Local Village President Lends Helping Hand to Japanese

It has been more than a month since a devastating earthquake and monster tsunami rocked the country of Japan. While Barrington residents, like most Americans, have watched helplessly as the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant grows, one Barrington area man has the unique capability to become part of the solution.

“We have been in contact with members of the Japanese Atomic Industrial Forum, who in turn relays information to the prime minister’s office,” said Bob Abboud, President of RGA Labs, a nuclear engineering research and design firm housed in Barrington Hills. “About once or twice a day we get a download from the JAIF about what’s going on and then we provide our advice.” 

Some Barrington area residents know him as the Village President of Barrington Hills, others as a candidate for the U.S. Congress in 2008.  What most people do not know is that Abboud has more than 30 years of experience in the nuclear business.   Over that time Abboud has worked as a senior nuclear engineer for Argonne National Laboratory, the California Energy Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy and Commonwealth Edison, now Exelon Corp., the largest nuclear energy company in the United States.  His expertise and creativity helped design the nuclear power stations that provide electricity for 70 to 90 percent of northern Illinois at any given time.  His accomplishments are myriad, including design awards, patents and a stint on then Vice President Al Gore’s Advanced Vehicle Commission.  He now runs his own research, design and consulting firm.  Visit www.RGALabs.com to see the scope of what Abboud does.

It was a month ago, a Saturday and little more than 24 hours since the tsunami washed through the site, wiping out basic and auxiliary power to the reactors at the Daiichi plant, when Barrington Patch first called Abboud for his take on what is now being called a nuclear disaster on a Chernobyl like scale. Abboud was already focused on the situation, using news reports and his institutional knowledge to assess the conditions on the ground.  Abboud’s analysis was consistently days ahead of cable and network news coverage.  You can read his day by day analysis here.   

“I know how the systems work and have analyzed accidents before,” Abboud said. “I have also managed some severe reactor events at Zion, including a steam-flow/feed-flow mismatch trip from 100 percent power with subsequent loss of off-site power.”

In layman’s terms – it was the same problem unfolding internally at Fukushima. 

One of Abboud’s first recommendations was received by Dr. Tatsuhiro Suzuki, of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission. After news outlets reported Japanese officials were considering burying the failing units at Fukushima in concrete like Chernobyl, Abboud was quick to send advice against repeating that mistake.  Abboud was joined in his recommendations by Dr. Thomas Neff, a senior researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies.  Abboud explains in his letter that encasing the reactors in concrete will actually insulate the fuel and raise the temperature significantly, causing a much greater release of radioactive material into the environment.  Ultimately, the strategy has not been employed by TEPCO, the JAIF or the Japanese government.

"Did I tell them that, I don’t know,” Abboud said. “It could have been me, it could have been others.” 

Another recommendation forwarded by Abboud and his brain trust suggested very early on that TEPCO, the company who operates the plant at Fukushima, fill their spent fuel pools with a water/boron/silica sand slurry to help keep spent fuel in pools devoid of water from overheating, becoming damaged and releasing more radio nuclides into the atmosphere; a piece of advice Abboud and his colleagues still wish the Japanese would take. In an email to the American Nuclear Society dated March 16, Abboud expressed his displeasure with TEPCO’s handling of the disaster. Abboud said he recognizes how difficult the conditions are on the ground, but also had to be critical of certain decisions.

“I really don’t want to be a Monday morning quarterback, but if they had buried the fuel, not the plant but the spent fuel in the sand slurry that we created for them they would not be having the problem they are having today,” Abboud said.

The engineer pointed to TEPCO’s excessive bureaucratic structure as one of the contributing factors that has slowed their ability to react to new problems at the site.  Abboud said one of the differences between Japan and the U.S. is our operators’ ability to innovate and adapt to changing situations during crises without approval for everything.

“You’re in a situation when what you have what’s called an above design basis accident.  You now have to rely on your personnel at the site and the support facility to create and execute new procedures in real time,” Abboud said. “They didn’t do that at TEPCO because you need six signatures to accomplish anything.”

Despite the advice of Abboud and others, the conditions at the Fukushima plant seem to continue to deteriorate at an alarming rate.  While not pleased with how the situation has been responded to overall, Abboud continues to monitor conditions and send along advice from him and his colleagues to scientists, engineers and government officials in Japan.  Abboud still believes the situation can be salvaged and said the economic consequences of the disaster, both short and long term, pale in comparison to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“This is clearly an industrial accident of the first order, but on a chemical basis, in comparison to the BP disaster they are not even comparable,” Abboud said.  “From an ecological how many cubic miles of the earth are damaged, these two are not even on the same page.” 

In the end Abboud’s assessment paints a less than rosy picture, but he believes the situation can be salvaged and that many of the critical challenges TEPCO is facing today are of their own making.

“After the first 12 hours the sequence of this event is driven principally by the actions of the TEPCO management,” Abboud said. “It is our assessment that the situation is currently, substantially out of control.  TEPCO needs to ask for more help.”