Defying Conventional Wisdom Through Research: The Case of License Renewal
Ann Stouffer Bisconti, PhD
October 2022
In the early 1990s, nuclear industry leaders began to talk about seeking to extend the operating licenses of their plants. The initial licenses were due to expire after 40 years, and the plants were designed to operate a lot longer than that. But who would go first to test the process of applying to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for license renewal? No company CEO wanted to be first. Conventional wisdom held that a company seeking license renewal for its nuclear power plants would face powerful opposition from antinuclear groups and even its own public. They had a surprise in store, and research predicted it.
Normal
The first public opinion research on license renewal was made for an industry task force that was established to study technical-regulatory, political, and social issues on the topic.
Dr. Andrew Kadak, CEO of the Yankee Atomic Electric Company and subsequently an MIT professor, led the task force. Our research found that the public considered it quite normal that companies would seek to renew the license of safely operating nuclear power plants. They saw the process as analogous to renewing a driver’s license. That insight helped change the industry mindset from defensive to one that treated the process as normal and positive.
20-Year Trap
The new license would be for 20 years, which would be added to the 40 years of the original license. To the industry, the words “license renewal for 20 years” rolled off the tongue. To the public, it raised red flags. That amount of time seemed too long. How, they wondered, could it be safe to allow the plant to go without inspections and oversight for 20 years? In fact, a nuclear power plant never goes without inspections and oversight. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspects each plant every day and, if at any time the plant is not operating safely, the regulator will shut it down. Moreover, constant upgrades and improvements in practices are shared through the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) and implemented with their oversight. All these facts are new to the public and important to communicate, especially if one mentions the time frame of license renewals. If one does not have an opportunity to explain these practices, it is better to leave information about the timeframe for a more complete discussion.
Meeting Federal Safety Standards
Subsequent focus groups for a utility company added further insights. When I asked group participants if they favored or opposed renewing the license of their nearby plant, they looked puzzled. In their opinion, that was a decision for the regulator, not for them. They favored their company’s asking the regulator to renew the license, but they did not have the expertise to determine if the plant met the safety standards to have the license renewed. As a result, our future research never asked the public to voice an opinion that the regulator alone should make. We asked if the public supported a company’s plan to seek license renewal or if the public supported renewing the license of plants that continue to meet federal safety standards.
Our national surveys since 1998 show large majority agreement with this proposition: “When their current operating license expires, we should renew the license of nuclear power plants that continue to meet federal safety standards.” In May 2022, 86 percent agreed that we should renew the license of nuclear power plants that continue to meet federal safety standards. Only 14 percent disagreed.
Percent Agree/Disagree We Should Renew the License of
Nuclear Power Plants that Continue to Meet Federal Safety Standard
Trend 1998-2022¹: Annual Averages Until 2005
Real-World Experience
The first license renewal attempt did not end well, as the industry initially predicted. Antinuclear groups wanted to shut down all operating plants and saw license renewal as an opportunity. Thus, when the Yankee Atomic Electric Company plant applied to renew its license, it became the target of national antinuclear groups, despite an excellent operating and safety record and community support. Questions were raised about the condition of the reactor vessel and other aspects of the physical structure. Because the plant was relatively small, management withdrew the license renewal application and decided to permanently shut down the plant eight years ahead of schedule.
The second nuclear power plant to apply for license renewal was Calvert Cliffs of Baltimore Gas & Electric, and that application was successful. Under the creative leadership of Barth Doroshuk, the company formed what they called Fan Teams. These teams comprised staff who reached out to their contacts in the community, explaining the license renewal process and reporting back any opinions, questions, and concerns to a central point—like the point of a fan. With this approach, the team had an excellent reading of public opinion.
Following the NRC hearing for Calvert Cliffs in April 1999, The Calvert Recorder, a local newspaper reported:
“We are sure some of the opponents to relicensing Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant were left confused following a hearing last week. Critics of the utility and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission denounced the licensing process as well as nuclear energy. Then what happened next was a little startling. Calvert Cliffs residents stood up and told them to leave their plant alone. That Baltimore Gas & Electric had been a good neighbor.”
Between 1999 and 2019, with little fanfare or opposition, 94 nuclear power plants received license renewal from the NRC. Two more are currently in review and two have sent letters of intent to submit an application.
Further, six plants have received second or subsequent license renewal, which will allow them to operate for 80 years, as long as they continue to meet federal safety standards. The NRC has received applications for subsequent license renewal for nine additional units and letters of intent for seven more.
Messages
The messages that need to reach the public in support of these renewals include:
Current and future generations benefit when we use our resources wisely.
The NRC inspects and monitors each plant every day, and if a plant is not operating safely, the regulator will shut it down.
New technology has continuously been built into these plants, and improvements will continue to be made as technology advances.
No Anthropomorphisms
We can say with confidence that our research boosted the movement to relicense nuclear power plants, but we did not succeed in all respects. Not all of the lessons learned from our research were adopted. Time and time again our research showed what should be common sense: the industry should not use terminology that brings up images of the dead and dying. Sadly, this advice has been widely ignored, as terms like life extension and aging are still common within the industry. Those terms convey the image of an industry on its last legs instead of the dynamic, ever-advancing industry that it is. We can’t win them all.
[1] Surveys each with 1,000 nationally representative members of the U.S. public, margin of error +/- 3 percentage points, for the Nuclear Energy Institute and Bisconti Research, Inc. The wording changed in October 2014 from “When their original operating license expires...” to “When their current operating license expires…”
[2] https://www.nrc.gov/images/reading-rm/doc-collections/maps/power-reactors-license-renewals.png
[3] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/subsequent-license-renewal.html
© Ann Stouffer Bisconti, 2022.