Ageing nuclear plant in Florida at risk from climate crisis, advocates warn

Regulators extended the life of two of the oldest US reactors in Miami. Millions of people in the area are now vulnerable

A decision by regulators to extend the life of two of the oldest reactors in the US decades beyond their original permits has elevated the risk of a nuclear disaster in heavily populated south Florida, environmental groups are warning.

The Miami Waterkeeper says the ageing Turkey Point facility in south Miami-Dade county, which was built in 1967 and generates power for a metropolitan area covering about 3 million people, is especially vulnerable to flooding and excessive heat from the climate emergency, in part because of its low-lying position and coastal exposure to a major hurricane.

One of the major risks, the group told a packed public meeting in Miami this week, is contamination of drinking water in the Biscayne Aquifer on which the plant and its two nuclear units sit.

Consultants said last month that the plant’s owners, Florida Power & Light (FPL), will not meet a crucial deadline to clean up a toxic hyper-salinated water plume produced in the reactors’ network of cooling canals that has been creeping closer to freshwater wells.

More generally, the activists fear the potential consequences of an unprecedented decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to extend Turkey Point’s operating license to 2053, a reversal of its earlier refusal.

They point out that the Florida plant’s two nuclear power reactors are already among the oldest of 94 currently operating in the US, and beyond the age of both the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania that suffered a partial meltdown in 1979 in the country’s worst nuclear accident and radiation leak; and Ukraine’s Chornobyl plant, site of the 1986 catastrophe.

Turkey Point is also the same age as the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, which is similarly located on a coastline exposed to severe weather events, and where a 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear disaster.

“Nobody needs to be reminded what a worst-case scenario looks like, but I will say this plant is within 30 miles of millions of people,” said Rachel Silverstein, the chief executive of Miami Waterkeeper, which has worked with Friends of the Earth and the Natural Resources Defense Council on legislation to try to block the license extension.

“Turkey Point was the first reactor in the country to apply to run for a total of 80 years, and no one in the world has ever run a nuclear power plant for 80 years. They all came online in the early 1970s and have gone through their first license extensions into the 2030s, more or less.

“Now, because the world is looking for low-carbon energy sources, we’re looking into extending the operating license of all of these plants into the coming decades. Our position is not anti-nuclear, but if we’re going to rely on nuclear in the coming decades as a primary source of energy that’s going to help us address climate risks, we also have to consider the risks of climate on the plants.

“We have to be clear-eyed about those risks, and we have to be elevating, fortifying, preparing these plants for storms, for floods, for sea level rise, for drought, and for heat.”

Silverstein’s group has partnered with the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, whose ancestral homelands cover much of south Florida, to appeal the NRC’s decision allowing Turkey Point to become the first to test the outer limits of its “80-year rule” for license extensions for nuclear power reactors.

They argue that the regulators failed to properly acknowledge a critical report from the Government Accountability Office published last year that stated climate change “was expected to exacerbate natural hazards that pose risks” to Turkey Point.

The report also noted that, instead of issuing a citation or fines, the regulators’ response to FPL’s breach of the maximum allowable cooling water temperature of 100F (38C) during an incident in 2014 was to raise the acceptable figure to 104F, the amount of the overage.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, insist the true operational lifespan of nuclear power generating facilities is far below the NRC’s eight-decade guideline, and point to data showing that among US plants built before 1973, half were decommissioned within 40 years.

According to the New Hampshire-based Seacoast Anti-Pollution League: “In most cases the plants simply wore out, broke down, or never functioned properly.”

Cover photo:  Turkey Point nuclear reactor building in Homestead, Florida, in 2017. Photograph: Rhona Wise/AFP via Getty Images