Testimony of William Levis, COO PSEG, before House Committee on Energy and Comerce

William Levis
President and Chief Operating Officer
PSEG Power LLC

United States House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation
Committee on Energy and Commerce

Washington, DC
April 6, 2011

Testimony for the Record

Chairman Stearns, Ranking Member DeGette, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.
My name is William Levis.  I am President and Chief Operating Officer of PSEG Power which is a subsidiary of Public Service Enterprise Group, headquartered in Newark, New Jersey.
I appreciate your invitation to testify at today’s hearing to discuss the status of the U.S. nuclear energy industry and the implications of the Fukushima nuclear accident on nuclear energy in the United States.  I am testifying today on behalf of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear energy industry’s Washington-based policy organization.
My remarks today will cover four major points:
First, U.S. nuclear power plants are safe.
Second, safety is the U.S. nuclear energy industry’s top priority.
Third, the U.S. nuclear energy industry has a long history of continuous learning from operational events. We will do the same as a result of the Fukushima accident.
And fourth, the U.S. nuclear energy industry has already taken pro-active steps to verify and validate our readiness to manage extreme events.  We took these steps early – without waiting for clarity on the sequence of failures at Fukushima.
Regarding the first point, U.S. nuclear power plants are safe.  They are designed and operated conservatively to manage the maximum credible challenges appropriate to each nuclear power plant site.  U.S. nuclear power plants have also demonstrated their ability to maintain safety through extreme conditions, including floods and hurricanes and other natural disasters.
U.S. nuclear reactors are designed to withstand earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and other natural events equal to the most significant historical event or the maximum projected event, plus an added margin for conservatism, without any breach of safety systems.
Recent experience with earthquakes in California, Hurricane Andrew in Florida and  Katrina in New Orleans repeatedly demonstrate that U.S. nuclear plants can withstand  severe natural events. In each case, safety systems functioned as designed, operators  responded effectively and emergency training proved successful. 
Regarding the second point, safety is the U.S. nuclear energy industry’s top priority, and complacence about safety performance is not tolerated.

We know we operate in an unforgiving environment where the penalties for mistakes are high and where credibility and public confidence, once lost, are difficult to recover.
All of the safety-related metrics tracked by industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission demonstrate high levels of excellence.  Worker radiation exposures, events with safety implications, and lost-time accident rates have all trended down, year over year, for a number of years.
Regarding the third point, the U.S. industry routinely incorporates lessons learned from operating experience into its reactor designs and operations.
I could point to many, many examples of improvements made to U.S. nuclear power plants over the years in response to lessons learned from operational events over the last 40 years.  Let me list just a few:

• In the 1970s, concerns were raised about the ability of the BWR Mark I containment to maintain its design during an event when steam is vented to the torus.  Subsequently, every United States Operator with a Mark I containment implemented modifications to dissipate energy released to the suppression pool and stringent supports to accommodate loads that could be generated.

• As a result of the Three Mile Island accident, NRC required all sites have emergency plans including both an Emergency Operations Facility and a Joint Information Center.  These offsite facilities were mandated to ensure the states and NRC could have direct access to the information coming from the station.

• In 1988, the NRC concluded that additional Station Black Out (SBO) regulatory requirements were justified and issued the Station Black Out rule to provide further assurance that a loss of both offsite and onsite emergency AC power systems would not adversely affect public health and safety.

• Since the terrorist events of September 11, 2001, U.S. nuclear plant operators identified other beyond-design-basis vulnerabilities. As a result, U.S. nuclear plant designs and operating practices since 9/11 are designed to mitigate severe accident scenarios such as aircraft impact, which include the complete loss of offsite power and all on-site emergency power sources and loss of large areas of the plant. All U.S. nuclear power plants have enhanced capacity for fighting very large fires, alternatives for bringing cooling water to used fuel storage pools and the ability to bring in additional sources of power from remote locations. Also, all plants have ability using diesel‐driven portable water pumps, for example to bring cooling water to the reactor and fuel storage pool without offsite or onsite electric power.

Regarding the final point, the U.S. nuclear energy industry has already started an assessment of the events in Japan and is taking steps to ensure that U.S. reactors could respond to events that may challenge safe operation of the facilities.  These actions include:

• Verifying each plant's capability to manage the severe accident scenarios developed after 9/11 that I previously described.

• Verifying each plant's capability to manage a total loss of off-site power.

• Verifying the capability to mitigate flooding and the impact of floods on systems inside and outside the plant.

• Performing walk-downs and inspection of important equipment needed to respond successfully to extreme events like fires and floods.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, it will be some time before we understand the precise sequence of what happened at Fukushima, before we have a complete analysis of how the reactors performed, how equipment and fuel performed, how the operators performed. As we learn from this tragic event, however, you may rest assured that we will internalize those lessons and incorporate them into our designs and training and operating procedures.
That concludes my oral testimony Mr. Chairman, I look forward to answering questions that the Committee may have.