 We're delighted to have you here. My name is John Hamry. I'm the president at CSIS and I'm very glad, actually very glad I have Sharon Squisoni here because she was the one that thought that we ought to be getting on the front end of this issue and I'm glad that she's organized it. Thank you Sharon and all of our colleagues who are here today. Talking about nuclear safety after Fukushima, I just want to start by saying that there's kind of a popular sentiment that's growing that somehow our Japanese friends were incompetent to manage this crisis. I think that's completely wrong. I think they've been working very, very hard under most remarkable and difficult set of circumstances you can imagine. You have to understand this earthquake and this tsunami, you know, it has taken the lives of probably 30,000 Japanese. When we had, you remember how we were brought to our knees with Katrina, that was 1,300 people. This is 30,000 people. This is just a remarkable, and all of that is a backdrop. That would stop everything in its tracks by itself and then to have a crisis of this significance on top of it. So I know these people well and they have been doing heroic work and they are smart and capable people dealing with a very complicated problem. So the spirit of this discussion today is for all of us to stop, let's take the dumb emotion out of this. Let's take the anger out of this. Let's take the paranoia out of this. Let's take the fear out of this and let's start having the intellectual discussion that we need to have as thoughtful people about the role of nuclear power and the way that we need to deal with this very complex industry. Now, we're going to, you know, this is a little bit like how stock markets crash. You know, the first immediate sentence, everybody get out of that. You know, and so all of a sudden you have two malts and it takes several days for the market to kind of recover its balance and people to start thinking coolly and rationally. We're in the front end of that right now. That's where we are. That's what the purpose is of this session. To start thinking, you know, calmly about what we're looking at, not just race to the exit and say shut down everything we got. That's been the sentiment we've seen in some countries and frankly they're hurting themselves. So the goal now is for us to be thinking together and to think thoughtfully about this issue and we're going to do that today with two superb panels. And I do want to say a sincere thanks to all of our colleagues for coming today and bringing their wisdom to what I know will be a very civil discussion. We're going to hear lots of points of view and we should. That's to be expected. But this is in the spirit of thoughtful reflection, not white panic. And I think we should also never don't let a day go by without saying how can we help our friends in Japan. Not just with Fukushima, but with the great crisis that they've been enduring. We need to find ways to help this remarkable people. And I call on all of you to find a way in your own heart to make that work. So let me turn to you Sharon, you're going to get this started for real. Thank you all for coming and I look forward to the session. Thank you John. And thanks to all of you for coming today. I would underscore Dr. Hamry's points about the objective of today's session. It is not to sift through the data of what we know and don't know about Fukushima because I'm sure everyone here in this audience has been glued to their television screen or their computer screen. But we want to look ahead at how nuclear safety in the United States and abroad might change in response to Fukushima. Of course there are questions about how Fukushima will affect what we call the nuclear renaissance, new nuclear construction in the United States. But that's a topic for another day. I think it's still a little too early to be taking bets. Here in the United States, government officials, civil society and elected officials are already thinking about the lessons learned from Fukushima for safety at U.S. nuclear power plants. And I'm very happy to have our three experts on the first panel who will offer a kind of big picture assessment. I hope I won't hear the word Taurus in any of your presentations. We're going to focus on this first panel on domestic responses. There is definitely more coming ahead in the next few months as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission conducts its 90-day review and Congress will undoubtedly hold more hearings. On the international side, we're just beginning to see some responses. This week, members of the Convention on Nuclear Safety are going to be meeting for their fifth review of the convention and the International Atomic Energy Agency director Yukia Amano has called for a Nuclear Safety Summit in June. And our second panel of experts will explore the impact of international cooperation and these conventions on nuclear safety. Before I make the introductions to our first panel, I would like to just give you a few administrative notes. Please turn off the ringers on your cell phones and blackberries. This event is on the record. It will be taped. And during the question and answer session, we'll have microphones roving around and so you just need to raise your hand. I want to take this opportunity before I forget to thank the CSIS staff of the Proliferation Prevention Program for their excellent work in putting this together on a really short notice. That would be Tamara Spitzer-Hobika, Keen Hu Chung, and Jung Min Woo. And so now to introduce our panelists. First we have Alex Flint. We have, if you didn't get a copy of it, copies of all their bios outside. As you enter, Alex is Senior Vice President for Governmental Affairs at the Nuclear Energy Institute and has been since February 2006. Before joining NEI, he had a long and illustrious career on the Hill and lastly as Director of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy of the Staff of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. And he began his career with Pete Domenici. I'm going to do all the speakers bios in a row and then we'll get to what you really came here for, which is the panelists. After Alex, Ellen Vancoe will speak and she is the Nuclear Energy and Climate Change Project Manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. She's also the Senior Advisor on Federal and State Policies Concerning Electricity Service, Integration of Renewable Energy, Energy Conservation, etc. She has more than 25 years of experience as an energy policy professional. And lastly we will have Mark Holt from the Congressional Research Service. Mark and I were colleagues when I was there and he was always the one I went to to answer those hard questions. He's been a policy analyst in Nuclear Energy since 1988 and some of the CRS reports, if you didn't know this, are available on the web, but you have to look hard for them. So I would like to invite Alex Flint up now to give an industry perspective on the safety challenges. I was just thinking about working on the staff of the Senate Energy Committee. Of course, I learned about the Senate Energy Committee sitting on the back bench while Bennett was running the place. So it's a pleasure. Good to see you, Senator. I wasn't going to mention the word Taurus. Instead what I want to do is I want to thank John for the way in which he set the context for this conversation. I do believe that we are at the beginning of a conversation about nuclear safety after Fukushima. The situation in Fukushima is obviously not yet concluded. And so it's impossible to draw lessons from the situation. What I'm going to do is I'm going to talk a little bit about the evolution of the conversation that we have observed just in the less than three weeks now. We have been doing innumerable presentations around town. And so I drew a few slides that I want to walk through just to establish maybe some points of common understanding, at least from our perspective, that might be relevant to the conversation that we have. When this incident occurred and NEI started working 24 hours a day, our mode was in information, collation, and then dissemination. Interestingly now, after a week or so, there have developed a number of other very good sources for information. And I've been impressed by the press coverage. There are certainly a number of reporters who are now getting access to information that is truly impressive and where we are learning from the press rather than the other way around. It was also interesting for me when we started briefing members of Congress and the executive branch and anybody would listen to us the Monday after the incident. We went several days before anybody asked us about U.S. plants. The conversation was entirely what is happening in Japan. But after several days, we started getting questions about the similarities of plants in the U.S. Could this issue occur, could these sorts of events occur in the United States? And we spent some time on that and I'll just get to that in a minute. But then we've seen a further evolution in the conversation. The conversation, particularly when the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Committee held their hearing last week and then when the House Oversight Investigations Committee of Energy and Commerce held its hearing yesterday, the conversation had evolved to what about spent nuclear fuel on site? What about the back end of the fuel cycle? I don't know what the next evolution in the conversation is, but I recognize that we may be several evolutions from really what the long-range conversation is and where we are trying to learn and draw conclusions from what has happened in Japan. But let me get particularly to the subject at hand and I will approach it largely through a political perspective. For several reasons. Number one, it's my beat at NEI, but then also because we do not know the circumstances on the ground at Fukushima in their entirety. We certainly are able to draw some conclusions and there has become some accepted conventional wisdom, but we are going to be challenging that conventional wisdom and reevaluating the situation in Fukushima for months and years to come. And so it is inappropriate to draw conclusions today. On a start, though, in political space, Thursday after the event, the President held a press conference at the White House and I think set the tone not just for the executive branch, but really for the country in how to handle this going forward. And John, in his introduction, talked about the need to take the fear out of this and to start thinking about this in the long range, I think, was John's words. The President and the chairman of the NRC did an exceptional job in that regard Thursday, six days after the event began. Announced that the NRC would be conducting its review, which is broken into a 90-day review and a long-term review. And I think really establishing the tone, the fact that we would try to understand what had happened in Fukushima before we left to conclusions here in the United States. I want to talk just a little bit. And as I said, I drew a number of slides, I drew a selection of slides. There's been a lot of discussion about EPZs because in the President's comments that Thursday, he suggested that the United States would recommend that U.S. citizens within 50 miles of Fukushima evacuate or shelter in place. I wanted to just make sure that everybody kept in mind the way in which we do EPZ work here in the United States. We have a 10-mile emergency planning zone where the instruction is either to be prepared or to shelter in place depending upon what the circumstances are. We monitor for environmental contamination out to 50 miles. And it's up to largely the governors in consultation with the NRC and with FEMA to determine what has to happen beyond that 10-mile emergency, the EPZ. I've been impressed by the attention that has been focused on the preparation of U.S. nuclear plants for whatever scenarios policymakers or others can dream up right now. And clearly an earthquake that is large as the one in Japan and then a tsunami that came ashore at about 45 feet or so is some of the worst scenarios you can possibly imagine. But the NRC has been working on these scenarios and other scenarios for some time. But let me make a broader point. At U.S. nuclear plants, we don't try to understand every particular event or combination of events that can occur. What we try to understand are the symptoms that can result from occurrences. So for example, the situation at Fukushima to us is a station blackout, a complete loss of all on-site power, including the batteries. The causes of that are not particularly important when you try to assess how a U.S. plant will respond to a station blackout. In the United States, most of the thinking that's gone into station blackouts, post 9-11 in particular, have been airplane impacts. What the Fukushima situation has done, and from our chief nuclear officers who've been doing walk-downs of the sites recently, is it's brought a new mindset to the issue. It's what if instead of flames resulting from an airplane impact, you're dealing with a situation where you have floods and a lot of water on hand. And how does that affect your views of the preparations? And so there's a lot of learning that comes from this, but at its core what we're talking about is a station blackout. Now a station blackout is not the only circumstance that you can find oneself at a plant, but the fact is that, particularly here in the United States, what we do is we prepare for circumstances rather than whatever events lead up to those circumstances. I'm going to skip a slide here. The industry, shortly after this event occurred, began to take both some short-term and some long-term steps to respond to the inevitable focus on safety at the U.S. plants. First of all, we are verifying readiness to manage extreme events. And on the next slide, I'm going to walk through some of these details. Over the long term, there are going to be important lessons that can be learned from Fukushima when we really understand the facts. There may very well be lessons that we need to import into the United States that may change the way we operate, the way we build, and some of the systems that we maintain in the plants. Let me tell you a little bit about what we've done in the short term. The plants have, every one of them, verified their ability to respond to major challenges. I was talking to a site vice president of one plant who, after 9-11, implemented a number of changes, 128 different changes, that they then went and walked down over the last week to ensure that all of the preparations they had made under B5B, which was the NRC's regulations post-9-11, that they had responded and that their systems were in place and were operating. They did very well in their walk down, but they also said it was very interesting to contemplate a completely different set of scenarios that could result in some of those systems needing to be used, a flood, a force 5 hurricane, something else very different than an airplane. A lot of attention has been focused on loss of off-site power. Clearly, as a result of that, a lot of attention is being paid to diesel generators, backup batteries, flood scenarios. On my concluding slide, I want to give you some details. Now, I've picked a slide that is from one of NEI's member companies. And I don't want to represent this slide as representing the industry as a whole, but I did want to walk you through at least one slide that does have a picture of a torus on it, I'm afraid, to give you a sense of some of the upgrades that may distinguish U.S. plants from Japanese plants. And I say may because we do not know what upgrades and modifications have been made to plants in Japan, and that's going to be one of the key elements that we have to learn in coming months and coming years. You have a BWR, and you have on the side a list of upgrades and improvements that have resulted largely from important incidents that have affected the industry. So after TMI, there were upgrades and changes made to control room layouts and to procedures within the plants. In the 80s, the toruses were reinforced. There was concern about their ability to survive stresses both from thermal loads but also from exterior sources, and there were upgrades made to the toruses. In 1979, fire protection, you'll notice there are two diesel generators on that picture. There were redundancies put in in backup systems following a fire. You'll see in 1992, the NRC required the construction of hardened containment vents. You'll see that that's the pipe bleeding up the left-hand side of the reactor. It's our assumption that if those had been used at a reactor like the ones in Fukushima, that hydrogen would have been vented off and there would not have been an explosion within secondary containment. But to this point, I will tell you that now I'm getting mixed signals as to whether or not the Japanese have hardened vents on their reactors, and it's a perfect example of where I'd like to be able to draw a comparison, but until we really understand the circumstances and the physical characteristics of the plants in Japan, we'll be unable to do that. 1988 was when the NRC imposed station blackout requirements. A lot of time, a lot of focus was put on those after 9-11 when additional systems were put in place, including spared diesel pumps and generators so that, for example, reactors that may already have three or four backup diesel generators now have a portable diesel generator on site. A lot of facilities have hardened containment for both their generators and the fuel supply on site, and they also have new requirements for battery backup power. So I list these things not as a comparison, and I need to be explicit, of the U.S. plants versus the Japanese plants, but simply to discuss the way in which U.S. plants have evolved, as regulatory requirements have evolved, as the U.S. industry has learned from experiences here in the United States and will make upgrades and changes to both the physical plants as well as the way in which the plants are operated. With that, I'm going to conclude. I want to emphasize my appreciation for CSIS beginning this sort of conversation. There are going to be a lot of conversations in town about nuclear safety. We welcome that. It's appropriate that these conversations occur. We do need to make sure that before we make changes that we really understand the circumstances so that if necessary, we can make appropriate changes in the operation of not just U.S. plants, but plants around the world. And we welcome that conversation. I suspect it's going to take a long time, and that this conversation is going to go on for several years. But I appreciate CSIS being here at the beginning of it. Thank you, Sharon. Thank you, Alex. We're going to hear all three presentations and then start the Q&A session. So Ellen Vancoe, you may have the microphone. Thank you, Sharon. And thank you, everybody, for coming. I can say that I won't even drive a tourist. Since it's, couldn't resist. Since it's founding in 1969, the Union of Concerned Scientists has worked to make nuclear power plants safer and more secure. We have also sought to minimize the level of risks that nations and terrorists could acquire nuclear weapons material from nuclear power facilities. We have a 40-year history of doing that. As the events unfolding in Japan do make starkly clear, once again, nuclear power poses serious risks that are unique among the energy options being considered to reduce global warming emissions. The future risks of nuclear energy will depend, in large part, on whether governments, industry, and international bodies take serious efforts to address these risks before we move forward with expanding the nuclear reactor, whether it's in the US or abroad. It's also important to point out, again, from our organization's perspective, that the risks posed by climate change are so grave that we cannot afford to rule out nuclear power as a major contributor to addressing global warming. Prudence dictates that we develop as many options to reduce global warming emissions as possible, and that we take into account their impact on public health, safety, and security. We also need to take into account the time required for large-scale deployment of these technologies, as well as their costs. We should begin by deploying low-carbon technologies that achieve the largest reductions most quickly and with the lowest cost and risks. Today, nuclear power does not meet those criteria. Any expansion of nuclear must occur under effective regulations and an appropriate level of oversight while new research and development is needed to focus on enhancing safety, security, and waste disposal. However, until these long-standing problems are resolved, whether these problems are gonna be caused by accidents, acts of terrorism, or acts of God, the potential for nuclear power to play a significant role in addressing global warming will be held hostage, both to the industry's worst performers and to our own worst nightmares. So how will the events in Japan affect the construction of new reactors in the United States? I'm afraid I'm not smart enough to know and stupid enough to say, but I think it would be naive to say that this ongoing catastrophe will have no impact on the nuclear industry in this country. The first impact will be on existing reactors, and I think everybody agrees with that. A thorough assessment is needed to ensure that these reactors are being operated as safely and securely as possible, that existing NRC regulations and standards governing nuclear plant safety and security are fully enforced, and that any necessary improvements to NRC requirements are identified and implemented quickly. The impact on new reactors is less clear. The nuclear renaissance in the United States was in trouble long before last month's earthquake into the tsunami. Spiral and construction cost estimates, declining energy demand, low natural gas prices, and the failure to place a price on carbon already spelled trouble for the industry. That's not just my view, the CEO of the largest nuclear utility in the United States told the American Enterprise Institute just days before the earthquake and tsunami that he would not invest in new reactors because they are on an economic compared to other low carbon alternatives like energy efficiency, natural gas, upgrades at existing reactors, and I would add other low carbon energy sources like wind and solar and hydro, but in his view and in mine, this is going to create a very difficult or would have created a very difficult economic situation for the nuclear industry before Fukushima even occurred. In terms of building new reactors, I believe we need to hit the pause button until we've dealt with the problems of the current reactor fleet. The crisis underway at Fukushima Daiichi has revealed serious nuclear safety shortcomings that have major implications for nuclear power plants in the United States and around the world. Although the events in Japan are still unfolding, it is not too soon to begin to learn lessons from the evidence available so far. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is initiating comprehensive internal reviews of its regulations and practices, but stringent external oversight will be needed to ensure that these reviews effectively challenge prior assumptions that the Fukushima crisis has called into question and that any weaknesses identified by these reviews are promptly corrected. Just yesterday, Dr. Edwin Lyman gave testimony on behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. The hearing was titled The U.S. Government Response to the Nuclear Power Plant Incident in Japan. Congress has a way with words. In his testimony, and copies of Ed's testimony are outside of the room, along with testimony Dave Lockbaum gave to several Senate committees just the week before he's the director of our nuclear safety program, both outline some of the areas where we think steps can be taken right away to take advantage of some of the lessons we already know. The first is that the NRC should strengthen the requirements to cope with prolonged losses of electric power, i.e. station blackout, in order to prevent damage to reactor cores and spend fuel. The NRC should require the accelerated transfer of spent fuel from densely packed wet pools to dry casks. The NRC should strengthen requirements for management of severe events that cause damage to reactor cores and spend fuel and ensure plans are realistic and workable. Finally, the NRC should revise emergency planning requirements in the vicinity of U.S. nuclear plants to ensure that all populations at risk from excessive radiation exposure will be protected. These are our initial and most critical recommendations. I expect that more will be forthcoming. The biggest lesson we can learn from the unfolding disaster in Japan is that no matter how technologically advanced a society is, and Japan is certainly an advanced society, it is impossible to fully plan for every curve ball that Mother Nature can throw or to prevent catastrophic events from affecting a nation's critical infrastructure, including roads, bridges, power plants, and telecommunication systems. In Japan, these events even wiped out the emergency first responders capability to respond to the first two events, never mind the third. It's obvious they didn't plan for that. It's not sure that anybody can plan for every possible combination of events. I agree with Alex on that point. But one of my lesser known talents that I really didn't expect to call on again is the fact that I'm a FEMA certified, I'm certified in the FEMA incident command system. I've consulted with utilities on reviewing and improving their disaster response plans. So I am quite familiar with what these companies are and are not prepared to deal with and how well many of them are or are not prepared. Despite these lapses and weaknesses that we already know about, it doesn't mean we should not put in place all practical mechanisms to protect our citizens and the environment from known hazards that could occur if reactors are not planned, built, and operated in a safe and secure manner. Unfortunately, we've just been reminded that a large scale of expansion of nuclear power in the US under existing conditions would be accompanied by an increased risk of catastrophic events, risk not associated with any other non-nuclear means for addressing global warming. Again, you know what the risks are, I'm not gonna repeat them today. Thanks to a 24-7 news cycle, we're watching one of those events unfold in real time with all of its attendant hazards. I wouldn't want to be a nuclear industry CEO right now. They've just seen their highly depreciated, high load factor, low cost, low carbon assets turned into very large liabilities. According to a just released analysis by UBS, Fukushima is worse for the nuclear industry than Chernobyl. In a 140-page report looking at the future of the global nuclear industry, the UBS analysts say, and I quote, while the 1986 Chernobyl accident, at least to date, had a significantly greater environmental impact, we would argue that Fukushima raises even larger credibility issues for the nuclear industry than previous accidents. They say this for two reasons. First, Fukushima is happening in an advanced economy using American, Japanese reactor technology. It is not happening in a totalitarian state with some standard technology and no safety culture. The second reason is that the size and duration of this accident is unprecedented. Four reactors are facing significant damage and it has already lasted more than three weeks without engineers getting the situation under control. The UBS report predictably forecasts that safety regulations will be tightened, adding that plants' life extensions will likely be legally limited with many plants forced to shut down and abid to a peace public concerns. The report names 30 plants that the authors believe are particularly vulnerable. Even more significantly, especially for investors and nuclear providers, UBS argues that there could be an entire reevaluation of the risk of nuclear companies both by governments and insurers. This could mean that not just higher operating costs for operators, but a greater chance that if the worst should happen, procedures will have been put in place to make sure that there is no taxpayer bailout. Again, to quote from the report, if the government takes the risk, then it needs to take into account this risk when deciding future energy policy. But if liability will be holier partly with the operators, we think discount rates will likely need to be higher. In other words, investors will need to adjust to the reality of nuclear operators being significantly more risky than other utilities. Up until now, nuclear operators and investors have been living in a fantasy land where Price Anderson protects them from intolerable losses in the event of a catastrophic accident. Given that no one at this time can possibly put a price tag on the eventual cost of the Fukushima disaster, I can easily surmise that it will run into the many tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars, and that does not include the cost of replacing the power that was produced by the now disabled plants. Therefore, the current industry limits under Price Anderson can be expected to receive serious scrutiny in this country. I do not believe they will hold, but again, I don't pretend to be able to predict the future. In summary, the UBS report states that the big winners from Fukushima will be gas and to a lesser extent, coal and renewables. The big loser, of course, will be nuclear power. With every crisis comes opportunity. The crisis in Japan gives us the opportunity to ensure that nothing like this ever happens here. We can start by not saying that it can't happen here. The Russians came to Three Mile Island and said it couldn't happen there. The Japanese went to Chernobyl and said it couldn't happen there. Over the past month, I have heard US nuclear executives, politicians and industry supporters say it can't happen here. I wish I could say that, and I'm very happy to hear that Alex is not willing to say that because we don't have all the facts and that it's going to take us a very long time to know what they are. Thank you very much and I look forward to your questions. Thank you, Ellen. Mark? Thanks, Sharon, for inviting me to this very timely and interesting program and I'm certainly happy to give some of the congressional perspective. Again, I'm with the Congressional Research Service which is part of the Library of Congress. Our mission is to provide objective, timely, confidential and authoritative information and analysis to Congress. As part of that mission, CRS does not advocate policy. So as always, I'll be watching my words very carefully to ensure that I do not appear to be favoring one side or the other. If I appear to be doing so, it's a mistake, so. And as Sharon mentioned, I've been at CRS since 1988 and I also was covering nuclear energy issues for Congress since the beginning of 1985 with the Environmental and Energy Study Conference. And so I do go back far enough on this, hopefully to provide a little bit of perspective on what's been so far a very short period of time for congressional reaction to this situation. What I've seen as a congressional response so far seems to be falling into three major areas. And those are first, the specific nuclear power plant safety issues that we've been hearing about. And the second is the role of how the accident might affect the role of nuclear power in future U.S. energy policy. And the third has been the effect of the accident on nuclear waste policy. And of course, those overlap to some degree, but that seems to be the three major areas. Statements and actions so far from members of Congress have included all those areas. And of course, talking about the reaction of Congress is a little misleading. So far, the substantive responses have been from individual members of Congress or senators or groups of members. And they're as opposed to any kind of formal action by subcommittees, committees, either House or of course Congress as a whole, other than hearings, which you've heard about. There have been several hearings so far. So the reactions are really pretty much individual. We don't really know what Congress thinks yet, but we can certainly look at what members have said so far. So what we've seen from the immediate reaction, of course, the images of nuclear reactor buildings in Japan exploding one after another was a huge shock around the world. I was actually in Europe when that occurred and it's certainly as shocking there as I assume it was here, but I got back as quickly as I could. And of course I did discuss with my colleagues who were left here responding immediately as to what was the most immediate questions that we were getting from Congress. And certainly the most immediate types of questions were, as Alex mentioned, local concern, dealing with members who saw that the designs of the Fukushima reactors were, in fact, similar to a number of US designs, in fact, near many congressional districts, so they were concerned about that. We got a lot of questions about seismic qualifications of US plants here because they may have been at a Mark I reactor near Earthquake Zone, so they wanted to know about that. So that was sort of the immediate reaction. But then possibly that may have been mitigated a little bit by the, of course, the horrifying images of the tsunami may have seemed almost surreal to viewers in the United States because that is not really a type of disaster that most of the United States is really subject to. And in fact, Senator Franken noted that during the Senate Energy and Water Subcommittee hearing on this and said, well, if we have something along the lines if we have a tsunami in Minnesota, we're in really big trouble, which is certainly true. But he also went on, of course, to make the larger point, which is not that he was concerned about a tsunami in Minnesota, but concerned about similar or any other type of incident that could cause a station blackout that could result in the same problems. But the hearings, several hearings have been held, as was noted, they've been very well attended, more well attended than a typical hearing. That is, I mean, attendance by the members of the committees. So that certainly is a sign of intense congressional interest in this. Typically, the hearings have focused on trying to find out facts about the accident, what did happen, and of course, as we know, that's still ongoing. We don't really know. And then safety implications for US reactors, and then often, invariably in the hearings, the subject of nuclear waste policy comes up and also maybe the effects on new reactors. So one of the immediate reactions after the accident was for a lot of sort of restatements of positions on nuclear power in general, what does it mean? And of course, the Obama administration did reiterate its support for nuclear power as part of its clean energy program as stated in the State of the Union address, and the administration is still sticking by the $36 billion expansion in loan guarantees for nuclear power, and it appears so far that nuclear power supporters in Congress have not changed that support, at least not that I've seen, although it does appear that perhaps there's been less emphasis recently on urging the NRC to speed up pending licenses. That had been a big theme in a lot of the congressional debate recently, I've not seen that recently. The Democrats in Congress that I've seen make a statement seem to not be opposing the administration on its nuclear power policy, but of course many have expressed significant safety concerns, so there's clearly some unease there that presumably will be addressed as the issues are continued to be examined. I thought that an interchange at that same hearing between Senators Feinstein and Alexander was very indicative of the very, very different paradigms that the members of Congress are coming at this. That was the point, if anybody was there toward the end of the hearing, Senator Alexander introduced into the record an article by the British environmentalist, George Monbio, saying that the Fukushima accident had turned him from neutral to pro-nuclear power because in his mind this was the worst natural catastrophe that could affect a nuclear power plant and that the results were much less than the typical health effects of other types of energy sources, particularly coal, and the response of Senator Feinstein was really, I'm not sure that Senator Alexander explained exactly what the article was very clearly because as soon as she heard the result of the accident were not very severe or something along the line clearly was very shocked and it was just, at that point, pretty much there was almost no communication happening at that point and so that may be where we're coming from as far as congressional debate is really two different views as to the dangers of nuclear power and radiation and that type of thing so that may color the debate considerably. But certainly as far as the safety issues that have been raised, we've heard a lot about them, I'm just going to mention them briefly without discussing them in detail. But the things that have been raised in Congress so far are of course earthquake and flood resistance, station blackout, spent fuel pools, the potassium iodide or KI pills, how widely those should be distributed, contamination of the ocean and seafood safety which we actually wrote a report on that there was so much interest in that, use of mox fuel, international nuclear safety, license extension for new U.S. reactors, emergency planning zones and emergency planning in general, hydrogen management in severe accidents, licensing of new reactors and new designs. All of those topics have come up and certainly are in play at this point in Congress. As far as nuclear energy policy in general, of course as was mentioned, we're still in the very early stages of that and so how this will affect that in the long run is really hard to tell. Ultimately, the effect on U.S. nuclear policy will depend on how the accident does unfold. It is, we're still in the middle of it, it is not contained, we don't really know what the extent of contamination is, how long residents will have to stay out of certain areas, it's really, really unclear. So that will have a big impact on ultimately what Congress may decide on a big picture of nuclear policy. But certainly our analysis, and I think about every other analysis indicates that the expansion of, or any expansion of nuclear power in the United States does depend very heavily on federal policy. In general, in the United States, the new nuclear power plants are more expensive than competing technologies and even with incentives that are now available, our analysis indicates that more needs to be done, at least on a pure economic case. Now, licenses for about 20 reactors are currently pending at NRC but their future is really uncertain at this point. A lot of them are on hold or they're just getting a license and not that many have made a commitment to move forward. So it really does depend on federal policy so this debate, of course, is very important. Many of the nuclear projects that were announced had prominently noted that the reason that nuclear power was being considered was an anticipation of federal greenhouse gas or carbon controls. And of course there was in the previous Congress a major debate over carbon controls with the cap and trade proposals that passed the House. And it was certainly expected that any type of cap and trade system would be a huge benefit to nuclear power. Of course that did not pass last Congress but the President's Clean Energy Standard announced in the State of the Union Address could potentially provide a similar type of benefit. Of course that would mean that would be, nuclear power would be one of the technologies that would help a given utility meet the 80% clean energy goal which is of course a very high standard. And so potentially that could take the place of the cap and trade, keeping nuclear power in play. But of course the competition for natural gas has been a serious issue. That was the other, besides the carbon controls, natural gas competition was probably the other main driving force but behind these reactor projects that are currently announced gas prices had been wildly volatile and had been spiked to extremely high levels. Of course now with the shale gas seemingly in plentiful supply for the foreseeable future that may be an issue. And also of course the inclusion of gas in the clean energy standard at a half credit rate could also be an important consideration. New safety requirements that might result from the accident Fukushima accident obviously could increase the cost of nuclear power even more and be a factor. As was mentioned it could increase the risk perception plant financing making perhaps the federal loan guarantees more important again. And of course potential opposition by the public has not been seen widely to the proposed plants that we've seen so far but that potential impact of that is not yet clear. One of my colleagues I was discussing with him this morning who was actually from the environmental policy world did not think that public opposition had had a major impact in the past but so that's sort of an interesting side note but still of course it's not clear what the public reaction is ultimately going to be. And nuclear waste policy has also been in play in Congress and the many, many comments have been made in Congress that the accident should be evidence against the Obama administration's policy of canceling the Yucca Mountain repository in that it would tend to mean that the spent fuel would stay at reactor sites longer and of course the response has been the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's nuclear future will be issuing its draft report in July and that at that time maybe the debate should begin in earnest and so that will be certainly of great interest but the extent to which the Fukushima accident and the effect that it had on the spent fuel pools apparently will be a part of that debate as well. Not a huge number of bills have been introduced yet related to this in comparison to prior similar incidents but there are at least three or four so far they're directly related to the accident most notably probably being the Nuclear Power Plant Safety Act, HR 1242 by Congressman Markey introduced March 29th and that is the most detailed so far on nuclear safety issues directly addressing some of the nuclear safety concerns that have been raised particularly by the Union of Concerned Scientists and other groups related to the accident. It would essentially delay new licenses and design approvals for 18 months while NRC would implement new regulations on station blackout, spent fuel pools and a number of other specific requirements. The also introduced was really reintroduced although it modified was the further Furthering International Nuclear Safety Act which we may hear more about in the second panel which is S640 and HR 1326 by Senator Akaka and Congressman Fortenberry that would is intended to strengthen the effectiveness of the Convention on Nuclear Safety which of course is currently holding its fifth review meeting in Vienna and then there's the Nuclear Power Licensing Reform Act HR 1268 by Congressman Lowey which would expand evacuation planning zones to 50 miles among other measures so those are out there certainly many more to come no doubt. We haven't had any legislative hearings yet so it's sort of certainly hard to see what Congress's reaction will be but maybe to put it in context I wanted to discuss Congressional reaction to some of the previous major incidents nuclear and otherwise that have affected nuclear policies specifically Three Mile Island Accident, Chernobyl and the 9-11 attacks which do show a little bit about the possible timing and mechanisms for Congressional action that occur after such an incident and of course most proposals are ultimately not enacted but just because it's not enacted doesn't mean that it does not have some effect Congressional action typically is in parallel with executive branch action especially in RC in these cases as you will see so really in many cases it's not that Congress swoops in and imposes a lot of new requirements it's often more and in many cases endorsing steps that have been already taken or contemplated or agreed to by pretty much all the major players in most cases and putting a statutory framework on them which is important in many cases I mean the wording of the statute does matter as we have seen after the Three Mile Island Accident March 1979 we're started in March 79 obviously a huge shock to the US nuclear power community including policymakers that showed really at least one of the postulated series accidents could really happen I do know nuclear engineers working at GE at the time and his description of the scene and the engineering department was really grim it was really that you could see that people were truly stunned that this could really happen and even though it wasn't their reactor at that time but of course this resulted in many hearings very very intense congressional scrutiny major congressional investigations especially the Senate Environment Committee which is the oversight committee for NRC primarily resulting a lot of the ideas that were brought up were included in the NRC authorization of 1980 which was June 1980 so that was pretty quick that was only a little more than a year after the accident most notably requiring emergency plans and a number of other changes to the Atomic Energy Act but of course many major responses to TMI continued for years afterwards especially with NRC and it took a long time to work all those through and so it was not a quick response overall but Congress acted relatively quickly now in Chernobyl which was April 86 as was mentioned this was not really very similar to US nuclear power plants and that was made clear pretty early on hearings there I was there for those and they were very the intensity level was very high as far as participants it was very serious they didn't know if huge numbers of people had died immediately because it was such a immediate accident as opposed to slightly slower unfolding Fukushima but eventually became clear that it wasn't necessarily a lot of lessons for the nuclear power industry but then there were the Department of Energy Production reactors that some of them were similar in technology specifically the N reactor at Hanford and also the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor both of which were ultimately shut down not necessarily because of congressional action but certainly there was congressional pressure and at that point again executive branch policy makers everybody working together did sort of reach a consensus that this had to be done Debate on the Price Anderson Act that was mentioned was certainly affected by both Chernobyl and TMI and this was the mid 80s extension that ultimately I guess was 88 and I'm certainly happy to see Senator Johnson here who was very very involved in that and certainly the increases in the liability limits were affected the Convention on Nuclear Safety grew out of Chernobyl and that was an example of a very slow moving reaction that U.S. supported IAEA resolution in 1991 the agreement entered into force in 1996 and the U.S. Senate did not ratify it until 1999 of course now we're a full participating member now the 9-11 terrorist attacks also had a although that was not a nuclear attack it certainly raised a lot of questions about in Congress about nuclear security because it was thought that nuclear power plants were one of the potential targets and there was certainly congressional reaction to that in 2002 as part of the Bioterrorism Act potassium iodide pill stockpiling and distribution was authorized and of course that's a recurring issue in Congress that that was actually not implemented the iodine pills that are being done now are only through NRC in the 10-mile zone but this 2002 provision was not implemented and then many of the other proposals the design basis threat that's the amount of number of attackers and the force that can be used that can be assumed to be brought against a nuclear power plant force on force exercises to drill the power plant security forces were all and many other proposals were included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 so that was almost four years later but those were debated very intensively during that period of time in Congress so that gives a little bit of a picture we were looking at a long road ahead we're only at the very beginning it's still too early to tell how this particular accident will be played out which of the earlier crisis perhaps is the most relevant model of what might happen so certainly I and everybody else will be watching that with great interest and I guess with that we'll turn to questions thank you that's a lot to think about while you are gathering your thoughts I will take the prerogative of the chair and pose a few of my own questions but Tamara and Key are at the back with microphones and you just need to raise your hand and we'll get to you I will ask you to identify yourself in your affiliation and make it a question so you can raise your voice at the end or you can say isn't that right but we have these three fantastic experts here and we should take advantage of their expertise I will start off with one question for Alex and we may actually talk about this in the second session on when we talk about international cooperation but this issue of the US requiring specific improvements to the mark one containment for the GE boiling water reactors my understanding from talking to when you're absolutely correct we don't exactly know what improvements were made by the Japanese my understanding is that GE built the first Daiichi number one plant and then Toshiba and Hitachi I think right there was an evolution so there were other companies the Japanese companies then built those plants on the GE design but my question is I talked to a GE technician and he said yes when we did these improvements we gave them the information so in other words their calculations of what additional sort of stresses or whatever needed to be done and then the Japanese took the information and did their own thing so my question is if we are gonna look at a significant nuclear expansion across the world and some of these countries like China and who knows in the future may be taking that technology and then doing their own thing with it is that good enough should we feel good about that GE I gave you the mathematical calculations and I don't know is there any way to address this do you think? It's a profoundly important question and I don't have an answer but let me give you some insight as to how we're thinking about it because there have been a number of statements here today that are related to this the first is we have a lot of respect for the Japanese nuclear program and we are in a world in which there are 65 new reactors under construction worldwide right now in the majority of them outside the United States and we are now contemplating a scenario where non-nuclear countries begin their own development programs I think that I'm gonna reverse the way in which you asked the question there are countries whose GDP expansion and their needs for energy are causing them to consider building new nuclear as long with a whole suite of other technologies I think it's fair to presume that a number of countries will enter the nuclear energy business and the Japanese situation puts on the forefront the need to ensure that those facilities are constructed and operated in accordance with acceptable practices and I use acceptable without another adjective because your question goes to the core of how do we define what those practices are what those standards are and how do we ensure that plants are built to those standards and operated to those standards and evolve over decades to meet evolving standards I don't have an answer to that question but what I do think we have to do is we've got to recognize that inevitably we are going to see new plants built in other countries and we need to develop solutions to the question that you've asked Do we have some questions from the audience? So keep right up here, Corey Hi, Corey Hinderstein with the Nuclear Threat Initiative My question is, since this panel is looking at domestic response, one of the things we saw without needing to understand yet exactly what happened in Japan was an interesting split in this country between the responsibility of the Department of Energy for being the main governmental point of response and of managing the US assistance the industry which in some ways wanted to assist and had some resources to bear and couldn't figure out how to either get that to Japan or as this so often happens in our system couldn't figure out how to work with the DOE to go through that route and we even saw in the press some interesting dynamics where US officials were being asked questions that they were referring to the NRC by saying look in this country we have a split and the people who know reactors are at the NRC so are there any lessons we can draw just within our system as to how we can better work those three pieces, the administration, the industry and the regulator in order to either prepare for something that could happen here or make sure we're meeting the requirements that we should be meeting here as well as assisting in cases of crisis in other places. I mean I think the first thing one of the things that the again talking as a emergency prepared message is to respond sensitive person as opposed to a nuclear technology expert. My reaction was there was no there was no coordinated response and an international basis there didn't if there was a plan it wasn't implemented but it suggested to me that there was no plan and you had various entities both from the international atomic energy agency all the way around to all the various countries all speaking in separate voices. So that tells me just from an awareness and preparedness and crisis response standpoint to communicating with the public about what the risks are and are not whether it's this event in Japan or it's a similar event in the United States or somewhere else, you know when you have the government in Japan saying we're evacuating everybody to 12 miles and you have the presidents of the United States saying well I think everybody at a 50 mile radius should leave. It raised a couple questions as to you know well who should we listen to and my concern was less for the US citizens that heated the 50 mile warning than for the Japanese citizens that were you know closer to 12. So just a better and more coordinated national international response and communications plan would be huge a huge improvement over what we have today. I would suggest that the same thing in terms of an international investigation mechanism for investigating this and ensuring that all nations whether they operate nuclear power plants today or want to build nuclear reactors in the future there needs to be an international mechanism. I know it's been discussed, I know it's been considered, I know it's been debated but where exactly it stands is as far as actually becoming a meaningful body with the ability to develop and enforce standards. It's to me a long way off but we definitely need to move there. I mean you know Alex made a comment you know it's fair to you know that as nations GDP rises they're going to aspire to improve their energy situation and they're considering nuclear. My concern is that it's fair to say that the GDP of some of these nations is larger than the cost of building these reactors. So if you look at whether they're gonna look at improving safety or improving their energy situation you may end up with people not being able to put safety measures in place simply because they can't afford them. So to the extent there's a larger international body that can, I don't know, I can't say prevent but can place pressure on such nations to make sure that safety isn't cut in order to be able to get the next new reactor is something that's going to be absolutely critical. I'm sorry, there were three pieces but those are the two I'm, and your comment was a third and I'll leave that to Alex. That's not fair, I was about to talk but not on what you just directed me to talk about. I was gonna make an observation about US government coordination. Starting on the 11th and then go through and going through the weekend we were in contact with individuals in not every branch of government but a lot of branches of government and we saw the evolution of their knowledge and their thinking and there certainly were disparate thoughts initially. But I'll tell you, I think the US government actually did a very good job of coordinating its response. The Surgeon General's comment might be the single exception to that but certainly by Thursday when the White House was pulling in both the NSC staff, the NRC and DOE and that resulted in the President's statement I thought there was a remarkable effort to ensure that they were delivering the same message and from certainly the sort of the top level messages that we've been seeing since that point in time they have been consistent. And so I only point to that one example where I think there really wasn't coordination in the early days and I'll leave it at that. Mark, did you want to, oh, Senator Johnson? I'll let you to comment. This is a question for Ellen DeVankel. I'm Bennett Johnston with Johnston & Associates. Ellen, I was glad to see the Union of Concerned Scientists come out for dry-caste storage, which I've been for a long time. It's been my experience in some three decades of dealing with nuclear waste, the problem of it that it is principally a political problem as opposed to a scientific problem. I mean, there are various ways to solve it. Dry-caste storage is one way. My chosen way would be monitored retrievable storage with Yucca Mountain being a good site for that along with several other sites. My question is, do you agree that it is, there are a lot of scientific ways that are not really that difficult scientifically to solve the problem of nuclear waste? And how do you feel about monitored retrievable storage? And should we rule out Yucca Mountain for that purpose or any other purpose on a scientific basis? Well, you've asked me more questions than I can possibly remember, but thank you for them. I think UCS has come out in support of long-term storage in dry casks and our estimates are 50 years. Others have said it can be safely stored there for as long as 100, but in the life span of a nuclear waste fuel assembly, that's only a fraction of the time we need to deal with it. To the extent we have nuclear waste dispersed in various parts of this country and there's a way of safely transporting and storing it into fewer sites and that's where I'm guessing you mean you're coming from on the interim. I think there's support for that to the extent it can be done in a way that reduces risks, especially at numerous reactors that are will shortly be decommissioned. If there's a way to reduce waste on those sites into fewer, then that probably reduces public risk, does not increase it. As far as the long-term waste storage, I agree. I think it's largely a political issue. It's not that we can't find a long-term storage, permanent storage, but doing it in, there are plenty of problems with the Yucca Mountain that I can't go into. I've never really been involved in the Yucca Mountain debate, so I must give that disclaimer. Big problem being Harry Reid. Like I said, I give that disclaimer, but the reality is we probably can't cite them in the places where they would be most appropriately stored too, and I'm sure that you could name the senator of every one of those states, and you probably know them personally. So it's an intractable problem, and therefore, but we've got to get rid of the immediate problem, which is wet fuel or wet storage pools on sites in highly populated areas where the waste is being concentrated in increasing amounts because we don't have a place to put it. Any other comments from the panel on this question? Okay, we'll take a question from Meg. Thanks very much, Sharon, Margaret, Ryan. And I'm really following up on Senator Johnson. Okay, really following up on Senator Johnston's point. I agree certainly that we still have a ways to go to really learn the lessons of this accident, but it seems pretty obvious to me that one of those lessons is you need to reduce the inventory in your spent fuel pools if you can. That seems to me to be a very sensible thing to look at up front, particularly for things like for BWR designs where your spent fuel pools are above grade. Now, so I'm inviting anyone to take issue with me on this, is this the kind of thing that we can expect to see some action out of regulators on? My recollection is that post 9-11, there was discussion of requiring everybody to move older fuel out into dry cast. The industry thought it was needlessly expensive. Are we gonna see some change now? Okay, Alex, whoops. As I said, and I think this conversation is gonna reflect this, there has been an evolution of the discussion about Fukushima to a discussion about the US used fuel program, which has several infirmities. Without a question, it would be nice to see those issues resolved. What we'd like to see is a system for dealing with used fuel agreed upon. It would make it a lot easier to understand how individual parts of that system should work if the government could settle upon a workable system. Invariably, there is going to be pool storage. Used fuel, fresh out of reactors, has to be stored in pools for some period of time. That's the hottest fuel. Invariably used fuel removed out of those spent nuclear fuel pools into some sort of casks, whether it's a storage cask of one design or another, whether it's a transportation cask has yet to be determined. Ideally, but not invariably, it will be moved to some sort of centralized storage facility, a monitored retrievable storage facility of some sort. It is quite possible that there will be some sort of processing of used fuel in the future and eventually you have to have a geologic repository. What we would like to see is certainty as to what that program is. We can store used fuel safely in pools, we can store it safely in casks on site. The standards for protection of human health and the environment are similar for the pools and for the casks. From the NRC's perspective, and Chairman Yosco has asked this at the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Committee, both are safe. The issue is how do you assure the safety of used fuel storage in either pools or in casks? And you've got to meet those standards and we do currently. We don't want to be moving used fuel numerous times unnecessarily. You don't want to be moving it into one type of cask, out of a cask, back into a pool, into a transportation cask, et cetera. If we could get some clarity on what the program would be over the long run, then we could begin to move to implement that program. Now, we think that the Blue Ribbon Commission is the most valuable or the most likely organization to put forward some proposals that will engage in this sort of national dialogue that has to happen, particularly in the Congress. In some ways, it may be that the Fukushima incident encourages the Congress to take the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission seriously. I have word for some time that there's nothing that compels the Congress to reevaluate the Nuclear Waste Policy Act just because the Blue Ribbon Commission issues a report. Maybe the situation in Fukushima increases the likelihood that the Congress will engage constructively on this issue. There is no group more frustrated by the lack of clarity than industry on the used fuel program, but it's incumbent upon the government to decide if it's not going to follow the Nuclear Waste Policy Act exactly which program it is going to comply with. At that point, industry will begin implementing that program. Any other comments from the panel? All right. Hi, my name is Yong Su-Hang, I'm working as a visiting scholar in CSIS. I directly replaced the comment by Sharon in scientific way, because I used to be a scientist. I'd like to ask a question then to Alex. To me, the real problem and difficulty is how to define severe accidents which actually determine the core damage frequency. As far as I understand, there was some difference between G-people and the tech people about how to define severe accidents. And as you mentioned, the loss of the side power and all other blackout and anticipated transient behavior with the screen, those things actually determines the core damage. And do you see, do you have any idea how you can actually redefine severe accident, including some future threat of the potential earthquake and hurricanes in this area? For example, do you have to consider hurricane in category five in your new design, something like that? It will be to me very challenging how to get the scientific opinion as well as the public opinion to redefine what the severe accident you should consider for the license application. So how do you predict that kind of things in this country? You can't predict all severe accidents. What you can do is you can have a design basis in which you forecast the credible events of any type that could occur. You design so that you can meet your design basis. And then particularly what we do is we go beyond that with severe accident analysis. What happens if something exceeds the design basis and results in a set of circumstances and how do you respond to those circumstances? It is not simply a question of, it's an inappropriately simple answer. But I know an orthopedic surgeon who does not spend his time trying to understand how people can break their legs. He spends his time trying to understand how to fix broken legs. So the analogy is what we really have to understand is what can possibly happen at a plant and how do you address those scenarios? And we think we can do a good job of that regardless of what exterior event causes a situation within a plant. And if you want a longer answer, we can do it, but it'd take a long time. Okay, we have one question over here. And then Tamara, can you pass the microphone to this person in the back? Stephanie? Speak into the microphone. Hi, Stephanie Cook. I wanna follow on from what Margaret said. Bob Alvarez, I have two phases to my question. So if you'll bear with me, one is on spent fuel pools that Bob Alvarez and others have been beating the drum about just backup power to offsite, to spend fuel pools. And it seems to me that even it's true what Margaret says is something has to be done about these compacted, densely packed spent fuel pools. But at the very least, it would seem to me that something might be done about just ensuring that there's emergency backup power for some period longer than we have right now. And I would like to get a comment on that. The second thing is that despite all the assurances from the authorities and President Obama about the safety of nuclear power plants, I wanna raise the question that Ed Lyman raised yesterday about B5B and why it's secret. And if you think, A, it's justified that it's secret, if you could explain why it's justified