From: To: Subject: Date:

Dennis KRathbun VieWi-Cook, Annette; H; Hayden. Elizabeth Fwd: Dennis Thursday, March 17, 2011 6:48:04 AM

George works at Merrill Lynch, know generally what I did while working. Just asked what did I think type thing. Post retirement, I actually bought 2000 shares of GE stock. I did not buy it because of their reactor business, and am not selling because of this thing. It's not going to be easy, but I am sure they will handle it. In fact likely to get for worse----- no other dumb reasons than that there are so many avenues for more bad things to happen. This is one of those times that I can say, it sure is nice to be retired. I watched some but not all of the Energy and Commerce committee hearing yesterday. About half the members are the same as when I was there ---- they look and sound the same---except maybe older. I saw Sec Chu for the first time. He is as good as or better at a hearing as any energy secretary I have ever seen. Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message:
(b)6) From: Dennis K Rathbun < Date: March 17, 2011 6:24:44 AM EDT

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.(b)(6)
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To: "Vassiliou, George (Washington, DC)"

Subject: Re: Dennis George I was with the Commission all thru the agony of Three Mile Island, same with Chernobyl, different chairman actually visited that plant in 1988, thought I had provably seen been thru 9/11, again different chairman ----it all in terms of 'what's the worst that an happen' type of thing. Even with enormous agony in a multi year public process task lead the painful effort to write the Conmission's reactor safety goals policy statement. For use with quantitative probabilistic risk assessment. This business tops any of those not very pleasant for me personally type experiences. All involving myriads of Congressional hearings, painful press stuff. Now this. The idea that one natural event, one card dealt from Mother Nature herself could create this much of a common mode type event at 4 reactors was just not expected. All of our plants and theirs in any developed country are designed for loss station blackouts ----- of off site power. A 1000 Mwt reactor require around 50 Mwt to power is own station, pumps and valves type thing.

you cannot just flip off the switch to a reactor and everything stops. Many types of individual nuclear reactions are cooking at the same time. Some with fraction of a second half lives, some a few days, some weeks, months, others years or for plutonium 24000 years. These substantial heat producing things take a number of weeks to cook down. So station blackout, being loss of offside power is a thoroughly common planned for event. All plants therefor have so called emergency diesel generators---or something like that as 'high reliability systems'. Must handle station powers needs as long as necessary. Failing that it is typical to have additional batteries as backup behind the generators---which may not start. But they by nature are short term things. But the very idea that one thing, one natural event could knock out all of these things at all of these plants seems like dealing a 52 card royal flush. this Then forget the reactors ----- same event apparently swept away thousands of poor people like the tsunami in Indonesia, Chile. A so called undersea thrust type seismic event like 1876 in eastern Sierras, Owens Valley thing. Unlike the San Andreas, strike slip with the pacific plate going north into a subduction zone diving down in Alaska. As you know the off shore thrust seismic things create the step function tsunami conditions ---- amplified by proximity, near shore sea floor conditions. This will by it's nuclear and engineering nature drag on for painful weeks if not months. The all things considered conditions hole is so big, involving so many moving parts ---- that would be my notion. Plus they are Japanese. Not like Katrina when NRC mangers were demanding to know where those underwater nuclear materials all were. Those guys had some advance notice and time for the Gulf reactors to shut down and get ready. But for the many nuclear materials people demanded to know where all the nuclear materials stuff was. Well, La and Miss are NRC Agreement states. Thus we have a hold over them. Literally and legally. Well the state program directors in Jackson and La do not much appreciate pressuring calls from Washington when there offices are underwater, no lights, no phones etc etc. Like get out of my face till I can breathe again. And they speak English. You get the idea. Now post TMI and the reliance on jammed phone lines lead NRC to spend a fortune hard wiring every nuance of plant life at every single nuclear plant in the US to the NRC Incident Response Center. This situation is half a globe circumference away, day is night, night is day type thing, no wired data connection, with a people who for the most part do not speak English or ours speak Japanese, with a regulatory

system which neither I or almost anybody else around understands. You get the idea. Sure, once in 1992, with one of the NRC chairman, we went to Japan, went to one of their power plants. Sure I and everybody knows they use GE like ours various types boiling water reactors. Not Westinghouse PWR's. And yes, they are always, always interested and follow closely what we develop and do in the US. But that's it. I read in the WSJ papers like you have, they have had their issues their with regulatory independence, enforcement, and so forth. So we will learn from what they tell us and what can happen around here. Beyond that we have to make our own decisions based on us. We are not them and vice versa. For me personally I do not think I want waterfront property anywhere on the Pacific rim. Chile, Japan, Alaska, or California. Anyway ---- thoughts per your Q. my Regards Dennis Sent from my iPhone On Mar 16, 2011, at 9:19 PM, "Vassiliou, George (Washington, DC)" <7(b)(6). _j> wrote:
Hi Dennis,
What do you make of the Japanese reactor situation? Best, George

Sent using BlackBerry George D. Vassiliou, CRPC, CSNA Vice President Senior Financial Advisor Merrill Lynch Global Private Client Group Tel (202)659-7528 Fax (202)609-9441 Maria Kennedy Client Associate (202)659-5499

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