Online exclusive | Posted Feb. 4, 2007

During his trip from the Raleigh-Durham Airport to N.C. State’s campus last week, Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Dale Klein sat down with the Technician to answer a few questions in advance of his tour of both the research reactor in Burlington Labs and the Shearon Harris plant on Thursday and Friday. Below is the full transcript of the interview.

Technician – How has the size of the workforce of the nuclear industry changed over the years and how do you expect it to change in the upcoming years?

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Dale Klein – One of the challenges we’re having at the moment is just looking at increasing the pool of students. If you look at most academic programs, enrollment has declined over the years.

When the perception was that they were not building new plants, the academic enrollment dropped off. So now we’re in a catch-up mode for the new workforce. This is needed across the board. It’s not just nuclear engineers, but also people in power engineering, in [electrical engineering]. It’s not just microelectronics, it’s how do you do the transmission lines, the substations.

In addition, there’s also a need for the skilled craft, the welders — people in that area as well. As an example of the skilled craft, I was at the restart of Browns Ferry Unit 1, by [Tennessee Valley Authority] and they were 75 welders short of what they wanted.

It’s clear that there’s a need across the board for people in the nuclear field.

Technician –What can we expect to see in the nuclear industry as far as new plants being built and how is the NRC going to respond to that change?

Klein – The change for us is that we’re probably the busiest we’ve been as a regulatory agency in the entire history. Not only do we have license renewals … but the new reactor area is one we’re we’ve been planning for growth for a number of years. So we currently have about 32 reactors … people that have given expressions of interest. So we saw this workload coming, and we’ve been staffing up to handle that workload.

We will be hiring a net of 600 people and we hope to have that pretty well finished by the end of ’09. So as an example, last year, calendar year ’07, we hired 451 for a net of 219, so we have a lot of retirees.

We’re an industry in transition. A lot of people who got in the business in the 60s and 70s are retiring, so we have a double hit — we have retirees, plus we have an increase in workload.

So one of the things that we did at the NRC is that the most important thing we can do is make sure that the existing fleet operates safely. So we created a division of new reactor operations, distinct from nuclear reactor regulations so that we would not get our people distracted from monitoring that existing fleet. Our office of new reactors we intend to grow by about 400 people to handle this new workload. So we’ve been hiring, training and getting ready.

Technician –You mentioned that [the NRC] playing catch-up with the hiring boom. Do you anticipate at any point that this hiring period is going to slow down?

Klein – I think by the end of ’09 we will have met our growth — the net of that additional 600. But we will continue to be replacing people who retire. We will be in the hiring mode for the next decade at least.

Technician – As far as students right now who are thinking about if they’re interested in working for the NRC, what are the kinds of things they need to be looking at and doing right now while they’re in school?

Klein – I think the education that they will get in any engineering field … we need engineering across the board, not just nuclear. We need all engineers. Seismologists, structural people — so we need a whole broad cadre. So in those academic programs, they will get a lot of technical knowledge. We also need writers. We need people to work on policy, so it’s not just the technical field that we need.

But for those that are in the technical field, what I would encourage to help them in a regulatory environment is communication classes — how do you communicate with people, how do you learn, how to listen, how do you learn how to write. So take some classes in policy — how you balance the policy sides of the technical issues.

When I went through my engineering program, in those days they basically told us and trained us to come up with a technical answer and that’s all you have to do. What I was telling my students when I was still teaching was that you’re a third of the way there. The next third is that you have to convince others that it’s right. Then the other third is that you have to get the money to make it happen.

I think at a program like N.C. State, they will get very good technical skills in the engineering programs, but it would be wise for students to look at communication and policy to get a more well rounded education.

Technician – How will the NRC be affected by the end of the current administration?

Klein – The fact that we’re an independent agency, we are less subjected to changes in the administrations and executive branch positions, so that will not impact us as much.

We are obviously now, two commissioners short. The way the NRC is structured is that we have five commissioners — five year terms. Every July 1, we should get a new commissioner or the commissioner should be reappointed. The intent was that that way you’re continually getting new people and you don’t have a lot of people going out the door at the same time. The process has gotten a little bit challenged.

You have to live in a cave not to realize that Sen. [Harry] Reid is opposing Yucca Mountain. So he has exercised his political influence to have certain requirements on potential commissioners.

I think from the standpoint of the change of administration, one of the things I think President [George W.] Bush has done very well is that he’s mentioned nuclear in his state of the union and his speeches. And he’s the first president since [Dwight] Eisenhower that really has taken a proactive position on nuclear. As a regulator, we don’t take positions for or against. Our job is safety and security of the plants. The proponent for nuclear is the Department of Energy. But clearly his publicly stated comments — I think he has increased the awareness of nuclear and it will remain to be seen what happens with whoever is in the next administration — if they also take a pro-energy position.

Technician – When was the last nuclear reactor constructed?

Klein – It was 1996. People oftentimes talk about that there’s been no new order since Three Mile Island — you know that’s kind of the buzzword that’s out there — but there were a lot of plants in the process. So plants have been coming online. Browns Ferry Unit 1 was almost like a rebuild. They put $1.8 billion into that plant and so the next one that’s being actively constructed is Watts Bar Unit 2, also by TVA.

There’s a lot of activity that’s going on either for plants that were either shut down or stopped and now restarted. So that has helped us get our inspectors out, look at how do you inspect these plants how do you look at this next group of people that will have to be involved in this. We’ve created an office in Atlanta for new construction, because most of the construction will be in the Southeast initially.

Technician – Is it public concern that really shapes the period of no new construction for these new plants?

Klein – I think a variety things happened. One, was there was a significant reserve margin. So there was not the perceived need for new baseload [power]. That margin has shrunk. There is an increasing demand for both baseload and peak [power]. And for about a decade about all that was added that was new was natural gas. The price of natural gas has just gone up significantly.

What also had a significant impact for nuclear is the concern about global warming. I’m not an expert in global warming, that’s not my technical field, so I don’t know if it’s technically real, but it’s politically real. Most of our electricity in the United States comes from coal and its very difficult now to build coal plants in the United States.

All of those factors, increasing demand, high price of natural gas, concern about global warming and the fact that we’ve changed our regulatory structure from how it was in the 70s and 80s have, I think, resulted in nuclear being examined in a new light.

Technician – We had some questions about the disposal of nuclear waste. The Shearon-Harris plant is one of the larger storage areas for nuclear waste because of other plants shipping their stuff there. What do you foresee as the U.S.’s long-term strategy for dealing with nuclear waste?

Klein – Obviously we’re the regulator and so we are awaiting an application from DOE for Yucca Mountain. So the current plan is for the Department of Energy to submit the Yucca Mountain application and they’re publicly stated date is June of ’08 to give us the application. So the current policy for all countries that have nuclear power plants is ultimately geological disposal.

You will have two different pathways to that ultimate geological disposal. You will have some countries that want to do once-through and then you will have those that recycle.

So clearly, France, Russia, Japan, the U.K. have massive recycling programs. The United States had a policy decision for a long time to just have a once-through fuel cycle and then bury the spent fuel. That’s being re-examined as part of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, GNEP, to see whether or not we should look at recycling. Whether we recycle or don’t recycle, we still need a geological repository for the permanent solution.

Until we get there, we use the dry cask storage. From our perspective as a regulator, dry cask storage is safe and secure. So our long-term path will be a geological disposal and it will be a policy decision about whether we will recycle or not. But from our perspective we are awaiting and ready to receive the application.

Technician –Do you think, as far as GNEP is concerned, that that policy is going to be affected at all by the exit of the Bush administration?

Klein – Absolutely. How it will be affected isn’t clear, but it will be affected.

Technician –How does the concept of fuel reprocessing fits into the country’s commitment to nuclear nonproliferation?

Klein – I think that’s one of the activities that’s a positive aspect of GNEP. I think they were able to in that program articulate that you can recycle and you don’t have to increase the risk of proliferation. So there are technologies out there where you don’t separate plutonium by itself, you can keep plutonium, iridium and other actinides together and put that in reactors. I think that’s one of the benefits of the GNEP program is that they have, I think, brought that discussion up to the forefront, where just because you recycle does not mean you’re increasing proliferation.

Technician –I have another question from a student who was asking about the costs of storage as compared to fuel reprocessing. How do they compare?

Klein – Well it depends on over what period of time. I can tell you that in my former life I was one of three commissioners on what was called the Monitored Retrieval Storage Commission. This was a Congressional commission that looked at whether we should have central interim storage or we should have storage at each site and we recommended in 1989 that there should be central interim storage rather than each site having a baby MRS.

So our studies showed at that time that if the repository was delayed — and they were still saying it would open up in 1998 — but our commission showed in 1989 that if you had two factors that it would be more economic if you had central interim storage. Those two factors were a delay in the repository — which is happening — and the other was the cost of spent fuel at shut down sites. So just from the storage standpoint, you know we end up having a situation of central would have been cheaper, if we would have had central storage — dry cask storage. If you look at recycling, I think there again one has to look at an integrated approach. They have to look at: Is the volume reduced where you only need one repository? Do you take credit for taking the plutonium and uranium and putting it back into the reactor?

I think the difficulty we have as a nation is that we always want a single answer for why we do things. It’s either cost, safety, security. I think recycling does not lend itself for a single answer. It has to be looked at from a systematic approach. The short answer is that I don’t know which way is, quote, cheaper. Part of that depends on the cost of uranium. Anne Lauvergeon of Areva says that with the high price of uranium, the best uranium mined is your spent fuel pool. I think if you look at a lot of factors, there are reasons that one would want to go with recycling, but again, that’s a position that’s better answered by the Department of Energy.

Technician –Do you think that those costs — recycling versus storage — reflected the scarcity of storage? Does that present some incentive options for the industry?

Klein – If we have to go with a second site, absolutely. Not only the technical cost, there’s a political cost of finding a second site. If you look at recycling and you reduce the volume and only need one site, then that would make DOE’s policy decisions easier.

Technician –If there were to be a situation where someone can offer incentives to the industry for recycling as opposed to storage, would that be a viable option?

Klein – I believe the DOE has requests for proposals out where they are looking at incentives both for central storage and for recycling. There are several sites that have expressed interest in hosting a recycling facility.

Technician –How are the regulation and safety concerns different on a college campus as compared to a full-scale reactor?

Klein – The consequences of potential what-ifs are much different on research reactors than power reactors. Typically, [research reactors’] heat is a waste. They operate at low power because they want the radiation, that’s what they’re doing the research on. If you look at a power reactor — to them they would just as soon not have the radiation because they just want the heat.

The power density, the amount of megawatts is much different. So the consequences, because you’ve got a huge operating system at a commercial plant, let your safety analysis be completely different.

Typically research reactors are low power, low heat, so the consequences are much different. So typically, like in a TRIGA reactor, they’re inherently safe … As it gets hot it sends to shut itself down. So it’s very self correcting. So a lot of these research reactors are very inherently safe because they’re designed that way, because you want to use it to teach.

If you had a student who wanted to become a reactor operator, you wouldn’t want to put them in Shearon Harris and let them play with it. It’s intended to go up to full power and just run flat out to generate electricity. It’s got to service.

Whereas at a university, the intent is teaching and research, so therefore you want the reactor to be safe so you can use it for teaching so students can learn how to operate it.