When considering the current troubles at three nuclear reactors of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant, two words must be promptly defined: radiation and meltdown.
The former carries fears of spreading, invisible poison; the latter seems one step away from an atomic blast.
Neither is quite what it seems.
Most importantly -- and this cannot be stressed enough -- no commercial nuclear reactor contains a high enough concentration of nuclear material to cause an atomic explosion. A meltdown is a crisis of an entirely different order, one of chemical energy and, at times, explosions. The worst-case scenario for reactor meltdowns is, in modern terms, radioactive "dirty bombs."
There are two past meltdowns that guide reaction to Fukushima: Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
Chernobyl can easily be discarded. The nuclear reactions in 1986 at Chernobyl's core sped up when coolant was lost in a reactor whose design was opposite to Western standards. And, more importantly, Chernobyl lacked the massive steel-and-concrete containment structure common at Japanese and American plants. When the Chernobyl core began to burn, the plume easily stretched out into the atmosphere. Chernobyl was a dirty bomb.
Three Mile Island (TMI) has proven the better guide for Fukushima, though vitally that 1979 accident, near Middletown, Pa., on March 28, 1979, saw only one reactor in crisis, as opposed to Fukushima's three. Like Fukushima, the control rods at TMI worked properly, absorbing the subatomic particles that would cause more uranium to split and release energy. But also like Fukushima, TMI's cooling failed, allowing the radioactive elements remaining in the core to begin overheating.
Nearly half of TMI's core subsequently melted and slumped toward the bottom of its reactor vessel, allowing radioactive particles to escape from several levels of containment -- the metallic tubes holding ceramic fuel pellets, which in turn contained uranium. (The Fukushima plant is similar in design.) However, despite this meltdown, the containment structure of TMI remained intact, and practically no additional radiation spread to the surrounding area. There have been no fatalities tied to Three Mile Island's meltdown, experts say.
While TMI saw a similar hydrogen bubble to Fukushima, there was no explosion. The blasts at Fukushima erupted outside of the containment structure, which Japanese officials say has not been compromised. Thanks to a desperate backup plan using seawater to cool the reactors, there have not yet been indications that Fukushima has seen melting similar in scale to TMI. Certainly, some fuel has cracked or melted, judging from the radioactive profile of gases vented to keep the reactor's pressure down, but it is impossible to say if this rises to the level of a "partial" meltdown.
Should the Japanese fail to prevent a meltdown in the reactors, it's likely that the molten mix of radioactive elements would be contained. It is a poorly understood reality of Three Mile Island that the meltdown didn't penetrate the steel reactor vessel containing the core, let alone the surrounding containment structure. Would the Fukushima reactors show a similar resilience, following an earthquake and tsunami? That's a question engineers are likely scrambling to answer.
If containment holds, the largest public concern will be the partially radioactive gases vented from the reactors to keep their internal pressure down. Many of these gases are unbalanced cousins of common, simple elements that quickly morph back into their stable, safe counterparts, posing no health concern. But several elements detected in the gas, including radioactive iterations of iodine, cesium and strontium, can pose health risks at elevated doses.
The most tangible health problem caused by Chernobyl was a tragic rash of thyroid cancer in children surrounding the plant, located in Ukraine, caused by radioactive iodine. These elements essentially spread like nuclear fallout: The particles land on grass and forage, and are consumed and accumulated in cows and their milk. (Concerns about strontium in milk prompted the end of atmospheric testing of atomic bombs.) The slow-decaying elements then displace common atoms in the thyroid or bones, spitting out damaging radiation as they arrive.
So far, Japanese officials have not indicated that the dangerous radioactive particles released by the plants' venting are close to dangerous levels. And the radiation levels immediately surrounding the plants, they say, though slightly elevated, are not hazardous.
Beyond meltdowns, radiation is a frequently invoked specter when it comes to nuclear power, and for good reason. It seems otherworldly that, for example, nuclear reactions and their subsequent radiation -- which is simply a release of energy -- cannot be doused like a raging fire. They seem fundamentally beyond control.
But despite this unfamiliarity, radiation is far more common than many realize.
The world is awash in radiation, which can be thought of as traveling energy. Much of it can be found as variations of light: the radio waves that carry our chatter or the radar that guides our planes. Called non-ionizing radiation, it disperses energy by heat, which can cause molecular agitation -- think microwave dinners -- but does not have enough oomph to destroy DNA bonds or tear electrons off atoms, a process called ionization.
When most people think of radiation -- the kind of radiation produced at Fukushima -- it is ionizing radiation they have in mind.
Ionizing radiation is used for nuclear weapons, for medical imaging and for cancer therapy. It is a fundamental part of the universe.
Of the 117 known elements, there exist some 3,100 isotopes -- variations on an atom's nucleus -- many of which have an unbalanced number of protons and neutrons, the complementary particles that constitute the nucleus. Since atoms seek equilibrium, these unstable -- or radioactive -- nuclei jettison neutrons, electrons, photons or even whole smaller atoms, like helium, in a struggle toward the mean. This can take time.
The march toward stability often requires a chain of decay. The atom first transforms into another radioactive element, and so on, until finally, rest. This is how, after 14 or more steps, uranium turns into inert lead.
Ionizing radiation comes from many sources. One of every 8,550 potassium atoms is radioactive. Bananas, rich in potassium, are radioactive, though you'd have to eat a truckload to get the radiation dose of one X-ray scan.
People are radioactive, too. As one radiation biologist says, every year, he tells his students that each time they have sex, they're irradiating their partner.
Streaming down on and through all of us is cosmic radiation, mostly in the form of protons, shot out from supernovas, neutron stars and black holes. And seeping up through the soil is radon, which accounts for some 50 percent of the average worldwide yearly dose of radiation, which is about 3 millisieverts (mSv), to use a common measure. Typically, government-regulated radiation workers receive much higher doses.
Radiation can be confounding in its diversity. It can be electrically charged or not; relatively massive or not; spat out by dense, burning plasma or by ripping scotch tape.
Perhaps the most common form of radiation is massless, energized light photons, called X-rays or gamma rays, which can stream through most materials, like skin and organs, with ease, shedding bits of energy along the way. Along with chargeless neutrons -- the ejected nucleus components that ricochet about in a nuclear reactor, causing fission -- gammas are the critical radiation threat from nuclear power.
There is no doubt that high doses of ionizing radiation can cause cancer and, at levels like those reached at Hiroshima after the atomic bombing there in 1945, death after a matter of days or weeks. Catastrophic radiation exposure is simple and brutal. The radiation buzzsaws through the body's most vulnerable cells, located in the bone marrow, stomach lining and intestines. The body cannot survive such assaults.
At more moderate and prolonged doses, though, radiation is far more insidious. Starting at levels around 200 mSv, radiation increases risks of cancer. As the mysteries of DNA came to be understood, this cancer risk was tied to radiation's ability to cause breaks in the DNA. Some of these damaged cells would die and some would be repaired, and others would heal incorrectly: The mutated DNA would lead, at times, to cancer.
Since it is possible that even one particle of radiation could cause a DNA break that leads to cancer, for the past 40 years, the radiation protection community has operated under what is called the linear no-threshold hypothesis. Although unable to directly measure the health effects of low-dose radiation, scientists have extrapolated radiation risks down from high doses (around 200 mSv) on a linear scale, meaning that any additional radiation, no matter how low, is a health risk. Nearly all of these data stem from two tragic cases: the 113,169 survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
Many scientists have questioned whether this safety model, often confused with scientific "truth," works.
Some point out the seemingly healthy inhabitants of Ramsar, Iran, where the background radiation is 66 times higher than U.S. levels. Others say that humans evolved when background radiation levels were much higher; radiation resistance is part of our biology. Parts of the population, though, may be especially susceptible to radiation damage, other scientists argue -- perhaps more protections are needed. Given that a third of the U.S. population will develop cancer at some point in their lives, it's a nearly impossible question to sort out whether low doses of radiation can be tied to an increase in cancer risk.
When it comes to nuclear power and health, then, the best reaction to the invocation of radiation is, simply, more questions: How much radiation (in scientific units, not multiples of safety guidelines)? What kind of radiation? How does it enter the body?
Radiation is always with us, ethereal and ineffable, and treating it with respect and skepticism can go a long way toward adding more light, not heat, to the conversation.
Televised explosions at nuclear plants in Japan are quickly deflating the concept of a "nuclear renaissance" in the United States. But some close observers say the earthquake points to the durability, rather than the fragility, of nuclear power plants.
After all, the reactor that experienced a blast over the weekend is a 40-year-old nuclear plant that was hit with a quake much bigger than anything recorded in California. And what actually failed were the batteries and diesel generators.
"The problem here is not a structural problem with containment," said Kevin Book, an energy analyst with ClearView Energy Partners in Washington. "What really failed here was the seawall."
Jack Spencer, a research fellow who studies nuclear energy for the conservative Heritage Foundation, stresses that the releases so far have contained relatively low levels of radiation that likely will have no biological or environmental impact.
"The inherent robustness of these nuclear plants is keeping the radiation inside of the containment vessels," said Spencer, who worked on commercial, civilian and military components of nuclear energy at Babcock & Wilcox Co. between stints at Heritage. "This has done nothing to show we should not be building nuclear power plants."
Experts say their argument isn't that nuclear power is completely safe, but that fears about nuclear power are distorted when compared to other sources.
"If you had 26 workers killed at a nuclear plant, the nation would be up in arms," said Frank Settle, an analytical chemist who teaches classes on nuclear energy and nuclear weapons at Washington and Lee University. "If you have 26 coal miners killed, the attitude is, 'Well, that's the cost of doing business.'"
Settle said he expects the results in Japan to be worse than the 1979 events at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, a partial meltdown that frightened the nation and crystallized the anti-nuclear movement, but resulted in minimal public exposure to radiation. He added, however, "it's no Chernobyl."
The failures at the plants, Settle said, show the difficulty in planning for any calamity, even on an earthquake-prone island.
"They designed for an earthquake," Settle said. "They didn't design for a tsunami. It's impossible to predict everything that's going to happen to you."
The Japanese disaster hit as nuclear power had started to emerge from a policy deep freeze cast in the 1970s and '80s by the Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union, Three Mile Island and the movie "The China Syndrome," a Hollywood film that depicted a scenario similar to the Pennsylvania meltdown.
The support of a Democrat like President Obama for nuclear power, joined with the long-standing philosophical backing from Republicans, had led to hopes by some nuclear advocates that public opposition to nuclear plant construction might be diminishing.
But the nuclear industry has required more than an absence of opposition. Given the expense of plants, utilities generally have indicated they need government support in the form of loan guarantees and insurance. That became tougher with the newfound frugality of the tea party-inspired lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
A recent poll showed that a majority of Americans see nuclear subsidies as a good place to cut government spending (E&E Daily, March 4). Book said those political undercurrents mean nuclear power probably won't have its renaissance anytime in the near future.
"We're shooting a dead bird on its way down," Book said.
The risk of a partial meltdown at a floundering Japanese nuclear power plant rose today as cooling systems failed at a third generator, potentially exposing its fuel rods, just hours after a second explosion at a separate reactor blew the roof off a containment building.
Japanese authorities are struggling to bring several damaged reactors under control three days after a massive earthquake and tsunami on Japan's northeast coast crippled the electricity that runs the cooling system for reactors.
Eleven people were injured in the blast, one seriously, officials said. It was unclear if radiation was released by today's explosion, but a similar explosion at another of the plant's reactors over the weekend did release radioactive material.
Yukio Edano, chief Cabinet secretary, said the release of large amounts of radiation was unlikely. Trace amounts could be released into the atmosphere, though, and about 500 people who remained within a 12-mile radius were told to temporarily take cover indoors, he said.
The two reactors where the explosions occurred are thought to have already suffered partial meltdowns, which can occur when radioactive fuel rods, normally underwater, remain partially uncovered for too long. The longer that the fuel is exposed, the closer the reactor comes to a full meltdown.
Now, technicians are fighting for time while the fuel gradually generates less heat. They are trying to keep the rods covered despite a breakdown in the normal cooling system, which runs on power from the electrical grid. The operators have been using a makeshift system for keeping cool water on the fuel rods ever since the earthquake knocked out power and the diesel generator later failed.
The incidents are putting incredible strain on Japanese nuclear officials and Tokyo Electric Power Co., the company that runs both struggling plants.
"I'm not aware that we've ever had more than one reactor troubled at a time," said Frank von Hippel, a physicist and professor at Princeton University.
"The whole country was focused on Three Mile Island," he said, referring to the 1979 nuclear plant accident in Pennsylvania. "Here you have Tokyo Electric Power and the Japanese regulators focusing on multiple plants at the same time" (Tabuchi/Wald, New York Times, March 14). -- AS
The nuclear crisis in Japan and renewed concerns over the safety of nuclear power could have serious financial repercussions for the U.S. nuclear industry, according to a scholar who is researching the probability of nuclear accidents and their impact on the cost of nuclear energy.
Major nuclear incidents in the past have increased regulations and lengthened the time of power-plant construction and permitting duration, said Mark Cooper, a senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at the Vermont Law School.
"When there's an incident, policymakers, regulators, they pause ... they decide they need more safety so they increase the direct cost of the reactors," Cooper said in an interview today. "They increase the length of time it takes to build reactors, some that are put on hold. Wall Street looks at this stuff and says, 'Wait a minute, these are riskier investments than we thought,' so they increase the financing costs."
Cooper acknowledged that the events in Japan are still unfolding and questions of what happened there could rage for years. But he said there is a correlation between the rise in cost of nuclear plants and accidents, and that the process reflects regulators focusing on safety and Wall Street on its investments, both of which lead to higher cost for nuclear plants.
The "overnight construction costs" for nuclear power plants were about $2,600 per kilowatt between the 1979 partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine, which then was part of the Soviet Union, Cooper said. But costs rose to about $5,000 per kilowatt after Chernobyl.
"The simple fact of the matter is, cost of the reactors increase with the number of incidents," Cooper said. "Capital markets, it's their job to evaluate the risk of assessment."
But Phil Kasik, a senior nuclear engineer with in Alexandria, Va.-based MPR Associates, said cost impact of recent events should take into account that newer plants have already built into them newer safety features. Conclusions on costs should also take into consideration differing designs and where the plants are sited.
While Cooper is looking into the large-scale financial impacts of such events, industry and technical groups like the nonprofit American Nuclear Society are urging caution, asserting that although there are risks associated with operating nuclear plants and other industrial facilities, "the chances of an adverse event similar to what happened in Japan occurring in the U.S. is small."
Congress is preparing to ask federal nuclear regulators probing questions on Capitol Hill this week.
Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), a proponent of nuclear power, is calling for a measured approach and questions directed toward the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to better understand the implications of the events in Japan.
Upton has repeatedly called on NRC to provide more certainty and transparency in its license renewal process, specifically pointing to the slow pace of relicensing the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts and the Vermont Yankee power plant in Vermont.
On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) sent a letter to President Obama yesterday calling for an immediate ban on all new reactors in seismically active areas until U.S. officials conduct a "top to bottom" review of design resiliency, emergency response, backup power to prevent meltdown during power outages and evacuation plans.
Markey also sent Obama another letter this weekend, flagging concerns that the United States does not have a "coordinated plan" to deal with a nuclear disaster on par with the events unfolding in Japan.
Data released under a Freedom of Information Act request indicate that NRC and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, disagree about which agency would take the lead in responding to and cleaning up a large-scale radiation release caused by an accident at or attack on a nuclear reactor, Markey said.
"I am concerned that it appears that no agency sees itself as clearly in command of emergency response in a nuclear disaster," Markey said. "In stark contrast to the scenarios contemplated for oil spills and hurricanes, there is no specificity for emergency coordination and command in place for a response to a nuclear disaster."
Under the federal government's nuclear accident response plan, DHS is responsible for responding to and recovering from terrorist attacks, major disasters and other emergencies. But the plan also indicates that the coordinating agency may be the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, U.S. EPA, NRC or the U.S. Coast Guard, depending on the type of radiological incident, Markey said.
NRC did not return a call seeking comment on Markey's letter before deadline.
Markey is asking NRC not to approve the design of the AP1000 reactor design, which the agency has said could be approved within months. Markey has raised concerns that Westinghouse Inc. based assumptions that the reactor could withstand a strong earthquake on faulty information.
Meanwhile, NRC has sent two experts on boiling water reactors to Japan and is assuring U.S. citizens that weather conditions and distance will prevent "any harmful levels of radioactivity" from venting of radioactive steam at the damaged reactors from reaching the United States.
"Given the thousands of miles between the two countries, Hawaii, Alaska, the U.S. territories and the U.S. West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity," NRC said.
How well Japan nuclear power plants perform in the wake of Friday's earthquake will shed light on how safe that country's atomic energy reactors are in a natural disaster, said Christine Todd Whitman, one-time U.S. EPA chief.
"It's going to be a very good lesson in how these things work," said Whitman, who co-chairs the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. "You can't pretend [the quake] didn't happen. You can't pretend there aren't nuclear reactors. We will be paying attention."
Whitman, who held the top environmental regulatory post during President George W. Bush's administration, said she is trying to recruit new members to her group, which is backed by the nuclear industry. While visiting civic clubs and college campuses last week in Columbia, S.C., she stressed that nuclear energy is safe.
"It's safer than working in a grocery store," she said.
She also stressed that the country needs one nuclear waste repository and said she was bullish that the country would eventually move forward with the Yucca Mountain facility. Reprocessing should also be on the table, she said (Sammy Fretwell, Columbia (S.C.) State, March 12). -- AS
In the Caribbean, locals know the tsunami as el peligro olvidado: the forgotten danger.
The nickname reflects a truth that Bill Proenza, the southern regional director of the National Weather Service, has been studying for years. Tsunamis in the Atlantic Ocean only occur every 20 years or so, he said, but they can be just as deadly as the one that hit Japan last week.
"That's exactly what we're facing: It's the forgotten danger. Here we are in the 21st century, and I've had people ask, 'Aren't we safer now?'" Proenza said. "It isn't that the science isn't there helping, it's the fact that we have more people living in coastal areas. We have more people with recreational time, and that means more people in the water."
As Japan reels from an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and its aftermath, attention has turned to the funding and quality of the United States' warning system. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) issued a statement last week calling the event a "wakeup call" for lawmakers looking to cut funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NWS.
For Proenza and other NWS officials, the event highlights the need for a third tsunami center in Puerto Rico. Right now, the United States has two centers in the Pacific region -- one in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and one in Palmer, Alaska.
NOAA has been considering a tsunami warning center in Puerto Rico in recent months, and Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuño (R) has offered $6 million toward the construction of a facility at the University of Puerto Rico's Mayagüez campus. But NOAA would have to commit to staffing the center and contributing an additional $6 million for its construction.
Dan Sobien, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, said last week that the center was needed to ensure "multiple layers of backup" in case a single Pacific Rim event damaged both the Hawaii and Alaska centers. Proenza said a center could also mean quicker warnings for an area vulnerable to "short fuse" tsunamis that can be detected only 10 to 15 minutes before they hit.
The agency has begun a "phased" approach to building the center, according to Proenza. But he said the center should be built more quickly; one tsunami could result in thousands of deaths.
In fact, Proenza and Florida Institute of Technology professor George Maul recently finished a report finding that the Caribbean has had six times more tsunami-caused deaths in the past 168 years than Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon and California combined.
The last serious tsunami in the area was in 1946, when almost 1,800 people were killed in the Dominican Republic. But the coastal areas were underdeveloped at the time; today, that number would be much higher, thanks to tourism and a larger population, Proenza said.
"It's inevitable. It's going to happen. It's just where and when," Proenza said. "Even though they may have more earthquakes in the Pacific Rim, when a tsunami occurs in the Caribbean, it yields more loss of life."
Meanwhile, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility called on NOAA today to change its plans to move its Pacific Tsunami Warning Center from Ewa Beach, Hawaii, to an island in the middle of Pearl Harbor.
In a news release, PEER said the Navy was under orders to evacuate the island during a tsunami warning and close the only bridge connecting it to Oahu's main island. PEER claims the island is in a high-risk area for tsunamis; NOAA claims the likelihood of disruption is low.
"This is a case of NOAA putting its bureaucratic politics above public safety," PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said in the release. "It is disturbing that NOAA will not defend the accuracy of the report it is relying upon to make a very important decision affecting tsunami preparedness."
NOAA spokeswoman Susan Buchanan said the agency plans to consolidate several Oahu offices into a Ford Island complex as a "cost-saving" measure. Hawaii's tsunami center is currently located in an "inundation zone," she said, and the new complex would provide space on the top floor of a tall building.
PEER challenged NOAA's report on the tsunami risk for the island in 2009. NOAA responded last year that it had undergone adequate review.
Countries are facing pressure for their own nuclear energy industries following fears of a nuclear meltdown in Japan.
In response to the accidents in nuclear power plants that followed Friday's earthquake and tsunami in Japan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced today a temporary halt to the government's plan to lengthen the lives of 17 nuclear plants. German officials also announced over the weekend that the government would begin a safety review of the country's nuclear reactors.
Nuclear reactors made up 23 percent of Germany's power production in 2009, the second largest behind lignite-fired power plants. Also over the weekend, Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said that the German government would look to expand other greener sources of power, such as wind and solar (Jan Hromadko, Wall Street Journal, March 14).
On the other hand, China won't back down from nuclear, though there are lessons to be learned from the accidents at Japanese plants, Chinese Vice Minister for Environment Zhang Lijun said.
China is currently building almost 30 new reactors amid efforts to reduce the country's dependence on coal-fired power plants. China receives about 10.8 gigawatts of nuclear power and hopes to start building nuclear plants with a capacity of 40 gigawatts by 2015 (V. Phani Kumar, MarketWatch, March 14).
The Swiss government, meanwhile, has suspended plans to replace and build new nuclear plants.
The suspension affects three requests for "blanket authorization for nuclear replacement until safety standards have been carefully reviewed and if necessary adapted," according to Doris Leuthard, head of the Swiss federal energy department.
Leuthard said "safety has absolute priority" and that she has told the government to review the two hydrogen explosions at Japanese plants (AP/San Francisco Chronicle, March 14). -- AP
Concrete seawalls, breakwaters and other sea structures have been a linchpin of Japan's major initiative against earthquakes and tsunamis. But as the death toll from Friday's quake rises and the nuclear accident continues to play out, the devastation in coastal areas could push Japan to redesign its seawalls, or re-evaluate its reliance on them altogether.
At least 40 percent of Japan's 22,000-mile coastline is lined with seawalls, breakwaters or other structures meant to protect the coast from high waves, typhoons and tsunamis.
But the risks of depending on them were laid bare at the Daiichi and Daini nuclear power plants, which are both located along the coast close to the earthquake zone. There, the tsunami that followed the quake washed over the plant's protective walls, disabling the diesel generators that are crucial for maintaining power for the reactor's cooling systems during shutdown.
Malfunctions with the cooling system prompted overheating and partial fuel meltdowns at two reactors at the Daiichi plant, making it Japan's worst nuclear accident.
Peter Yanev, a world-renowned consultant on designing nuclear plants to withstand earthquakes, said there were major flaws in the Japanese plan. The plant's seawalls probably could not handle tsunami waves as high as the ones that struck them, he said. And the diesel generators were located in a low spot because it was assumed that the walls were high enough to protect against any tsunami that might hit.
These turned out to be a fatal miscalculations, Yanev said. In the near-term, increasing the heigh of tsunami walls is the obvious solution.
"The cost is peanuts compared to what is happening," he said.
Some critics have long argued that the seawalls are a mistaken effort to control nature and a wasteful public works project that rewards politically connected companies. They also say that, because they block the view of the sea, seawalls reduce coastal residents' understanding of the water and their ability to flee by watching for clues in changing wave patterns. But supporters say the seawalls increase the odds of survival in a country vulnerable to earthquakes whose mountainous interior has historically driven people to move to the coast (Norimitsu Onishi, New York Times, March 13). -- AS
UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations is mobilizing to assist Japan with disaster relief in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami that have killed thousands, the first known action by the world body in an industrialized nation.
The U.N. Disaster Assessment Coordination (UNDAC) team landed today in Tokyo to help the government coordinate relief efforts, the United Nations said.
Officials say the team was sent upon the request of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Comprising nationals from six countries, the team will set up an operations coordinating center in Tokyo and act as a liaison between Japan and the international community.
The UNDAC is normally sent only to the developing world, where government post-disaster capabilities are weak and inefficient. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) acknowledges it is an odd deployment but says the scale of the devastation in Japan's northeast warrants the assistance.
"This is not the normal UNDAC deployment as the government of Japan has a very strong disaster preparedness and response mechanism in place and is coordinating the international response effort," OCHA officials said.
While Japan will stay firmly in charge of the effort, officials say UNDAC will advise on what type of international aid the government should accept and how it should be distributed. The team will also help with coordinating the efforts of some of the dozens of search-and-rescue teams arriving from 13 separate countries.
"It will also assist the government in providing advice on incoming international relief goods and services with the aim of limiting unsolicited contributions," OCHA said. "The UNDAC team will travel to the affected areas in the coming days to get a better understanding of the humanitarian needs."
The United Nations' nuclear watchdog is also busy backing up Japanese government assertions that the nation is not about to experience a massive, Chernobyl-level radiation leak from its crippled nuclear power plants. But media reports suggest that the population there is becoming less inclined to believe such declarations, as every day seems to bring fresh news of expanding evacuation zones and detected radioactivity.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says it is monitoring the situation and stands ready to lend technical assistance to Japan should the government ask for it. Officials there are also expressing confidence that Japan's nuclear regulators can eventually get a handle on the problem.
IAEA Director-General and Japanese national Yukiya Amano said he is in close contact with Japanese officials concerning developments at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, which authorities say has already suffered two chemical explosions. In a videotaped statement, Amano expressed relief that there seems to be no major damage to the reactor cores at the plant and that safety regulators seemed to be taking all precautions to prevent a major meltdown.
The decision to close 11 of the nation's nuclear power plants in the quake-affected zones is "showing the effectiveness of the safety measures," Amano said. While acknowledging the growing concern over potential radiation leaks and contamination, Amano echoed Japanese government calls for calm.
"The IAEA has remained in close touch with the Japanese authorities throughout the emergency and continues to do so," he said. "I know the Japanese authorities are working their hardest to gather the necessary details and ensure safety under difficult and constantly evolving circumstances."
IAEA officials say they can provide equipment and personnel to assist with environmental sampling, radiation surveys and medical assistance geared toward treating exposures and radiation poisoning. The agency will also coordinate assistance with other third-party nuclear agencies that may be called in to assist.
Officials from various Asian countries have announced they will begin testing Japanese food for radiation as concerns over a nuclear meltdown continue in the aftermath of Friday's earthquake.
In Hong Kong, officials are checking food products "to ascertain that they have not been affected," said Hong Kong's Food and Health Secretary York Chow.
"As far as radiation is concerned, I think the most at-risk articles are ... fresh products, perhaps dairy products, fresh fruits and vegetables," Chow said.
Singapore's agri-food and veterinary authority likewise said it would test fresh produce, while South Korea's Food and Drug Administration will test agriculture and forest products, officials announced. The country is also considering testing seafood.
Malaysia is also closely monitoring the situation and will take precautionary measures by monitoring food imports from Japan, Malaysia's Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai said in a statement.
In the Philippines, government officials said that circulating text messages saying the country was in danger from radiation leaks were untrue, and that the Philippines' chances of being affected are "really remote" because it is about 1,860 miles south of Tokyo. Presidential spokesman Ricky Carandang said that food imports will be tested there, too, as a precaution.
"Right now, we are not yet recommending a ban on any food products from Japan and we don't think it's ... necessary," said Fe Medina, spokeswoman of the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute (Mair, Reuters, March 14). -- AP
The earthquake that shook northern Japan on Friday brought more than seismic waves and a devastating tsunami; it also moved the coastline and changed the planet's rotation.
Global positioning stations close to the epicenter jumped 13 feet to the east, and Ross Stein, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey, said Japan is now wider than it was before. According to estimates by NASA scientists, the earthquake also shortened the day by a couple millionths of a second and caused the Earth's axis to tilt.
Part of Japan sits atop the North American plate, which is colliding with the Pacific plate. The Pacific plate is moving about 3.5 inches per year in a west-northwest direction, diving under the North American plate in what is called a subduction zone.
Last week's 8.9 magnitude offshore earthquake released some of that tension, causing the land to jump back to the east. As the land unbuckled, Japan's coastal altitude dropped by about 2 feet, paving the way for the tsunami to cause more damage once it reached land.
This unbuckling during major earthquakes causes a shift of mass toward the planet's center. Like an ice skater pulling her arms toward her body to gain momentum in her spins, the inward shift of mass causes the Earth to spin faster, thus shortening the day.
Other great earthquakes have altered the Earth's axis and shortened the day. The 2004 earthquake in Sumatra shortened the day by 6.8 millionths of a second, compared to 1.8 millionths of a second by last week's earthquake, said Richard Gross, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"The Earth is always wobbling, and the length of the day is always changing," Gross said.
Stein said the event has reminded many of the need to re-evaluate the effect of large earthquakes in the region. Nothing larger than a 8 magnitude earthquake had hit the Japan subduction zone, leading to underestimates of the size of a tsunami that might strike the coast.
"It did them a great disservice," said Stein of the geological survey that led to the underestimate (Kenneth Chang, New York Times, March 13). -- PK
High-level Obama administration officials have gotten involved as U.S. EPA has prepared to unveil a plan to crack down on toxic air pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants, suggesting the White House is keeping a close eye on rules that could have the greatest impact of any environmental regulations issued under President Obama, experts say.
The Office of Management and Budget has held at least 10 meetings with stakeholders as it has reviewed the proposed rules, which have to be released by Wednesday under a legal deadline. Those types of meetings are nothing new, but as power companies, unions and advocacy groups have come to make their voices heard, they've sent the big guns -- and they've gotten to sit down with top officials who don't normally get involved in the day-to-day grind of the rulemaking process.
| The Visitor Log |
High-ranking White House officials have paid attention in recent weeks as a slew of power companies, unions and advocacy groups have lobbied the administration on U.S. EPA's plan to limit toxic pollution from coal-fired power plants. At one meeting with the CEOs of Constellation Energy, NextEra Energy Inc. and Exelon Corp. last week, the usual roster of staffers from U.S. EPA, the Office of Management and Budget and the Council on Environmental Quality was joined by White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley and Cass Sunstein, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
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White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley attended one meeting last week with the CEOs of Constellation Energy, NextEra Energy Inc. and Exelon Corp., three utilities that are pushing EPA to press forward with the limits on mercury, acid gases and other types of air pollution. Also in the room were Cass Sunstein, who oversees the review of new rules at the White House, and Gary Guzy, the second in command at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Michael Livermore, a law professor at New York University and a close observer of the regulatory process, said their involvement suggests the White House is keeping tabs on a proposal with broad impacts -- both costs for utilities and health benefits for the public.
"These are not the kinds of folks who spend their time on run-of-the-mill permit applications," said Livermore, who is executive director of NYU's Institute for Policy Integrity.
The new regulations will replace the George W. Bush administration's Clean Air Mercury Rule, a cap-and-trade program that would have required the power sector to cut its mercury emissions by about 70 percent. A federal court rejected the program in 2008, saying that the Clean Air Act requires power plants to control more than 180 different kinds of toxic pollution -- not just mercury.
Based on the court decision, the Obama administration must now decide what utilities must do to cut down on their pollution. Many older power plants without pollution controls may need to install scrubbers and other pieces of costly equipment.
That has raised concerns among power companies, which might need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to comply with the rules, as well as industries that make heavy use of electricity, which are worried about hikes in energy prices.
"The concern is that it's going to be hugely expensive and a very draconian rule," said Claudia O'Brien, an attorney at Latham & Watkins LLP whose clients include utilities. EPA staffers understand what's at stake, she said last week, but "they're hamstrung by a series of disastrous court opinions that didn't reflect what they should have reflected. It's a mess."
The White House has also been hearing from unions, which have usually been among the administration's biggest supporters. Groups such as the United Mine Workers of America, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and AFL-CIO met with the administration to discuss the rules last week to highlight their worries about possible job losses (see related story).
Meanwhile, environmentalists are asking EPA to think big. Many of the controls that cut down on toxic pollution also trap emissions that lead to soot and smog, leading to health benefits that would greatly exceed the costs to utilities, they say.
Several health groups, including the American Lung Association, have put out reports and launched advertising campaigns to drum up support for the new rules as they anticipate a protracted battle with industry (Greenwire, March 9).
Frank O'Donnell, president of the advocacy group Clean Air Watch, said he is concerned that Sunstein and other White House officials will weaken the rule before allowing EPA to move forward.
"If EPA is permitted to act honestly, every coal-fired power plant in America would have to clean up," he wrote in an e-mail last week. "If done correctly, EPA would require that the most toxic power plants be brought up to the standard of control used at the least toxic."
It is the longest slate of meetings on an EPA rule since early last year, when dozens of groups visited the White House to discuss a proposal to start treating coal ash as toxic waste. That rule has faced a backlash from companies that burn coal, or recycle the ash by using it as an ingredient in cement and other products.
EPA has not moved forward with a final rule since receiving tens of thousands of comments on the coal ash proposal. The agency is unlikely to make a decision by the end of this year, Administrator Lisa Jackson told lawmakers during a hearing earlier this month.
The Obama administration has issued its second deepwater drilling permit for the Gulf of Mexico since BP PLC's oil spill last April.
The permit -- which was approved Friday evening -- allows BHP Billiton to resume drilling that was suspended as part of the deepwater moratoriums Interior Department issued last summer in the wake of the BP spill. Production on BHP's Shenzi facility began in March 2009 and is located about 120 miles south of Houma, La., the company said.
Interior last month issued its first deepwater drilling permit to Noble Energy Inc. since last year's spill. The company seeks to resume drilling in 6,500-foot depths in waters about 70 miles southeast of Venice, La. (E&ENews PM, Feb. 28).
As in the Noble permit, BHP will use a stacking cap designed by Helix Well Containment Group to contain oil in the case of a spill, an Interior official said.
"We are pleased to be resuming work," said BHP spokesman Ruban Yogarajah.
The agency's second permit comes amid increasing pressure from Republicans, oil-state Democrats and industry groups to accelerate permitting in the Gulf to create jobs, boost domestic production and potentially cushion the recent rise in gasoline prices.
House Republicans have called a series of hearings this week to examine permitting in the Gulf and to highlight a new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service suggesting the United States contains the world's largest recoverable resources of oil, natural gas and coal (E&E Daily, March 14).
The permit also comes less than a week before Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement Director Michael Bromwich is set to testify before House appropriators on his agency's fiscal 2012 proposal to significantly boost funding to strengthen offshore drilling oversight.
The American Petroleum Institute issued cautious praise for the new deepwater permit but said the agency is taking "baby steps" by approving projects that were already operating prior to the BP spill.
"As we said last week, all new permits are welcome," said Erik Milito, API's upstream director.
"The oil and natural gas industry can and will provide even more jobs, higher economic growth and increased revenues to the federal treasury when policymakers pursue options that make resources currently off-limits available," Milito added, "and move forward on permitting and licenses at a pace necessary to support domestic production."
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar earlier this month said resuming a pre-Macondo pace of drilling while implementing new safety measures -- including well integrity standards, worst-case spill estimates and mandatory spill response and containment plans -- will depend on whether the agency receives a requested $133 million bump over current spending levels.
Salazar recently promised to issue a "handful" more permits in the near future now that operators have begun demonstrating the ability to prevent and contain possible oil spills.
President Obama on Friday rejected criticism that his administration is blocking access to oil and gas resources in the Gulf and said oil production from federal waters in the region was at an "all-time high." Critics, however, point out that such production is coming from leases and exploration plans approved under the George W. Bush administration.
"I don't think anybody's forgotten that we're only a few months removed from the worst oil spill in our history," Obama said. "We are encouraging offshore exploration and production. We're just doing it responsibly."
Obama also said he was continuing to pursue a strategy outlined in his budget proposal to encourage nonproducing lease holders in the Gulf and onshore to pursue development of their tracts. The majority of federal mineral leases on public lands and waters lay dormant, and the administration is asking Congress to authorize a $4-per-acre fee to encourage development.
Obama directed Interior to provide an updated report on nonproducing leases within the next two weeks.
"People deserve to know that the energy they depend on is being developed in a timely manner," Obama said.
A renewable power mandate poised to clear the California Legislature this week differs significantly from a sister version of the standard that went into effect under an executive order signed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) in 2008.
The California Assembly this week is expected to take up and approve a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) requiring utilities to generate 33 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020, taking up where the state's 20-percent-by-2010 version left off. The state Senate passed the same bill last month (E&ENews PM, Feb. 24).
The law would replace the executive order. Broadly, the targets and intent of the measure, which was authored by Sen. Joe Simitian (D), are the same as the Schwarzenegger order to boost clean energy sources like wind, geothermal, small hydroelectric and solar. But a closer look reveals a number of important differences, starting with the agency in charge of implementation.
Under the executive order, the state Air Resources Board was delegated much of the authority to oversee the RPS, which would for the first time apply to both public and private power. That decision, brought about because the California Public Utility Commission (PUC) has no jurisdiction over public power entities such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, led to an extensive rulemaking at ARB last year.
The air board approved a slate of rules that put Schwarzenegger's order into motion in September (Greenwire, Sept. 24, 2010). Crucially, the ARB version of the 2020 RPS included no cost-containment ceiling and said utilities could comply by purchasing renewable energy certificates for 100 percent of their requirement.
The Simitian bill would change all of those key details, putting more authority in the hands of the PUC while asking public power to come up with models for compliance on their own. The PUC would handle oversight of the state's investor-owned utilities with the air board retaining the authority (under the state's climate change law) to loosely oversee and, if need be, punish public utilities.
Moreover, the new law would enact cost-containment measures and put a cap on the use of out-of-state renewable energy certificates (RECs). All of these measures would likely make the RPS less susceptible to litigation and send a stronger signal to investors, experts said.
Laura Wisland, an energy analyst at Union of Concerned Scientists, described the legislation as much tougher than the executive order, which was signed by Schwarzenegger only because of disagreements at the time over how to deal with imported power from other states.
Under that order, utilities "could technically do nothing to replace the fossil fuels in their portfolios and buy credits," Wisland said. "The Simitian approach gives authority to the PUC to require renewables of IOUs and requires public utilities to do the same for themselves."
With Gov. Jerry Brown (D) expected to sign the legislation, Wisland said a law from the Golden State -- often seen as the leader in renewable development -- would send a clear message to investors that the 33-percent goal will be the ruling standard and not subject to quick change.
"They don't have the certainty they need if it's not a law," she said. "There are more hurdles to reversing it. It would presumably be more difficult than shutting down an agency program or having a new governor come in and say, 'I'm changing my mind.'"
The law also is important because it gives utilities more reason to raise their rate base and justify the increase during proceedings before regulators or local leaders. Carl Zichella, director of Western Transmission at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the order could have easily been vacated, which would have thrown any rate proceeding into doubt.
"The authority for cost recovery is greater," he said. "You have to go back and repeal a statute."
The industry agrees. Mike Hall, CEO of San Diego-based Borrego Solar Systems Inc., called the law "tremendously important" for the solar sector because funds have essentially run dry for residential and commercial installations under the California Solar Initiative.
"Without an RPS, given the budget situation, it would be more challenging to continue momentum," said Hall, adding that his company has doubled in size since 2009, hiring 30 new employees. "It's not going to continue unless there's some kind of long-term program."
A final concern, which is still likely to play out in courts, is whether any RPS that reaches into out-of-state electricity would stand up to a challenge under the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause. ARB chief Mary Nichols has said the air board's rule was written to withstand such scrutiny, but it remains to be seen how the issue will play out with respect to the RPS legislation.
A broader concern is power lines and whether the transmission exists to meet 33 percent renewables. Zichella, a specialist in transmission, insisted the state has enough power lines either in place or in the works, crediting the process under the 2010 RPS for getting regulators thinking proactively.
"Most of the work that's been done with transmission planning has assumed we'd be exceeding 20 percent," Zichella said. "Nobody's taken by surprise by this."
Zichella noted that the California Independent System Operator, which runs the grid, has conducted its planning and analysis for the next decade based on the 33-percent target, assuming it would be in place. There are bottlenecks -- particularly from south to north in the Central Valley -- and Zichella agreed that more lines are needed to move electrons from the desert in Arizona, but he was confident in predicting the grid will be ready.
Wisland of the Union of Concerned Scientists was just as comfortable saying transmission is sufficient, though some environmentalists have been pushing more localized power sources, such as rooftop solar, to avoid major capital upgrades. Hall said solar is poised to increase its share of renewable generation -- which currently sits at about 2 percent, far behind wind and geothermal -- partly because of the transmission question.
"Solar, by its nature, is a smaller-scale deployment," Hall said. "From 20 to 33, you're going to see that solar is a much larger portion of the next 13 percent. That's because a lot of the low-hanging fruit, in terms of of sites like geothermal and wind, is taken."
Stanley Young, a spokesman at ARB, said the agency supports replacing its rule with a law, though the agency does believe a few pieces of "cleanup legislation" might be needed following passage of the Simitian bill.
Sullivan is based in San Francisco.
One of the Senate's top Democrats yesterday joined a growing chorus of lawmakers urging the Obama administration to tap into the nation's petroleum stockpile to alleviate soaring crude oil prices.
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate Democratic whip, said tapping into the nation's 727-million-barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) would ensure that rising gasoline prices wouldn't affect economic recovery.
"We need to consider moving toward the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to put the oil we have in reserve into the economy, to try to temper this increase in gas prices," he said yesterday on CNN's "State of the Union." "This isn't helping our recovery."
Durbin's comments come as a growing group of Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill have urged the president to sell off some of the stockpile to help lower gasoline prices. Durbin joins Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and House Natural Resources ranking member Ed Markey (D-Mass.), among others, in calling for a petroleum reserve sale.
But President Obama said Friday that he wasn't ready to dip into the stockpile just yet.
"The idea behind the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is if there was a severe disruption in supply, similar to what happened in the '70s, for example, when you had the -- OPEC making a decision not to sell for a while, how would our economy continue to function, and making sure that we've got sufficient supplies for that," Obama said Friday during a news conference. "Right now, what we're seeing is not a shortage of supply. Refineries are actually operating at fairly full capacity at the moment."
Obama said he was "confident" about the United States' current ability to fill any potential supply gaps that would generate another price spike. But he didn't rule out the possibility of an SPR sale.
"If we see significant disruptions or, you know, shifts in the market that are -- are so disconcerting to people that we think a Strategic Petroleum Reserve release might be appropriate, then we'll take that step," he said.
Durbin and other Democrats in Congress think Obama should sell off some reserves now.
"I'm worried that if we don't use the reserve, that our economic recovery will stall and fall backwards," Durbin said.
Not all Democrats are urging Obama to dip into the reserves, and Republicans are generally opposed to the idea. Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) both said last week that the reserve should be used only during emergencies and the current price spike didn't qualify as such. The two oil-state Democrats and Republicans say the administration should ramp up domestic oil production instead to reduce dependence on foreign oil.
Democrats, too, say the United States should reduce foreign oil imports.
"We need to think about what we need to do as a nation to move forward," Durbin said. He touted energy efficiency and said, "We need to look and see what other things are available to us."
The Colcom Foundation last week announced the first round of recipients of its Marcellus Environmental Fund grants.
The first batch of organizations received portions of a $900,000 gift from a $1 million fund that recently increased to $1.3 million because of enthusiastic local feedback.
Pittsburgh-based Colcom was founded by the late Cordelia May, heiress to the Mellon family fortune and distributes environmentally focused local grants, typically targeting population issues. John Rohe, the foundation's vice president of philanthropy, said energy consumption and resource usage are just the flip side of the overpopulation issue.
Rohe said the foundation recognized the deep legacy costs absorbed from coal mining in southwestern Pennsylvania. With Pittsburgh quickly becoming a hub of natural gas production in the Northeast, Colcom hopes to circumvent further environmental degradation by providing upfront funding for the study of the effects of the industry.
"We take interest in the integrity and respectability of Marcellus Shale drilling," he said. "We want to assure that we can adopt the highest level of respect for our surroundings and for human health."
To achieve that goal, Colcom distributed its first batch of funds to several Pittsburgh-area organizations that mostly aim to monitor regional air and water quality.
The Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP) received a grant to collect data on air emissions from the natural gas industry and develop recommendations for regulations and best practices.
GASP director Rachel Filippini said she hopes to get citizens involved in their permit review work to extend the organization's reach. She hopes the group's work can moderate the fast growth of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania, allowing regulations to catch up.
"Let's slow this down; let's make sure we have regulations and precautions in place before environmental degradation happens," Filippini said. "We want to make sure that this industry has enough environmental controls and regulations in place so that any drilling can be done responsibly."
The Washington County Conservation District plans to put its Colcom funds to use by monitoring the temperature, pH, conductivity and water level of the region's major streams. It hopes to serve as a watchdog for natural gas companies in the area.
"Most of the gas drillers and the haulers of frack water are responsible, but just like any industry you always have a few that want to take shortcuts," said Gary Stokum, president of the Washington County Watershed Alliance. "We may not find anything. I hope we don't."
Other grant recipients include the Clean Water Fund, League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania Citizen Education, Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, Conemaugh Valley Conservancy, Elk County Conservation District, Evergreen Conservancy, Greene County Watershed Alliance, McKean County Conservation District and Mountain Watershed Association.
Chuck Christen, director of operations for the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Healthy Environments and Communities, applauded Colcom's decisions to distribute the grants. The center manages FracTracker, a Web tool that allows users to find geological data related to gas extraction activities.
"It seems that the Colcom Foundation has a vision of the significant amount of drilling for and production of natural gas to come to Pennsylvania and sees a need for a network of water monitoring projects so that regular surveillance on our streams and water supply can be monitored," said Christen in an e-mail.
Federal officials called Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s safety standard an "incorrect" interpretation of government safety regulations, saying the company had avoided costly inspections of pipelines like the one that exploded in San Bruno, Calif.
According to a company document, PG&E decided in 2008 that it would test for problems only if its pipeline pressures spiked above 10 percent of a standard defined by federal rules. Federal regulations dictate such pipelines should be inspected for seam damage if pressures rise even slightly above the federal standard.
PG&E said such tests could cost from $125,000 to $500,000 per mile and could shut down a line for days. The 10 percent level was taken from a separate federal regulation that allows pipelines to temporarily exceed pressure caps.
The company did not explain why it transferred the 10 percent exception to this particular federal pressure cap.
"We are currently reviewing all of our risk management policies and procedures," PG&E spokesman Joe Molica said. "Safety is our highest responsibility, and we are working hard to restore public confidence in the safety and integrity of our gas pipeline operations."
Experts said the 10 percent add-on appeared to have no federal regulatory support.
"They are on the defensive to explain why they have done something so weird here," said Richard Kuprewicz, a safety consultant in Redmond, Wash. "I have not run across this in all my years. I hope they are outliers" (Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle, March 13). -- PK
New Jersey has withdrawn from a lawsuit seeking to force five electric utilities to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in 20 states by 3 percent a year for the next decade.
A spokesman for state Attorney General Paula Dow (D) said that the "lawsuit that was originally filed in 2004 has been effectively mooted by the 2007 Supreme Court decision declaring that the regulation of greenhouse emissions is a federal issue."
"Considering the Supreme Court's ruling and the Obama administration's subsequent position that the EPA must determine an appropriate plan of action," Dow spokesman Paul Loriquet added, "it does not make sense to incur further taxpayer expense on an unnecessary lawsuit."
The lawsuit was originally brought by eight states, New York City and three nonprofit land trusts, but Wisconsin also withdrew from the suit in February. The plaintiffs contend that greenhouse gases cause global warming and that those gases are emitted from coal, gasoline and other fossil-fuel production.
A judge dismissed the suit, but the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan overturned the ruling in September 2009. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case last fall.
U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D) of New Jersey criticized the decision to withdraw.
"Why should New Jersey be less concerned about the health and well-being of its families than Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, California and Iowa?" Lautenberg asked in a statement. "The choice here was between the health of New Jersey families and profits for out-of-state polluters. When companies in other states are dumping pollution into the air that affects our families, New Jersey must stand up and fight -- not back down" (Newark Star-Ledger, March 12). -- AP
The Virginia Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli II to overturn a state judge's ruling that he could not demand documents tied to climatologist Michael Mann.
Cuccinelli is alleging that Mann, a former University of Virginia professor, defrauded taxpayers by providing false information about climate change for research grant applications. Critics, including the university, have called Cuccinelli's claims an attack on academic freedom, and Mann has denied the fraud charges.
Cuccinelli is seeking to gain access to academic documents, computer programs, thousands of e-mails and other data from Mann. A state judge had ruled last August that Cuccinelli did not have the authority to demand documents related to federal grants and that he also did not provide evidence of fraud in his subpoena.
Climate skeptic Cuccinelli has claimed that his investigation is not about climate change research but about finances. If the documents are released, Cuccinelli will have to comb them to prove a chargeable offense. Cuccinelli has acknowledged that the e-mails may not provide much proof of financial mismanagement.
"Frankly, I would say the odds are there is nothing like that," he said. "But we don't know that" (John Collins Rudolf, New York Times, March 12). -- AP
U.S. EPA received a due-date extension for a new regulation aimed at shoring up the environmental impacts of cooling water intakes at power plants, which can vacuum up and kill fish, shellfish or their eggs, leading to steep declines in aquatic species populations along heavily tapped waterways like the Hudson River.
According to an agency spokeswoman, EPA now has until Friday to publish the rule unless Congress passes a new short-term continuing resolution. In that case, EPA may take two weeks, until March 28, the spokeswoman said.
The extension was agreed to between lawyers for EPA and Riverkeeper, the lead plaintiff in the environmental lawsuit whose settlement agreement forced the agency to draw up the new rules, EPA said.
In the settlement, EPA agreed to draft new regulations for existing power plants by March 14, a deadline that would have lapsed today. Final action on the new rules is due July 27, 2012, according to the settlement.
The settlement resolved two lawsuits brought against EPA in 1993 and 2006 alleging the agency's failure to issue regulations implementing Section 316(b) of the Clean Water Act.
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), one of EPA's leading critics on Capitol Hill, warned the agency to move slowly on the cooling water intake rules, estimating they could cost power plants hundreds of millions of dollars to implement (E&ENews PM, Dec. 3, 2010).
The Obama administration is proceeding with aggressive plans to improve the safety of miners as the one-year anniversary nears of the deadly explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia.
Despite an antiregulatory mood among Capitol Hill Republicans, the Mine Safety and Health Administration is pushing ahead with proposals to expand federal mining oversight. So far, Republican lawmakers have put up little resistance (E&E Daily, March 4).
The last thing many congressional coal-mining boosters want to do is hurt an industry that provides much-needed jobs in Appalachia and other mining strongholds. At the same time, lawmakers do not want a repeat of the Upper Big Branch mine explosion, which killed 29 workers and was the worst U.S. mining disaster in 30 years.
Almost immediately after the Upper Big Branch disaster, MSHA inspectors began "impact inspections" of mines with a history of problems. In January alone, they issued almost 400 citations and orders in those probes (E&ENews PM, Feb 17).
The agency is also in the midst of an education campaign to remind mining companies and miners about common risks. In December, for example, MSHA said it was emphasizing the prevention of accidents with shuttle cars and scoops used to transport materials that have been linked to more than a dozen deaths and hundreds of injuries since 2000.
MSHA chief Joseph Main, says his agency really needs a new law providing expanded authority to crack down on problem mines.
"New legislation should provide us sufficient authority to act," Main said at a recent House oversight hearing.
Some lawmakers, especially Democrats, want to give MSHA more authority, including increased civil and criminal penalties for violators. But Republican leaders have said it is premature to move forward with legislation before the Upper Big Branch investigations are complete.
As lawmakers debate and legislation stalls, Main has moved to fix significant problems within the agency, some of which were outlined by the Department of Labor's inspector general in a report last year. The report said MSHA had failed to enact tougher oversight at coal mines with a history of violations (Greenwire, Sept. 30, 2010).
In September, MSHA announced new screening criteria under its pattern-of-violations program, which is at the center of the debate over the agency's mine safety oversight. Mine operators were able to avoid getting on the pattern-of-violations list, which means stricter enforcement, through appeals.
"We have a backlog that precludes a lot of immediate action. There are so many violations stacked up, 80,000-some violations," Main told the House panel. "It's going to take us in a matter of, not months, but years to get the backlog down."
Beyond the new screening criteria, the agency has proposed a new rule on a pattern of violations (POV) at mines. The proposal would eliminate a requirement that only final citations and orders can be used in MSHA's review. In other words, it will be easier for MSHA to put mines on the POV list.
"As I've said many times before, the current POV system is broken, and this regulation is the next critical step in reforming the enforcement program under the existing statute," Main said in a statement.
In August, the agency issued guidelines to remind operators about ventilation requirements. MSHA described it as an effort to prevent explosions from methane and dust accumulation. An emergency temporary standard followed for underground bituminous coal mines.
Federal investigators have said they believe the Upper Big Branch disaster was triggered by a small methane ignition sparked by accumulated coal dust.
Another proposed rule would require underground coal mine operators to identify, record and correct violations of health or safety standards.
A rule to prevent black lung disease is also in the works amid industry claims that the proposal is based on flawed data (E&E Daily, Feb. 16). The industry said it would struggle to comply if the proposal is put on the books.
Industry has pointed to President Obama's ordering agencies early this year to eliminate rules that are outdated and could stifle the economy to make a point about the mining office being out of step with the administration's efforts to stimulate the economy.
But MSHA officials say they are taking industry and public comments into account on proposed rules while also trying to do right by miners who died in last April's Upper Big Branch blast.
"Our core mission in life," Main said, "is to find the problems and fix them."
The Obama administration's environmental agenda is starting to come under fire from some of the Democratic Party's most reliable supporters: labor unions.
Several unions with strong influence in swing states are pushing for U.S. EPA to soften new regulations aimed at pollution associated with coal-fired power plants. They say roughly half a dozen rules that are expected to come out within the next two years could jeopardize thousands of jobs.
"If the EPA issues regulations that cost jobs in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the Republicans will blast the president with it over and over," said Stewart Acuff, chief of staff to the president of the Utility Workers Union of America. "Not just the president. Every Democratic [lawmaker] from those states."
The Obama EPA has long been a target of many U.S. companies, from coal and oil firms to manufacturers. They say a new regulation targeting mercury and other toxic pollutants, slated to be proposed this week, could mean higher electric bills, billions of dollars in new costs and the shuttering of plants that employ thousands of workers.
Now, with labor unions joining the chorus, pressure on the agency is intensifying and some Democrats are urging EPA to slow down its push on climate change.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and her top aide on air quality, Gina McCarthy, have been talking with representatives of several unions that together have given tens of millions of dollars to Democratic candidates over the years. They include: the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, the Utility Workers Union and the United Mine Workers.
A study by the miners' union said the soon-to-be proposed mercury rule, along with others targeting coal-related pollution, could put as many as 250,000 jobs at risk. The lion's share of those would come from the utility, mining and railroad sectors, hitting the Rust Belt states hardest. They have many old coal-fired power plants -- and also electoral votes.
But EPA says it is too early to calculate possible job losses.
"These are the same doomsday scenarios we hear whenever we take steps to protect Americans from dangerous air pollution," said EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan. An EPA study released this month said regulations the agency put in place between 1990 and 2005 to reduce soot and smog will yield $2 trillion in benefits in 2020, mainly from fewer premature deaths.
Now, a nascent alliance between unions and companies wary of EPA has begun to emerge. Last month, representatives from the boilermakers and the electrical workers unions met in Washington with Mike Morris, CEO of American Electric Power Co. Inc., which is one of the nation's top coal burners and stands to be among the companies hit hardest by tougher EPA rules.
And in January, Morris met with the president of the electrical workers union and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Political analysts say these changing dynamics could come into play in the 2012 election, especially in Rust Belt states.
"Environmental issues aren't going to be the No. 1 issue on the table, but they're going to be a factor with enough voters that in a tight election, it can tip the scales," said Greg Haas, a Democratic political strategist based in Columbus, Ohio (Stephen Power, Wall Street Journal, March 14). -- AS
California and other states are doing everything in their power to snag federal high-speed rail funds Florida's governor said he does not want.
The competition is about to get even fiercer following Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's announcement Friday that states may apply for the $2.4 billion in high-speed rail money turned down by Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R).
California, which previously received $624 million declined by the Republican governors of Ohio and Wisconsin, is believed to be a front-runner for receiving the money. The state's proposed line would run from Los Angeles to San Francisco and would cost at least $43 billion.
This could be the last chance for states to snatch up high-speed rail money. Such funds have been targeted by House Republicans for budget cuts.
Florida, however, may still be in the running, despite the governor's rejection of the funds.
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said a transit authority composed of officials from cities along the route from Tampa to Orlando would compete.
"Florida's chances are alive," Nelson said.
Applications for the money are due April 4 (Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times, March 12). -- PK
Honeywell International Inc. was fined $11.8 million Friday after it pleaded guilty to storing hazardous waste from its nuclear fuel division without a permit.
The company was found in violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which requires a permit for storing hazardous materials for more than 90 days.
U.S. EPA said the fine showed that the Obama administration will be vigilant in pursuing companies that violate permit requirements.
"The defendant's illegal storage practices put employees at risk of exposure to radioactive and hazardous materials," Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for U.S. EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, said in a statement. "[The] plea agreement and sentencing shows that those who try to circumvent the law and place people's health and the environment at risk will be vigorously prosecuted."
At issue in the case was Honeywell's storage of a byproduct at its uranium hexafluoride conversion facility in Massac County, Ill., near Metropolis. The Metropolis facility is the only one in the country that converts natural uranium into nuclear fuel, and Honeywell is licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to possess and manage natural uranium.
To control the air emissions from the conversion process, all air emissions are scrubbed with potassium hydroxide (KOH) before being discharged. The KOH scrubbers and equipment used in that process accumulate uranium compounds and are then pumped into 55-gallon drums in what is called "KOH mud."
KOH mud has a pH greater than or equal to 12.5 and thus is subject to RCRA regulations.
Originally, Honeywell put the KOH mud through a reclamation process to extract the uranium from the substance. In 2002, it discontinued that practice. By September 2008, Honeywell had accumulated more than 7,000 drums of KOH mud at its facility, according to EPA. In April 2009, EPA conducted a search of the property and found nearly 7,500 drums.
Honeywell has sought the proper permits for the waste. In July 2007, the company requested a modified RCRA permit, which it received from the Illinois EPA and which allowed it to store KOH mud in an area designed contain spills or leaks. Honeywell began storing its KOH mud in compliance with that permit in March 2010.
Honeywell will also be subject to a five-year probation period as a result of the case.
New York City's 10-year plan to identify and replace light fixtures in schools that are leaking toxic chemicals is too slow and not comprehensive enough, U.S. EPA said Friday.
After initially praising the city when it announced its plan last month as part of a wider energy efficiency effort, EPA is now rejecting the city's 10-year timeline and pushing for a shorter turnaround. How much shorter, though, is still being discussed within the city, said Judith Enck, the agency's regional administrator.
"Ten years is too long," Enck said Friday. "From our inspections, we've found that there's a problem with leaking light ballasts and I'd be concerned with the problem lingering for a long period of time."
The issue of replacing old fluorescent light fixtures became a pressing one for the city after a pilot study begun last year found leaking light ballasts to be a major source of high levels of toxic PCBs in air samples taken from schools. Spot inspections of schools by EPA this year found that the problems pervade the school system.
Under pressure from federal officials and worried parents, city officials announced a plan last month to spend $702 million to replace light fixtures in nearly 800 school buildings. But school advocates said PCB contamination was too urgent of a problem to wait a decade to complete (Mireya Navarro, New York Times, March 11). -- AS
The West Virginia Legislature ended its session Saturday without passing any regulations on Marcellus Shale drilling, a move that one Democratic state senator called "shameful" in a floor speech that night.
Lawmakers blamed one another for the failure of a Senate bill that would have set environmental regulations, permit fees and property-owner protections for natural-gas drilling in the shale. The Senate passed the bill this month, but it did not reach a House vote.
House and Senate members disagreed on drilling setbacks from homes and water wells, the hiring of well inspectors and notice to be given to property owners.
"It makes us wonder what the commitment of the House leadership was to get this job done," said Sen. Mike Green (D).
Meanwhile, House Judiciary Chairman Tim Miley (D) blamed the Senate for refusing to compromise. Other lawmakers criticized the Legislature for passing a bill that gives tax breaks to the natural gas and manufacturing industries. Another Democrat, Del. Mike Manypenny, pushed for a moratorium to be issued on new Marcellus drilling permits.
Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman said the agency will be able to oversee drilling without the regulations.
"We don't have a crisis in the short term," Huffman said. "I think it was a lot to expect to get so many issues and so many interests dealt with adequately in such a short period of time" in the Legislature (Kabler/Knezevich, Charleston [W.Va.] Gazette, March 12). -- AP
Norway blocked oil drilling in ecologically sensitive Arctic waters Friday over fears of a disaster similar to the BP PLC oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The country's government decided to prohibit an environmental impact assessment in the area, which would have served as the first step in preparing for exploration.
"The chances for such an accident are small, but the consequences would be enormous," said Environment Minister Erik Solheim, describing the country's concerns about potential spills.
The oil industry criticized the decision, which they said could block them from an area that could contain as much as 3.4 billion barrels of oil.
"We are very dissatisfied," said Gro Brækken, managing director of the Norwegian Oil Industry Association. She called the region "the most interesting area and where production can be started at the fastest pace."
The government plans to open for oil activities in waters farther north (Bjoern Amland, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, March 11). -- PK
Edward Leisenring Jr., former CEO of Westmoreland Coal Co., died Wednesday of heart failure in his winter home in Aiken, S.C. He was 85.
Founded by Leisenring's great-grandfather in 1835, Westmoreland is one of the largest coal producers in the United States. Leisenring began his career with the company as an underground mining machine operator in 1949 after graduating with a degree in English from Yale University.
During his chairmanship of the Bituminous Coal Operators Association from 1976 to 1978, Leisenring played a key role in negotiating an end to what Leisenring's son called the longest strike in the history of the United Mine Workers of America union.
"At Westmoreland, Ted Leisenring sought to seize this moment by developing what he called 'an ongoing and intensive communications program' with workers 'to identify emerging problems and to resolve them before they fester and erupt into wildcat strikes,'" wrote Dan Rottenberg in his 2003 book, "In the Kingdom of Coal."
Leisenring leaves behind his wife, a daughter, two sons and eight grandchildren (Walter Naedele, Philadelphia Inquirer, March 13). -- PK
How will the clean energy standard and transmission cost allocation discussions affect smart grid development? During today's OnPoint, Bob Shapard, the new chairman of the GridWise Alliance, discusses the challenges posed to modernizing the grid as Congress debates transmission cost allocation and renewables mandates.
Click here for today's OnPoint.
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