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New Legislation Proposed For Nuclear Safety
mdsolar writes "Recent problems at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant have spurred Congresspeople from Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire to introduce legislation that would allow State governors to request independent safety reviews of nuclear power plants. The reviews would exclude NRC employees who usually work on that plant and include non-NRC reviewers. This review model is based on one that found problems at Maine Yankee before it closed. Problems at Vermont Yankee have included a cooling tower collapse, a SCRAM caused by an un-greased valve, and failure of a safety system during the SCRAM. The plant is coming off of heightened review after shipping nuclear material with insufficient shielding. The plant's application for a 20 year license extension is also currently under review."
Nuclear power does have a safety culture, using systems like lessons-learned to attempt to improve safety. But, pushing aging reactors past their design capacity or refueling faster with fewer people seem like lessons learned just waiting to happen. Shoestring methods lack the kind of redundancy that provides for safety margins.
I work in the nuclear industry. Decisions to uprate power reactors are not made willy-nilly. There is extensive engineering work done to provide technical justification to the NRC, who ultimately must approve it. The power rating for these plants was originally established with uncertainty margins reflective of when they were built: the 1960s and 1970s. As our engineering abilities have developed over the past 40 years, we've been able to trim some of that uncertainty. Larger uprates are sometimes contingent upon replacing old equipment.
The Simpsons are, in fact, not reality-based television. There are no rivers of green goo or three-eyed fish. Yes, these things are commercial operations, and there are schedule pressures. In every plant that I've ever been to, in every outage I've ever worked, the length of the outage has not been controlled by loading and unloading fuel. Lots of other stuff goes on. The reasons outage lengths have grown shorter have to do with better technology, improved scheduling and management, and a well-trained work force. Not with cutting corners on safety.
Entergy is a very large company with serious management issues, some of which are imposed from outside. They have been putting the screws to their workers since the stock market crash of the late 90s and really lost it after 9/11. The security guards you talk about are really a waste of money, but their salary is nothing compared to the rivers of money that have been put into other useless "security" measures like machine gun nests, screens, parachute leg breakers and other crazy gadgets. Money has been taken away from engineering and maintenance to do this and it's starting to show. This is a bigger problem than quick outages, which could be achieved with good planning and hard work instead of shortcuts. Entergy is an increasingly miserable and dangerous place to work.
Security measures are pointless. Navy seals continue to prove that a trained team can easily penetrate all measures but there's not much they can do when they get there. They might be able to make the thing melt but exclusion zones around plants mitigate actual harm done to people and terrorists have better options. Nukes are not useful targets for terrorists.
Cut backs in staff and maintenance have been not been fun and their management style is more insane than ever. The number of forced outages have increased over the last seven years. Every person I talk to says things are worse because they have continued to fire people and not do enough real work. Presentations to upper management are supposed to substitute for routine upkeep. If you make a mistake, you will be fired. This is going to encourage people to cover ass instead of reporting problems. That puts people in real danger. Plenty of people are also on "personal improvement plans" where they get extra shit work to do before being fired. Overall less useful work is being done by people who are almost as worn out and miserable as the equipment. These are all symptoms of conditions that should not exist.
Nuclear power and Entergy in particular should be beaming success stories. Entergy invested heavily in nuclear power and should be enjoying tremendous revenue and profits. Every other kind of power is so fiercely expensive that DIY solar is feasible. All of that will be thrown in the shitter if mismanagement does what Osama Bin Laden won't bother to do.
Osama Bin Laden's attacks on New York were a tremendous success but only because we have reacted like idiots. The money for these extra inspections is going to come out of Entergy's hide and those who actually get things done will suffer the most. External inspections are only needed because GWB has mismanaged the NRC and pushed Homeland Security instead of real safety. Through hysteria and corruption, we have deprived outselves of a cheap energy source. I'm glad to be out of that industry.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Vermont Yankee has been a sore subject in Vermont for a while, and not because of FUD. Doing things like losing spent fuel rods, and then trying to spin the situation as not-such-a-big-deal is not going to endear you to Vermonters or their neighbors.
v ermont-yankee-issues/location-spent-fuel-rod.html
Link: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/plant-specific-items/
The rods are not in the cooling pool, they weren't found, and after observing this and other Yankee Nuke related issues as a concerned citizen I am convinced that Entergy and Co should get the fuck out of Vermont.
VT Yankee has been run too poorly for too long. Nuclear done right is a beautiful thing, nuclear done the VT Yankee way leads to disasters.
Regards from Burlington 05401.
I think this is an interesting point. Up until recently, problems at US plants had to be disclosed to the public and so there was a flow of information that could be broadly helpful. In Japan there have been coverups of problems that have lasted years and at the UKs Sellafield plant outside monitoring by non-governmental groups were needed to document the existance of problems. In the US, the culture is changing. For Official Use Only desiganations are being used to hide serious hazards and the DOE project at Yucca Mountian has experienced data falsification. In the linked article we see the NRC taking the position that the legislation would be duplicative with the plant operator cheering them on. Since when does a federal agency tell congress they can't pass legislation? They sound mighty defensive. I think that you are right that the US industry experiences too many problems and day-late-dollar-short maintenance can be seen as part of the reason. But, I'm not sure that what is going on elsewhere is better or if we just don't hear about the problems. As the US moves to greater secrecy, things may get worse everywhere.