural disasters like the ones that hit the Japanese plant in March.

Marty Virgilio, the deputy executive director of the agency, told the five commissioners that inspectors checked a sample of equipment at all 104 reactors and found problems at less than a third of them. The problems included pumps that would not start or, if they did, did not put out the required amount of water; equipment that was supposed to be set aside for emergencies but was being used in other parts of the plants; emergency equipment that would be needed in case of flood stored in places that could be flooded; and insufficient diesel on hand to run backup systems.

Many of the emergency systems were put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Officials said the problems that had been found were addressed immediately but not everything had been inspected. Mr. Virgilio said he expected to have a fuller picture soon.

He said an entire category of new procedures, called “severe accident mitigation guidelines,” had been adopted voluntarily by the nuclear industry and thus was not subject to commission rules.

R. William Borchardt, the commission’s chief staff official, said some of the preparations for severe accidents “don’t have the same kind of regulatory pedigree” as the equipment in the original plant design.

The two-hour briefing given to the five-member commission was an early assessment, 30 days into a 90-day review being conducted by an N.R.C. task force.

Charlie Miller, the staff member leading the effort, said the staff was considering “enhancements” to its disaster plans and procedures. But as laid out by the staff, some of the changes under consideration could be far-reaching.

For example, the N.R.C. now looks at how well a plant’s design can handle a problem at just one reactor, even if there is more than one reactor at the site.

“You have to take a step back and consider what would happen if you had multiple units affected by some ‘beyond design basis’ events,” Mr. Miller said.

Another problem, staff members acknowledged, is that they have never paid much attention to the issues posed by handling an emergency when there is widespread damage to surrounding roads, power systems and communications links. In the past, the commission has explicitly rejected the notion that it should consider such combined events when reviewing a plant’s safety preparations.

Simultaneous with the commission’s meeting, Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, released a report arguing that a variety of other shortcomings existed at nuclear plants, including the frequent failure of emergency diesel generators, which are essential to plant safety if the power grid goes down. He also criticized the commission for not requiring plants to have a backup power source for spent fuel pools while the reactor is shut for maintenance or refueling.

The Fukushima accident has cast new attention on spent fuel pools; the reason the United States government recommended that Americans stay 50 miles from the plant was damage to the spent fuel pool of Fukushima’s Unit 4, a reactor that was shut down before the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Mr. Markey pointed out that in the last eight years, the commission had received 69 reports of inoperable diesel generators at 33 plants, with six of those generators out for more than a month. The diesels provide power for water pumps that allow removal of “decay heat,” the heat that fuel generates even after a reactor shuts down. The Fukushima plants shut down successfully but decay heat wrecked their cores.

The N.R.C. said it was aware of the reports. But on Wednesday, attention was called to that problem by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, an industry group formed after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 to provide peer-to-peer safety reviews. That group said one of the few safety measures that was getting worse was the reliability of diesel generators.

Mr. Markey also complained that the commission had allowed some plant operators to remove equipment that eliminates hydrogen produced by overheating fuel. In addition, there is no requirement for equipment to remove hydrogen in the rooms where spent fuel is stored; the building surrounding Fukushima Unit 4 was destroyed by the explosion of hydrogen that came from the spent fuel pool.

Commission officials said they were reviewing their previous decision to permit very heavy loading of the spent fuel pools. Thinning them out would reduce the amount of heat production that had to be dealt with in case of a severe accident, they said.

 

For Some, Helping With Disaster Relief Is Not Just Aid, It’s a Calling

The minute they got the call from Southern Baptist Convention disaster relief leaders that tornadoes had ripped through the South, the Blankenships grabbed their sleeping bags and sturdy shoes and headed out from their home in Decatur, Ala.

Together, they have cleaned up after Hurricane Katrina, mucked out flooded homes in Atlanta and built houses in Sri Lanka. And for the past week they were camped out here in a rural part of northeastern Alabama where 48 lives were lost and thousands more disrupted in the storms.

Mr. Blankenship, 70, and Mrs. Blankenship, 69, heated up chili and Salisbury steak, handing it out to people who drove through a church parking lot and packing it into Red Cross vans that carry meals into the remote countryside.

And they did it all for God.

“I thought when we were done working that I wanted to travel,” said Mrs. Blankenship, a former flight attendant. “I just never thought it’d look like this. But it’s our calling.”

With the ability to feed 20,000 people from one mobile kitchen, and a chain of command so tightly run it would make a military officer proud, the Southern Baptist teams are the backbone of disaster relief here.

Nearly 95,000 Baptists across the country are trained to handle disasters like hurricanes and floods. After the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, the Baptist group is the biggest disaster relief organization in the country.

“We’re the best-kept secret out there,” said Ron Warren, cleanup and recovery coordinator for the Alabama Southern Baptist disaster relief group.

Of course, thousands of church members are doing their part to help the South recover from the tornadoes. They raise money, sort clothing donations and hand out water.

They are what the veterans of large faith-based relief efforts call S.U.V.’s — spontaneous untrained volunteers. The efforts are welcomed, but they have nothing on what the Southern Baptists bring to a disaster.

From an elaborate “war room” in a church building in Montgomery, Ala., to direct lines of communication with federal and local emergency agencies, the Southern Baptist disaster ministry is a model of efficiency.

Its renowned chain-saw crews were cutting fallen trees so medical crews could get to the injured in the hours after the tornadoes hit. They had an enormous mobile kitchen, complete with a hot-water heater for dishwashing and five convection ovens, set up here a day before the Red Cross arrived.

“Churches are literally, honestly, the first ones there,” said Jon Mason, director of the Alabama Governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

The Baptist relief efforts began in earnest during Texas’ hurricanes in the 1960s and became more organized in the 1980s. They and other large church disaster programs got a formal, though controversial, lift in 2001, when President George W. Bush created the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

But when it comes to disaster relief, the link between church and state has never been stronger than during the most recent storms in the South, say federal officials and the leaders of faith-based disaster relief work.

Joshua DuBois, executive director of what is now known as the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, credits David L. Myers, a Mennonite minister and the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Mr. Meyers meets regularly with government emergency officials and church leaders to discuss how best to respond to disasters.

As a result, Mr. DuBois said, “there’s a dramatic difference” in the relationship between the government and faith-based groups since Hurricane Katrina.

“There were a lot of groups that felt like they weren’t plugged in before,” he said.

Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said, “I have never made a distinction that the faith-based communities were something separate from the team.”

The Baptists are not the only church group with highly organized disaster relief teams. More than a dozen denominations, from the United Jewish Federation to the Islamic Circle of North America, jumped into relief operations here.

Each is known among government emergency crews for its own specialty. The Mennonites help to warehouse emergency supplies. The Presbyterians do counseling. Lutherans have a broad network of churches that can provide shelter, and specialize in long-term relief work.

All of them rely on donations and special fund-raising events. Some work directly with the Red Cross and state and federal emergency management agencies, which provide supplies and technical assistance.

 

For Some, Helping With Disaster Relief Is Not Just Aid, It’s a Calling

The minute they got the call from Southern Baptist Convention disaster relief leaders that tornadoes had ripped through the South, the Blankenships grabbed their sleeping bags and sturdy shoes and headed out from their home in Decatur, Ala.

Together, they have cleaned up after Hurricane Katrina, mucked out flooded homes in Atlanta and built houses in Sri Lanka. And for the past week they were camped out here in a rural part of northeastern Alabama where 48 lives were lost and thousands more disrupted in the storms.

Mr. Blankenship, 70, and Mrs. Blankenship, 69, heated up chili and Salisbury steak, handing it out to people who drove through a church parking lot and packing it into Red Cross vans that carry meals into the remote countryside.

And they did it all for God.

“I thought when we were done working that I wanted to travel,” said Mrs. Blankenship, a former flight attendant. “I just never thought it’d look like this. But it’s our calling.”

With the ability to feed 20,000 people from one mobile kitchen, and a chain of command so tightly run it would make a military officer proud, the Southern Baptist teams are the backbone of disaster relief here.

Nearly 95,000 Baptists across the country are trained to handle disasters like hurricanes and floods. After the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, the Baptist group is the biggest disaster relief organization in the country.

“We’re the best-kept secret out there,” said Ron Warren, cleanup and recovery coordinator for the Alabama Southern Baptist disaster relief group.

Of course, thousands of church members are doing their part to help the South recover from the tornadoes. They raise money, sort clothing donations and hand out water.

They are what the veterans of large faith-based relief efforts call S.U.V.’s — spontaneous untrained volunteers. The efforts are welcomed, but they have nothing on what the Southern Baptists bring to a disaster.

From an elaborate “war room” in a church building in Montgomery, Ala., to direct lines of communication with federal and local emergency agencies, the Southern Baptist disaster ministry is a model of efficiency.

Its renowned chain-saw crews were cutting fallen trees so medical crews could get to the injured in the hours after the tornadoes hit. They had an enormous mobile kitchen, complete with a hot-water heater for dishwashing and five convection ovens, set up here a day before the Red Cross arrived.

“Churches are literally, honestly, the first ones there,” said Jon Mason, director of the Alabama Governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

The Baptist relief efforts began in earnest during Texas’ hurricanes in the 1960s and became more organized in the 1980s. They and other large church disaster programs got a formal, though controversial, lift in 2001, when President George W. Bush created the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

But when it comes to disaster relief, the link between church and state has never been stronger than during the most recent storms in the South, say federal officials and the leaders of faith-based disaster relief work.

Joshua DuBois, executive director of what is now known as the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, credits David L. Myers, a Mennonite minister and the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Mr. Meyers meets regularly with government emergency officials and church leaders to discuss how best to respond to disasters.

As a result, Mr. DuBois said, “there’s a dramatic difference” in the relationship between the government and faith-based groups since Hurricane Katrina.

“There were a lot of groups that felt like they weren’t plugged in before,” he said.

Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said, “I have never made a distinction that the faith-based communities were something separate from the team.”

The Baptists are not the only church group with highly organized disaster relief teams. More than a dozen denominations, from the United Jewish Federation to the Islamic Circle of North America, jumped into relief operations here.

Each is known among government emergency crews for its own specialty. The Mennonites help to warehouse emergency supplies. The Presbyterians do counseling. Lutherans have a broad network of churches that can provide shelter, and specialize in long-term relief work.

All of them rely on donations and special fund-raising events. Some work directly with the Red Cross and state and federal emergency management agencies, which provide supplies and technical assistance.