Local Nuclear Facility. Asset or Hazard?

By BRETT WARNKE

NARRAGANSETT—As Japan reels from the aftermath of a crippling tsunami, it has led experts of all kinds to debate the utility of atomic energy. Today, 30 percent of South County’s power comes from a nuclear plant in Waterford, Conn., and Narragansett’s own Nuclear Science Center research reactor on the University of Rhode Island Bay Campus is humming quietly, for now. One critic, former Rep. Ray Rickman, is sending a letter to Gov. Lincoln Chafee demanding answers about the cost, safety, and future of the 47 year old facility.

The reactor was built in 1964 and, while it was constructed by General Electric (the same engineer of the 35 year old Japanese plants in Japan) it is 2,000 times smaller than those energy facilities, about the size of a barrel. It does not have a pressurized system and does not create power. Its fuel is funded by the Department of Energy, it is owned by the state, and is inspected by the federal government. For fiscal year 2011 it will cost the state $1.49 million.

The reactor has gone through many improvements and changes, according to Distinguished Professor Bahram Nassersharif of URI. In 1992, for example, the type of fuel the reactor uses was changed. Nasshersharif expects the reactor survive 20 more years and explains that if the facility were to be constructed today it would cost $!00 million.

“We have won many research and education awards,” Nassersharif said. “The latest achievement was when my students won first prize last year at the National American Nuclear Society student design competition. Their design was for the ‘sample transport system and radioactive material depository’ which has now been installed at the reactor.”

Each semester, students from URI, Roger Williams University, Providence College, as well as students from New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Connecticut use the reactor for experiments, research and learning. Students, who use the facility two or three times a semester, conduct atmospheric data analysis on the smallest amount of pollutants and particles and have taken ice core samples they collected from the Arctic region and can analyze their composition by running them through the reactor.

“It is absolutely wonderful and spectacular that we have it for students to use,” Nassersharif said. “We’re lucky to have it.”

Terry Tehan, the director of the facility, insists the facility is safe. He wrote that over one hundred advanced degrees in chemistry, physics and engineering have been awarded based on the use of the facility and as numerous papers including Dr. Jean-Guy Shilling’s work on neutron activation analysis, studies on neutron scattering, and a student who used the reactor to study the mechanics of oil spills. URI interns have also been working on projects including the sample transfer system, which won the American Nuclear Society competition. Additional changes are planned for the reactor control room and other aspects of the facility to keep its instrumentation and controls up to date.

However, despite this information (or because of it) Rep. Ray Rickman is skeptical about the merit of the facility.

“I’m worried about the materials ending up in the Bay; not the materials exploding. This place should be closed and decommissioned.”

Rickman, who runs a consulting firm in Providence and is secretary of the Rhode island Historical Society and former President of the Black Heritage Society, has spent the last 20 years attempting to close the nuclear facility, one he considers expensive and unsafe.

“It is an absurdity to put out this kind of money in this small, old, little-used reactor. It is not a priority for the state right now in this fiscal climate,” he said.

He claims that the facility has yielded no substantive awards and no original research and is currently drafting a letter to Governor Chafee expressing his concerns.

“I want to know about the current security and I want the Chafee administration to detail in writing that this nuclear facility is secure. We need to know how the state plans to evacuate citizens in case of a disaster. You can imagine, like all governments when these disasters occur, throwing up their hands and trying to figure out what to do.”

Rickman says that he has read the federal reports and he calls them “skimpy.”

“What you have here is very loose state supervision—very loose,” he said.

He said the facility is a concept model created as a public subsidy to the private industry in a bygone era and argues there is no reason students could not do research in nearby universities.

“Give students $500 a year to take the train to MIT and save the state 1.5 million bucks,” he said.

The director of the facility will earn, roughly, $160, 962 in fiscal year 2012 and earned $156, 364 in 2011. According to Peter Dennehy of the Division of Legal Services, this and close amounts were authorized by the state, though they may not have been exactly received in a given year.

“Who should be receiving a $42,000 raise over an eight year period in these slim economic times?” Rickman asked. “as a former state representative and former Deputy Secretary of State, I reviewed this salary 20 and then 10 years ago. It just keeps climbing. And for what service?”

But Rickman says he is not only concerned about the money that would be saved. Recently, he went to the facility and took pictures with his telephone camera but no one stopped him.

“Then I took out my big camera and took 50 pictures and no one came out. I wanted someone to come out and yell at me, just so I would know that it as secure,” he said.

He expects that if the facility were canceled, it would take roughly three years and up to $2.5 million. Director Tehan said the facility is not open to the public and cannot be toured because of safety regulations after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.