W orld Information Service on Energy founded in 1978 NUCLEARMONITORNUCLEARMONITOR A Publication of WorldInformation Service on Energy (WISE) and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS), incorporating the former WISE News Communique #591--North American Edition August 22, 2003 U.S. ELECTRICITY CRISIS: UNFORTUNATE BUT ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE The electricity crisis, that hit the Northeast on Thursday August 14, has shown one of the negative consequences of electricity market deregulation. Less attractive investments (i.e. no short term profits) in the electricity grid had made it very vulnerable to failures such as happened on August 14. About 50 million people in eight U.S. states and Canada were affected. Due to the outage 9 NPPsintheU.S. and 13 NPPs in Canada and more than 10 conventional power stations were shut down. (591.5532) WISE Amsterdam – The power supply stopped at 4.11 p.m. subways, trains could not drive, blackout appears to have started in Until 4.25 p.m. nine other reactors airports were closed as passenger’s three transmission lines near shut down automatically after losing security checks could not be carried Cleveland (Ohio). At 3.06 p.m. a trip power supply: Indian Point-2/3 (NY), out, people had to sleep on the street at one transmission line caused extra Perry (OH), Fermi (MI), Ginna (NY), as they were not able to get home, power coursing at another line, FitzPatrick (NY), Oyster Creek (NJ) etc. An official state of emergency which got overheated and tripped as and Nine Mile Point-1/2 (NY) (1). was declared in New York city and well. Another line got disconnected the Canada province of Ontario. in a switching station due to In Canada, 13 NPPs shut down after Although some thought that sabotage overload. As a consequence of over- the blackout. Pickering “B”-5/8, Bruce by terrorists might have caused the loads, several lines and switching “B”-5/8 and Darlington-1/4 were in failure, this possible cause appears to stations started to trip and dis- full operation. Pickering “A”-4 was at be not realistic. New York city was connect. Power stations disconnected 15% power when it was shut down also hit by outages in 1965 and 1977. themselves automatically from the after the blackout. This unit was out In 1965, 30 million people in New grid to protect themselves from of operation since 1997 (due to safety York and New England had been damage. concerns) but now in the process of affected. In 1977, New York had no restarting (2). electricity for several hours (3). The Davis-Besse NPP was the first nuclear plant to be hit by the failure. Due to the crisis, computers stopped Nuclear Although it is out of operation, its working, people got stuck in Within 15 minutes, nine nuclear reactors in the U.S. were shut down automatically when power supply IN THIS ISSUE: was disrupted. They had to rely on emergency backup diesel generators U.S. electricity crisis: unfortunate but entirely predictable 1 to supply the necessary power for cooling the reactor. According to U.S. Senate passes pro-nuclear Energy Bill 4 Public Citizens’ Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program (CMEP), LES switching to New Mexico? 4 sudden reliance on backup diesel Massive actions against proposed South Korean waste dump 5 generators is less than reassuring as there have been 15 instances in the U.S.: criticism of NPP fish kills 6 past 12 months in which emergency generators either malfuntioned or Ukraine proposes resettlement in Chernobyl Zone 8 failed to operate. At the Fermi In brief 8 reactor, all four of its backup generators were found to be inoperable on 1 February. Without NPPs in the U.S. As of 18 August, five Deregulation emergency backup cooling, the of the NPPs had been restarted and Many see the current crisis as a reactor core could melt between two operating and a sixth was in the negative consequence of the and eight hours. process of restart. Restart of Indian deregulation on the electricity Point-3 was delayed as repairs were market. According to Public Citizens’ If the current blackout would have needed on electrical cables in the Critical Mass Energy and caused a meltdown due to failing control rod mechanism. Owner Environment Program, “there was backup generators, it will have been Entergy said that they were not plenty of power available at the time likely that emergency sirens to alert certain whether the grid failure had of the blackout, but something or proper officials and the public would caused the damage. Perry NPP could someone overloaded the wires to not have operated due to the lack of not restart until repairs are made on move it to markets”. power. Indeed, the Indian Point and a reactor core isolation system, which Ginna NPPs informed the U.S. was already planned but now Deregulation even promotes such Nuclear Regulatory Commission that necessary since the shut down. overloads because of the principles of some of their emergency sirens Fermi-2 was back to 24% power at 20 selling as much as possible (to make would have rendered impotent due August, after damage was repaired at profits). Necessary repairs or to the blackout. Leaving the public in turbine equipment, pumps and additions to the transmission system a tragic state of ignorance in he event circuit boards. Fermi owner Detroit are however discouraged as these of a meltdown (4). Edison said that the components got measures diminish profits (9). damaged when they were overheated The blackout possibly also caused in the sudden power loss (5). According to former U.S. Secretary of damage to some of the nine affected Energy Bill Richardson, the U.S. In the U.S., Senate Republicans have would be “a superpower with a WISE Amsterdam/NIRS called for greater reliance on nuclear network of a Third World country”. ISSN: 0889-3411 energy and increase of production The Electricity Power and Research capacity. Although the problem was Institute (EPRI) concluded that Reproduction of this material is mainly caused by a transmission electricity consumption has encouraged. Please give credit when problem, not a capacity problem, increased with 30% in the last 10 reprinting. Republicans are using the current years, but the capacity of the grid in Editorial team: Robert Jan van den crisis to promote nuclear energy. the same time only increased with Berg (WISE Amsterdam), Michael 15% (10). Mariotte (NIRS). With contributions They already rejected addressing the from Korean Dereation for core issue – power grid and rules – in Even the U.S. Department of Energy Environmental Movement and WISE/ a separate legislation and rather use (DOE) concluded in 2002 in the NIRS Ukraine. the crisis as “proof” that the U.S. National Transmission Grid Study needs a comprehensive Energy Bill, that the “outdated transmission The next issue (592) will be mailed including large investments in system was not designed to support out 5 September 2003. nuclear (see elsewhere in this issue today’s regional, competitive elec- Due to circumstances we have no “25 on Energy Bill developments) (6). tricity markets. Investments in the Years Ago” in this issue. We will transmission system has not kept certainly write one for our next issue! Only four of the Canadian reactors, pace with the growth in generation three at Bruce “B” and one at and the increasing demand for Darlington, were able to restart electricity. Transmission bottlenecks Oops! In issue 589 (“25 years ago”) we immediately after the blackout. As of reliability and cost consumers wrote that a referendum on nuclear 21 August, the other eight were also hundreds of millions of dollars each energy in Austria took place on 9 expected to operate at full power. year.” November 1978. This must be 5 The failure to restart the eight November 1978. The “few” research reactors mentioned in the article are reactors immediately after the The present grid was built up over one 10 MW reactor at the Austrian blackout contributed to a power crisis the last 100 years, mainly intended Nuclear Research Centre at in the Ontario province that shut for local electricity distribution. Seibersdorf (presently shut down) and down much of the industrial Small interconnections between two 1 MW reactors at universities. production (7). utilities existed, but were created to The 1997 “anti-nuclear package” was share excess generation. in content different from the later Ontario is heavily dependent on adopted “Constitutional Law for a nuclear energy. The three Ontario Over the past 10 years, competition Nuclear-Free Austria” of 1999. The Power Generation (OPG) nuclear into wholesale electricity markets scope of the former was much larger than the eventually adopted Law. stations produce about 45% of the has been introduced and as a result Information from PLAGE, 19 August province’s electricity (8). the grid has become to function as a 2003. kind of interstate highway system for 2 WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor 591, 22 August 2003 wholesale electricity commerce. interconnected rather sparsely with utilities that ought to be investigated. According to DOE, the grid has now heavy dependence on a few critical become congested and needs urgent nodes, many of which are nearly One of the examples mentioned: modernization. overload. Ohio utility FirstEnergy, where the blackout possibly started, was a large The DOE study group recommended Although traditional responses often financial contributor to Bush’s re- the establishment of Regional plea for more and larger power election campaign in 2000. Transmission Organizations being plants and extensive expansions of responsible for grid reliability and the power grid, RMI’s response is a Public Citizen proposes to establish federal legislation to make reliability more distributed generation an independent task force, including standards mandatory (11).