Living in the Time of Pandemic 2020...
/A Personal Essay
By Maggie Gundersen
As Fairewinds Crew Member Patrick Moore wrote in an earlier blog in Fairewinds May 8 Demystifying Nuclear Power Blog post entitled Climate Crises in the Midst of a Pandemic, all of us with Fairewinds are facing a myriad of events on a daily basis. Like Patrick’s personal essay, this post Living in the Time of Pandemic 2020 is also my personal essay and therefore my own personal opinion.
Our [Arnie’s and my] daughter Elida is an emergency room trauma nurse in Charleston, SC, where we now also live. During the fall, we watched flu numbers climb nationally and read projections, then we ordered hand sanitizer and extra immune support supplements, so luckily we were ahead of the curve when discussions about Covid-19 began to appear in the news in early January. Since Arnie and I are at what some experts call a more ‘vulnerable age’ according to early views on this new illness, and each of us has faced and weathered significant health issues in the past, we pulled out masks, gloves, and doubled up on soap and other supplies. However, like many others around the U.S. we did not foresee a TP shortage, and almost ran out.
First, let’s look at the facts about this past flu season, as my daughter and I have frequently done this entire year in our discussions. As a mother, I was already worried about her role as an emergency room trauma nurse and well before that as a paramedic prior to the 2020 Pandemic. In the ER and on the ambulance during her 16-years in these roles, she has dealt with what we would consider the normal emergency illnesses of heart attacks and strokes to gang knifings and shootings, drug overdoses, surgical errors, suicide attempts, horrific fires and car crashes in addition to horrendous drunk or drugged driving crashes and deaths. And, then all year there was the ‘virus of the month’, from a stomach bug to the flu, and now Pandemic 2020 of the Coronavirus Covid-19.
The 2019-2020 flu season ran from October 1, 2019, to May 1, 2020 according to the CDC, which estimates that “between 39 million and 56 million people were sickened with the flu” during this flu season, and there were at least 24,000 deaths including children. Moreover, as of April 25, this was the worst flu season for children in a decade and the CDC data shows that there were 171 reported pediatric deaths associated with the flu during the 2019-2020 season. “Experts say the high number of pediatric deaths this flu season was due to the fact that both influenza A and B were dominant, leading to what was called a "double barrel" flu season.”
Now we find ourselves in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. Should we have anticipated this pandemic? I say yes. During the decade prior to its arrival people were confronted with SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2012. The United States government had an actual federal ‘pandemic response team’ prior to it being downsized and moved into another department in 2018. Reuters and the Washington Post, to name two well-known newspapers fact-checked statements about the dismantlement and/or dismissal of the pandemic response team and found that while the pandemic response team was not entirely dismantled, it was moved from the “National Security Council (NSC) — a forum of White House personnel that advises the president on national security and foreign policy matters” to a subsidiary position under John Bolton during a move to streamline what the Republican appointees considered ‘bloated’ infrastructure with a complicated hierarchy.
Noted Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson in her daily column entitled Letters from an American wrote:
“Who could possibly have known that a pandemic was coming? Every White House official. In preparation for taking over in January 2017, outgoing Obama administration officials worked through a pandemic emergency with the incoming officials, but the administration did not make epidemic preparedness a priority. It cut more than two-thirds of the staff at the Centers for Disease Control in China, from about 47 people to 14. It cut the pandemic response team from the National Security Council in 2018, leaving no epidemic disease specialist on the NSC. It had a playbook for managing a pandemic, prepared in 2016 by officials in the Obama administration after the Ebola crisis”.
Before you decide to shoot off a missive to me or the other members of Fairewinds Crew to complain about what we say in Fairewinds’ Demystifying Nuclear Power Blog Posts, forget about it, usually pronounced "fuggedaboutit" [an exclamation; as the title character explains in Donnie Brasco].
My husband Arnie and I are nuclear whistleblowers, who have been married 41-years. We lost our home, pensions, and savings when we pushed back against the nuclear industry, and we have been sued, harassed, stalked, and slammed by both the nuke industry who have claimed we were lying [easily disproved] and by the anti-nukes who claim we can’t be telling the truth if we do not lie down in front of bulldozers or chain ourselves to nuclear facility fences to show the media what we mean. We will simply continue to focus on rigorous science and bringing these truths forward to the people and communities impacted the most by unmonitored radiation releases.
As a former nuclear power spokesperson, a lifelong journalist, a former mediator, and a paralegal since 2003, I will continue using my talents to do what I do best: research, study, analyze, write, and present – always speaking truth to power. Fairewinds is not fake news, and we write about what impacts what the government and industry calls public health and safety – in plain language, we will continue to use science, data, and the law to make sure that the people, families, and communities that host, are near to, or are downwind /or upwind from nuke facilities are protected and not subjected to radioactive releases and permanent exposures just so corporations can make extra money or save a few bucks or that the feds can keep some type of upper hand on the world nuke scene.
There is no doubt about it, the Pandemic 2020 here in the U.S. impacts nuke safety. Whether we are talking about operating atomic power reactors, nuclear waste dumps, uranium mining sites, nuke weapons or atomic fuel fabrication facilities, [just to name a few] people at these facilities and the surrounding communities are being severely impacted by Pandemic 2020 as safety parameters are cut by the nuclear power industry, its federal regulators [the Nuclear Regulatory Commission – NRC], and other agencies that are seeking benefits on the perceived nuclear weapons worldwide stage.
The Spanish Flu Pandemic occurred a little more than 100-years ago, when my grandmother was only 26-years-old, before she had even become a mother. I heard stories from my grandparents, and while the seriousness of the illnesses and death toll were real, many people throughout the world mistakenly believed that with the ‘modern medicine’ we have today, a ‘first world’ country like the U.S. would escape any worldwide pandemic relatively unscathed. Now, more than 100,000 people in the U.S. have already died from the Covid-19 Coronavirus Pandemic and more than 5 million people around the world have been diagnosed as Covid-19 positive with limited testing available in many countries, like the U.S. We live in South Carolina, and even though we were exposed to people who most likely have had Covid-19, none of us were able to be tested; this is not a third-world country, but no longer a first-would country either.
We now know that Pandemic 2020 is devastating families and communities around the globe, and will continue to do so for probably two more years according to virologists who study how viruses spread so rapidly and how long they last. I hope we are lucky enough to stop the considerable reach and spread of the Pandemic 2020 sooner rather than later, but that will not happen, if people do not follow wellness practices like hand washing, social distancing, wearing masks, and lots of testing so that people without symptoms do not contaminate others!
When I founded Fairewinds Associates paralegal services and expert witness testimony in 2003, I knew about some of the risks at nuclear power plants and facilities, and I had already been a nuclear whistleblower about those risks to federal regulators, state regulators, and members of Congress after my husband Arnie Gundersen was fired as a nuclear whistleblower in 1990. I personally began working in the nuclear industry early in 1976, and have spent more than 30-years as an industry employee and as a paralegal working on oversight of atomic risk and safety issues at nuclear power facilities, nuclear waste dumps, and numerous other radioactive risk projects and programs.
Public health and infectious diseases like viruses and bacterial infections, are the two fundamental challenges facing the world today that both Pandemic 2020 and the Nuclear Industries have in common. [Nuclear Industries like: Atomic Power Reactors, Nuclear Weapons Production, Nuke Waste Dumps, Radioactive Testing facilities, Fuel Production Plants, etc.] Most chemical contaminants and hazardous waste catastrophes have colored smoke and acrid or burning smells, but unlike oil spills or chemical fires, there are no colors or smells to let people know that they have been exposed to the Covid-19 Coronavirus or to Radioactive Releases from major disasters like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island (TMI), or Fukushima, or many of the other health damaging radiation released regularly all over the world at operating nukes, test laboratories, etc. What’s in the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the food you eat?
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), its predecessor the Atomic Energy Agency, in conjunction with the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense were designed to protect public health [real people] from exposure to radiation releases and disasters. Additionally, in terms or regulations and/or monitoring of operating nuclear facilities like America’s experimental nuclear labs, such as Santa Susana in California and many others at locations around the U.S., the NRC has key control and oversight. However, knowing that some issues like a pandemic would need the full focus of many different organizations, Congress and other parts of the federal government have also created laws that say that different branches of government must work together and across disciplines in the case of a pandemic for example. More importantly, the laws states that OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] and FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] must work together to protect public health especially during the possibility of a pandemic! Even though there is a national law [federal statute] in place, under the direction of the current administration, no joint efforts for FEMA, OSHA, and the NRC to work together have been put in place as required by law!
Such laws are not ‘big government’ in action, but an effort to protect you and me – as the US Constitution says “we the people” – from decisions that benefit corporate profits for their malfeasance, or lax federal and state regulators whose lack of enforcement will hurt people. Most Americans cannot escape the overwhelming impact of Pandemic 2020 by jetting off to a 2nd home somewhere, and they are unable to adequately protect their health or create an adequate safe space in their own homes, apartments, communities, or places of work and worship.
Let’s do two things here. First, let’s look at what the risks are of Pandemic 2020 at nuke facilities and the host communities. Second, let’s look at what the NRC is really saying about Pandemic 2020 in executing its statutory obligation [federal law] to protect people and communities before the nuclear corporations and their industry cronies.
There are usually 6-teams of control room operators at operating nuclear power plants, who are trained together and who always work together. Usually, each of these teams consists of 5-people, working in the physically tight space of the atomic reactor control room, so that there is no room for “social distancing”. In sports, a football team trains together to create synergy, cohesiveness and reliability, and an atomic reactor control-room team similarly trains together and works together. Throughout years of training, each team member learns how other team members react during a nuclear emergency. Therefore, if and/or when one or two members of a control-room team is stricken with the Covid-19 Coronavirus, it is impossible to immediately replace those team members with new people who have not become part of a synergistic team. To assure a united and cohesive control-room team, the training must be the identical for each team member and each individual must “fit” the team to create synergy, cohesiveness, and team reliability. Pandemic 2020 seriously jeopardizes nuclear power safety by compromising the ability of the control-room operators to function as a specialized unit.
Depending on the size of the nuclear reactor and the type of fuel mix within, each reactor must be ‘refueled’ every 18-months to 2-years. Refueled means that new uranium fuel [about 1/3 of each nuclear reactor core] is added to the reactor and mixed with the older fuel. Reload Core Design groups specialize in attaining the right mix of fuel by determining where in the reactor each fuel bundle is located. I know. When I worked for Combustion Engineering in Windsor, Connecticut, I worked in the Reload Core Design where the nuclear engineers and nuclear technicians performed the mathematical analyses and calculations to determine the mix for the longest and safest burn of the fuel. Throughout the time of the refueling outage, important repairs to the atomic reactor, its turbine, and other equipment are made by electricians, welders, pipefitters, and other journeymen contractors and/or employees.
Back to Pandemic 2020: During refueling outages, between 1,000 and 1,500 temporary employees and/or contractors move to the communities surrounding a nuclear power plant site for 30 to 45-days in order to replace the fuel and make any critical repairs to the reactor. Now, Living in the Time of Pandemic 2020, these traveling workers bring the Coronavirus with them, unwittingly infecting the nearby communities and each other. There is no way to tell ahead of time if these journeymen may be Covid-19 hosts. As the CDC and virologists around the world have noted, fully 35% of people Covid-19 positive show no symptoms at all. Another 6-10% of Covid-19 hosts have no fevers, no coughs, no runny noses, etc., and instead of GI symptoms similar to those of a stomach-bug like headaches, nausea, vomiting, and/or diarrhea. Other Covid-19 hosts may have symptoms so mild, that if they notice them at all, they and everyone near them assume that the sneezing and runny noses are due to seasonal allergies rather than Covid-19 because the symptoms are so few and so mild.
By necessity at each reactor, these traveling laborers must work in close proximity to each other. There is no “social distancing” inside a nuke while it is being repaired! The corporate management in charge of nuke plants place a premium on speed of the reload and repairs, so the nuke can be up and running ASAP and generating income for the utility or corporate energy company that owns it. Because speed is of the essence and space is so limited as welders and electricians for example must work side-by-side, Pandemic 2020 with its Covid-19 Coronavirus also endangers nuclear safety by impacting how carefully and focused maintenance activities may be performed under such serious time constraints, radioactive exposure levels, and Covid-19 Coronavirus contamination risks. Finally, the traveling journeymen risk the health of their host communities by adding hundreds of potentially-contaminated and recently traveled newcomers to local bars, restaurants, motels, and community facilities that have reopened like gyms and movie theaters or shopping malls.
Because there are so many concerns about reactor safety at nuclear power plants sites in the Time of Pandemic 2020, Fairewinds Energy Education Nonprofit joined with 85 other Organizations from all over the United States to write to U.S. Vice President Michael R. Pence with a Demand for Immediate Corrective Action to Address Urgent COVID-19 Pandemic Risk at U.S. nuclear power plants.
Together, we all took this grave step knowing the risks and in a serious effort to protect the people and communities hosting atomic power plants as well as the people consistently working at these nuclear sites. You may find the letter we all jointly authored below in its entirety, or on the website of NIRS (Nuclear Information and Resource Service), who thankfully hosted this letter for all the participating groups, and whose Executive Director Tim Judson acted as the agent writing on our behalf.
Copies of this important notice were also sent to:
Robert R. Redfield, MD, Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Anthony Fauci, MD, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
Chairwoman Katherine L. Svinicki, Chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
Loren Sweatt, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA)
Peter T. Gaynor, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Neil Chatterjee, Chairman, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
There has been no response from Vice President Pence in this matter. In spite of so many people working remotely, and this being a 21st century electronic world, the Letter to VP Pence had to be ‘mailed’ to his office, an act that I thought was ironic given that the White House and current administration are attempting to defund and shut down the U.S. Postal Service, so that no one will have mail again. Additionally none of the other agencies [CDC, NIAID, NRC, OSHA, FEMA, or FERC] have acknowledged receipt of the peoples’ letter about the increased risks at America’s nukes during Pandemic 2020.
Shortly after the letter was received in VP Pence’s office, President Trump announced that he would be closing down the Covid-19 Task Force as soon as possible, and then a few days later he retracted that statement. Meanwhile, there has been no response to the groups, not even an acknowledgement of their ‘Urgent Action Request’ and no further information has been requested by any of the government agencies from the experts involved who have brought these issues forward.
On May 18, 2020, the NRC wrote to VP Pence [see attached letter] also available on the NRC ADAMS document website, the public repository for NRC notices and documents.
In her letter to Vice President Pence, NRC Chairwoman Kristine Svinicki said,
Dear Mr. Vice President,
On behalf of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), I am providing an overview of the measures the NRC is taking during the ongoing COVID-19 public health emergency as addressed in the enclosure to this letter. I want to assure you that the NRC is taking all necessary steps to protect public health and safety, including efforts to strike the right balance of inspection and oversight activities while limiting opportunities for the spread of the virus…
In her letter, Chairwoman Svinicki ignored the letter from 86 organizations regarding a “public health emergency as addressed in the enclosure to this letter”. Ms. Svinicki then claims that the NRC is taking all necessary steps to protect public health and safety.
1) To begin with, in her entire letter, Commissioner Svinicki does not even acknowledge or address the regional public health impact and major concern referred to by the 86 organizations that somewhere between 1000 and 1500 temporary migratory workers will have on these predominately rural communities with limited resources and/or personnel trained in infectious diseases and viruses or the management of pandemics.
2) While the agency claims it has a standard for regulatory relief in Chairwoman Svinicki’s letter, the NRC simply does not expedite requests from the people most impacted, yet it hustles to meet industry requests and demands. Why? Because the nuke industry has the money and the high-priced attorneys, even though the NRC is statutorily authorized [ordered by federal law] to protect public health and safety as its first obligation, and yet like its predecessor the Atomic Energy Commission, it continues to promote the nuclear industry rather than regulate it.
“The agency’s standard for granting such regulatory relief remains unchanged and each request is reviewed on a case-by-case basis: the NRC may only grant exemptions that do not present an undue risk to public health and safety, are consistent with common defense and security, and are authorized by law.” Paragraph 3, Page 1 of Enclosure, NRC Letter to VP Pence
3) The NRC has an analytical system in place to technically evaluate these industry proposals, yet, it is not applying that system. Just one example is this failure may be seen in a legal petition against this lack of NRC action. Representing Beyond Nuclear and Don’t Waste Michigan, Attorney Terry Lodge filed a petition to the NRC on April 16, 2020. Entitled, FERMI UNIT 2 – PETITION PURSUANT TO 10 CFR § 2.206 SEEKING DEMANDS FOR INFORMATION (EXPEDITED RELIEF REQUESTED). Now, almost six-weeks later, no response on the emergency request has been received, and this issue is a security risk. Yet, Chair Svinicki said,
“All requests for COVID-19-related temporary regulatory relief are reviewed by the staff on a case-by-case basis and then granted only if adequate controls are in place to maintain safety and security.” Paragraph 3, Page 1 of Enclosure, NRC Letter to VP Pence
The NRC has already approved dozens of industry safety exemptions, showing that the NRC is not conducting rigorous analyses, but rather is simply making arbitrary decisions.
“Expeditiously reviewing and, if warranted, approving such relief requests under the current circumstances enables licensees to take necessary measures to follow Federal, State and local public health guidelines.” Paragraph 4, Page 1 of Enclosure NRC Letter to VP Pence, NRC Letter to VP Pence [Emphasis Added.]
4) The exemptions the NRC is giving to the utilities and energy corporations critically impact the ongoing safety of each nuke. The safety of the outage is not the main question or concern. When a critical inspection or repair has been postponed for 18 to 24 months, millions of lives are arbitrarily put at risk of reactor failures and meltdowns.
“Multiple facilities have safely completed their outages during this period.” Paragraph 5, Page 1 of Enclosure, NRC Letter to VP Pence
5) Every day there are between 1,000 and 1,500 people working at each site and yet the NRC has only one inspector show up once every three days, thereby risking the safety of all the communities and people living near the plant once it is up and running again. What security is there that repairs were adequately completed? What additional independent inspections were done?
“NRC staff has implemented a flexible strategy for NRC resident inspector site-coverage, such that each site should be visited by a resident inspector at least once every three business days to perform plant inspections.” Paragraph 1 Page 2 of enclosure, NRC Letter to VP Pence
6) NRC claims that their agency is only responsible for evaluating the emergency preparedness for radiation released from inside nukes, while FEMA is responsible for offsite issues and health issues like Covid-19 during Pandemic 2020. The letter that the 86 organizations sent specifically reminded the NRC, that is supposed to be working with both FEMA and OSHA under the Pandemic Preparedness procedures. It is clear that the NRC does not address the issue of Covid-19 Pandemic 2020 overcrowding in emergency shelters and instead refers the issue back to FEMA rather than working with FEMA to protect people and communities as required to do by Pandemic Preparedness procedures.
With regard to emergency preparedness, the NRC is responsible for evaluating the overall status of facility emergency preparedness, while FEMA is responsible for evaluating specific offsite emergency plans and preparedness and providing the results of their assessments to the NRC. … However, it may be necessary for licensees and OROs to temporarily develop compensatory measures or contingency plans to meet guidelines for limiting the spread of COVID-19. Paragraph 2, Page 2 of enclosure, NRC Letter to VP Pence
Quite simply, pandemics and atomic meltdowns are not predictable events, and now both pandemics and meltdowns (5 meltdowns in 40-years) have become a fact of life during my lifetime.
Fortunately the two catastrophes have not yet occurred at the same time. What concerns me the most along with the rest of the Fairewinds Crew and most of our colleagues are that these ‘speedy’ outages at power plants caused by attempts to modify things in light of the ease of spreading the pandemic will only serve to increase the likelihood of a meltdown. If a meltdown occurs in the midst of Pandemic 2020, it is obvious that none of the nuclear evacuation facilities will be able to maintain pandemic prevention procedures while at the same time they are accepting and treating evacuees from a meltdown.
No one could have foreseen what this pandemic would be like or what it would mean for each of us. The fact of the matter is: we [as a society and ever-connected world] could have been better prepared. If you are a member of the Fairewinds Energy Education Community, then you are well aware of the numerous safety and public health issues surrounding atomic power production in the face of the worldwide ongoing climate emergency.
If anything, this pandemic has shown us that even the most minimal preparedness planning can be wrong! I strongly believe we can do better, and we should be striving to put peoples’ lives before politics and profits. This personal essay is the second essay in a series that will cover life during this unprecedented pandemic event.
Fairewinds will keep you informed.
