Water collects in the bottom of the cooling tower. The plant’s operating license includes a regulatory limit requiring the cooling tower basin’s water level to be at least 42.15 feet above mean sea level. Two separate instruments monitor the water level in the basin and transmit that information to the control room.

On November 2, 2012, operators in the control room noticed that one instrument (SW-LI-6139) showed the basin’s water level to be about one foot below the indication on the second instrument (SW-LI-6129). Both instruments monitor the same thing – water level in the cooling tower basin – and should provide the same result. Workers checked two other indications – a control room chart recorder and a plant computer point. These indications matched the value from SW-LI-6129, so they determined that instrument SW-LI-6139 was reading incorrectly.

On December 7, 2012, workers determined that the cooling tower basin’s level was below the minimum limit of 42.15 feet and took measures to add water to the basin until the level rose above that limit.

Subsequent investigation determined that instrument SW-LI-6139 had been reading correctly all along and that instrument SW-LI-6129 had been providing falsely high indications.

They further found that the control room chart recorder and the computer received information from instrument SW-LI-6129.

Our Takeaway

The nuclear industry talks often about conservative decision-making. It entails erring on the side of caution when making choices. Two control room instruments monitoring the same parameter output different values. Conservative decision-making, if actually employed rather than meekly being bantered about, would assume the output providing the least safety margin – the lower of the two water level indications in this case – is valid until demonstrated otherwise.

But here, as in way too many other instances, workers used convenient decision-making and assumed the instrument showing the least safety margin was bad. And they compounded their initial poor decision-making by deciding not to check about their guess for over a month. Imagine their surprise upon finding that the “bad” reading was good and the “good” reading was actually bad. At the same time, they should have realized that their “good” decision-making was actually bad, very very bad.

“Fission Stories” is a weekly feature by Dave Lochbaum. For more information on nuclear power safety, see the nuclear safety section of UCS’s website and our interactive map, the Nuclear Power Information Tracker.

Each entry in the data set contains a date, the reactor’s name (e.g, Indian Point 2) and the percentage of rated power (i.e., 0 to 100).

The data set can be easily downloaded as a text file and imported into a spreadsheet program like Excel to allow the data to be examined. Those steps for Excel are:

1. Go to http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/reactor-status/
2. Right click on the “Power Status (raw data text file) for the last 365 days” link and use “Save target as …” to download this file to your computer
3. Start the Excel program
4. Select the “Data” tab across the top
5. Doubleclick on the “From Text” icon at the upper left and select the text file downloaded to your computer in Step 2
6. Verify that the first step of Text Import Wizard seeks to import Delimited data (rather than Fixed Width data) starting at row 1, then click the “Next” button
7. Change the Delimiters option in the second step of the Text Import Wizard from using “Tabs as Delimiters” to “Other”, and enter a vertical line (| which appears on a standard keyboard as a capital backslash, \) in the white box to the left of “Other”, then click the “Next” button
8. Change the Column data format for the first column in the third step of the Text Import Wizard from “General” to “Date (MDY)” and then click the “Finish” button
9. Place the data into the existing spreadsheet by clicking the “OK” button

The data will be sorted from the power levels for each reactor 365 days ago at the top and the power levels from today at the bottom. Excel can be used to resort the data by reactor (column B) and date (column A) to facilitate reviewing individual reactor performance.

Fig. 1: Fermi 2 Daily Status 4/18/12-4/17/13 (click to enlarge)

For example, the figure shows the daily power levels reported for the Fermi Unit 2 reactor in Michigan between April 18, 2012, and April 17, 2013. The plot shows a number of times when the reactor was shut down as well as prolonged periods when the reactor operated at reduced power levels. Although the data set doesn’t provide an explanation, other sources indicate that a broken feedwater pump prevents Fermi Unit 2 from achieving full power.

Peach Bottom 2 Daily Status 4/17/12-4/16/13 (click to enlarge)

The plot for Peach Bottom Unit 2 shows the reactor was shut down in September and October 2012 and generally operating at full power otherwise. Again, other sources reveal that a refueling outage explains the downtime in fall 2012. Circumstantial evidence from the plot reinforces this fact – the steady decline in reactor power level from late July 2012 until the reactor was shut down in September is suggestive of a coastdown as the consumption of uranium and plutonium atoms in the nuclear fuel no longer enabled the reactor to achieve 100 percent power.

A future NEAT post will cover the monthly operating reports available in the NRC ADAMS online library that can be consulted to explain why reactors are not operating at full power.

The UCS Nuclear Energy Activist Toolkit (NEAT) is a series of post intended to help citizens understand nuclear technology and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s processes for overseeing nuclear plant safety.

Chinese propaganda poster from the 1960s. Center text: “People of the World Unite! Overthrow American Imperialism! Overthrow Soviet Revisionism!” Left Text: “Resolutely Support the Righteous Struggle of the Asian, African and Latin People Against America!” Right Text: “Resolutely Support the Righteous Struggle of the Arabic People Against America.”

China’s recent defense white paper did not include a reiteration of the nation’s traditional commitment to never use nuclear weapons first. The omission was not a signal that China abandoned no first use, despite U.S. speculation to the contrary.

U.S. doubts about China’s commitment to no first use are not new. More importantly, they continue to undermine the bilateral dialog on nuclear weapons. These doubts are, in part, a product of the U.S. experience with the Soviet Union, which announced and later abandoned its no first use pledge. Conflating Communist China and the Soviet Union is an unfortunate U.S. habit, however, and especially misleading when thinking about Chinese nuclear weapons policy.

China announced its no first use policy in 1964 immediately after its first nuclear test.  The promise was part of a broad declaration on intent that also included a commitment to the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. These commitments were articulated within an argument against contemporaneous developments in international nuclear arms control, specifically the ban on atmospheric testing proposed by the U.K., the U.S. and the Soviet Union.  China’s explanation for this apparent contradiction is revealing and still relevant.  It conveys the Chinese communist leadership’s unique perception of nuclear weapons and their role in international politics.

“China is developing nuclear weapons not because it believes in their omnipotence nor because it plans to use them. On the contrary, in developing nuclear weapons, China’s aim is to break the nuclear monopoly of the nuclear powers and to eliminate nuclear weapons. …

The Chinese government fully understands the good intentions of peace-loving countries and peoples in demanding an end to all nuclear tests. But more and more countries are coming to realize that the more exclusive the monopoly of nuclear weapons held by the U.S. imperialists and their partners, the greater the danger of a nuclear war. They are very arrogant when they have those weapons while you haven’t. But when those who oppose them also have such weapons, they will not be so haughty, their policy of nuclear blackmail and nuclear threats will not be so effective, and the possibility of complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons will increase.”

The Chinese leadership argued the established nuclear powers would never surrender their weapons, and the coercive power they engendered, if their privileged position was permanently protected by international law and practice.  Their declaration, including no first use, was aimed at the non-nuclear weapons states. It was meant to communicate that China would be different; an attempt to justify its decision and persuade others that China would never use its nuclear weapons to coerce another state. This justification is central to China’s modern national identity as a leader of the developing world. For this reason, it is highly unlikely that China would abandon it, especially without a very public explanation, not necessarily to the United States, but to its intended audiences in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

It is easy for U.S. analysts to see the Chinese declaration as a disingenuous piece of political propaganda. But the Chinese communist leadership’s perception of nuclear weapons as an instrument of political blackmail is an understandable consequence of their own historical experience with the bomb. As Thomas Schelling points out in a recent interview, President Eisenhower “very conspicuously sent nuclear weapons to Taiwan” to protect the officially recognized government of China, led by the Nationalist Party, which retreated to the island in 1949 after losing control of the Chinese mainland to its communist rival. Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, spoke publicly about eliminating the taboo against using nuclear weapons. In Schelling’s opinion, this indicates the U.S. was actually planning to use them, if necessary, to prevent the Chinese communists from launching a successful military campaign to end the long-running Chinese civil war.  Schelling, an expert in strategy and bargaining, believes it was “the only time that the United States really might have used nuclear weapons again.”

It is difficult for U.S. analysts, officials and observers to appreciate the formative impact of a credible U.S. threat to use nuclear weapons to intervene in Chinese domestic politics. For many, the historical details were either never learned or are long forgotten. China’s historical memory is more frequently exercised. Differing conceptions of shared historical experience is not an uncommon problem in U.S.—China relations.

It is possible to imagine a creative new format for bilateral talks that would permit an extended and constructive excavation of those details. And it is conceivable this examination of a shared past could have a cathartic effect on a significant percentage of the participants from both sides of the cultural and historical divide. Given the seemingly irresistible appeal of a clearly dysfunctional debate on China’s no first use policy, it may be the only way to move beyond it.

For weeks, Sen. Graham has been blocking a vote on the confirmation of Ernest Moniz for secretary of energy. Is he doing this because of a question about the suitability of the highly qualified MIT professor and former energy undersecretary for the job? No. Sen. Graham has placed a hold on the nomination as blackmail to try to save the Department of Energy’s (DOE) ailing Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility project in his state, which over the last decade has wasted more than $3 billion of taxpayer money, and threatens to waste many billions more unless the DOE is able to shut off the spigot. And Sen. Scott is backing Graham all the way.

This is old-fashioned pork-barrel politics at its most fundamental: two senators trying to secure a gravy train of federal funding for their home state by keeping alive a project so flawed that even its sponsor and formerly biggest defender, DOE, appears poised to abandon it.

Ballooning Costs of the MOX Plant

DOE began building the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility in 2007 at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to convert a stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium that was no longer needed for military purposes into fuel (called MOX) for U.S. nuclear reactors. Because MOX fuel is more expensive than conventional nuclear fuel utilizing low-enriched uranium, the project was always projected to lose money for the government. But the price tag has ballooned since the DOE’s first optimistic estimate. The projected construction cost of the MOX fuel plant alone increased from about $1 billion in 2002 to $4.8 billion in 2007, while the estimated total project cost increased from about $4 billion to more than $15 billion.

Despite this, the DOE continued to press on. However, the most recent jump in the projected construction cost of the plant to $7.7 billion, at a time when the DOE’s overall budget was under unprecedented pressure, appears to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. In its FY14 budget request, the DOE proposed a pause in construction of the plant in order to conduct a review of the program and consider alternatives. This is the action that so incensed Sens. Graham and Scott.

In fact, this program review is badly overdue. The MOX plant cost overrun is far from the only problem. The plant is being built “on spec,” since no utility has yet committed to use the fuel that it would produce, and there is no guarantee that a customer will be found to take the fuel off the DOE’s hands. Even though DOE will offer MOX fuel at a discount, the cost savings may not be enough to compensate utilities for the additional complications from storing and using MOX.  For instance, since weapon-usable plutonium can be readily extracted from MOX fuel, MOX fuel requires a greater level of protection than low-enriched uranium fuel. If this security burden proves too troublesome for any utility to accept, the DOE could well be left with a $7.7 billion white elephant. In early 2011, I warned of the danger that this facility would become a “factory to nowhere.” Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars could have been saved if that warning had been heeded sooner.

Avoiding a White Elephant

Sen. Graham has said that he is willing to work with the DOE to try to bring down the cost of the plant. But cutting corners further would be a reckless enterprise at a facility intended to handle dozens of tons of a nuclear-weapons material that poses serious safety and security risks.

The DOE’s proposed review should consider alternatives for disposing of plutonium, such as immobilizing it in a glass or ceramic matrix, that would be safer and may prove cheaper. These options also could provide jobs at the Savannah River Site. True fiscal conservatives should welcome such a review.

Sen. Graham should release his hold on Professor Moniz’s nomination, and let the DOE assess the best way to move forward that will accomplish the mission of plutonium disposal, enhance security, and provide the best value to taxpayers.

Photo source

More than a year after the Atomic Energy Commission (NRC’s predecessor) issued operating licenses for the two reactors at Zion, workers discovered that sensors installed to detect low pressure in the steam pipes were wired according to the blueprints, but that the blueprints were wrong. These sensors had been put in place, tested, and accepted to be properly installed years earlier. Other workers launched an investigation into how this mistake was made and overlooked for so long.

The sensors were located in the pipes carrying steam from the steam generators to the turbine. If a pipe breaks, the pressure in that pipe drops. The sensors monitor pressure and initiate automatic plant responses, like shutting down the turbine and reactor, when appropriate. The mis-wired sensors meant that the plant would not respond to events as assumed in the safety studies.

During construction, workers noticed that the wiring in the plant did not match the blueprints. They communicated this situation back to Westinghouse, the reactor vendor. Westinghouse misunderstood the information they received. They thought that the sensors had been tested and that wiring changes had been made to correct deficiencies identified during the testing – a plausible scenario because functional testing often yields such outcomes. But no such testing had been conducted of these sensors. They had merely not been installed as specified on the blueprints.

Based on its mistaken perception, Westinghouse revised the blueprints to match how the sensors had been wired at the plant. In other words, Westinghouse “corrected” the blueprints to match the errors at the plant. When Westinghouse issued the revised blueprints, Sargent & Lundy (the architect/engineer for Zion) accepted the blueprints without any verification and included them among their “as-built” drawings for the plant. While the blueprints truly reflected the plant as it was built, it had been built wrongly.

Our Takeaway

The NRC’s regulations, particularly the quality assurance criteria in 10 CFR 50 Appendix B require plant owners to have effective programs to find and fix safety problems. Here, they scored 50% for having found safety problems but failing to fix them.

This event involved an error trap. Westinghouse received lots of reports from Zion about changes made to wiring arrangements as the result of functional testing results. As happened in this case, it was easy to mistake another report about blueprints not matching wiring configurations in the field as a request for another blueprint revision instead of a request to re-wire the sensors.

Over the past decade, the nuclear industry has emphasized three-way communications among operators. For example, a supervisor will instruct an operator to “start the alpha pump.” The operator will confirm understanding of the direction by responding something like “understood I am to start the alpha pump” and the supervisor will confirm correct understanding with something like “correct, you are to start the alpha pump.” The two verification steps avoid errors due to miscommunication.

Three-way communications can also avoid problems like those experienced by Westinghouse at Zion. Workers at Zion could have sent a message to Westinghouse about the difference between the actual wiring configuration and the blueprints. Westinghouse could have responded with its understanding of the difference as well as its expected resolution. Workers at Zion could have responded with confirmation that the situation and its solution were properly understood.

It’s literally as easy as 1-2-3.

“Fission Stories” is a weekly feature by Dave Lochbaum. For more information on nuclear power safety, see the nuclear safety section of UCS’s website and our interactive map, the Nuclear Power Information Tracker.

The tech specs define safety limits for key parameters that are established to protect the integrity of physical barriers against the uncontrolled release of radioactivity. When a safety limit is exceeded, the reactor must be shut down and cannot be restarted without formal NRC authorization.

The tech specs also contain Limiting Conditions for Operation (LCOs) that establish the minimum performance levels for various reactor operating configurations. For example, the LCOs might allow indefinite reactor operation when two or more emergency diesel generators are available, restrict reactor operation to only 7 days if only one emergency diesel generator is available, and require the reactor to be shut down within 12 hours if none of the emergency diesel generators is available.

The tech specs have surveillance requirements for testing and inspections necessary to verify that all safety limits and LCOs are being met. For example, the surveillance requirements establish both the frequency and acceptance criteria for emergency diesel generator testing.

Each reactor has its own tech specs. In addition, each reactor vendor (e.g., Westinghouse, General Electric, Combustion Engineering, and Babcock & Wilcox) have developed standard technical specifications. This post will feature the Westinghouse standard technical specifications but is applicable to other standard technical specifications and to individual reactor tech specs.

Details of the Tech Specs

Section 1.1 of the tech specs defines specific terms. Whenever a word appears in all capital letters throughout the tech specs, that word is explicitly defined in Section 1.1. A key term is MODE. Table 1.1-1 defines six operating configurations. There are two MODES where the reactor is critical (MODE 1 with the reactor power level above 5 percent and MODE 2 with the reactor power level less than or equal to 5 percent). There are three MODES where the reactor is not critical (MODE 3 with the reactor water temperature greater than or equal to 350°F, MODE 5 with the reactor water temperature less than or equal to 200°F, and MODE 4 with the reactor water temperature between 200°F and 350°F. And there’s MODE 6 where the reactor is shut down with one or more of the bolts holding the head on top of the reactor vessel loosened. The MODES are important because LCOs are only applicable in specified MODES. In other words, an LCO does not have to be met except during applicable MODES of operation.

Section 2 defines the safety limits.

Section 3 contains both the LCOs and their associated surveillance requirements. Subsections cover emergency core cooling systems, containment systems, electrical power systems, refueling, and other areas.

An Example

Consider the LCOs and surveillance requirements for the Accumulators, (LCO 3.5.1). The Accumulators are part of the emergency core cooling systems. They are metal tanks partially filled with water and partially filled with nitrogen gas under pressure. Under certain accident conditions, the nitrogen gas will automatically “push” the accumulators’ water into pipes that carry it into the reactor vessel to cool the reactor core. The accumulators one-time makeup supply buy time for other emergency core cooling systems to start up and provide additional makeup cooling flow to the reactor core.

LCO 3.5.1 requires four ECCS accumulators when the reactor is in MODES 1 and 2 and also in MODE 3 with the reactor pressure above 1,000 pounds per square inch. For MODE 3 with the reactor pressure less than 1,000 pounds per square inch and in MODES 4, 5, and 6, no accumulators are required.

If the water within an accumulator lacks the specified boron concentration, LCO 3.5.1 Action A requires that the proper concentration be restored within 72 hours. If an accumulator is unavailable for any reason other than boron concentration, LCO 3.5.1 Action B requires the problem(s) to be remedied within 24 hours.

If the remedial actions are not completed within these specified limits, LCO 3.5.1 Action C requires that the reactor be shut down within 6 hours and depressurized below 1,000 pounds per square inch within 12 hours.

If two or more accumulators are unavailable, LCO 3.5.1 Action D requires the reactor to be shut down within 7 hours. (Note that while Action D specifies 7 hours to shut down compared to the 6 hours specified in Action C, Action C’s clock does not start until after the 72 hour clock in Action A or the 24 hour clock in Action B runs out. The clock for Action D starts as soon as the second accumulator is determined to be unavailable.)

The associated surveillance requirements (SRs) determine whether accumulators are available. SR 3.5.1.1 requires that the isolation valves for each accumulator be verified to be open at least once every 12 hours. A closed isolation valve prevents the water inside an accumulator from reaching the reactor core in event of an accident.

SR 3.5.1.2 requires that each accumulator be verified to contain 7,853 to 8,171 gallons of borated water at least once every 12 hours. This ensures sufficient water is available to flow through an open isolation valve into the reactor vessel in event of an accident.

SR 3.5.1.3 requires that each accumulator be pressurized with nitrogen gas between 385 and 481 pounds per square inch. This ensures sufficient force is available to propel an adequate volume of water through an open isolation valve into the reactor vessel in event of an accident.

SR 3.5.1.4 requires that the boron concentration of the water in each accumulator be verified to be 1,900 to 2,100 parts per million at least once every 31 days and within 6 hours of adding water to an accumulator. This ensures that the water reaching the reactor vessel in event of an accident is sufficient to prevent a nuclear chain reaction in addition to provide cooling of the reactor core.

So What?

The tech specs provide insights as to the relative risk, or safety importance, of plant equipment. For example, the accumulator tech spec described above suggests that boron concentration is the least important parameter. After all, the boron concentration can be out of specification for up to 72 hours without invoking a reactor shut down. But an inadequate amount of water or a closed isolation valve must be remedied within only 24 hours.

Likewise, a comparison of LCO 3.5.1 to other LCOs provides relative risk insights. The atmospheric dump valves are addressed by LCO 3.7.4. These valves are located on the pipes carrying steam from the steam generators to the main turbine and automatically open when pressure rises too high to protect the pipes from bursting. Three atmospheric dumps valves are required during reactor operation. But all three can be unavailable for up to 24 hours before a reactor shutdown is required. Clearly, the atmospheric dump valves are not as risk significant as the accumulators.

Bases

Deeper and fuller (and easier) insights can be realized from the companion to the tech specs, their Bases. The Bases provide the hows and whys for the whats established by the tech specs.

The Bases for the accumulators contains information such as:

The accumulator size, water volume, and nitrogen cover pressure are selected so that three of the four accumulators are sufficient to partially cover the core before significant clad melting or zirconium water reaction can occur following a LOCA [loss of coolant accident].

But if three accumulators are sufficient to cool the reactor, why does LCO 3.5.1 require four accumulators? The Bases explain the reason:

The need to ensure that three accumulators are adequate for this function is consistent with the LOCA assumption that the entire contents of one accumulator will be lost via the RCS [reactor coolant system – the reactor vessel and attached piping] pipe break during the blowdown phase of the LOCA.

The Bases explain how the minimum and maximum ranges for accumulator water inventory, nitrogen pressures, and boron concentrations were established. And the Bases explain why the accumulators are required in some MODES and not others.

The Bases provide insights into the potential implications of broken safety equipment. The Bases for the accumulators explains:

If less than three accumulators are injected during the blowdown phase of a LOCA, the ECCS acceptance criteria of 10 CFR 50.46 could be violated.

a.      Maximum fuel element cladding temperature is ≤ 2200°F,

b.      Maximum cladding oxidation is ≤ 0.17 times the total cladding thickness before oxidation,

c.       Maximum hydrogen generation from a zirconium water reaction is ≤ 0.01 times the hypothetical amount that would be generated if all of the metal in the cladding cylinders surrounding the fuel, excluding the cladding surrounding the plenum volume, were to react, and

d.      Core is maintained in a coolable geometry.

The tech specs define the minimum complement of safety equipment needed for various operating conditions and the performance requirements for this equipment. The tech specs also establish what actions need to be taken within what time frames when safety equipment is unavailable or under-performing.

The Bases explain the role played by safety equipment during design basis accidents and the reasons behind the performance requirements for this equipment.

What Does It All Mean?

When reading an event notification or licensee event report about an equipment problem, the tech specs and Bases might serve as useful references to putting that problem in fuller safety context.

The UCS Nuclear Energy Activist Toolkit (NEAT) is a series of post intended to help citizens understand nuclear technology and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s processes for overseeing nuclear plant safety.

With sufficient foreign assistance, Iran may be technically capable of flight-testing an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States by 2015.

This conclusion is only slightly modified from the April 2012 Report, a year ago, which concluded

With sufficient foreign assistance, Iran may be technically capable of flight-testing an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2015.

This change seems intended to clarify its assessment since technically the term “intercontinental ballistic missile” means one with a range of more than 5,500 km, while Iran would need a missile with range of over 10,000 km to reach population centers in the U.S.

The article made something of the apparent contradiction of the DOD report with a December 2012 assessment of Iran’s ballistic missile program by Steven Hildreth for the Congressional Research Service. Hildreth writes:

It is increasingly uncertain whether Iran will be able to achieve an ICBM capability by 2015 for several reasons. Iran does not appear to be receiving the degree of foreign support many believe would be necessary, Iran has found it increasingly difficult to acquire certain critical components and materials because of sanctions, and Iran has not demonstrated the kind of flight-test program many view as necessary to produce an ICBM.

Similarly, last July Michael Elleman at IISS speculated on the slow pace of ballistic missile development:

There is mounting evidence to suggest that, whereas the sanctions regime has not prevented Tehran from operating an increased number of centrifuges for uranium-enrichment activities or adding to its stockpile of fissile material, it has stymied efforts to develop and produce the long-range ballistic missiles capable of striking potential targets in western Europe and beyond.

Is this really a contradiction?  While the Pentagon’s approach to assessing  Iran’s ballistic missile program has changed over the years, the above Pentagon reports  estimate the shortest timeline for Iran to acquire an ICBM capability, under the best conditions—in this case, with “sufficient foreign assistance.” What that assistance might consist of is not provided in the unclassified summaries.  The CRS and IISS reports instead talk in specifics about what kind of foreign support Iran might actually be getting and how that might realistically affect its timeline.

To those accustomed to thinking in math terms, the Pentagon appears to be giving the “lower bound” of when Iran might achieve ICBM capability, not assessing the most likely value. That’s one useful piece of information, but not the whole picture.

Chinese Vice Premier and Foreign Minister Qian Qichen signs the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) on September 24, 1996.

On April 16, the Chinese Ministry of Defense released a white paper that mentioned Chinese nuclear weapons but did not contain familiar language expressing China’s declaratory policy, particularly that China would never use nuclear weapons first, under any circumstances. This commitment to “no first use” has been a bedrock of Chinese nuclear weapons policy since the announcement was first made in 1964, immediately following China’s first nuclear weapons test.  All previous white papers issued by the Chinese Ministry of Defense contained the language.

James Acton suggests the omission indicates China may be abandoning its long-standing commitment to no first use. It doesn’t. Eight days before the white paper was released, Chinese Councillor Zhang Junan repeated China’s commitment to no first use in an official statement to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament. Acton’s suggestion is based on the reasonable assumption that the change in the white paper “is almost certainly not the result of bureaucratic error.” But neither is Councillor Zhang’s statement to the UNCD. Moreover, Pang Sen, Director General of the Department of Arms Control of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, made the following statement at the Second Preparatory Committee for the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) on April 22:

“Nuclear weapons states should abandon the deterrence doctrine based on the first use of nuclear weapons. … China has adhered to the policy of no first use of nuclear weapons at any time or under any circumstances, and made the unequivocal commitment that we will unconditionally not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states or nuclear weapons free zones.”

Readers should not mistake the use of the present perfect and past tense in the translation as a cause for concern. The original Chinese text is unambiguous and emphatic in its assertion that no first use has been “scrupulously” observed “from the start” and will continue to be “to the end” [始终恪守].

Unfortunately, while Mr. Acton pleads for greater U.S.—China dialog on nuclear weapons policy his op-ed perpetuates a fundamental misunderstanding that inhibits progress. Productive dialog on nuclear weapons issues between the United States and China requires a change of heart on both sides of the table. The United States needs to set aside its doubts about China’s commitment to no first use and China should stop insisting the United States adopt the same policy. Continuing to make no first use the focus of the talks will only condemn them to continued failure.

According to a recent posting on the website of the Airline Owners and Pilots Association, 70-year old Robin Fleming was arrested on July 26, 2012, for flying his sailplane in restricted airspace over the HB Robinson nuclear plant in South Carolina and for having been “ordered several times to land.”

Odd. According to charts and advisories issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there are no such restrictions. While he was airborne, the FAA was contacted by nearby airport authorities. The FAA reportedly said that Fleming did not have to land.

Odder. The only person in contact with Fleming by radio during his flight stated “I never demanded him to land.”

Oddest. The Darlington County Sheriff Department arrested Fleming when he landed at the Hartsville Regional Airport near the plant. They denied his request to call the people waiting for him at Bermuda High Soaring in nearby Jefferson and locked him in a cell overnight with 11 other inmates. The 70-year old man was released the following day.

On August 21, 2012, the case against Fleming was dismissed after he agreed not to take any legal action against Darlington County law enforcement officials.

Our Takeaway

Look on the ground! It’s plainly Barney Fife!

Nope. Barney Fife was amusing. It’s not amusing at all to arrest an innocent man and incarcerate him overnight without justification.

After 9/11, the FAA issued a notice to airman stating that “pilots are strongly advised to avoid the airspace above, or in proximity to such sites as power plants … Pilots should not circle as to loiter in the vicinity over these types of facilities.” The Soaring Society of America queried the FAA specifically about the circling aspect of the notice because gliders routinely circle to gain altitude in thermal updrafts. The FAA explicitly responded that it did not consider this behavior to be loitering.

During Fleming’s contested flight, the Chesterfield County Sheriff’s helicopter flew to Hartsville Regional Airport. But the pilot left after pulling out an aviation chart to show folks “nothing in this chart says you cannot fly over the nuclear plant.”

Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. A person cannot evade accountability for violating a law on ground that he or she did not know about the law.

Ignorance by the law cannot be an excuse, either. Arresting and detaining individuals for violating laws that do not exist is un-American. Or it should be.

Mr. Fleming reported stated that “he wouldn’t be satisfied until he could be sure a pilot can rely on the sectional [aviation chart] for direction and not go through a similar ordeal.”

While Mick Jagger and Keith Richards can’t get no satisfaction, we certainly hope Mr. Fleming does.

“Fission Stories” is a weekly feature by Dave Lochbaum. For more information on nuclear power safety, see the nuclear safety section of UCS’s website and our interactive map, the Nuclear Power Information Tracker.

China’s gross national income per capita ranks 114th among all nations and is below the global average.
(Source: World Bank, Last Update: Jan 17, 2013)

The most well known and the least well appreciated statistic defining contemporary China is the size of its population, officially estimated to be 1.344 billion. That’s equivalent to the combined populations of the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, South Africa, Australia and Jamaica. It is just about one out of every five of the estimated  6.973 billion people on earth. President Obama keeps calling on China to play a greater role in the world. China’s leaders argue taking care of their own is hard enough. They have a point.

President Obama also considers China a developed country no longer deserving of the international legal and trade accommodations accorded to developing nations. He’s dead wrong. China isn’t even close to being a developed country. It may be the world’s second largest economy but on a per capita basis China ranks approximately 90th on many comparative national economic indices, such gross domestic product. President Obama argues China needs to do something to curb its rising carbon emissions, and Chinese leaders agree, but U.S. insistence on equal treatment in a new climate treaty conveniently overlooks the size of China’s population and the relative historical contribution of the average Chinese family to the problem. China may now produce more CO2 as a nation, but the average Chinese person produces approximately one-third the CO2 produced by the average American. And their parents and grandparents produced a far smaller percentage of the CO2 produced by their American counterparts.

National level statistics are important, but per capita statistics count too. When talking about China, they count for a lot.

Ever since the Beijing Olympics the meme of China as a “great power,” ready to assume a leading role on the world stage, has overtaken U.S. perceptions of the country. U.S. commentary on high speed rail, the space program, fighter planes and Chinese cyber culture has created the impression China is catching up to the United States. But the focus of China’s new president on the ”Chinese dream” of “national renaissance” is simply to build a “moderately comfortable society” by mid century. This isn’t the rhetoric of an ambitious “great power.” It is the cautious terminology of politicians who worry how difficult it will be to meet the expectations of their fifth of humanity for jobs, homes, education, health care and pensions without exhausting the national treasury or the Chinese environment.

Most Americans who visit China, including President Obama’s leading China advisors, see the country from an understandable distance. They notice all the new construction, crowded shopping malls stuffed with familiar brands, highways congested with new cars and countless other outward signs of China’s very real economic progress. But they don’t experience life here. They don’t depend on this economy for their individual health and well-being. If they did they might better understand just how much farther the average Chinese citizen has to go before he or she remotely approaches the quality of life the U.S. economy affords.

Even those Americans who live in China are relatively isolated from the harsher realities of Chinese daily life. Every now and then, however, those realities intrude.

A Trip to a Chinese Hospital

After experiencing chest pains I hopped on a bus and took myself to the emergency room of the closest hospital. Calling an ambulance or taking a taxi would have been slower. From the outside it looked great, a beautiful big new building constructed about the same time as the Olympic stadium. Inside, it was like walking back in time thirty years.

After standing in a variety of lines to register and get my papers in order, I stood in another line to see one of three doctors sitting in a dusty room packed with beat-up medical equipment. They were sitting behind the same wooden white-painted desks I remember from my time as a student in China in the 1980s. All manner of people milled about the room with various ailments, family and friends trailing close behind. I described my situation and got an abrupt EKG which didn’t look right at all. I am almost certain the fact that some of the contacts weren’t working had something to do with it. They stuck me in a bed, drew some blood, and put me on an IV of a substance that remains a mystery. They told me it made my blood vessels wider. The nurse said I needed to wait a few hours and left. Lucky for me a good friend came to sit with me, absolutely essential in a Chinese hospital since nurses are scarce relative to the volume of patients.

The blood tests showed nothing unusual and I was shown the door. My chest still hurt, so I went to another hospital that specialized in cardiovascular care. It was packed. The doctor, behind the same white-painted desk surrounded by beat-up medical equipment, looked at the EKG and the blood tests results. He strongly recommended I come back the next morning at 5am to stand in another line to register for a CT. The window to register would open at 7am. I could expect to have the test sometime after noon. He gave me prescriptions for nitroglycerin and Lipitor and moved on to the next patient.

My friend suggested I go to the foreign-run clinic on the other side of Beijing, near the embassies in the neighborhood where most expats live. I was attended by three nurses, given a private room, surrounded by pristine medical equipment and treated more or less like I would be at my local county hospital back in Los Angeles. It was back to the future, back to the insular safety of experiencing life in China as a guest.

This was in Beijing, the wealthiest city in the country. Had this happened in a rural village just 100km to the southwest there would have been no hospital to go to at all, no doctor, no pack of Lipitor. There might be a local health worker behind a small wooden white-painted desk with some antibiotics and aspirin. Getting that hospital built, educating the doctors to staff it and maintaining that capability in the face of intense population pressure are the immediate ambitions of China, the next “great power.” A decent school and local officials educated enough to know how to plan and operate industries without poisoning themselves and their communities are a priority as well.

The next time President Obama and his advisors travel to China, it might be useful for them to imagine how they would govern China’s 1.344 billion, what kind of resources they would need and how long it would take them to reach the standard of living they have come to expect as Americans. My guess is that China’s foreign reserves would not look so big, that they would demur from playing a greater role in the world, and they would have a bit more appreciation for the difficulties faced by the people sitting across the negotiating table.