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THE COST of the Chernobyl accident to the Soviet Union is put at eight
billion roubles. It is a huge sum but one that is difficult for those outside
the country to put a value on. For a start, the rouble is not a convertible
currency: officially, one rouble is worth about one pound sterling; unofficially,
US dollars can buy 10 roubles apiece. More importantly, it is not clear
how the Soviet Union arrived at this figure. What is certain is that the
economic fallout from Chernobyl has harmed the commercial prospects of the
international nuclear industry, which is now eager to make up the losses
as quickly as possible. It wants to reverse the rising tide of public opposition
to nuclear power and to reap the profits from its hefty investments in nuclear
technology and equipment. And its operators appear confident of success.

Last month’s inaugural meeting in Moscow of the World Association of
Nuclear Operators (WANO) focused on collaboration and the presentation of
a new image: East and West agreed to work together to make nuclear power
stations safer and more reliable. Nearly all the utilities that produce
electricity from nuclear power sent a representative to pledge support for
WANO. Those unable to attend are expected to sign the WANO charter soon.
Everyone agreed the new spirit of nuclear glasnost could not have happened
without the accident.

The estimated cost of the Chernobyl accident came from Nikolai Lukonin,
Minister of Atomic Energy. He refused to provide a breakdown of the figure,
nor would he say exactly what it covered. He brushed aside a request for
some idea of the cost of making safe the network of RBMK (thermal, water-cooled
graphite-moderated) nuclear reactors, similar to the one that exploded at
Chernobyl just over three years ago. (There are 13 units of 1000 megawatts
and two of 1500 megawatts in the country.) All Lukonin would say is that
engineers will complete the modifications to the design of the RMBK reactors,
all sited in the Soviet Union under his jurisdiction, by the end of this
year.

One advantage of specifying a financial toll is that it gives respectability
to the notion that the authorities have at last determined the consequences
of the accident. Such a public relations exercise is not wasted in the Soviet
Union where, officially, at least 650 000 people risk developing a cancer
induced by Chernobyl’s radioactive fallout. The Department of Radiation
Medicine of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev lists these people
on a national register and invites them for regular checkups, once or twice
a year. They are evacuees from territory within 30 kilometres of the Chernobyl
power station and from other areas that received high doses of radiation;
people involved in the emergency operations to make the rogue reactor safe;
and workers now living in the evacuated areas and their newborn children.

Another facet of this PR exercise is that the official death toll has
been revised, downwards. The original figure was 31. Two workers at the
power station died immediately after the explosions at the site, buried
under rubble, and another 28 people died soon after from acute radiation
disease. An old man, whose body was found near the site, has now been scratched
from the accident’s death list: pathologists discovered later that he died
of a heart attack. ‘There have been some further deaths among those with
less acute radiation doses,’ says Anatoli Chumak, head of immunology in
the department’s Institute of Clinical Radiology, ‘but they were not due
to the accident.’ Doctors made their diagnoses after thorough autopsies,
which are obligatory for potential victims of the accident, he says. ‘It
is difficult to separate what is the consequence of radiation and what is
the effect of other factors,’ adds Chumak.

A further advantage of drawing up the accident’s financial toll, and
one that appears to be of considerable political importance to the Soviet
authorities, is that it allows the scale of the Chernobyl accident to be
compared more easily with earlier mishaps with nuclear reactors. The incidents
the authorities have in mind are those at Three Mile Island in the US in
1979 and at Windscale, now Sellafield, in England, in 1957. The Soviet estimate
of the national damage caused by the Chernobyl accident, using an unofficial
exchange rate that values the rouble more realistically than the official
one, is the equivalent of $1 billion, equal to a recently published figure
for the cost of the cleanup at Three Mile Island. Western nuclear engineers
tend to set the Chernobyl accident apart in the hierarchy of the industry’s
catalogue of disasters; their Eastern counterparts are less selective. Boris
Shcherbina, deputy leader of the Soviet Council of Ministers and the person
who led the government inquiry into the Chernobyl accident, is no exception.
He referred to ‘Chernobyl and other major accidents’ in his welcome to WANO
delegates.

Against this background, founder members of the association, from East
and West, are justifiably pleased that they have managed to launch the organisation.
Now they have only to keep talking to each other to ensure it functions
effectively. WANO plans to exchange details of how its members are operating
their nuclear power stations, with the aim of refining a set of working
practices that should ultimately produce the safest and most reliable procedures
ever . But the organisation will ignore other areas of the fuel cycle, notably
reprocessing of spent fuel and disposal of radioactive waste.

WANO’s role model is the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO),
an American organisation based in Atlanta, Georgia. The American nuclear
power industry established INPO in 1979 after the accident at Three Mile
Island. It did not take much prompting to set up the organisation once the
government’s inquiry discovered that the accident might never have happened
if people in the industry, a very competitive network of private utilities,
had been prepared to discuss individual problems collectively. The investigators
quickly uncovered the cause of the accident, a faulty valve for relieving
steam pressure in the reactor vessel. In the process, they were shocked
to hear operators of other power stations describe similar, unreported problems
that could have served as warnings to the industry as a whole.

INPO decided to try to improve the performance of its members by exploiting
the industry’s natural competitiveness. It identified a set of characteristics
reflecting the way nuclear power stations are run; devised a method of measuring
these ‘performance indicators’ so that it could calculate average values
for the industry every three months; and then encouraged each operator to
aim for a target in 1990 by letting them compare their own performance with
that of the industry as a whole every six months. The institute started
with six indicators, added a seventh in 1985, two more in 1987 and another
last year .

Most of these indicators are aimed at improving the reliability of power
stations – that is their ability to generate electricity cheaply and efficiently
– rather than at enhancing safety. They gauge how much useful work the operator
of a power station extracts from its labour force, plant and equipment.
Only one indicator, the amount of radioactivity leaking from a reactor,
seems to be concerned exclusively with the safe running of a power station.
And even this indicator could be interpreted as a factor influencing reliability:
big leaks would presumably incur financial penalties eventually. But the
industry maintains that safety and reliability mean the same thing. Better
returns for the stockholders and fewer risks of radioactive pollution are
the combined benefits of operating plants more safely and reliably, says
Bill Lee, chief executive of Duke Power, which owns and operates seven reactors
in the US. Lee was the founder-chairman of INPO, and delegates in Moscow
elected him to be the first president of their new organisation, an honorary
post, in recognition of his ‘contributions towards the mission of WANO’.

According to INPO, the indicators record an astonishing turnaround in
the industry’s operating performance. Of the seven performance indicators
for which information is available, the industry achieved the 1990 targets
for three of them last year, and is already close to meeting the targets
for another three. INPO attributes the success of its programme to ‘peer
pressure’, the eagerness of individual American utilities to be seen to
be performing better than the others. WANO likes the idea, which it believes
can work on an international scale.

Improvements in the industry’s operating record since the Three Mile
Island accident have not succeeded in reducing the American public’s hostility
to nuclear power. ‘Two-thirds of people believe more nuclear power will
be necessary,’ said Lee, ‘but less than half of them want it.’ Slower growth
in the demand for electricity compounds the industry’s problems. Lee says
the US has enough power stations to meet the country’s continuous demand
until the turn of the century; even new units to cover peak demand will
not be needed for another six to eight years, he adds, and anyway these
will be fossil fuel stations or pumped storage schemes. Energy conservation
and reduced economic activity have cut the demand for power, says John Taylor,
vice-president, nuclear power, at the Electric Power Research Institute,
an organisation funded by American utilities. ‘Demand is now doubling every
30 years instead of every 10 as it used to.’

Widespread opposition

The American industry is not alone. In Sweden, Italy, Japan and the
Soviet Union, public opposition to nuclear power has forced governments
to tread warily. Nuclear power meets as much as 50 per cent of Sweden’s
demand for electricity and yet the government has told the industry to prepare
to start decommissioning its nuclear stations from 1995. In Italy, the government
has already shut down its nuclear reactors, which were meeting about five
per cent of demand, and shelved plans to increase the ratio to 20 per cent
by the end of the century. The decision was an expensive one, says Paolo
Fornaciari, deputy director of ENEL, the state utility that runs the country’s
electricity system. Construction sites have been abandoned and one half-built
nuclear power station is being converted to run on fossil fuel, he says.
Japan has one of the most ambitious programmes for expanding the size and
diversity of a national network of nuclear power stations. The local industry,
however, worries that an anti-nuclear movement, which has mushroomed since
the beginning of last year, could make life difficult, says Shoh Nasu, president
of Tokyo Electric Power. Soviet authorities, too, are having to heed public
opposition to official plans. One of their first responses has been to consider
a public relations campaign: a publicity officer with the Ministry of Atomic
Energy was quizzing British delegates at the WANO meeting about the methods
and arguments used to win planning permission for the new generation of
pressurised-water reactors (PWRs) in Britain.

Cynics believe these governments are merely paying lip service to public
opinion. Sweden has still not come up with a viable alternative to nuclear
power and few people believe that the government will be in a position to
press the industry into fulfilling its commitment. The industry expects
to have to close down two of its oldest stations, dating from the mid-1970s,
as a token gesture, but that is all, says Lars Gustafsson, executive vice-president
of the Swedish State Power Board. In the meantime, the government is turning
a blind eye to major contracts for the repair and rehabilitation of its
network of PWRs and boiling-water reactors. In Italy, nuclear engineers
are trying to come up with a new design for a safer reactor; until they
do, the state is importing electricity generated by nuclear power stations
in France. Japan, meanwhile, is already drawing up plans to establish a
domestic fuel cycle: it wants to be able to enrich uranium, to reprocess
spent fuel and to dispose of radioactive waste locally by the beginning
of the 21st century. And in the Soviet Union, revisions to the government’s
approach to nuclear power appear to be more a result of pressure from the
international industry in the wake of Chernobyl than a response to public
appeals .

At this time of mixed fortunes for nuclear power, the industry has snatched
the opportunity of Chernobyl to create WANO. And as concern about the greenhouse
effect heightens, the industry is delighted to promote nuclear power as
the environmentally friendly solution: it ignores the fact that emissions
from fossil fuel stations are responsible for only about 11 per cent of
global warming. Lord Marshall of Goring, the head of Britain’s largest utility,
the Central Electricity Generating Board, and the new leader of WANO’s governing
board, is convinced the association is on the right track. ‘The greenhouse
effect gives added impetus to nuclear power,’ he said. ‘I’ve been defending
nuclear power for two decades; now I can afford to sit back and wait for
people to come over to my side.’ In Moscow, he recalled a recent meeting
he had with British premier Margaret Thatcher, who has shown an increasing
interest in environmental matters. ‘I believe she will be advocating an
expansion of nuclear power,’ said Marshall. ‘There is no alternative.’

* * *

The politics of fusing nuclear expertise from East and West

THE CHERNOBYL accident would never have happened if the World Association
of Nuclear Operators had been founded 10 years ago. Or so says Lord Marshall
of Goring, the head of Britain’s Central Electricity Generating Board and
the newly elected leader of WANO’s governing board. The association aims
to make the world’s nuclear power stations as safe and as reliable as possible
by encouraging utilities that run commercial reactors to exchange operating
details freely among themselves. Communication and comparison will lead
to emulation of the best working practices, it says. Trade embargoes that
normally restrict the flow of expertise from West to East will not hinder
the development of WANO, insists Thomas Eckered, who was elected unopposed
in Moscow as the association’s director. Eckered is a former managing director
of the joint safety organisation of the Swedish nuclear utilities (RKS,
now replaced by KSU) that brings together operators of nuclear power stations
in Sweden.

The idea of setting up WANO was first aired in Paris in October 1987
at a gathering of the industry’s senior representatives. In response to
the Chernobyl accident, they met to discuss the need for increased cooperation
worldwide. The logical step would have been to expand the mandate of the
Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, which the industry of the US established
in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident. INPO brings together the
54 American utilities and it has attracted 14 foreign affiliates, from Europe,
Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. The notion was considered,
says Eckered, and dismissed. The overwhelming reason was the prospect of
trying to encourage the utilities of Comecon to join a club that they might
see as being dominated by the US.

WANO is run from a coordinating centre in London linked to four operational,
or regional, centres in Atlanta, Moscow, Paris and Tokyo. The centres have
about ten permanent employees apiece, comprising nuclear engineers and administrative
staff. They use personal computer systems to store information and to communicate
electronically with one another. According to the WANO charter, members
will be able to discuss their problems on the basis that nothing will be
released into the public domain without their permission. Confidentiality
is essential to the success of WANO, says Marshall ‘but I cannot imagine
significant events not being reported’.

Running expenses are met by members, which are either individual operators
of nuclear power stations or a group of operators that have first affiliated
to any one of the regional centres. Generally, operators select a centre
on geopolitical lines, though there are some anomalies: one of the two operators
in Finland belongs to the Moscow centre because it uses pressurised-water
reactors designed in the Soviet Union; the other belongs to the Paris centre.
The state utility of Cuba reports to the Moscow centre. The annual cost
of managing a centre is expected to be around $1 million: each centre contributes
to the expenses of the London headquarters.

Eckered is supported by local directors at each of the four regional
centres. These five directors are non-voting members of WANO’s governing
board: the voting members are two representatives from each regional centre
and the chairman.

WANO’s members are not worried that they have no jurisdiction over the
reactors that produce plutonium for military purposes. Marshall says they
are much simpler, safer devices and Nikolai Lukonin, the Soviet Union’s
Minister of Atomic Energy, says his government has already started to close
them down as part of its move to reduce its arsenal. Bill Lee, founder-chairman
of INPO and the new president of WANO, does not see any problems either.
He says the military division of the US Department of Energy already ‘sends
its people to INPO for training’.

* * *

Guidelines to gauge the reliability of power stations

THE INSTITUTE of Nuclear Power Operations, the American organisation
founded in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident, has established
10 ‘performance indicators’ to enable the industry to gauge how well it
is running its power stations.

The ‘equivalent availability factor’ is the ratio of the total power
a unit could have produced to the capacity it was designed for, expressed
as a percentage: for the American industry as a whole, the ratio climbed
from 59.8 per cent in 1980 to 64.9 per cent last year, and the target for
1990 is 76 per cent.

‘Unplanned automatic scrams’ is the number of times a reactor shuts
itself down as a result of failures of equipment or errors by people working
in the plant: the number of scrams per unit fell from 7.4 in 1980 to 2.1
last year, and the target is 1.5.

‘Unplanned safety system actuations’ is the number of times operating
failures cause the emergency cooling and power systems to come on: the number
per unit dropped from 1.3 in 1985 to 0.8 last year, which matched the 1990
target.

The ‘gross heat rate’, which reflects the thermal efficiency of a power
station, is the amount of heat energy needed to produce one unit of electrical
energy: the average value fell from 10 504 British thermal units (11 082
kilojoules) per kilowatt-hour in 1980 to 10 251 British thermal units per
kilowatt-hour last year, which is just less than the target for 1990.

The ‘collective radiation exposure per unit’ measures the dose of radioactivity
leaking from a reactor: for boiling-water reactors, the level fell from
1230 worker- rems per unit in 1980 to 511 worker-rems per unit last year,
and for pressurised-water reactors, from 597 to 345 worker-rems per unit
over the same period. The latest values are still around 10 to 20 per cent
short of the 1990 targets.

The ‘lost-time accident rate’ is the number of days that one worker
was absent through injury for every 200 000 hours worked: the number fell
from 1.36 in 1980 to 0.3 last year, and the target is 0.19.

The ‘low-level, solid radioactive waste per unit’ measures the average
volume of radioactive waste produced: for boiling-water reactors, the volume
fell from 1113 cubic metres per unit in 1980 to 312 cubic metres last year,
and for pressurised-water reactors, from 586 to 159 cubic metres over the
same period. The industry achieved its 1990 targets for this performance
indicator two years ago.

INPO has not released data on the three newest indicators: it says it
has not collected enough information on them yet. ‘Fuel reliability’ measures
the amount of fission products released into the coolant in the reactor,
which INPO wants the industry to reduce; ‘thermal performance’ is said to
be a better indicator of the efficiency of a power station than the existing
one, gross heat rate; and ‘safety system performance’, on which INPO’s members
began to collect data last year, records the number of hours that components
of the safety system are broken down.

* * *

Another approach to nuclear power in the Soviet Union

THE CHERNOBYL accident has opened up the Soviet Union’s nuclear power
industry to international scrutiny, says Nikolai Lukonin, the Minister of
Atomic Energy. Last year a team of Western experts looked over the giant
Rovno power station in Ukraine under the auspices of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA). The station has three pressurised-water reactors (PWRs);
one generates 1000 megawatts, the other two 400 megawatts apiece. Later
this year another team will visit the 1500-megawatt station at Ignalinga
in Lithuania, which uses the boiling-water (RBMK) reactors similar to the
one that exploded at Chernobyl. The IAEA specialists will be able to see
how Soviet engineers have modified the RBMK design, says Lukonin. ‘It will
also be very useful for us, our personnel,’ he added.

These two OSART, or operational safety review team, missions are among
the first official contacts between the IAEA and the Soviet Union. ‘Before
Chernobyl we did not attach too much importance to the IAEA,’ said Lukonin;
but then nor did many other countries, he adds. In the aftermath of the
accident, the IAEA and its director general, Hans Blix, played a pivotal
role in establishing a dialogue among members of the nuclear power industry
from East and West. This has now given the authority unprecedented status:
OSART missions, created in 1982 and made up of experts seconded from utilities
around the world, have become popular within the industry. There is about
one per month, lasting three weeks, according to Blix.

Nuclear power for civilian purposes is 35 years old in the Soviet Union.
At the beginning of this year, 47 reactors with a generating capacity of
35 400 megawatts were meeting about 13.6 per cent of the country’s demand
for electricity. Nearly half the reactors are PWRs; the rest are RBMK reactors.
This ratio is set to change dramatically.

Despite widespread public opposition to nuclear power, says Lukonin,
he expects the industry’s generating capacity to increase as much as 1.3
per cent per year to help to meet an annual growth in demand for electricity
of around 4 per cent. Only two more RBMK reactors are planned, however:
they are both within the Russian federation, one at Smolensk, due to be
ready this year, and another at Kursk, in 1991. The others will be PWRs,
high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and a ‘series of small reactors for
use in the extreme north of the country’, said Lukonin. He stressed that
all of them will have ‘enhanced safety features’.

The Soviet Union plans also to improve the training of the operators
of its power stations. It has opened two new simulators, making three altogether:
a second one at Novovoronezh within the Russian federation for PWRs, and
one at Smolensk. Lukonin hopes to sign a contract with Singer, an American
manufacturer, so that he can quickly open more.

There is no reprocessing of fuel in the Soviet Union, according to Lukonin.
‘We have the technology, but it is not economically efficient,’ he said,
‘it is cheaper to get (the uranium) from the ground.’ This has simplified
the problems of radioactive waste disposal, he maintains.