NUCLEAR EXPORTS: INTERNATIONAL SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1979 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC POLICY AND TRADE, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met at 2 p.m. in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jonathan B. Bingham (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Mr. BINGHAM. The subcommittee will be in order. Today the subcommittee meets to explore the health and safety and environmental issues raised by the export and use internationally of nuclear power reactors, and the implications of heightened concerns about these issues for U.S. foreign and economic policymaking. Domestic and international attention is focused on nuclear safety questions now more than ever before. At home, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident has greatly increased the saliency of safety concerns both within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the nuclear industry. Concurrently, the State Department has issued final regulations implementing the President's Executive Order No. 12114 on "Environmental Effects Abroad of Major Federal Actions," with respect to nuclear exports. The executive branch has also submitted to the NRC the first environmental assessment prepared pursuant to these regulations for the proposed nuclear reactor export to the Philippines. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is in the process of reviewing both its jurisdiction generally over export-related health, safety, and environmental issues, and the substantive concerns raised by the Philippines export in particular. Internationally, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other multilateral institutions are taking a closer look at ways to upgrade safety-related technical and regulatory assistance, particularly to developing country nuclear programs. We have asked Members of Congress, the State Department, and public and industry witnesses to testify on many of these developments today. Next year, we will hear from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, once it has had an opportunity to review the nearly four dozen public submissions on the matters I have described. Mr. Lagomarsino, do you have an opening statement? (1) Mr. BINGHAM. As our first witness, we are happy to welcome our distinguished colleague from Maryland who has long been concerned with nuclear exports, the Honorable Clarence D. Long. STATEMENT OF HON. CLARENCE D. LONG, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND Mr. LONG. Mr. Chairman, the issue facing this subcommittee is the future role of the United States in dealing with the health, safety, and environmental problems associated with our nuclear exports. In dealing with this question we must understand both its magnitude and its seriousness, and consider whether our response has been adequate. Late last year President Carter ordered environmental reviews on all our nuclear exports. Serious problems nevertheless remain, primarily because of the inadequate implementation of the Executive order by Federal agencies. Although we have become more aware over the past 2 years of the serious health and safety problems of nuclear power in developing countries, we have not faced up to the difficult bureaucratic, economic, and political issues. We have created a review system which is not capable of dealing with the problem. PROPOSED EXPORT TO PHILIPPINES As chairman of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee, in January 1978, I held hearings on the proposed export of the Westinghouse nuclear reactor to the Philippines and wrote to Chairman Joseph Hendrie of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stating my opposition to that export and all future export licenses, until the Commission addressed serious questions concerning the safe design, siting, construction, and environmental risks associated with nuclear plants sold abroad. Mr. Chairman, the Philippine nuclear reactor has received a great deal of attention over the past year. The case has come to symbolize in the minds of many people overseas the dumping of unsafe U.S. technologies onto the developing world and has demonstrated the need for a comprehensive review of the safety and environmental dimensions of all nuclear exports. The problems facing the Philippine nuclear plant include: (1) Site Hazards, the nuclear plant sits on the slope of Mount Natib, a volcano considered active by the NRC staff. The NRC itself admitted that in the event Mount Natib became active, mud and ash flows should be considered possible hazards at the site. (2) Seismic Hazards, a 1977 NRC staff review of the Philippine nuclear powerplant pointed out that the site area and environs have a long history of past and ongoing intense seismic upheavals. According to Daniel Ford, head of the Union of Concerned Scientists, "Of all the problems that affect the Bataan project none appears more serious than the danger of earthquake induced accidents." (3) Design Problems, Westinghouse claims that its nuclear powerplant export to the Philippines is designed to withstand the "severest possible" earthquakes in the region. Yet Dr. Ricardo Palabrica, recently appointed Director of the Philippines Atomic Energy Commission believes that previous calculations made by Westinghouse and Ebasco, the U.S. con sultant, are not adequate and that "design changes can still be made.” My question, Mr. Chairman, is, who will see to it that these changes are carried out? Will these design changes really guard against the consequences of a strong quake at the plantsite? The fate of the nuclear export to the Philippines is now in the hands of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Unfortunately, our response toward the larger issue of what is our responsibility for the safety of nuclear exports seems to have been based on the erroneous assumption that the Philippines case was atypical, an abberation, and that with some additional IAEA safety programs as well as bilateral measures, including the State Department's concise environmental review, the safety and environmental problems can be managed. My contention, Mr. Chairman, is that the Philippine case may be only the tip of the iceberg. If this contention is correct, we must seriously question the adequacy of the present review system. NUCLEAR PROBLEMS IN BRAZIL The Angra I Westinghouse nuclear reactor in Brazil is a case in point. Based on reports in the American and Brazilian press, the many problems facing Angra I may be no less severe than those of the Bataan plant in the Philippines. (1) When a storm in the spring of 1977 sent waves over the sea wall at Angra, where the Westinghouse plant sits only 15 feet above sea level, officials hastily hired a consulting firm. The consultants concluded that a 29-foot catastrophe wave could hit the location sometime in the next 100 years. (2) Little consideration seems to have been given to the possibility of an earthquake at Angra, despite the fact that quakes have jolted the area four times in the past century. (3) Over a 5-month period in 1977, 71 fires took place at the Angra construction site. The problems have also been aggravated by the presence of 10,000 Brazilian workers, most of them illiterate and few with any constructive skills. (4) The president of the Brazil Society of Physicists said, "If shortcomings persist distaster is inevitable." As an article in the Washington Post concluded, "The question in the case of projects like Angra, is how comfortable one can feel about the safety of nuclear powerplants being constructed by illiterate laborers who think they are working on a project to send a Brazilian astronaut to the moon." One of the West German engineers working on the Angra project said, "The only way you'd get me back into that place after it's finished is in a lead suit." TARAPUR The Indian Tarapur Atomic Power Station (TAPS) provides another example. Built on a turnkey basis by General Electric under an Indo-U.S. agreement and commissioned in 1969, Tarapur was the first atomic power plant to go in operation in the Third World. According to Business India, an Indian journal, "TAPS is so heavily contaminated *** that it is impossible for maintenance jobs to be performed without the maintenance personnel exceeding the fortnightly dose of 400 mren in a matter of minutes. Thus the maintenance worker who is often not an employee of TAPS, holding a spanner in one hand and a pencil dosimeter in the other, turning a nut two, three rotations and rushing out of the work area is a common phenomenon in TAPS." We are facing a growing problem, perhaps a crisis, one which necessitates complete rethinking about our ability to ensure the safety of nuclear exports, the kind of re-examination that Three Mile Island and the Kemeny Report did for our domestic nuclear program. ROLE OF STATE DEPARTMENT In examining the safety of nuclear exports the President has given the lead role to the State Department's Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. Yet can a relatively small office monitor and coordinate all multilateral, bilateral, and industry safety programs and provide the necessary technical expertise for a thorough and authoritative review of the health, safety, and environmental issues facing each nuclear export. I think not. The Kemeny Report on Three Mile Island points out that our own NRC despite its staff of hundreds and its budget of $700 million, "does not possess the organization and management capabilities necessary for the effective pursuit of safety goals." Can we expect a small State Department office to do it better? Some argue that the State Department's environmental review is only one part of a larger multilateral and bilateral effort to ensure the safety of our nuclear exports. Assistance programs of our Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and foreign utilities and regulatory agencies are worthwhile, but are they enough to do the job? Cooperative programs have been going on for many years, yet with what degree of success? According to an official of the IAEA, "At the present time with little exception, the regulatory organizations of developing countries with active nuclear programs can be classified as subminimal. In many cases they consist of less than 15 full-time staff members associated with nuclear power activities. This minimal staff may not be familiar with the disciplines of nuclear safety and may be in need of extensive training." Yet without good regulatory agencies, developing countries cannot ensure they are being sold safe nuclear systems or that the latter are being operated safely. INTERNATIONAL REGULATORY PROGRAMS To minimize their expenditures on nuclear programs, the governments of most developing countries, including South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, and Mexico, hold the budgets of their regulatory agencies at very low levels by relying on foreign consultants. Jim Wook Chung, professor of nuclear engineering at the State University of New York described the South Korean regulatory agency in the following terms, "They discussed sincerely all the problems, but you could feel the lack of experience. They knew they had to have a concept of quality assurance and safety, but they didn't have the manpower." In 1976 the Philippine Atomic Energy Commission itself admitted in a letter to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it did not have the technical expertise nor breadth of experience to evaluate the prelimi nary report on the Philippine nuclear plant. According to a Mexican official: The Mexican regulatory body is still considered to be working under less than ideal conditions. For example, licensing actions have been taken with insufficient information and the construction schedule is such that in some cases it has had to make certain judgments without evaluating all relevant safety considerations. In Yugoslavia the regulatory body is practically nonexistent. In India there is considerable domestic competence, but the Atomic Energy Commission is both utility and regulator. What these various examples show is that dramatic improvements in the ability of local nuclear regulatory agencies to deal effectively with issues of nuclear safety will not come about quickly, even with our bilateral assistance. We should not, therefore, proceed with our nuclear exports on the assumption that the nuclear agencies of developing countries are adequate. On the contrary, we should assume that they are probably not able to insure the safe design, construction, or operation of these facilities. Thus, rather than having the State Department attempt to make the politically difficult analysis of whether a foreign agency is competent or not, perhaps our Nuclear Regulatory Commission ought to take the lead in examining the design, siting, health, and safety problems in all nuclear exports to developing countries, regardless of what they perceive to be the competence of various local nuclear regulatory agencies. The role of the nuclear industry in insuring the safety of its exports is also in doubt. In the case of the General Electric built Tarapur reactor in India, defective fuel bundles supplied by General Electric led to widespread contamination of the plant and extremely high radioactive levels. Very little help was obtained from General Electric. According to one source, General Electric simply blamed them for mismanagement and lack of technical expertise. Yet, the Atomic Energy Commission pointed out: U.S. manufacturers have extremely poor records of information disclosure to foreign purchasers. Designs at times do not reflect all the regulatory items required in the United States, at times design innovations are first tried by U.S. manufacturers in overseas reactors. U.S. manufacturers normally deal with foreign utility companies and short-cut their assistance to foreign governmental control groups, like nuclear regulatory agencies which are sometimes in weak governmental positions. As for multilateral safety programs, the IAEA's ability to insure the safety of nuclear plants in developing countries could be summarized in a statement made by a spokesman of the IAEA regarding the safety of the Angra reactors in Brazil: There is absolutely nothing we can do about this. Our job is merely that of giving advice and instructions on the best ways of guaranteeing the safety of nuclear installations ***. If the case were extremely serious, the IAEA could send a commission to the country involved to examine the situation, but this can only be done if the IAEA is invited by that country. Mexico provides another example. Although IAEA missions have visited the nuclear facility at Laguna Verde and identified several deficiencies, subsequent missions reported that little attention has been paid to previous recommendations. As one author concludes: If countries lack the political will to insure safety or possess systems in which the utility is more powerful politically than the regulatory agency, then regu |