More in Delaware in nuclear risk zone

Southern New Castle County's renewed building boom is drawing more Delawareans into the bulls-eye circles used for emergency and evacuation plans for the Salem/Hope Creek nuclear complex across the Delaware River from Bay View Beach.

That surging population, however, is nowhere to be found in PSEG's application for federal site approval to build one or more new reactors just north of its three big plants on Artificial Island. The idea, if carried out, would make it the nation's largest generating site.

The News Journal compared state growth projections with PSEG's submissions to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and found that, inside the 10-mile evacuation planning circle around the reactors, the county population will race past the company's entire year 2081, two-state forecast of 61,000 residents less than a decade from now.

NRC officials had no explanation for the inconsistency this week, and said they planned to ask the company to explain. A company spokesman said late Friday he had no details and was unable to comment.

PSEG wants the NRC to approve its reactor site in advance while it considers a multi-billion dollar gamble on using nuclear to meet an anticipated shortfall in New Jersey's minimum electricity baseload need. That shortfall is expected to hit by 2021 – and rise to 3,500 megawatts by 2028, officials said. Power from outside the state will be unavailable to fill the gap.

A public comment period on a draft environmental impact study for the facility's 20-year permit ended earlier this month, with a final decision expected next year on both environmental and safety assessments.

Nuclear Regulator Commission staffers have recommended approval of the environmental assessment, describing impacts as "small to moderate."

Some Delawareans who live in the 10-mile circle say that's wrong.

"The report blatantly overlooks the potential impact to a region that is critical to the security and well being of the country," said David M. Magyar, who recently moved to the partially finished Silver Maple Farm development north of Odessa, less than six miles as the wind blows from PSEG's plants.

"It overlooks the consequences of aggregating as many as five reactors in one location."

Approval and eventual construction could make Artificial Island, so named because it was created by dredge sludge pulled out of the Delaware River, the nation's largest nuclear complex. And it would make northern Delaware part of the nuclear center of a Mid-Atlantic region that already has more people living inside more overlapping, 50-mile emergency planning zones than anywhere in the nation.

Dave Carter, conservation chair for Delaware Audubon, said during a public comment session on PSEG's environmental permit earlier this month that the NRC needs to closely examine population estimates and evacuation plans.

Uncounted populations evacuating from border areas around the 10-mile radius could quickly overwhelm and clog highways, slowing escape, the Government Accountability Office and others have warned.

A study commissioned by PSEG and released in 2012 estimated up to half the population of the 10-mile radius evacuation zone could flee the area in 50 to 90 minutes, even during snow on a mid-week day. But up to six hours would be required to move out the rest of those inside the zone, including special needs residents and school children.

The estimate was based on a combined 45,000 resident population for Delaware and New Jersey in year 2010 that already has been exceeded in Delaware alone, according to a News Journal review of state forecasts. By 2025, Delaware's population inside the evacuation area is expected to exceed 68,000, meaning the two-state total will be nearly double the estimate in the 2010 report.

"It all needs to be evaluated. Do we have other routes to get out? Carter asked. "Will the roads handle it?"

Area residents are generally confused and uninformed, he said, "because of a complete failure to do an effective outreach program with these communities, to let them know what's going on."

There are other signs that regulators, plant operators and public safety officials are still catching up to Delaware's exposure and risk – despite growing warnings about the need for public information and stark questions about the adequacy of the nuclear industry's and PSEG's performance.

While Delaware's residents dominate the population inside 10-mile radius evacuation planning zone centered on Salem/Hope Creek, Delaware has yet to adopt the kind of public briefing and comment sessions on evacuation plans convened by New Jersey each year for Garden State communities near reactors.

Decisions about evacuation or sheltering-in-place are in flux in light of findings from Japan's Fukushima reactor trauma in early 2011. Residents there encountered dangerous radiation levels far from the earthquake and tsunami waves that damaged reactors, areas that had long been presumed safe.

In 2012, the Natural Resources Defense Council released a nationwide computer modeling of potential plumes under weather conditions matching those seen at Fukushima.

At Salem/Hope Creek, the modeling showed a narrow radiation plume, intense enough to warrant evacuation, spreading some 30 miles northwest of the plant – far outside the official 10-mile circle, taking in all of Wilmington, Greenville and Hockessin and passing beyond Kennett Square, Pa.

Radiation levels sufficient to justify sheltering in homes reached 50 miles, to Morgantown, Pa., northwest of Coatesville.

The emerging concerns added to the annoyance of some Delaware residents who questioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's initial decision to schedule public comment sessions on the new reactor site only in New Jersey. Agency officials added sessions in Middletown after prodding by Delaware's congressional delegation.

PSEG's operations have been a sustaining force for the region, especially economically challenged South Jersey communities along the Delaware River. Its 1,500-member workforce on Artificial Island nearly doubles during each one- to two-month reactor refueling cycle, which take place every 18 months for each of the site's three reactors.

The company and industry as a whole see hope for nuclear after decades that swung between periods of go-go optimism and despair brought on by cost overruns, insurance availability scares and accidents.

The Obama administration offered some reason for hope recently with its proposals on clean power and carbon dioxide reduction rules, although plant owners have complained that emission target rules actually penalize states with more nuclear power and need to be changed.

"The amount of CO2 emissions avoided by nuclear facilities is equal to the CO2 emissions from 113 million passenger cars – more than all the passenger cars in the United States," Nuclear Energy Institute official Daniel S. Lipman said this week during a Senate subcommittee hearing.

"Our main priority right now is continuing through the regulatory process for the Early Site Permit (ESP). We expect approval in late 2015. The ESP is not a commitment to build and provides a 20-year time window for us to make a decision to pursue a construction and operating license."

The company is hedging on technology also.

PSEG's initial site application referred to its use of one or two new-generation reactors in the 1,000 megawatt-plus range similar in output to the three already on Artificial Island. But the company also has forged ties with nuclear industry manufacturer Holtec International, a company now working on designs for a new type of small, modular reactor. Holtec is continuing the work despite an NRC decision to award as much as $226 million in development cost design support to a competing company, NuScale Power LLC.

NuScale Power Chief Commercial Officer Mike McGough, told the House Energy Subcommittee this week that his firm's design "shuts itself down and self-cools for an indefinite period of time, with no operator action required, no additional water other than an 8-million gallon pool, and no electricity."

Delmar said the company is continuing "to review the different reactor technologies and would not select a specific technology until we choose to file for a construction and operating license. We continue our partnership with Holtec on their small modular reactor design. It is another possible option for consideration. However, we have no specific preference at this time."

Salem and Hope Creek wound up where they are today because of concerns about location and population exposures.

In the early 1970s, PSEG, then known as Public Service Electric & Gas, had intended to put two plants on Newbold Island in the Delaware River south of Trenton, part of a move into the nuclear age that included talk of floating, offshore reactors.

By late 1973, the Atomic Energy Commission was pressing the company to consider shifting from the Trenton-area to a more-remote location, and utilities were scaling back an ambitious nuclear construction push. Proposals at one point included talk of a reactor in Delaware's Red Lion area, and, later, north of Delaware City. Delmarva Power took initial steps toward building a two-reactor complex along the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal near Summit, but canceled in 1975.

Instead, the Salem 1 reactor was followed by Salem 2 on Artificial Island.

Even then, it wasn't remote enough for everyone. At one point in 1976, a year before Salem 1 began commercial service, New Jersey's environmental commissioner went so far as to recommend a ban on new housing projects near the Salem complex and the older and smaller Oyster Creek reactor along the Jersey Shore. News reports from the time show the idea was quickly trampled down.

Today, Hope Creek's big cooling tower and the three imposing reactor domes on Artificial Island are a daily sight for Susanna Garver, who rents a home at the very edge of the Delaware River in Bay View Beach, south of Port Penn.

It's a sight that she's not entirely comfortable with.

"I really don't know a lot about it. It's a little scary, especially when, sometimes, an alarm goes off while they're testing the system," Garver said, referring to sirens placed throughout the 10-mile evacuation zone.

"I'm not really crazy about the idea of more nuclear, and I don't think they should put more over there."

Steve Spiese, a Delaware resident and recording secretary for International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 94, which represents 3,675 PSEG employees, said that PSEG's plan offers a prospect of clean energy without requiring the amount of land and development needed for equivalent generation by solar or wind.

"Currently, about 20 percent of PSEG Nuclear employees are Delaware residents. A fourth nuclear plant, as proposed by PSEG, could mean about 4,100 construction jobs to build the plant, and an additional 600 new, full-time, good quality jobs to run the plant," Spiese said in testimony at the NRC's hearing in Middletown.

The nuclear industry has seen upbeat periods in the past, most notably during what was called a so-called "Nuclear Renaissance" that came to a screeching halt with the Fukushima earthquake and tidal wave disaster in Japan in 2011.

Before Fukushima, the industry saw Chernobyl and Three Mile Island throw cold water on public warm-ups to nuclear, along with skyrocketing construction costs.

In 1981, before workers had completed 15 percent of Hope Creek, cost overruns prompted the owners to scuttle what would have been its twin and the fourth reactor on Artificial Island, with that project costing billions for what was initially expected to be a $600 million, two plant investment.

The physical and economic landscape changed as well, at least on Delaware's side of the river.

In Salem County, the population has barely moved since 1970, growing by only 8 percent over more than 43 years to an estimated 65,166 residents in 2013. While New Jersey ranks as the nation's most densely populated state, Salem County has about 5 percent fewer residents per square mile than Sussex County in Delaware.

New Castle County, in contrast, has grown 43 percent over roughly the same period, and the number of county residents below the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, closest to the reactor, increased by 443 percent between 1990 and the present.

"When this plant was first built, it was placed there because it was one of the least-populated areas in New Jersey," Middletown resident Thomas R. Keating said. "This is a highly developed area now, especially in Delaware, and it seems like they're pushing it through before a lot of things are settled."

Yet PSEG's Early Site Permit application assumes that just 61,000 Delaware and New Jersey residents will live within 10 miles of the plant by the year 2081.

Official Delaware population forecasts approved in October project that New Castle County alone will reach 60,000 by 2021, and pass 68,000 by 2025.

By 2040, Delaware's population inside the 10-mile ring is expected to increase to nearly 86,000, counting the roughly 600 residents inside Kent County's tiny part of the 10-mile, circular "Evacuation Planning Zone. Forecasts for New Jersey's share, now about 12,000, were not available.

"If local/state authorities are forecasting larger populations than assumed in PSEG's evacuation time estimates, NRC should assess whether the differences could alter the conclusions – i.e., that people can leave before the radiation cloud passes," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and nuclear industry expert for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Ben Smilowitz, who directs the Connecticut-based Disaster Accountability Project, said the problem is larger that population growth alone.

The GAO last year issued a report cautioning that residents near the edge of traditional evacuation zones, and well beyond, are likely to evacuate on their own in large numbers if a nuclear plant emergency arises. That could disrupt traffic flowing from areas closer to a troubled nuclear plant.

Regulators "do not require similar information to be provided to the public outside of the 10-mile zone and have not studied public awareness in this area," the GAO cautioned. Although the NRC requires companies to assume 20 percent living between 10 and 15 miles from a plant will evacuate, the GAO said the risk and consequences of having still larger numbers suddenly on the move must be studied.

In Delaware, the difference would be huge. About 49,000 now live inside the 10-mile radius of Salem Hope Creek. Enlarging the circle by 5 miles, to 15 miles, would add 120,000 Delaware residents to the potential evacuee population, for a total of 169,000, according to projections for 2015 by the Delaware Population Consortium.

By 2040, more than 228,000 are expected to be inside the 15-mile circle, without accounting for New Jersey and Maryland residents in the larger zone and those in an enlarged swath of northern Kent County.

Smilowitz plans to release a report soon on the availability of public safety information for residents near Salem/Hope Creek and several other plants. A draft version for PSEG's plants found that most county and local governments either declined to release public information documents about radiation risks and evacuation plans or failed to respond to requests.

"I think it's safe to say there's a lack of planning in most jurisdictions within 50 miles of nuclear plants," Smilowitz said. "If someone lives in an area that overlaps a number of plants and each one of their jurisdictions are not planning because they're not legally mandated to, that would make me very uncomfortable as a local resident."

Already, northern Delaware, South Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania rank at the top of the nation's list of nuclear complexes.

Pottstown, Pa.'s Limerick plants, Artificial Island and Peach Bottom southeast of York, Pa.– 7 reactors in three locations – rank second, fifth and sixth among the nation's 105 nuclear sites based on number of people living within 50 miles. That 50-mile circle is the NRC's "ingestion zone," an area considered at risk for exposure to contaminated food and water in the event of an accident.

More than 1.4 million people live inside the overlapping 50-mile ingestion zones of the 7 reactors, with the center of that football-shaped area running along the Delaware-Pennsylvania border, according to a count of 2010 census block populations inside the region by The News Journal. Only the nuclear complex south and west of Chicago rivals the Mid-Atlantic for its concentration of nuclear.

Past performance at Salem and Hope Creek, currently viewed by the NRC as acceptable, has provided fodder for worry about that exposure.

At various times, Artificial Island was among the most-troubled and riskiest nuclear sites in the nation, with the Salem plants shutting down for more than a year during the 1990s after a run of serious problems, hefty fines and demands for reforms, including from Delaware's congressional delegation.

More came a decade later, prompting a critical GAO report that held Salem up for scrutiny, and questions from then Sen. Joe Biden and Sen. Tom Carper about the NRC's ability to oversee the industry.

"We are concerned that Salem and Hope Creek are once again experiencing management and safety culture deficiencies, similar in part to conditions experienced in the 1980s and the 1990s," Delaware's senators said in a letter to the NRC.

One problem, a relatively large leak of radioactive tritium from Salem Unit 2, has remained unsettled for more than a decade. The leaks, caused by plugged up drains and cracks in concrete, prompted PSEG to install an extensive well network to control the spread of contaminated groundwater.

It also resulted in the continuing pumping into the Delaware River of tens of millions of gallons of water faintly contaminated with tritium as a dilution and disposal method.

The problem was found to be worse than previously known last year, when, under pressure from New Jersey, PSEG installed deeper test wells that found tritium at nearly 50 percent of the state's drinking water limit in a deeper, confined aquifer that the company had long said was untouched.

The Salem and Hope Creek reactors on Artificial Island have generated electricity reliably for years, sometimes setting records for continuous operations between refuelings. With current power uprates, the three units can produce up to 3,543 megawatts, enough for about 3 million homes.

Sometimes, however, the plant set other, unwanted milestones over the years:

• February 1983 -- Neglected cleaning and maintenance omissions disrupted automatic control rod insertion "SCRAMs" at Salem Unit 1 twice in three days. Investigators blame dirty, stuck-together circuit breaker parts. Federal regulators -- who had previously considered such a failure improbable -- brand the near disaster an industry-wide lesson and issue largest fine to date ($850,000).
• 1992 -- Salem Unit 2 steam turbine over-races and explodes after neglected, stuck safety systems allow a near "catastrophic" failure. Then Sen. Joe Biden criticizes regulators for failure to sanction owners.
• 1992-1995 -- Maintenance problems and other woes shut down Salem 1 and 2 plants 22 times over a three year period, earning them spots on NRC's former "Watch List" and rankings as worst in nation's nuclear fleet.
• 2003 -- Regulators begin probe of the Salem/Hope Creek work environment and safety culture, triggering years of stepped up attention, assessments, reform plans.
• 2004 -- NRC conducts a special investigation at Hope Creek, labels steam line leak and small radiation release as an "unusual event;' company cites "equipment and personnel" issues.
• 2012 -- Heavy waterborne debris clogs cooling water intakes for Salem Units 1 and 2, forcing a shutdown and rare halt to an intensive refueling schedule. Company later announces new operating rules for use when hurricanes threaten.
• 2014 -- Salem Unit 1 has three unplanned shutdowns in single 30 day period; NRC says it will assess.
• 2014 -- PSEG finds all bolts broken or sheared off on a part securing a critical Salem Unit 2 part in four pumps. The NRC had declared metal used for the bolts ineligible for the service involved years earlier.

Contact Jeff Montgomery at 463-3344 or jmontgomery@delawareonline.com.