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Nuclear Info Kept From Congress and the Public
Thermite writes "On March 6, 2006 an accident occurred at Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin, Tennessee. According to reports, almost 9 gallons of highly enriched uranium in solution spilled and nearly went into a chain reaction. Before the accident in 2004, the NRC and The Office of Naval Reactors had changed the terms of the company's license so that any correspondence with Nuclear Fuel Services would be marked 'official use only.' From the article: 'While reviewing the commission's public Web page in 2004, the Department of Energy's Office of Naval Reactors found what it considered protected information about Nuclear Fuel Service's work for the Navy. The commission responded by sealing every document related to Nuclear Fuel Services and BWX Technologies in Lynchburg, Va., the only two companies licensed by the agency to manufacture, possess and store highly enriched uranium.' The result was that the public and Congress were both left in the dark for 13 months regarding this accident and other issues at the facility."
because we can't see the documents about an accident that *almost* happened?
If they're hiding the little "oopsie"s, what about the accidents that did happen?
What're we supposed to do? Tell *everyone (including possibly terrorists and enemy combatants) about every little nuclear accident we ever have?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
``I think if we were to have an event like this again, we would push to make it public,'' he added. ``Clearly it would have been better to have this discussion 18 months ago than it is to have it now.'' Was that his nose growing or what?
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Congress' approval ratings are tied with the historical low. Do they even know why?
I'm a conservative and typically voted Republican, and even *I* wanted the Dems to come into power to repair the damage of Bush's administration. But on any issue involving something the DoD / DoE marks as classified, they just shrug and say, "Bush's people called it classified. I guess we can't exercise oversight after all."
I know this post will likely cost me some karma. I just wish I could spend *all* my karma on it and actually get my congressmen and senators to DO THEIR FSCKING JOBS and stop this crap.
"I think if we were to have an event like this again, we would push to make it public,"
And I think that this kind of ass-backwards thinking is exactly what's going to result in the next Chernobyl. How about instead of spending all your time on clean-up and PR, put a little foresight into the management of the damn facility.
"Clearly it would have been better to have this discussion 18 months ago than it is to have it now."
Clearly. Asshat.
Erwin sure can't get it right. Almost century trying to escape their elephant hanging history and now this... (google hanged elephant)
Unfortunately, I can't tell if you're being serious. If so, how would terrorists benefit from knowing, after the fact, that we had a nuclear accident? If you're being serious (and I hope you're not) this sounds a lot to me like "OMG! Think of the terrorists!"
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I can imagine why they downplayed it when it happened due to fear of a public panic, but to wait 13 months to even tell the public is ridiculous.
...where Homer falls asleep at the control panel:
FTA:
The leak was discovered when a supervisor saw a yellow liquid ``running into a hallway'' from under a door, according to one document.
Information wants to be Free. Useful Information will cost you.
if its anything like this one, we wouldn't be left in the dark...
We'd glow in it.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Sad Times are these... when
1. passing ruffians can say `nee' at will to old women
2. the sarcasm in my post is not obvious as all hell.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
"The leak was discovered when a supervisor saw a yellow liquid ``running into a hallway'' from under a door, according to one document."
Highly Enriched Uranium or Godzilla's Urine?!?!? You be the judge.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
As I RTFA, I take that to mean it would have been a really unhealthy day for any one near by, al la blue-flash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident ); not a really unhealthy day for anyone for miles around, al la mushroom cloud(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_cloud) .
Only actual chain reactions need be disclosed and the mushroom cloud should serve as public notice. Anything more would be a waste of taxpayer dollars.
It does not appear that anyone's intent was to hide accidents - the original problem was that sensitive Navy information that shouldn't have been released was getting released, so instead of doing the narrow fix and just not releasing the sensitive documents, the (extremely through/lazy, you pick) step was taken and all the documents from the Navy fuel supply companies were restricted.
As an apparent unintended consequence (or a willfully accepted consequence) of the policy change to make sure that sensitive documents stopped ending u on websites, non-sensitive documents regarding safety incidents ended up being restricted as well.
But, even when the accident occurred, the regulatory commission apparently even made a point of having a special vote to make sure the party responsible for the incident was properly, and publicly, identified.
There is a definite difference between changing a policy to hide safety accidents and safety accidents not getting disclosed as well as a result of a policy change. The latter is the case here. The policy will be adjusted.
On the flip side, imagine the uproar if the policy had originally only specified that sensitive documents got restricted, and sensitive information was released anyway because someone mistakenly labeled a sensitive document as non-sensitive? It's a trade-off - and while the current policy made it harder for the public to find out about an accident, it's also true that a different policy would increase the risk of accidental release of sensitive material.
Either way, there's no reason to assign nefarious intent where apparently none is due.
paintball
In the mad rush to privatize government, the broader issue of a serious lack of oversight will become quite common.
0 6/murphy200706
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
There might be an accident in January of 2008, I want the reports published now!
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Your average congressman/woman is not fit for the types of duties we already allow them - allocating money. Let's say this had all been open, and it was brought up before an oversight committe in Congress. What exactly is a congressman going to bring to the table at such a discussion?
CongressMan A: "I'm outraged at this. You stored Uranium in plain gray containers, spilled them, and then didn't buy cleanup services from my home state. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Uranium Dude: "We acknowledge that we were wrong to spill the uranium, and promise to paint the containers yellow, AND buy the yellow paint from your home state."
Congressman A: "That's damn right you will! Yellow paint and pork in one day. That's congressional leadership."
We need people with experience in handling such materials on the oversight committe - congresspeople can go off and write some vision law or national spotted insect day - in other words, what they are good at. And we need some sort of realistic expectations on what punishments would ever be meted out. I doubt we would ever ditch a uranium supplier because it's in our best interests for security to keep the number of entrants in the field small. And we wouldn't want disgruntled employees deciding to contract out.
www.voiceofthehive.com - Beekeeping and Honeybees for those who don't.
I'm sorry, but I missed something. If it's in the container, it's safe, but if it's loose on the floor, it's liable to start a chain reaction? That just doesn't sound right. I smell an ulterior motive in this story.
Ibid.
I can see temporarily keeping documents from the public until they can be properly sanitized, provided this is done in a timely manner and isn't over-done.
However, Congress, or at least the parts of Congress that oversees civilian use of nuclear material, should have immediate and unfettered access. These same Congressmen should be specifically alerted any time there is an event that could affect regional or national interests.
The lawmakers and key appointed officials from the surrounding areas, including certain state officials, should be briefed any time there is an event that affects the region, such as a toxic or radioactive material spill that escapes into the environment.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's not necessarily your fault that you sarcasm wasn't obvious as all hell, but if you read what some people post in all seriousness here, you have to admit that it wasn't that obvious! (What's the name of that law regarding satire/parody and right-wing conservatives again?)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Congress was not kept from the results. The public was. Anything marked "For Official Use Only" (with or without the "for") is self-regulated. Meaning, if you aren't doing it for official use, you stop yourself from reading it. It also means you can't distribute it willy-nilly.
All members of Congress have at least the right to view FOUO information. Some politicians disagree with marking this material as such, and they are quoted in the article. But at NO TIME were they banned from the information.
The title written as it is lends itself to a much more insidious plot, and that is far from what occurred.
A few years ago, I had a conversation about next generation energy with a friend (one of those "privatize everything" types). He lambasted people for fearing nuclear energy as he saw it as the way of the future. This story is *exactly* the argument I made to explain the legitimacy of public fears of nuclear power. We let the private industry in with it's self-serving interests and God forbid something goes wrong. Just like on Three Mile Island, private industry finds it in their interest to sweep problems under the rug to the detriment of the public good.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
yo are thinking of a nuclear explosion, and no, that would not occur. However, the fuel cold have a chain reaction, and get very hot and messy. radioactives polution would be the result. good stuff - almost as good as breathing that stuff GW Bush puts out every day in DC.
wake up and hold your nose
The core hypocrisy of "Republicans" is how they hate the republic, preferring a monarchy whose benign neglect amounts to corporate anarchy.
This kind of Republican fraud goes well beyond the $5 word "hypocrisy". Republicans prefer rulers to be mere actors on a political stage, fed their lines from under the platform, written by their corporate sponsors.
Republicans have studied Ben Franklin's famous reply to a new American's question about what kind of government, "a republic or a monarchy", they'd just created in Independence Hall:
Knowing they could steal it best by first stealing its wardrobe. And they studied their Party's first president, Lincoln, especially well his (often attributed) observation that
So they make sure that when all of the people sometimes aren't fooled, that we're as discouraged as possible from doing something about it. Like scaring us with images of "terrorists and enemy combatants".
It's not going to work this time.
--
make install -not war
For the record, I am a physicist.
A lot of nuclear materials can under-go a chain reaction if a significant mass is accumulated. It has to do with production versus escape of neutrons and scales as volume-to-area. So, if two sub-critical masses were combined, they could become critical. I am somewhat leary of a "spill" making something go critical, unless the mass was over-critical and the container provided some damping effect.
bork bork bork!
I'd say Three Mile Island. Mind you, it's just a guess.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I used to live near Erwin, TN and NFS was always secretive about it's work. Yes we know they recycle material from weapons grade uranium to produce reactor fuel. They also supply fuel for nuclear subs and ships for the Navy. The rest of what they do is not know. There was also an interesting event that seemed related to them as well about 3-4 years ago. The local sheriff for that area busted a couple of suspected terrorists with fake Israeli passports that came in through Canada. They were driving a moving truck and heading towards where the NFS complex is located. Another strange coincidence to that was the apache helecopters that were searching for them with their full armament. This was odd since they don't do training with apaches in that area and they were flying along the roads searching for someone. The feds got involved on that, but I suspect there is some relation to the guys with an empty truck heading towards Erwin and NFS on fake Israeli passports. Erwin isn't exactly a town people (especially non-white folks) travel to for vacation and it's known in East TN for it's past racist problems. One of the best statements I heard about Erwin was from someone I knew that worked at the school there... "We don't have a racist problem, we have plenty of chinese and mexicans in our area..." Given the area, the views of many folks in that backwards town and such, a couple of middle eastern guys with fake Israeli passports in a moving truck could only be there for one reason that I know of and it's NFS.
It's about time they un-cover all that happens with NFS. I'm no gov conspiracy theorist or anything, but the events in a backwards small mountain town like that catch peoples eye. I am sure there are other facilities and private gov contract companies that have much of the same view as NFS does. With how scary accidents like this are and some of the unusual things that happen around plants like that, it's rather disturbing.
People are fallable and make mistajes. No matter the safeguards and systems in place, people will screw up. Sure you might be able to fire them for not following procedure etc, but that won't clean up the mess.
Safety is not king. Money is. Operators are very reluctant to scram reactors or spend up huge on safety and equipment "just in case" because they really want to maximise profits. Thus, they operate in the risk zone. Bad calls are inevitable.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Must be a sign of the times here on slashdot. I'm so used to reading political news posted by kdawson that I was left wondering what the National Republican Committee had to do with nuclear fuel.
It's that they thought you were gullible enough to believe their lies about how safe nuclear fission energy sources are.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
There are some good reasons for keeping secrets about a nuclear incident, but preventing public panic is not one of them.
In a case like this, the PR guy's job is to frame the information so it comes out factual and in a way that defuses any OMGtheskyisfalling response before it happens. Withholding the information just hurts you in the long run.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The government is extremely Bureaucratic! *Gasp*
If the enriched uranium liquid had run into a series of fuel rod castings and those castings just happened to tip over, falling precisely into a nearby reactor, this thing could have gone critical.
They have more parties to choose from. I think that was the GP's point, but I could be mistaken. In the US, however, voting 3rd party is unfortunately a lot (although not quite) like not voting.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
but I don't think that packing enriched uranium into a glovebox could cause a nuclear reaction
And you'd be wrong. From the wikipedia article on fast neutron reactors: "Such a reactor needs no neutron moderator, but must use fuel that is relatively rich in fissile material when compared to that required for a thermal reactor." In essence, the fast neutrons emitted by the radioactive decay of the fuel triggers further fission, resulting in a chain reaction. Or, as the article on fast breeder reactors states, "While fast neutrons are less likely to be absorbed by uranium-235 or plutonium-239 than thermal neutrons, the highly enriched fuel used in fast breeder reactors allows for a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction."
Note, the key, here, is the fact that this was an *enriched* fuel leak. Were this regular Uranium, you'd be absolutely right, as the neutrons would need to be thermalized (slowed down by a moderator) before a chain reaction could progress, hence the need for a moderator in a traditional reactor design.
A /. bug ate your URL. Add "ml" to the URL above.
/. doesn't like URLs ending in shtml.
Appearently
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Agreed. When has Congress ever used an oversight hearing to do anything constructive? All they are interested in doing is turning important issues into political weaponry. I say the more is hidden from Congress the better. If the laws establishing the NRC need adjusting, let the executive branch bring it to their attention.
The uranium was in a liquid form ("solution", FTA). Less likely to catch fire, easier to process, but also easier to mishandle in a way that would promote a nuclear reaction.
What causes the reaction is not pressure but neutrons. If the liquid is pooled up flat on the floor, most neutrons shoot out the top or bottom of the puddle. If that puddle is piled up in a bucket, or in the bottom of a glovebox (not the kind in your car, but the kind you reach into with lead-lined gloves) then more neutrons can hit more uranium and make more neutrons. Enough neutrons, and a blue flash results. Geometry matters.
Not sure why he threw the elevator shaft in there. Maybe there's a bucket at the bottom.
We must repeat.
This isn't a situation where they hid the facts from congress. It is a situation where a paperwork processing change from before the incident cause the incident's paper work to go unnoticed by congress. The reporting became classified and out of direct sight.
I'm sure this can be fixed. It isn't like carelessness is rampant and they sought out to hide the incident.
I guess the big surprise here is that a company is able to change classifications of certain paperwork without talking to the agencies with oversight. It should be that the classifications should be mandated by a set of guidelines and maybe some notification system to oversight panels when something happens. The government agency automatically assume one thing and marked the reports classified where even if they should be classified, the people overseeing them should stil be aware of them.
Any container designed to hold enriched uranium would be carefully shaped so as to avoid coming anywhere near to creating a critical mass. In this incident, the risk was that the liquid would flow into the elevator shaft, where it would pool into a compact shape that could create a critical mass.
Just an FYI; highly enriched fuel is used for naval reactors (aircraft carriers, submarines, etc.) Typical power reactors aren't designed to burn this in large quantities.
Here's a photo of the facility. That's a guard tower in the right foreground.
They kept a lid on it for 3 years. I note that this was NRC policy, as opposed to a company cover up. The NRC is typically rather open about these sort of events.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
It wouldn't have caused an explosion, just a chain reaction a la what is sustained in a nuclear reactor - except this would be completely uncontrolled and unshielded. As everyone here probably knows, fission is caused by one neutron busting apart a big nucleus, throwing out more neutrons (among other things). Criticality happens when there are more neutrons in a given "generation" (instant, essentially) than the previous generation (for a given geometry, etc). In a power reactor this ratio of neutrons in a given instant to the previous instant (k) is (very close to) 1 - ie the neutron flux remains (relatively) stable across short time frames (the flux varies significantly with fuel burnup). Once you go to k > 1, the reaction increases very rapidly and thats when things get dangerous in an uncontrolled environment. There would be "nuclear reactions", even fission, going on in a tablespoon of the stuff, just not at a rate necessary to create a chain reaction and establish criticality. How much of this stuff it would take to create and maintain a chain reaction depends on a lot of things - geometry, what else is in the liquid solution (ie anything hydrogenous would help thermalize/"slow-down" the neutrons to the point where fission is most likely, maintaining the chain reaction), and the amount of enrichment (since this is weapons/navy grade stuff, it was extremely high, meaning you wouldn't need much). That said, I don't have a good estimate of how much of this stuff it would take, but I do know that a sphere of pure Pu-239 a little bigger than a softball (~12kg) is a critical configuration. I have a BS in Nuke Engineering, but haven't had a reactor theory course for a few years and shifted career paths, so I apologize for any errors.
about nuclear power. I'm opposed to it. not on any technical grounds, or any dogmatic or spiritual bollocks, just because I do NOT trust private companies with this stuff, nor do I trust them to handle GM food responsibly either. If we had decades of perfect safety records on existing reactors, combined with absolute transparency on what goes wrong and who is to blame and what happened if something does fail, then maybe I'd be convinced that this is a technology that you can trust private companies, or for that matter, the government, to use safely.
This is not currently the case. here in the UK, we even falsified documents to show the japanese we had carried out safety procedures on their reprocessed fuel. Not surprisingly, they sent it back.
The risk of nuclear accidents is VERY small, but the potential worst case effect of one if it does happen is massive. With other forms of power like tidal, solar, wind, the worst case scenarios tend to be very very benign. As a result, I'd rather we spent the same cash investing in those technologies than one with so many potential downsides, including the leak risk, the theoretical meltdown, the security risks, potential health problems, need for uranium, centralised nature of the technology, need to be near large supplies of water, yada yada yada...
nuclear is great in theory, so is GM, but in practice, I don't vaguely think we are there yet in terms of safety.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
There might be an accident in January of 2008, I want the reports published now!
The presidential primaries are already getting heavy coverage.
Actually, the "spill" makes it more likely, not less likely.
Fissionables in solution are tricky things to deal with. Consider the following four cases:
1) Homer Simpson drops a subcritical hunk of a water-soluble U235 salt into a swimming pool. No big deal. It's a single subcritical mass of U235, and the neutrons fly straight out of it and into the surrounding water, and not enough bounce back into the mass to present a problem. Homer reaches in with a net, and pulls the chunk of salt out of the net. "No problemo."
2) A little while later, as the harmless chunk dissolves into the huge pool, there will be localized spots near the chunk, with both sufficiently-high concentration of fissionable materials and the right amount of moderating material between them for a criticality incident. "D'OH!"
3) "Aha! I'm smart! I'll prevent that scenario by dissolving it, a bit at a time, by adding it to the pool by using a salt shaker near the pump intake!" Congrats! The U235 atoms are, at all times, sufficiently widely-dispersed, that there is no criticality risk. "Woohoo!"
4) A few weeks after your swim, the place is shut down and everyone gets fired. The maintenance guy forgets to drain the pool. The water gradually evaporates, and concentrations in the remaining water begin to rise... and a few years later, some guy spraying graffiti by the abandoned poolhouse wonders WTF that blue flash was. "D'OH!" again.
I'm on a roll here, so I may as well close off the "security by obscurity" issue. There are places where security by obscurity works, and this is one of them.
The deal here is that criticality incidents, especially involving fissionables in solution are a function of degree of enrichment (in the case of uranium as the solute), nuclear properties of the solvent, local concentrations of the ions in solution, and a whole boatload of other things, in order to build cool toys, you often have to deal with them all, simultaneously. I'm not in the building-of-cool-toys industry, and have mercifully I've never had a need to know.
Some of these things are public domain, but others (particularly those things pertaining to the design of shipborne Naval reactors, which use HEU because there simply isn't enough space on all types of ships to permit the use of LEU-based designs) are classified. Given a description of an incident, however, it may be possible to place upper and lower bounds on some of the classified parameters - bounds that are narrower than the published numbers, and there are plenty of adversaries who would be delighted to deduce things about our Naval capabilities (a lot more interesting/useful than even our bomb designs), given just a few more missing puzzle pieces. The math is hard, and denying adversaries the pieces of the puzzle that they can use to derive the whole picture isn't security by obscurity, it's just good security practice.
Its all a miscommunication. If the congress wanted "nu-ku-lar" information, they should have asked for it.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Yawn...
I don't know enough about nuclear safety to say one way or the other, so I'm not trying to flamebait here. I'd just like to know how all those people feel who, during discussions about energy viability, come out with statements like "modern nuclear power plants are completely safe, a major event is almost impossible"? Is this article overplaying the safety issues involved or were you not really as sure as you made out about the current state of technology/protocol in such plants?
sam brightman
Take off your tin foil hat.
For one thing, the comment of "nearly went into a chain reaction" is complete FUD. What is nearly? That does not even make sense. Anything done with nuclear fuel is done inside different levels of containment. Okay, maybe it spilled out of a storage container but it was contained in the handling room which has a special closed drainage system, non porous floors, and a ventilation system that is uses recirculated air that is monitored and filtered. For the purpose of FUD, everyone here would like to think two dudes in an old pickup truck went around a bend to fast on a dirt road and some of the "stuff" in that barrel spilled into old man Thompson's catfish pond. I am all for oversight with nuclear projects but I am not for the FUD that surrounds everything nuclear.
I was a nuclear operator and radiological controls maintenance supervisor in a past life. I've done my share of operating and cleaning the plants and their by products including an ion resin exchange replacement and a refueling.
I was taking a new person to the facility on a general tour of the area. He commented that he remembered his parents wearing gas masks and protesting a nuclear plant when he was a little kid and now here he is standing just outside the secondary shield looking at one. Things can go wrong and do go wrong but it is not the norm. TMI for example was a combination of about 6 different problems or errors and even still, the end results were minimal on the surrounding area and the general public.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Are descendants from Israel...
For the record, a not-entirely dissimilar thing happened in Japan a few years ago. That one wasn't a leak, it was the use of a higher-than-normal amount of 235 in the mixture. It caused a bit of a problem in the area and at least one technician died as a result of the criticality. Google "tokai criticality incident"
.max
So leaving the isotopic enrichment and concentration of the material firmly in the land of "we don't know" but recognizing that the mysterious report said "uncontrolled criticality possible" i'm inclined to think it wasn't a wholly impossible scenario. Above a certain concentration and enrichment, all you need is enough [fissile] material and the right geometry.
We've had several incidents of this sort in thte past, and they're kind of not so fun, ramping up and down in power as they pass in and out of boiling, gently wafting highly radioactive fission products into the air, bleaching the bones of emergency personnel...
As far as being concerned about (gasp) terrorists learning about a CI... Get A Grip! In simple terms: we should extend to ourselves the same hazard warnings regardless of where the danger comes from.
Danger is danger, and classifying our mistakes is only going to help us kill ourselves before the bad guys do.
We wouldn't classify a dirty bomb attack, or, for that matter, some chicago gangbanger's feeble half-assed attempts to acquire a dirty bomb. so... what has more real danger? One might suggest real U235 running down a real hallway...
Remember, even if this facility is out in Boo Foo Tn, (and it is) it's still a national technical asset. If the operators of the plant fuck it [the facility] up so that it can't be used, we have lost ~~50% of our national technical means to reprocess nuclear material. That suggests an additional interest in disclosure.
etc.
You're wrong. Enough highly enriched uranium in one place will cause a chain reaction.
The reason why nuclear weapons compress the material using chemical explosives is that the threshold mass is dependent on the density. Compressing the material lowers the threshold so that the material will cross from subcritical to supercritical => mushroom cloud.
As for the elevator shaft, there's no way that could compress the material enough to make any difference. Presumably the thing they're worried about is that the geometry of the shaft could cause the liquid to collect into a compact shape allowing it to reach criticality (the geometry matters as well as the density).
Will you trust private companies to produce ethanol, or solar panels, or generators for wind power, or CPUs for that matter? All these products may use processes that will never be perfect and may involve the spilling of toxic substances from time to time.
This was just a spill. No biggie. Nuclear facilities can deal with them. Accidental criticality has happened before though, with varying levels of consequence from none to fatality. There's an interesting synopsis of historic criticality accidents here:
c al.html
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/accident/criti
The whole "yellow liquid running into a hallway from under a door" thing is a bit Simpsons though...
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
Keep in mind that this event's worst case result from this would have been:
e gs/staff/sr0090/v29/sr0090v29.pdf
"If a criticality accident had occurred in the filter glovebox or the elevator pit, it is
likely that at least one worker would have received an exposure high enough to cause acute
health effects or death." Keep in mind that the result of the second worst event for nuclear facilities for the year. Compare that with the coal industry or oil industry where there are multiple deaths annually.
Also this is fairly old news since it was in the NRC's "Report to Congress on Abnormal Occurrences - Fiscal Year 2006 (NUREG-0090, Vol. 29)". Which has a release date of April 2007. Take a look for yourself its on page 14
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nur
The information is available to congress is not notified everytime an incident occurs. Unless the accident could cause things to happen off site the public isn't notified until the annual list of inccidents, primarily because it would just create unneeded hystaria as seen by this FUD while the engineers review the facts and figure out REALLY happened. As far as the company trying to hide it. If it is not reported to the NRC within 24 hours of the event they would likely lose their license.
But this isnt a big problem.
You only get a chain reaction with *compact* arrangements of fissile material. For liquids, their innate tendency is to flatten out, spread out, and head downhill. For example, if a bottle of uranium nitrate breaks, its going to fall into a less critical configuration.
Even if the stuff drains into some sump, not a huge problem. It might get more reactive, but being a liquid it's going to boil, splash, spatter, and otherwise get less critical.
Sure, a big mess, some radioactivity, but we're talking self-limiting here, nothing like a mushroom cloud.
`It is likely that at least one worker would have received an exposure high enough to cause acute health effects or death,'' the agency wrote.
How many people die in coal mining accidents every year? Do shoddy mining practices get released to the public every day? This thing is way overblown in my opinion.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
You're supposed to be outraged because the notion of oversight, particularly over extremely dangerous substances, was shortcircuited.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Here is a link to the original notice in the Federal Register: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi ?dbname=2007_register&docid=fr04my07-111 taken from the very much in flux list of civilian nuclear accidents at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nucl ear_accidents. This is not the way that the NRC usually handles accidents of this magnitiude. The lack of awareness of supervisors of what they were dealing with is pretty amazing.s -selling-solar.html
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Unless you know of something that wasn't discussed in the article, no he hasn't already shown himself to be a liar. I'm not saying he couldn't lie, but this episode really doesn't tell us much about his character.
Remember, he didn't shove the report under a carpet and deny it happening. He complied with a mandatory order from the NRC. When the NRC reviewed the accident and decided it should be included in a public report, he appears to have fully complied.
Lying would be wrong regardless of the intent, but I agree that this isn't as big of an event as some might perceive. The NRC suggests that one worker could potentially have received a fatal dose if enough collected in one spot to go critical, and there would probably be trace amounts of radioactive material released (like living near a coal plant), but that's pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. Had it gone critical it would have just sat and fizzled for a short while.
it's pronounced new-cue-lur
Pick one rant only, please. You can complain about weak nuclear power safety *or* GM food but not both. Unless the weak nuclear power safety *causes* GM food.
Sorry, had to be said..
"What exactly is a congressman going to bring to the table at such a discussion?"
First, and most important, they represent you and me at the table.
Why is that important?
Well, if a nuclear lab is having a lot of accidents, congress (representing the people) have a right to know what's going on to provide oversight to the people directly running the program.
In other words, if the people directly responsible won't fix the problem, congress can at least insist on better oversight.
It's in everyone's interest to know these accidents are occurring.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Disclosing this information would embolden the terrorists. We must not embolden the terrorists at all costs. If we embolden the terrorists, we have lost... embolden.
/bush
Oh Please for sure.
We are supposed to believe that 9 gallons of enriched Uranium won't go into chain reaction but if you spill it onto a floor where it spreads out the chances of a chain reaction increases?
when Pigs fly.
Check out the Barns radius.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Nothing glowing in the dark to see here. Move along.
Have gnu, will travel.
I would like to point out that nobody who comes to power has a full grasp of all that is wrong in the first months. Consider the massive mismanagement and corruption of the GOP over many years. Congress can only fix what they see and the Executive Branch has most of the info under lock and key for a very good and self-serving reason.
It's called the Chain of Command, A Senator can not give orders to the Military or other Departments directly. Only the President can, and currently Bush is in the top seat. That is still a very powerful spot regardless of approval ratings. He can't get re-elected so he's having his minions cover the asses of the re-electables in Congress and Senate. Government is a very slow game.
Besides, when your digging out a mountain of shit, try and find that once piece of shit thats more dangerous then the others. BTW, it looks the same as all the rest.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Which sounds very reasonable, until you realize that the worst case scenario with a reactor (say, a Chernobyl style accident) happens every year with conventional technology. We would have to have a Chernobyl event annually to compete with the death and destruction caused by the coal industry.
The fact is that if you are serious about trying to solve our energy problems, there is ONE and ONLY ONE option available which does not require a technological breakthrough - and that is nuclear power.
Uranium Hexafluoride in solution is yellow/green coloured, and is the basis for the mythical fluorescent green 'gas cloud' or 'liquid' in cartoons.
:)
Captcha was: Particle
What does that mean? It probably means that if things had been very different, there might have been a problem. The reporter, (Guardian, UK) doesn't seem to understand the words he's using. Facts are hard to find here.
There seems to have been a leak in a pipe, and a puddle of dirty water ran out under a door. The stuff was radioactive, well above the legal limit. That's still not much.
No quantities are used, except the estimate of total liquid leaked. That doesn't mean much without knowing the molarity of the liquid. For a chain reaction, it could be anywhere from a mild increase in background radiation and a few jouls of heat, all the way up to a prompt critical reaction (bomb). I don't believe that the bomb end is possible here.
Most of the article is just typical European Green Nuclear scare stuff with little substance and even less understanding. The main thrust seems to be that we can't trust the evil Americans. Or those evil scientists. Or anybody who doesn't support the cause de jour.
Accidents do happen, no matter who is in charge. There were controls, they did work to fix the problem. I saw no report that any of the material go out of the plant. Congress wasn't notified, but then, Congress can't overview several million reports a year. They need to prioritize too.
Word did get out, as the article shows. It seems the system worked. The problem appears to be that some persons political preferences were not vindicated here. In the end, it's just another case of much ado about nothing. Perfect for Slashdot.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"You better believe that a solution of highly enriched uranium is a carcinogen, "
That would really depends on how enriched it is, what else is in the solution, and how much of it there is. small quantities of enriched uranium are not that much more dangerous than uranium. Uranium has a very low spontaneous fission rate so it has a very low neutron flux when you have less then a critical mass. It is a heavy metal so it isn't a good thing to have floating around it isn't a nightmare material to handle.
I worry more about them almost having a critical mass of the stuff. That would have been bad.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This doesn't make a lot of sense. Uranium isn't particularly dangerous by itself (every granite countertop has a bit of uranium in it). Much like Slashdot, uranium only becomes dangeous when a moderator is present. Spent nuclear fuel is a different story, as it's full of extremely radioactive materials (in addition to the uranium).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The containers are usually barrels. The important consideration here is the total mass of the material stored. US facilities usually store the Uranium/Plutonium/Thorium/etc as disolved salts. The whole suspension is then labeled as radioactive waste, but the total mass of the material is fairly low. If the concentration gets too high, considerable heat can be generated. That has happened at some US plants in the past. The solution is to limit the volume stored in any one container. If you don't plan to ever use it for anything, a little boron helps too. To get a chain reaction, you need to moderate the reaction somehow. The neutrons have specific energy bands (read temperatures) where they are absorbed by the tartet neuclei When emitted, they have too high an energy. (Un)Fortunatly, the hydrogen in the water is a moderator, so it CAN work. The next requriement is to concentrate the solution, to increase the mass of the reactant. You need something that is the exact opposit of the puddle on the floor. That spreads (thins) the reactant out, reducing any ability to sustain a chain reaction. A mop bucket would work better. A lot of the posts above were positing a 'blue flash' you won't see one of those unless you are getting close to a bomb type of reaction. If you do see one, you are already dead. The blue is secondary radiation. To get enough to see in a lit room, you have to be way over the amount of hard radiation that would kill you. You probably have around enough time to arrange your funeral. Say a couple of days. Don't count on being able to do anything on the last day, though.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
From the /. story...
"solution spilled and nearly went into a chain reaction"
From the actual story....
"the solution potentially could have collected in such a way to cause an uncontrolled nuclear reaction."
Are they talking about the same incident?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
"Convicted of a crime I didn't even commit. Hah! Attempted murder? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry?"
I'm surprised you don't know basic words like that, since you were a nuclear operator. You should probably read more often.
I balked at the "nearly" comment as well, but don't know enough about it to really know one way or the other. Maybe you can add some insight. What is "highly enriched uranium in a solution?" If I mix really pure cane sugar into a glass of really pure water, neither is really pure anymore. And the 3% hydrogen peroxide we have in our bathroom (a 97% water solution) isn't anywhere near the 97% pure (3% water) rocket fuel.
Also, if some uranium solution was to somehow find its way into a container that reflected the neutrons back into the solution (am I getting this right?), wouldn't there have to be some high level of uranium in the solution to make it achieve a self-sustaining reaction (which I believe is called "critical mass")? Are the stored solutions really that uranium rich?
Thanks for whatever you can add (or correct).
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
We are supposed to believe that 9 gallons of enriched Uranium won't go into chain reaction but if you spill it onto a floor where it spreads out the chances of a chain reaction increases?
No, we're supposed to believe that an improperly sealed transfer line could allow sufficent uranium to accumulate in two possible places over the course of multiple transfer operations.
Report PDF
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
I read the article also and I find it confusing at best.
They talk about a possible chain reaction but then they kind of imply at the end that the only danger was possible poisioning of "only one worker." Earlier they describe the leak as only occurring into a "sealed glove box" but then they say they discovered it because "yellow liquid was coming out from under a door."
I mean which is it? If it spilled into a glovebox, then how did it jump up and run across the floor? If the entire room was a glovebox, then it's kind of a mistake to have a door to that room with a gap underneath it isn't it? None of this makes much sense to me and makes me highly suspicious of the whole story, especially when you add the fact of the coverup.
Probably this is just yet another example of how the Police State in the US is adversely affecting science, but it could be something more than that given the utter confusion of this report. I am finding it hard to believe a word these people are saying.
If this uranium solution was intended for a Naval nuclear reactor, the voices in my head tell me that it would be at about 97% enrichment. Critical mass for U-235 in a sphere is 50 kg according to Wikipedia. At 9 gallons spilled, let's assume 4000 cubic centimeters per gallon (not exact). Uranium has a density of 19 grams/cc. Do the math and that works out to about 680 kg. Now that doesn't really correspond to the sphere figure, since it's in solution and thus forms a plane (*MUCH* narrower cross section for neutron fission), but it's definitely a major fuckup.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
Let me guess, David Hahn was working there?
The spill going critical wouldn't have been major problem even with all that other fuel laying around. I'm more concerned about it getting to the water table where it would become an unstoppable national disaster. This country is highly dependent on ground water sources. I come from an area where private companies have already been proven to have contaminated the ground water supplies and they're still doing everything they can to weasel out from under it. They also had known for years about it and that it was them and said nothing. It's only hydrocarbons but still many wells have been rendered useless and what about the human and economic costs over the next hundred years since many people were drinking contaminated water and didn't know, even when they were getting sick and dying. Private companies care for little beyond profits even when it affects their own employees. They cover it up as long as they could and paid off government to make sure they would get away with it when the truth does come out. The contamination affects wells for over 50 miles around and this is just a little non-nuclear spill. A nuclear incident of this type would be a thousand times worse. Oversight and accountability matters along with public knowledge. How can the public decide on anything without information?
Notice this also happened before the elections last year. I wonder what else is being played down? Thanks to the current crooks in government there is guaranteed to be no accountability to my current situation so what about accountability in a larger incident? And what about a response to stop a small problem before its to late? Private companies will play with fire as long as it profitable, there is a number of massive pollution examples over the last 50 years to prove this assertion and describe corporate ethics and behavior afterwards. The goals of business and government have been proven to be largely opposites. When will the public and government get the message that private industry cannot be trusted with responsibilities that are supposed to belong to the government and/or the public. Given the business culture and current government corruption, I won't hold my breath.
Oh, by the way, I live in the nations breadbasket, so the rest of you should be really concerned since my incident was just one of many.
1. No company - or agency - can change classifications without oversight from a senior agency.
2. Classifications are in fact mandated by a set of strict procedures - nothing as slack as guidelines are acceptable.
3. There are oversight processes in place at every facility handling any type of classified material - period. It even includes very regular visits with plenty of hands-on inspections. It absolutely includes inspections of new or changed documents/classifications.
4. Therefore this couldn't have been anything less than hiding the information - perhaps within some narrow defintion of the correct procedures, and most certainly successfully - but no way it wasn't "hiding."
You are posting things you have absolutely no firsthand knowledge of - or are purposefully misleading about things - with an air of calm authority to pose supposedly thoughtful questions or new ideas, which to be kind, are nothing less than mendacious and you know it.
Who in the hell modded you insightful?
It is illegal per the Espionage Act of 1972 to disclose publicly or acknowledge having retained a security clearance. Do not even try to give me the rubarb that you've held any clearance whatsoever in your life as a response to this. And FWI, you wanna know what a LACK of reporting looks like?????? Read a copy of the NRC Newsletter - where if you don't have sufficient backup oil for an oil change to a never-used emergency generator, that MIGHT be used in case of an accident, you'll report to congress and you will face the consequences (a true story from a regulated (is there any other kind?) commercial reactor in the US). And anything in the military nuclear supply chain is even more stringent - way, way, way more.
Don't mod me flamebait. Mod me flaming pissed.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Had it gone critical, it probably would have been an accident on the level of the one in Tokaimura, Japan in 1999 (which was a criticality accident). A bunch of people died, and more got sick, but not exactly China Syndrome.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
I smiled
Indeed, and just imagine if it pooled someplace...
From the article:
http://www.kettering.edu/~jhuggins/humor/flowchart .html
The incident falls under Hide It.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
There are quite a few Libertarians and Greens at the local level — it just depends on how your particular locale "swings".
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I fully understand the thermal neutron life cycle. What I don't understand is how someone determined it was nearly self sustaining. What person determined that and how? Seems to be someone has enough information that this so called cover up did not cover up? It takes a lot of physics and mechanics to get U235 to be critical (self sustaining). I mean what is nearly? If someone walked by the spill with a glass of water (water, which is an excellent moderator, slows down and reflects neutrons because of the H2 being very close to the mass of an electron), U235 splits when electrons with an energy level in the thermal region are absorbed, maybe if someone had a neutron source in their pocket or if the floor it spilled on was shaped a little different, maybe if the temperature in the room was a few degrees cooler etc etc etc. Maybe some calculated it out but for the amount of physics and work that goes into achieving a critical reaction, I find it very hard to believe that a random spill almost produced a nearly critical reaction. The difference between total shutdown and supercriticality is not much at all, even more so for something that small, for something to get to that level but not quite there would be a freaking miracle. Again, maybe it did but I doubt it.
Haha, conservative paranoia, mod parent up!
"damn libral medya makin noise bout nukular waste spills - bs just tryin sabatage th troops arrr"
you "smell an ulterior motive"? seriously?
Well, we're seeing widespread increase in the amount of material that's classified. Considering it is a "Military-Industrial Complex," you've gotta figure that there's a bigass amount of CYA (that's cover yo' ass) planned into classification policy nowadays... Need to fight this problem throughout government.
Yea, the plants who don't have CEMS (continuous emissions monitoring systems) do. But almost all coal plants now have technology like this. Your numbers are way off or not current. Source, please...
The CEMS systems remove a LOT of the pollutants. It's a newer industry, but there are lots of companies doing this work. And it's not revolutionary. The processes are fairly sound, but somewhat inefficient (as expected). Here's one. Here's a nice list. of companies doing this sort of thing. They make a living helping power plants reduce pollutants.
I am not saying it's perfect because it's not. But methinks your number of 96K lbs/yr of mercury is probably old and outdated. These systems have been on the market only for a few years, but certainly enough to bring down the "highs" of the old days.
The accident that might have happened would have been similar to Japan's worst accident so far: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_acc ident. Because liquids take on the shape of the container, a spill in the floor is not as important as the liquid accumulating in a narrow shaft. See this description: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi ?dbname=2007_register&docid=fr04my07-111.t ter power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
--
Be
This is the problem with nuclear energy. People are incredible uninformed. Nuclear power plants in the US are regulated by the NRC which does certification of operators at plants every 6 months and a longer reviews every year. Nuclear power plants are probably the safest places to be in the country. They are able to take on direct plane crashed and severe weather.
For anyone who uses Three Mile Island as an example against nuclear power needs to get the story straight. The reactor did fail but it did as it was designed, no radioactive matter escaped and the meltdown was contained. Currently the other reactor at that plant is in use (yes people work at a reactor in the same building). Chernobyl was a huge blow to nuclear power but should not be used to damn it so much. The plant design completely different than the US design and not nearly as robust and safe.
The US gets about 22% of it power from nuclear energy. France currently gets 78% of its power from nuclear. And there has been a total 2 accidents that have completely tarnished its reputation. So I guess oil would not be used anymore if it were held up to those standards.
When an earthquake struck the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear facility in northern Japan on 17 Jul 2007, the IAEA inspectors came in to check on its safety features.
Maybe the US should allow the IAEA inspectors to check on the safety features of the Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin, Tennessee, so that the rest of the world can rest assured that the safety features at the facility is OK and that no terrorists can siphon off the uranium from any future leaks.
-Mr Burns-
"He gassed his own people!" - Shrub, pointing out how evil Saddam was.
Glad we don't have to worry about Saddam or terrorists trying to poison us.
Problem is, a lot of what's supposed to be consumed as more-or-less objective news these days is actually generated by astro-turf organizations looking to push their particular agenda. One of the clues to identifying such nonsense is the invitation to *imagine* potentially catastrophic consequences, a.k.a. think-of-the-children syndrome.
It's one thing to alert the public to a uranium spill and the potential for contamination. But when the alarm was raised that the liquid could have gone, quite literally, nuclear, that's when my BS alarms went off and I questioned the source and motive of the story.
Ibid.
Nuclear weapons (or, at least, the plutonium pits) are fabricated by the Department of Energy at Los Alamos National Labs. You can read about it here. There's no plausible reason for the Navy to be sneaking around with any extra HEU given that the only two things you can do with it are run submarine reactors and make bombs.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
OK, so what are the consequences if "9 gallons of highly enriched uranium in solution spilled and went into a chain reaction"? Probably nothing interesting, or they would have said.
Criticality can be a bit complex and is a function of neutron capture. The very same liquid that is not critical when it's in a large flat tray can become critical if the tray is tipped so that it pools in the corner. Other examples include two containers of solution poured into one container, simple evaporation, placing too many small containers together, filling the space between containers with water (a moderator), pouring a solution from a tall cylindar to a beaker etc. That's why places that work with fissionable material employ one or more criticality officers whose job is to know what seemingly harmless actions can result in unplanned criticality (and so, death).
The Wikipedia article on Criticality accidents lists several incidents including one where a tungsten carbide brick dropped on a sub-critical sphere of plutonium caused an accident.
The first atomic bombs were gun type. That is, a mass of enriched uranium at one end with a hole in it and a slug that fits the hole at the other. An explosion behind the slug drives it quickly into the hole and boom! The biggest technical problem was a fizzle where the slug isn't fast enough. In that case, the assembly goes critical and destroys the bomb before it can go supercritical and explode with full yield (that is, the force of a small explosion prevents proper assembly of the supercritical mass).
Good insight into my comment. I saw the flaw in my logic later.
I would call your notion that profit-seeking somehow redresses or creates accountability a misguided idea. Profit is the only motive. Not accountability. The point being that soon after privatization takes hold the previously public system with some (admittedly remote) chance of accountability then vanishes altogether and is replaced with profit, not accountability or efficiency.
I would call your second notion that the courts provide a stick to correct a business' actions a deeply misguided ideal. The only party that benefits in the courts is the lawyers.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Looking at this I see less of a problem with a largely non fissionable concentration of radioactive materials, and accidents do happen. However, when you get a private contractor that wants to do this as cheaply as possible combined with a secretive government entity you have pretty much a carte blanch to hire people who don't know what they are doing, screw it up, and get off without responsibility for poisoning people. If you want to debate about how companies can't get away with this I can send over a picture of a tailings pile the size of a large apartment block sitting outside of Colorado Springs filled with Arsenic. It has been there for about 30 years without any cleanup by anyone, and the mining company that mined for gold there (a bit different I know then radioactive materials, but similar concept) has had no responsibility to clean it up. So it just sits there leaching Arsenic into the ground water and rivers each time it rains.
You'd like us to think that would be sufficient, wouldn't you? No, education should not be allowed to progress beyond what is necessary to read such great works as "My Pet Goat". Anything else is emboldening the terrorists.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?