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."

Comments

Entergy safety culture

[mdsolar]

Entergy, the company that has been buying up old reactors to try to run them harder as they reach then end of their design lifetimes gets quite a few safety related criticisms. They use solo guards at security posts so it is not too surprising that one was found asleep at Indian Point last month: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/27/ap405783 6.html. They were recently reprimanded for for a worker taking a nap at the Pilgrim Reactor as well. The Simpsons is reality based television.

They also try to cut costs by refueling quickly. They boast of 90% up-times because of their quick refueling, but with reduced staff, how can they manage to both refuel and to scheduled maintenance, or avoid deferring maintenance that cannot fit within the shortened down time window? In the present case they seem to even be willing to run at reduced power rather than to promptly address the broken cooling tower. Was the ungreased bearing that caused their SCRAM on a list that just got skipped to get more up time? They give the impression that controlling costs it their primary function. Installing required warning sirens at both Indian Point http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articl e?AID=/20070830/NEWS01/708300442/1025/NEWS09 and Vermont Yankee http://www.reformer.com/headlines/ci_6835609 has been lagging. In Vermont they want Boy Scouts to distribute warning radios rather than doing it themselves.

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.
--
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Re:Entergy safety culture

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Entergy safety culture

[zerus]

Refuelings can be performed faster these days because employees go through multiple dry-runs for the refueling and repairs before the system is brought off-line. This reduces exposure to maintenance crews and engineers. I can't fault them for going faster as the methods used across the entire industry are nearly identical and work over 99% of the time (103/104). Could it be a systematic problem at the plant? Maybe, as the number of tasks increase while the time each employee spends in the containment area decreases, you are bound to get a forgetful maintenance worker here and there; however, the goal of the dry-runs and checklists is to make sure that there are no forgetful maintenance workers. So this could be an issue with the administration there. If you have enough plants, the chances are that there will be issues like this at one of them at some point. The better part of this is that as these issues arise, the industry takes measures so that they don't happen again. Overall, the safety of nuclear plants in the US is spectacular.

Re:Entergy safety culture

[mdsolar]

The Simpson's bit was about the napping. I'm sure there are plants that don't eschew redundancy and post guards in pairs. The post doughnut nap is pretty classic in the show. In the case of Vermont Yankee, there are clearly problems with their over-rating generation since they keep pushing to up the temperature limit on their discharge into the Connecticut River. They also seem to be skipping steps in their refueling procedure. The degree that this impacts safety should likely be judged independently.

Re:Entergy safety culture

[ushering05401]

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.

Link: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/plant-specific-items/v ermont-yankee-issues/location-spent-fuel-rod.html

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.

Re:Entergy safety culture

[mdsolar]

I think it is hard to say that the safety at nuclear plants in the US is spectacular. The Three Mile Island accident is too large a blot on the record. It did have the effect though of reducing the growth of nuclear power and raising awareness so that some unsafe plants have been shut down. I think that finding ways to reduce worker exposure is an excellent thing, but double and triple checking is still needed. One worker's failure to complete a checklist should not cause a SCRAM since that failure should be caught. There have been recent problems handling fuel at the Erwin Plant and contamiantion problems at the Braidwood Plant. Security at plants has frequently been penetrated in drills. One gets the feeling that the learning curve is a bit too steep for the way the industry operates.

Re:Entergy safety culture

[falconwolf]

as the number of tasks increase while the time each employee spends in the containment area decreases, you are bound to get a forgetful maintenance worker here and there;

That's very simply to solve. Because of an accident I had I survived a Traumatic Brain Injury, TBI, and spent more than a year in therapy. Through that tyme it was constantly stressed that we keep a to do list. Note step 1, step 2, etc and make it as detailed as you need it. Next to each task, each task on it's own line or more than one line if needed, is a checkbox and as each task is compleated a checkmark is put in the box. Only when all the checkboxes have a check inside is the job done.

Falcon

Re:Entergy safety culture

[Mike Van Pelt]

Did you read the article you linked to?

On July 13, 2004, Entergy notified the NRC that the fuel rod segments had been located in the spent fuel pool. The pieces had been stored in a unique aluminum cylinder which was previously thought to be part of an existing in-pool structure.

This directly contradicts your assertion that the rods (two pieces, on 7" long, one 17" long, about the diameter of a pencil) were not found. They were found, right there in the cooling pond where the rest of the spent fuel rods were stored.

This seems entirely consistent with the truthfulness, accuracy, and attention to detail that I've grown accustomed to seeing from the antinukes in the past 30-something years.

Re:Entergy safety culture

[zerus]

As far as reactor design goes, TMI was a overwhelming success as far as the containment structure went. On the other hand, their public relations was a abysmal failure, which is why people generally think that nuclear power may be unsafe. Had their incident response been better planned, it would not have snowballed into as big an event as it did. During and after the event, no radioactivity of any significance was released as a result of the safety mechanisms built into the design. So really, it was proof that even in the event of a loss of coolant accident, the design is still safe. After that incident in 1979, mind you that it was nearly 3 decades ago when nuclear power was in its adolescence, what other large failures have happened outside of fuel processing facilities? None.
        A SCRAM is nothing on the safety of the plant, the safety is in the design of the redundant active and passive safety systems and containment. A SCRAM usually means operator error, which is why most plants are moving to digital instrumentation, control, and logging. Now I grant you that SCRAM's are not good events, as they cost the utility quite a bit of money and require NRC approval to restart after review of the events leading to the shutdown. With a reactor operating at nearly 1 GWe, that is quite a bit of revenue lost just in electricity production, not to mention the more expensive coal systems that have to be started to support the grid during the outage. So utilities don't want unplanned shutdowns, so their maintenance and operations records are usually spotless. That is why the industry as a whole have achieved a capacity factor over 90%, greater than any other type of electricity production. Utilities want clean safety records and to have their plants running as long as possible because it's more profitable that way. An ungreased valve at this plant was a maintenance error, and will probably result in that guy being fired (if he can be). I completely agree that redundancy in checking of work is necessary, and it is required in every plant so I'm not sure why they missed this (my guess is below). The risk of losing millions as opposed to hiring another maintenance worker at $50,000 per year is insignificant, so there really is no excuse for an ungreased valve.
          My own opinion, after seeing how some plants get screwed when dealing with unionized workers, is that the maintenance crew had a few issues with workers taking sick days during the outage as a retaliation for something, resulting in fewer people to work. Instead of delaying the restart, they chose to over-task those fewer workers and try to make the scheduled restart, resulting in their loss of millions of dollars of revenue, not to mention the bad PR. Bad PR in the nuclear industry is something no utility can afford, so they'll likely be on the S-list of the NRC for a while. In my opinion, unions in this country should take a good hard look at how the auto workers signed their own pink slips by screwing the manufacturers into moving overseas and south of the border. Forcing your employers hand is only going to raise the risk of putting many people out of a job.

Re:Entergy safety culture

[mdsolar]

Well, contaminating ground water with tritium seems like a failure to me, a large one. There were a lot of things that went wrong at Three Mile Island, and I don't think that containment can be said to have been adequate to the accident. Hydrogen accumulation, in particular, might have gone either way.

Entergy does seem to have trouble dealing with its union. The first reactions to the cooling tower collapse suggested sabotage owing to on going contract negotiations. With that kind of speculation going on, it sounds as though your maxum of spending enough to avoid an outage is not something Entergy observes. One wonders why shareholders would put up with management that cannot work well with unions. But, as with the cooling tower collapse, I expect that the problem with the valve will turn out to be a mangagment problem, forgetting to assign the task perhaps. I don't know if you've driven a ford lately. I buy American and I don't have high expectations, but I do kind of wish Ford had decided to compete on quality, efficiency, safety and price rather than putting so much into light trucks. Seems like they've shut themselves out of the market. Can't tell you how disapointed I was that my windshield cracked from having the hose run on it. Blaming unions for what are the effects of management decisions to throw reputaion out the window is something that will lead to continuance of the actual problem. At least the automakers are finally beginning to talk about single payer healthcare. Waking up to the real problems for American competitiveness is a start.

Re:Entergy safety culture

[zerus]

Most people don't know it, but tritium is constantly released from every boiling water reactor during normal operation, and not in insignificant amounts either; however, the effect to people/animals/plants is negligible. At TMI slightly greater amounts, than normally licensed for release, did diffuse into the ground, but with such a short half-life and it being a primary component of water, it makes people feel uneasy. In the health physics industry, tritium largely isn't considered that much of a health hazard, especially when it is diffused over a large area making the concentration rather small, as was the case with TMI and is the case with every BWR in the world. In fact, were it to be ingested in large amounts at once, it would still be far less dosage than flying a plane cross-country. Most people think of contamination breaching the reactor as being radioactive iodine or some other fission product. None of that was released in TMI, thus containment designs worked as they were intended.
          Unions aren't always to blame for this, I do agree that this seems like an issue with their management. The us-vs-them mentality kills any large work environment regardless of the industry. Their stockholders will be furious if the plant gets a NRC infraction causing a long downtime, thus reducing their profits greatly. If it turns out to be a problem at all of their plants, then I hope you don't have money invested in the energy sector because the entire industry will suffer. Generally, plants do pretty darn well with maintenance, but problems do happen. At the Shearon Harris plant outside of Raleigh, NC, there were quite a few problems years ago when the company was still Carolina Power and Light. Operators would press the wrong button when hearing an alarm (which happens about every 15 seconds as something needs to be bumped somewhere on an older instrumentation plant, which isn't the case with updated computer instrumentation mechanisms), causing an unplanned shutdown. The NRC told them to clean their act up, and since then it's had a pretty flawless record. So hopefully this won't cause too much harm to the industry, but it could if they let this kind of thing happen.

Re:Entergy safety culture

[mdsolar]

You had made a point of recent problems being non-existant other than at fuel processing plants, so I was pointing out that problems at Braidwood were recent: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2006/2006-03-21-02.asp. Sounds like Indian Point has yet more troubles as well in that article. It is amazing to me that anyone would let tritium escape. Helium-3 is very valuable.

Containment mostly worked at Three Mile Island, but it needn't have. There was sufficient energy to breach containment in the hydrogen build up. There were noble gases (fision products) that vented 13 Mcuries but you are correct that solids were mostly contained. What we know for sure is that continued use of nuclear power will lead a major accident just as we know that continued use of jets will lead to mid-air collisions. This is what bothers me about comparing nuclear power to coal. People point to mining deaths and deaths from pollution, all problems, but one large accident, which will happen, evens the score and then some. With the behavior of Entergy, it may happen sooner, but even the most flawless operation can't avoid the eventual large accident. Both coal and nuclear power need to be phased out.

Re:Entergy safety culture

[zerus]

Braidwood is an example of what I was talking about in that plants releasing tritium. They released more than normal at a few given instances, but there is still quite a bit that is released that is under the radar of most people. Suppose that you only hear about the company that released 1.01 billion tons of sulfur when it is illegal to release more than 1 billion tons. Other companies can go along releasing .99 billion tons of sulfur without hearing any complaints, but is the one that released a little fraction more unsafe and a horrible example for the entire industry? I'm making up the sulfur example, but hopefully you see my point as it is true in the nuclear industry as in the chemical industry. The legal limit for tritium release is quite large, companies get around the limits by releasing in batches at various points down a river (if that is the method of release). This allows the water to diffuse most of the upstream tritium such that the concentration downstream is significantly lower, and thus well within legal limits. Braidwood released too much upstream and got caught. They should be rightly punished as it was technically against the law, but this is merely a law in semantics. Though shalt not steal turns into people borrowing things on a permanent basis.
Tritium isn't all that useful for the most part. The 12 year half life makes it have a short half life, and the cost of separations would be too large to extract it down to a concentration that may be useful. This is why tritium isn't used many places. I think even gun manufacturers moved away from tritium sights because it was too expensive. Helium-3 is different though. Tritium is hydrogen (1 proton) with 2 neutrons while helium 3 is a helium atom (2 protons) with 2 neutrons. There isn't much helium-3 so it is very valuable. After 9/11, it's become increasingly expensive because it is used in one type of neutron detector. Fusion people would be out of luck as helium-3 is too scarce to use as a fuel on this planet. However, the moon has quite a bit of helium-3 according to space nerds, so maybe the answer is mining the moon.
Well, the inert gas release at TMI is another of those law issues. Noble gases in a BWR build up into the water and must be removed. The question is, where does it go? Into the air of course, but when and how much depends on the air conditions that day. The gaussian plume model is still used (to the best of my knowledge) to calculate dispersion of radionuclides into the atmosphere. This looks like a hot air balloon rising from a tube. If the wind is blowing hard in the upper atmosphere, the balloon gets dispersed horizontally at that height, which is ideal because this lower the concentration very quickly as it spreads over a much larger area, but when the wind is faster at a lower altitude, the balloon would disperse over a much smaller area, which would not reduce the concentration as much, so a lower amount is allowed to be released. 13MCi is quite a bit of radiation; however, as this is dispersed over a large area, as was the case at TMI, the concentration is significantly small. Most of the inert radioactive gases have half lives well under a week, so this is essentially gone in a month before the high altitude air even has a chance to permeate the lower atmosphere. The final story on TMI is that the radiation released wasn't that bad, but because they couldn't get engineers in contact with the right people, the situation looked worse and worse.
Coal does release more radioactivity into the air every year (as C-14 et al) than any nuclear plant does. This usually gets a pass, but now that people are looking into emissions, they're seeing this and wondering why they haven't heard this before. Nuclear isn't the answer for all our power either. In many cases, it's more useful to go with wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric; however, depending on the location, these type

Re:Entergy safety culture

[mdsolar]

That was kind of the point about discarding tritium. It is not so hard to separate, and you don't have to wait long to get a stock of Helium-3.

I am much less sanguine about the risk of large accident than you. If anything, systems are getting more complex, especially as the industry tries to squeeze more out of existing and aging plants. Under most circumstances, I would admire the ingenuity, but in this case, I can only see the increased risk.

Carbon-14 is low in coal because of its short half-life and atmospheric origin. Uranium and thorium are present in coal, but do not undergo the accelerated fission that occurs in nuclear reactors and so release daughter species at the natural rate rather than concentrating the very hot waste produced by reactors. Owing to the long half-life of uranium, the radioisotopes of iodine or cesium are rarely produced. It would be better to not burn coal, but sulfur, carbon and mercury are much higher reasons to avoid it than trace uranium and thorium.

I notice that per capita electricity demand in California is not rising yet many people want to move there. Perhaps some of the conservation efforts adopted there would make other regions attractive as well and also keep demand growth down. I notice also that 20% of new generation last year was wind power and wind is growing at about 40% a year. Presumably it will meet all new demand in about 6 years and be able to cut into the nuclear base which needs to be retired, Vermont Yankee and Indian Point being overdue I think. Gas is likely to be replaced by solar in about 15 years after which coal will start to decline as a fraction of generation if wind does not get there first. The place of nuclear power in a renewable dominated grid is hard to find since it has a hard time responding to changes in demand or supply. It wants to be always on yet it is fuel based. Storage seems a much better investment than inflexible and expensive power sources such as nuclear. With wind coming in at around $1.60/Watt capacity and solar at $2/Watt capacity (Nanosolar's wholesale price is $1/Watt) they are both cheaper than new nuclear power at about $2.50/Watt and they don't require fuel. Both wind and solar have further to fall in price so I expect they'll continue their rapid growth. It seems to me that even if safety can be improved for new nuclear power, the economics can't be very well.

I agree with you that mining deaths are horrible, the crushing deaths of an mine collapse or the lingering deaths from disease. Better use sand from the beach I think.

Re:Entergy safety culture

[zerus]

Reactors are not becoming more complex, that is a key thing on which the industry, both vendors and utilities, can agree upon with the anti-nukes out there. Complex reactors cause accidents because humans aren't that great at dealing with pressure. So the next generation of reactors, termed Gen IV, are relying on passive safety systems that require little if any human interaction. If something goes wrong, the reactor defaults to a controlled state whether it be a huge loss of coolant accident (LOCA) or otherwise. Before you go saying that legacy reactors are overly complex, massive upgrades and plant optimizations in both control and safety systems have been performed over the last 15 years. Introduction of passive safety systems have significantly lowered PRA's (probabilistic risk assessment) across the board. No one is saying that nuclear power may be a cure all, but it is a prolonged solution that has proven to be quite viable whether people approve or disapprove of it.

Renewable energy would be great it if works. I would love nothing more than to have my house off-grid, if only because of the "coolness" factor. Unfortunately, some renewable forms aren't good everywhere, and people even complain about those. Wind power isn't favored by some because it kills birds or ruins their landscape. Some people don't like the look of solar panels, so many home owners associations have banned their use in their neighborhoods. So unfortunately, while renewables are a hot topic right now, they still have to contend with people's preferences, no matter how petty they are.

I'll say again, it is pretty hard to separate tritium. It's bound in water molecules first of all, so the only way you can really separate it is with gravity-derived methods as there are no chemical differences. The weight difference is fractional, 20g/mol for tritiated water vs 18g/mol for regular. Now, the Canadians use natural uranium reactors with heavy water, D20, well that component of the reactor is very expensive. Separating tritium out of water is ridiculously more expensive as the massive amount of cooling water that is passed through a centrifuge would require quite a large system with a low separation efficiency per CCF of water. Looking at the cross section of hydrogen then deuterium, this double absorption of a neutron isn't going to be a very large product, which is why it is chosen as the moderator in the first place, so very small quantities are produced. The activity is high because of the relatively short half life, not a massive quantity. Now if you do a separations facility for the tritiated water, you would have to either couple it directly to the coolant of the plant or devise a shielded transportation method. Obviously, the coupled method would work the best. Now, you'll also have water at elevated temperatures, probably saturated, so the density will be lower. The loss of thermal efficiency from the separations facility would be huge as you would either have to reheat the feedwater before it enters the reactor, otherwise you'll have a rather nasty reactivity swing, or run the reactor at a much lower power for control reasons. If you see where I'm going with this, you'll see why tritium isn't separated out like this in commercial reactors. The economic cost of producing tritium this way is far more than the benefits would be.

Carbon-14 is low in coal because of its short half-life and atmospheric origin. Uranium and thorium are present in coal, but do not undergo the accelerated fission that occurs in nuclear reactors and so release daughter species at the natural rate rather than concentrating the very hot waste produced by reactors. Owing to the long half-life of uranium, the radioisotopes of iodine or cesium are rarely produced. It would be better to not burn coal, but sulfur, carbon and mercury are much higher reasons to avoid it than trace uranium and thorium.

I'm not sure where you were trying to go with this, but C-14 is a very large release of coal burning, not uranium or thorium. C-14 really won't do too much to anyone in terms of dose, but in terms of total radioactivity, this release is far greater than any other from nuclear.

Re:Entergy safety culture

[mdsolar]

If carbon-14 is measured in smoke stacks it is coming from the air intake for the most part. You can get some carbon-14 in some coal though the most recent date it will give is 40,000 years, about 7 half-lives. So that is one part in 128 of the usual abundance in air. So, assuming oxygen is completely consumed in combustion, you'd have about double the contribution of carbon-14 from coal compared to carbon-14 from the air coming out the stack. Most coal has undetectable amounts of carbon-14 though, so usually all of the carbon-14 will be from the air. The origin of carbon-14 in coal may be owing to uranium and thorium in the surounding rock. The largest signal for carbon-14 is above-ground nuclear tests. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14.

Governor Douglas' reservation

[mdsolar]

Vermont Governor Douglas expresses reservations about the idea that governors of neighboring states could call for a safety review. He feels there may be jurisdictional issues. In the context of nuclear safety, border crossing effect would seem to make this provision pretty sensible. It should be remembered that New England has pushed for scrubbers for mid-western coal plants because of cross-border effects on water quality.
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Vermont and renewables

[mdsolar]

Vermont limits the amount of net metering in the state no more than 1% of peak capacity http://www.dsireusa.org/library/includes/incentive 2.cfm?Incentive_Code=VT02R&state=VT&CurrentPageID= 1&RE=1&EE=1, while at the same time participating in the Northeast regional climate agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Perhaps the issues arising at Vermont Yankee will prompt Vermont to follow New Jersey and remove the cap, or at least follow Maryland and California and raise it.
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It's just capitalism at work.

[Anonymous Coward]

But, pushing aging reactors past their design capacity or refueling faster with fewer people seem like lessons learned just waiting to happen.

That's just capitalism at work. They're trying to extract the greatest value for the least amount of input. Funnily enough, we end up with the same situation as witnessed in a certain communist regime a couple of decades ago: unsafe nuclear powerplants are pushed past their limits by untrained and inexperienced staff.

For all the anti-communist sentiment we get from many capitalists, those capitalists seem very much inclined to follow the same path as their communist enemies. Let's hope that the results here are not the same as they were in the USSR in 1986.

Re:It's just capitalism at work.

[dattaway]

Capitalism is great, but if there's no review or auditing, they are going to give nuclear a very bad long term image. I'd rather live next to a nuke plant than a coal plant. They need to respect energy sources more than the almighty buck if nuclear is going to have a future.

Meltdowns are expensive and its likely our tax paid EPA Superfund will pick it up rather than their insurance. The greed needs to stop and they will run a clean shop.

Re:It's just capitalism at work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism is great, but if there's no review or auditing, they are going to give nuclear a very bad long term image.

And any review or auditing WILL be the result of governmental regulation. It's naive to think that any company will regulate itself when it can save money by not doing so. Since capitalism is about spending as little as possible to get the greatest output, these two ideas go against the very grain of each other. Capitalism is a wonderful thing, but like everything in the world, it cannot stand entirely on its own.

Re:It's just capitalism at work.

[Gamefreak99]

If there are market pressures that favor self-regulation, it isn't naive to think that they will. For example, Mattel and the recent lead-painted toys scandal: would you be willing to buy a toy for your child from them until they start testing their stuff? If they don't start regulating their assembly lines they're going to be looking at red numbers for quite some time. This scenario can't quite be transfered to the nuclear power situation, but if anything that is because there isn't exactly a capitalist system in place in regard to energy (that is, most consumers can't choose which power company to buy from thanks to barriers to entry or government intervention), but even so, the fault isn't necessarily with capitalism itself but poor business practices on behalf of the company.

Re:It's just capitalism at work.

[Goaway]

If there are market pressures that favor self-regulation, But there aren't. And no, letting consumers choose their power company isn't going to change that, as they will just go with the cheapest, thus introducing even more market pressure to NOT self-regulate!

Re:It's just capitalism at work.

[b4upoo]

Capitalism is a disease in itself. Maximum profits are elevated to a god like status while issues such as safety, quality or even honesty are left in a dung heap. And don't think these cooling towers are only an issue with power plants. Schools frequently use cooling towers as part of their air conditioning systems. Asbestos is a frequent component in these towers. Asbestos baffles are common as are cements containing asbestos in the structural members. These forms of asbestos do leech into the air as well as into water spillage and mists yet are not measured as "out of doors measurements of asbestos levels are not sampled.". The supposed reason for not considering outdoor exposure to asbestos in school children is that the asbestos might be coming from brake shoes or anywhere else and therefore doesn't count. I blew a very loud whistle on this issue in public schools in 1990. They still try to bury this issue. The Ft. Lauderdale area even trucked asbestos secretly into public landfills without precautions in that same era. The culprits still work within the school system.

Re:It's just capitalism at work.

[Gamefreak99]

Not necessarily. If that were the case, then why would certain people only buy American cars? Or choose to support eco-friendly companies? Or a company with a better pricing structure or better customer support? Price isn't the only consideration in choosing a product or company to buy (from).

Re:It's just capitalism at work.

[Goaway]

And have American cars taken over the entire US market? What about eco-friendly companies?

"Safe nuclear power" is not worth much if it's a fucking niche market.

Re:It's just capitalism at work.

[falconwolf]

But, pushing aging reactors past their design capacity or refueling faster with fewer people seem like lessons learned just waiting to happen.

That's just capitalism at work. They're trying to extract the greatest value for the least amount of input. Funnily enough, we end up with the same situation as witnessed in a certain communist regime a couple of decades ago: unsafe nuclear powerplants are pushed past their limits by untrained and inexperienced staff.

Another anti capitalist diatribe? This is in no way capitalistic, under true capitalism the business owning and or operating this plant would be held accountable. This company was not. It's amazing so many /.ers are anti capitalists, if it weren't for capitalism there wouldn't be any /., no internet, no computers. Actually these don't exist because of pure capitalism either, but more because of the desire for freedom.

"One of the reasons that capitalism is hard is because there is no one and nothing to blame for the failure of any given individual...except the individual. Blame of the other, in most instances, is incompatible with capitalism. Like democracy and freedom, capitalism requires self-reliance, respect for one's self including a recognition of one's value in a given instance (read "Leverage in Contract and Other Negotiations") and, perhaps most significantly, the willingness to accept personal responsibility for one's successes or failures. Indeed, what I have seen is that those who in fact are self-reliant, self-confident and who know their worth are often disparaged for those same qualities."

Falcon

Re:It's just capitalism at work.

[falconwolf]

And any review or auditing WILL be the result of governmental regulation. It's naive to think that any company will regulate itself when it can save money by not doing so. Since capitalism is about spending as little as possible to get the greatest output, these two ideas go against the very grain of each other. Capitalism is a wonderful thing, but like everything in the world, it cannot stand entirely on its own.

That is why I support both some regulations and a strong court system. With good courts those living near these plants would be able to sue the owners and operators of the plants, and win thereby receiving compensation. However because of laws like the Price-Anderson Act they can't be. The federal government has subsidized the nuclear power industry by shielding them lawsuits. With regulations there is no true capitalism, but are needed. However laws like this are bad.

Falcon

Re:It's just capitalism at work.

[falconwolf]

But there aren't. And no, letting consumers choose their power company isn't going to change that, as they will just go with the cheapest, thus introducing even more market pressure to NOT self-regulate!

You're quite wrong about that, sure some will go for the lowest price power but many who have the choice buy renewable energy. Those who don't have a choice can buy Renewable Energy Certificates, and those selling these certificates then use the money to support renewable projects.

Falcon

Re:It's just capitalism at work.

[Goaway]

Once again, what goddamn use is safe nuclear power if it's a niche market?

Old reactors

[zeromorph]

I can't say how it is in the US but in Europe old reactors (that have been wriiten off) are very profitable - much more than newer ones. Since old reactors are more profitable but tend to be less secure, this is clearly a case were legislation has to intervene, it's just to dangerous.

Extern, independent reviews in such critical businesses cannot be wrong anyway.

Re:Old reactors

[Rei]

There's a simple reason for that, and it has nothing to do with a security/profitability tradeoff. The basic facts are:

A) Building nuclear power plants is *very* expensive.
B) Running nuclear powerplants is, proportionally to other types of power plants, very cheap.

Hence, any extension of the lifespan of a plant is a windfall, and any premature termination or even cost overruns in construction is an unmitigated disaster.

In the US, building new nuclear power plants, by the 1970s, had become so uneconomical due to those initial capital costs that nobody wanted to build them. And it wasn't simply due to the technology that the capital costs were high; there were a lot of poorly designed regulations that were causing problems. There have since been a lot of "common sense" changes to the regulations that will greatly aid in that. Examples:

  * Can now apply for a joint construction/operating license. That way, plants don't have to deal with the nightmare of having construction approved, sinking billions of dollars into it, but then not operation approved.

  * Can apply for specific generalized plant designs to be pre-approved, instead of having to have each plant be approved right before construction. Then, when building a plant, if you're using a pre-approved design, you don't have to go through an expensive and lengthy review.

  * Can apply to have a site pre-approved. I.e., you don't have to go through the whole process of seeking a construction/operation license for a site only to have the government say it's not approved.

And so on. I don't think even nuclear opponents would find these changes unreasonable (apart from the fact that it makes it easier for nuclear plants to be constructed). The hope is that with improved modern technology, and with the improved regulations, soon there won't be any need for nuclear subsidies. They use the term "nuclear renaissance". I think we'll know in a decade or so how it pans out, but I'm hopeful.

Lastly, related to the driving force for this new legislation (accidents): Accidents happen. Even in the best regulated, most ideal nuclear power plant, or any industrial process, there will be mistakes made. Even releases of radioactivity aren't as rare as a lot of people picture. The issue is: how relevant are these accidents in the overall scheme of things? Nuclear power plants have the capability to cause *huge* environmental damage. Accidentally releasing a couple liters of colling water is not "huge environmental damage". It's not even as bad as running a coal plant for a few days. The only types of things we have to really be concerned with are any kind of accident that would cause the significant erosion of dirty fuel rods and their release from the core with a breach in the containment structure -- a level of damage which it's not fair to downplay. However, such a situation is incredibly hard to happen in even an older-style western PWR. I hesitate to say "impossible" -- anything is impossible, and failure scenarios are hard to predict -- but just from the standpoint of the containment structure alone, getting through that would be incredibly difficult ("huge hydrogen explosion" and "sabotage" are the only way I can picture, and even then, it's no guarantee). Chernobyl, on the other hand, was only able to happen due to a combination of utter incompetence of leadership and, more importantly, a completely idiotic reactor design. Re, leadership: they tried to run it as close to meltdown as possible, knowing very well what a meltdown would entail, and knowing that it became hard to control when they did so. Re. design: they built a reactor with a majorly positive void coefficient, with *no* containment structure, *and* with the most idioticly designed control rods imaginable. We're talking tightly fitting (no room for thermal expansion), with *graphite tips*. Graphite was their freaking moderator! It boggles my mind how anyone ever thought this was a reasonable idea. The problem with uncontained meltdown isn't killing people (although people will die). It's the contamination of huge swaths of land that's the problem.

Anyways, just my 0.16 bits.

Re:Old reactors

[MrKaos]

A) Building nuclear power plants is *very* expensive.

Building a *safe* nuclear plant is expensive

B) Running nuclear powerplants is, proportionally to other types of power plants, very cheap.

The "economic" calculations do not factor the long term storage of Nuclear waste, the decommisioning of exising plants or the poorly researched medical consequences of long term exposure to the elements that Nuclear plants vent (Noble gasses that decay into deadlier elements) as standard operating proceedure. Additionally alot of greenhouse gasses (as yet unfactored costs) are produced from mining the ore to refining the fuel. Carbon dioxide output used to power the enrichment process, CFC 114 (20000 times more potent than c02 as a greenhouse gas) and Uranium hexafluoride. When these factors are properly costed, there is nothing cheap about the Nuclear fuel cycle, open or closed, essentially making it pointless.

In the US, building new nuclear power plants, by the 1970s, had become so uneconomical due to those initial capital costs that nobody wanted to build them. And it wasn't simply due to the technology that the capital costs were high; there were a lot of poorly designed regulations that were causing problems.

Reflecting the true cost of of a well engineered plant and the cost of doing business even when subsidised by government. If nuclear power is so good, why should it need massive subsidies, why won't insurance companies insure them and why is governement (aka:taxpayer) forced to underwrite them? Are the regulations you refer to safety regulations? You only regulate these plants to increase public safety with advise from engineers and scientists, and the regulation only happens in reaction to an incident. The AP-600 and AP-1000 Gen III reactors reduce capital costs by eliminating equipment subject to regulation, active safety devices and the amount of structural concrete and steel. So todays nuclear power plant have decreased margines of safety and less scope to do the types of modifications typical now-a-days to extend their lifespans.

The hope is that with improved modern technology, and with the improved regulations, soon there won't be any need for nuclear subsidies.

If we *must* have a reactor produce one that lasts 1000 years - better yet 2000, stop uranium mining and run it of existing waste. Centralise it where the current 70000 tons of plutonium waste will be stored (not Yucca) and use that as fuel. The bottom line is our material science is not enough today for us to build a nuclear powerplant that can be operated without releasing radition and radioactive elements that accumulate in the food chain and be cost effective without slowly killing us.

Furthermore we have a limited supply of Uranium, perhaps another 50 years give or take a decade, so the risk vs return makes it unviable to what, boil water. All this just to boil water, it's a dumb, high risk investment, worth trillions of dollars and the return is questionable at best. Sure, study reactor design, make better reactors for when we have the material's to but the only place we should use this stuff is in space outside of our gravity well.

Re:Old reactors

[Rei]

Building a *safe* nuclear plant is expensive

And since regulations require safe nuclear power plants, building *a* nuclear power plant is expensive.

The "economic" calculations do not factor the long term storage of Nuclear waste

Long-term storage of nuclear waste is not due to a lack of funding. A kilogram of *unenriched* uranium (like you'd burn in a CANDU) produces something like 10 million kWh of electricity (i.e., several hundred thousand dollars of income). For just a single kilogram. The funding is there. The reason for a lack of long-term storage of nuclear waste is due to NIMBYism and NIMBYism alone. Nobody wants a repository in their backyard.

the decommisioning of exising plants

This is one of the main "subsidies" in existence currently that the hope is will be able to be phased out.

or the poorly researched medical consequences of long term exposure to the elements that Nuclear plants vent (Noble gasses that decay into deadlier elements) as standard operating proceedure

In normal operation, a nuclear reactor releases less radioactivity, *including* releases from mining and processing, than burning coal. And we're talking only about *radioactive elements* here, which are not the prime threat from a coal power plant. Here's a guide to how much radiation you're exposed to by various sources.

Additionally alot of greenhouse gasses (as yet unfactored costs) are produced from mining the ore to refining the fuel.

What, you think they get fuel for free? Come on. You better believe it's factored into operating costs. The thing is that you need so darn little of the stuff that the marginal operating costs on a nuclear power plant are very low compared to fossil plants. A kilogram of coal will run a hundred watt lightbulb for 4 days or so. A kilogram of *unenriched* uranium, 200 years.
Carbon dioxide output used to power the enrichment process, CFC 114 (20000 times more potent than c02 as a greenhouse gas) and Uranium hexafluoride [wikipedia.org].

Yes, uranium processing is dirty (although they don't *vent* hex or CFC 114 in any significant quantities -- and CFC-114 is not universal, and is being phased out, just like other industrial CFCs, while hex is what they want to process (venting it would be wasting money)). No, it's not anywhere even remotely approaching as dirty as coal mining, nor anywhere remotely approaching as bad for the environment as coal usage.

Reflecting the true cost of of a well engineered plant and the cost of doing business even when subsidised by government. If nuclear power is so good, why should it need massive subsidies

I just explained why; go back and read my earlier post. Nobody wants to deal with the nightmare having a project that you can be sinking money into for decades only then to have a regulator say, "We've decided not to grant you an operating license". It was a regulatory nightmare. Not the safety regulations, which were quite reasonable -- the licensing procedure was the primary problem.

If you want to see how nuclear has become more economical even *ignoring* new designs, go back and look at the history of power generation in the US. Despite no new construction of nuclear power plants, nuclear has been holding steady as a percentage of US energy production. How? Improved efficiency of operation. In the 1970s, nuclear power plants spent nearly half their time as downtime -- very different from the present day. This extra power is nearly pure profit. Some modern reactors, like the CANDU, now are designed to have *no* downtime -- they can be refuelled while the reactor is running. It's a whole different ballgame. Combining this with the new regulatory environment, and the fact that now *coal* and other fossil fuels are an insurance liability (due t

Re:Old reactors

[MrKaos]

The reason for a lack of long-term storage of nuclear waste is due to NIMBYism and NIMBYism alone. Nobody wants a repository in their backyard.

So why not lobby for a waste dump in your local area? NIMBYism alone hasn't stopped nuclear facilities, mines, chemical dumps or military bases being built so why not a waste dump?

Why? Because a *safe* waste repository that can guarantee safe long term storage has never been achieved, only the Swiss have come close. Because within the scope of bureaucratic wrangling a long term waste repository will be a compromise. Because transporting 70,000 tons of plutonium and over 91 million gallons of liquid waste around America would present logistical safety problems as yet undetermined and take up to thirty years to complete.

So while the nuclear industry talks about it's flashy new reactors, it can't even build a hole and it's completely inappropriate to discuss commissioning ANY form of new nuclear reactor until a permanent waste facility is established.

In normal operation, a nuclear reactor releases less radioactivity, *including* releases from mining and processing, than burning coal.

I've seen this laughable point brought up so many times like some sort of card trick that *suddenly* coal power is more radioactive that nuclear power. All it illustrates is how blaze ah the nuclear industry is with radioactive isotopes that are cancerous to humans depending on what element they analogue. Of course it's qualified with the phrase "In normal operation" to distance the nuclear industry from it's many 'incidents' where radioactive elements are released into the environment. Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and a plethora of 'accidents' that, because it's "an accident", doesn't get included in the radiation released by nuclear power plants cause it's "not normal operations". Beside older Nuclear power plants vent approximately 100 cubic feet of Noble gasses roughly every two weeks, that decay into deadlier elements, and thats NRC standard operating procedure.

It is irrelevant how much radioactive elements are released "in normal operation" because the entire supporting cycle releases so many radioactive elements and radioactivity and only exists to support reactors "In normal operations". Incidents are a fact of life for nuclear power, they happen because the nuclear industry exists, so telling me that the entire coal industry worldwide releases more radioactivity than Chernobyl released and will continues to release just illustrates that nuclear industry and it's supporters cannot take responsibility for it's failures and instead tries to qualify it with "In normal operations" . Beside's, all radioactive elements accumulate in the food chain.

What, you think they get fuel for free? Come on. You better believe it's factored into operating costs.

Oh, sorry did I miss Mr Bush signing the Kyoto protocol and implementing a carbon tax did I?

Thing is that you need so darn little of the stuff

But you have to process so much rock to get so little uranium that it takes so much energy to get the ore in the first place. 2.4 gigajoules per ton for soft ores and 5.5 gigajoules per ton for hard hard ores. Your argument on energy efficiency does not factor that to get a kilogram of uranium you have to process 500 tons of ore - and even that assumes an extremely optimistic extraction efficiency approaching %50 AND assumes you have a high grade ore. Even then your argument still doesn't factor the energetic remediation of the mine tailing.

Taking these factors into account we fast approach a point where the nuclear fuel cycle becomes energetically non-productive and pointless.

Yes, uranium processing is dirty

The entire fuel cycle is dirty.

(although they don't *vent* hex or CFC 11

Re:The sky is falling too.

[GPL Apostate]

I know what you anti-nuke people are gonna say, but Vermont is NOT 1980s Ukraine.

It sounds like they're working on it, though.

Refueling Efficiency

[tjstork]

I wouldn't necessarily say that you need to have a mountain of people to refuel a reactor quickly. A lot of companies do refueling simulations apriori and can set up a pretty good refueling script without the need for as many drones.

And, honestly, the need for safety at a nuclear power plant is so overstated that you can tend to drone it out and thus ignore those things that really do need to be safe. For example, when a company installed guard towers at its nuclear plants, the biggest dispute was that neither union or management could agree on the steps. It's just absurd, and to some extent, really, the union used the steps on the guard tower as a negotiating plank to get more money, more than any concern for safety or the obvious admonition - hang on to the rails.

Re:Refueling Efficiency

[mdsolar]

Refueling still takes resources and during the down time there are other chores such as maintenance on valves and their bearing that need doing. If you reduce staff and shorten the down time, then there is a greater chance that something will be neglected, or won't fit into that peroid of time. We need to wait for the conclusion of the investigations but it would seem that sagging in the cooling tower or regular greasing of bearings might have been deferred or neglected owing to Entergy's policy on rapid refueling.

I like solar, too, but eough of the spam

[ishmalius]

I know it's a slow Sunday, but please, enough of the sales pitch.

I for one am hoping that US nuclear operators will begin investing in newer technology, like the pebble-bed reactor. This one is an old idea, but recently implemented. It is inherently safer than rods & dampers, and is unable to go into meltdown. And the reactors can be smaller and can be located closer to the power-users for efficiency and economy.

Re:I like solar, too, but eough of the spam

[Grishnakh]

I disagree. I don't think we have any business at all building ANY more nuclear plants, and we should shut down the ones we do have. Nuclear is UNSAFE in America.

This doesn't mean nuclear power is unsafe everywhere. There are other cultures where nuclear power works great, like France for instance.

But we in the USA have no business messing around with nuclear power. It's a recipe for disaster. We're too greedy and shortsighted, and by letting private industry, run by greedy CEOs, run nuclear plants, it's obvious they're going to do it in an unsafe manner because they can squeeze more short-term profit out of it.

Soviet-era Russia proved they have no business running nuclear reactors, and we don't either. Leave it to people and cultures who can do it properly and safely.

Re:I like solar, too, but eough of the spam

[delvsional]

I'll stop supporting Nuclear power when all you whiny pricks turn off your electricity. It's great to see all the anti-nuke people come out to play when they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Greasing shutdown mechanisms? In PWR's the rods fall when they lose power. It's pretty hard to make them all stay without magnetic force holding them up. Aside from that there's boron, Aux feedwater, and many other systems designed to mitigate the worst case scenario (design basis accident). Even if they don't work, there's still a containment building. However I do happen to agree with you on the bean counter issue. That needs to stop. profit margins are good enough. there's no reason to save a nickel and compromise.

Re:I like solar, too, but eough of the spam

[Grishnakh]

I'm not anti-nuke. I'm just anti-nukes-in-the-USA. We don't deserve them, precisely because of the bean counters you mention. We don't have a culture that values doing things the right way, instead of cutting corners and making things unsafe not just to save a nickel, but to save money and give the executives a huge bonus.

If we had a culture that valued doing things the right way, and doing it safely, instead of trying to make as much profit as possible even if it means paying off regulators to look the other way, then I'd support nukes in the USA. Nuclear plants work great in cultures like that; France is a prime example. Most of their power comes from nuclear plants, and they haven't had any problems. But that's because they're more interested in doing things right than in giving executives big bonuses. So for France, nuclear power is the right choice. Not for America.

Having nuclear power in America is like having nuclear power in Mexico. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

Re:I like solar, too, but eough of the spam

[mdsolar]

I think that reactors are scaled up for economy. Vermont Yankee is small by commercial standards and its price for electricity is high (5 cents/kWh) compared to the industry average (a little under 2 cents/kWh). The larger scale to gain economy is also the reason why containment can fail and large scale accidents are possible. Going to smaller reactors, while safer, may not lead to reduced costs even considering reduced costs for transmission.

I feel that the solution being offered in the sig is relevant to the current problem. Producing power right at the point of use really does help with transmission costs and now that the cost of producing solar panels has come down, people can start saving money while eliminating the need for coal and nuclear power generation. It probably seemed a little heavy because I rudely took the first three posts. I had relevant information that was a little too detailed for a summary and had to leave the house fairly early. No offense was intended but you have my apology if any was taken.

pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[guardia]

It seems like there are still a few quirks to work out with pebble bed as well..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor#Cr iticisms_of_the_reactor_design

AFAIK, there is still no guaranteed safe nuclear reactor design! The only two choices we have (still) are:
1. using renewable energy or
2. taking the risk with nuclear.
(and maybe 3. keep polluting with oil)
Of course, let's hope research finds something better than these, but for now, safe nuclear does not exist! I'm not saying we shouldn't use nuclear, but that we should think and evaluate the risks properly.

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Your source lists a set of theoretical problems, none of which has been realized in almost three decades of testing. The one "example" of an issue is a stuck pebble being incorrectly handled during the very early experimentation with pebble bed reactors -- which led to a redesign of the reactor to fix the problem.

Renewables are not going to provide enough energy, ever. Yes, they should be used -- but there is no way we will ever be able to extract the exawatt we need for modern society from renewable sources. We have no choice but to make nuclear power work, and the longer we pretend otherwise, the more trouble we're going to be in, both economically and ecologically.

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[amorsen]

Renewables are not going to provide enough energy, ever. Yes, they should be used -- but there is no way we will ever be able to extract the exawatt we need for modern society from renewable sources.

So, modern society is destined to only last a few hundred years, maybe a thousand?

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[YU Nicks NE Way]

So, modern society is destined to only last a few hundred years, maybe a thousand? Have you got any idea how much readily available Th232 and U238 there is in the Earth's crust?

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[amorsen]

Have you got any idea how much readily available Th232 and U238 there is in the Earth's crust?

Not much good in a PBR.

The only good way to do nuclear is to place an unshielded reactor at sufficient distance from the Earth, and simply catch its radiation.

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[quanticle]

So, modern society is destined to only last a few hundred years, maybe a thousand?

Either that or we master controlled fusion.

The way I see it, there's an energy stepladder of sorts, with each step requiring more technology and expertise, but producing more output than the step before:

1. Human Power
2. Animal Power
3. Combustion
4. Fission
5. Fusion
6. Other, more exotic means of energy generation

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[cliffski]

or we could stop wasting energy. that's a European idea, hasn't really caught on in the USA yet.

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[YU Nicks NE Way]

The only good way to do nuclear is to place an unshielded reactor at sufficient distance from the Earth, and simply catch its radiation. Ah. So you oppose geothermal power usage? Bully for you.

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Really? Do you know how Germany pays for its "more efficient" lifestyle? You know, the one with the exponentially increasing energy consumption levels? By buying (nuclear generated) electricity from France. Italy does the same thing.

You might want to find out about the truth on European energy markets. It's completely true that the EU nations do a much better job of avoiding CO2 emissions -- for which they should be praised -- but it isn't through energy efficiency, but rather by source replacement.

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[foobsr]

s/Other, more exotic means of energy generation/Dark Energy/

CC.

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[quanticle]

s/Dark Energy/Vacuum Energy or Antimatter

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[Eternauta3k]

It seems like there are still a few quirks to work out with pebble bed as well.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor#Cr iticisms_of_the_reactor_design

Well thank you, I read the whole article and now I'm a pebble bed reactor fanboy
;(

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[MrKaos]

Your source lists a set of theoretical problems, none of which has been realized in almost three decades of testing.....which led to a redesign of the reactor to fix the problem.

I notice you brush over the flaws in a pebble bed in a very casual way AND you speak of theoretical problems for a theoretical reactor design. PBMR were operated for a short time in the late '80's and the only operating prototype has been going for seven years. It's hard to see where three decades of testing came from.

And we are talking about a graphite moderated reactor here, you know, like Chernobyl! But because we are talking about lower core sizes and lower temperature the theory is the traditional solid American concrete and steel containment building, which makes up a large proportion of the capital costs, is eliminated, Yippee! So in reality a PBMR introduces the same structural design flaws that Chernobyl had. Even the NRC calls this a "Major Safety Tradeoff", so how is this safer?

But let's explore the Pebble bed fantasy more, in a production facility how do you make the millions to billions of fuel kernels without imperfections? What about when the reactor is ageing, how do you prevent air entering the system and igniting the kernels? What about radioactive helium, how do you prevent that from leaking from the system?

It is totally inappropriate to talk of the theoretical safety of a Generation 3 reactor when existing Gen 1 and 2 reactors have not been operated without incident, when no reactor has ever been succesfully disassembled and existing waste problems have not been dealt with, because the real killer of PBMR is they produce deadlier wastes than PWR's.

Renewables are not going to provide enough energy, ever.

Oh really? when we haven't even explored the efficiencies we can drive into our existing systems.

We have no choice but to make nuclear power work,

Yes we do, we have a choice. We can choose what makes economic sense - which Nuclear does not. By factoring in energy efficiency a report titled "Nuclear Power: Economics and Climate-Protection Potential" found - by using government data - that worldwide decentralised electricity provided three times the output and six times the capacity as Nuclear power. Renewables make economic sense, thats why they are projected to increase by 170 times by 2010, whilst ageing reactors are being shut down because they are energy intensive, extremely expensive and take years to plan and build.

And renewables do all that without the generous subsidies that the nuclear industry receive.

Re:pebble bed isn't ideal either...

[foobsr]

You might like this vision (RUDY RUCKER):

"A Knowable Gaian Mind

There will be an amazing new discovery in physics on a par with the discovery of radio waves or the discovery of nuclear reactions. This new discovery will involve a fuller understanding of the level of reality that lies "below" the haze of quantum mechanics--suppose we call this new level the domain of the subdimensions.

Endless free energy will flow from the subdimensions. And, by using subdimensional shortcuts akin to what is now called quantum entanglement, we'll become able to send information over great distances with no energy cost. In effect the whole world can become linked like a wireless network, simply by tapping into the subdimensional channel.

This universal telepathy will not be limited to humans; it will extend to animals, plants, and even ordinary objects. Via the subdimensions you'll be able to see every object in the world. Conversely, every object in the world will be in some limited sense conscious, in that it will be aware of all the other objects in the world.

A useful corollary is that any piece of brute matter will be a computer just as it is. That is, once we can reach into the inner self of an object, we'll become able to program the behavior of things like rocks or log--without our having to attach any kind of microprocessor as an intermediary.

Humans will communicate at a vastly enhanced level. Presently I communicate an idea by broadcasting a string of words that serves as a program for reconstructing one of my thoughts. Once we enjoy subdimensional telepathy, I can simply send you a link to the location of some particular idea in my head.

Machines will fade away and, in particular, digital computers will be no more. The emerging interactions of Earth's telepathically communicating beings will become a real and knowable Gaian mind. And then we will become aware of the other higher minds in our cosmos."

Not immediately, though.

Ok, this raises the question...

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Why haven't they been allowed to do this previously?

Oh great

[Anonymous Coward]

There are probable 500 people in the entire country who are qualified to rate nuclear reactors and they are all employed working for the big energy companies or the NRC. Now the States want to get involved. I can guarantee that they are not going to rewrite their civil service wage scales just to accommodate nuclear regulators. Instead of ponying up the $250K+/yr needed for each qualified engineer they will instead hire inexperienced engineers from a "related field" for $80K/yr and the situation will look like it does for their state nuclear transportation officials: it will be a clusterfuck.

But this is probably what they want. Instead of regulating the older plants they will hire a bunch of inexperienced engineers to throw a wrench in the works and slow down the commissioning of newer safer reactors. Brilliant!

Re:Oh great

[R2.0]

It's already happening. The NRC passed new regulations regarding heightened security for radoactive materials used for purposes other than nuclear fuel - medical irradiation, industrial radiography, etc. Fear of someone stealing the stuff for a "dirty bomb". The regulations, on their face, are very reasonable:

1) 2 secured barriers between the public and the material. This can be an additional keycard on the room where the material resides (assuming exterior security) to 2 locks on a trailer - they can even be keyed alike.

2) A formal plan needs to be in place with local first responders - police, FD, whoever.

3) There must be provisions for immediate implementation of the plan if security is breached.

So the NRC has an agreement with about 45 states where the state inspectors implement the NRC regulations. You'd think, with such basic guidelines, there would be no problems. WRONG! Inspectors have been coming up with all kinds of stuff - installing security grids above ceilings to prevent intruders, installing motion detectors in the ceiling space, requiring the removal of all glass and louvers in any doors leading to the rooms, no matter how small. Keep in mind that the amterial is stored in a piece of equipment that weights several tons (lead shielding) and requires a crane and heavy riging to install.

To top it off, they won't give a pre-inspection or design review to let you know if your new construction is OK - build it, then they will show up and, if they don't like it, write citations to fix whatever they think needs fixing.

I hate to Admit It but....

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one area where the free market sucks.

The feds and the private industry need to get together, pick one kind of reactor a design a reference model. That should go through the regulatory hoops and once approved, never be subject to long regulatory or court imposed delays. Then, as much as possible, the parts can be prefabbed to reduce cost and increase quality and then assembled on site. Then all of it be enshrined in regulations and actual laws to the effect of "this is our nation reactor design, it is safe, so fuck off".

This is one area where we need to decide to do it and not screw around. Do everything by the book, make sure everyone has the same book and prevent environmental whackos from trying to rewrite the book in an effort to delay or close a plant.

Re:I hate to Admit It but....

[ScrewMaster]

I understand that's pretty much how France does it ... standardized a lot of their reactor designs and components. Maintenance teams can be trained at one facility, and be easily shifted to another.

Once a technology is mature enough that you can afford to settle upon a particular design for a while, it makes a lot of sense. That's entirely unlike the United States' approach to reactor design, where every individual plant is a goddamn work of art, a snowflake among snowflakes. I agree that large-scale fission power is where civilization needs to be (short of someone making fusion work, or some other breakthrough) but forty years of American anti-nuke hysteria has leached its way into our collective psyche, and infected government as well. Nobody wants nuclear power, nobody cares that burning coal is worse, that petroleum is going to run out ... I think people must believe their lights and air conditioners are powered by magic.

Given the amount of undue influence the corporate types have upon Congress, the chances of the Feds being able to ever enforce any kind of standards upon the industry are remote, even though I agree with you that it's a great idea. About the best the NRC seems to be able to do is delay reactor construction with paperwork for as long as possible. And you know, given the way the things are built in this country that's probably not such a bad thing.

Re:I hate to Admit It but....

[dbIII]

That implies there is a design that is good enough. It is not a solved problem - we had to do things like build a fast breeder big enough to theorically break even (Superphoenix) to find out that it wouldn't. We'll need to wait until the full scale pebble bed prototypes under construction in China and finished and run for a bit before we'll find all the problems that can be used to improve the design before going that way. We'll need to build a few accelerated thorium reactors of increasing size before we really know what to do to use it to generate electricity. The current well established designs are just expensive ways to boil water - great for a submarine or a country anticipating a sea blockade - but otherwise they are a side benefit of a military operation or pointless.

Homer Simpson will take that job!

[Joe The Dragon]

Homer Simpson will take that job and like other civil service works sleep when even he can even when his control board is full of lights red.

Not the EPA, the Treasury

[mdsolar]

The Price-Anderson Act already limits the liability of the nuclear power industry for the consequences of a meltdown by shifting that liability to the government. This is getting to be a problem because if you consider property values and casualyy payouts for a large accident at Indian Point, it would be possible to make the federal government insolvent.

Mod parent up

[kestasjk]

We need more people who know what they're talking about to cut through the damaging anti-nuclear FUD

The problems with "coal" go on and on...

[Joce640k]

The list of problems with coal reactors is a mile long but are they EVER discussed?

A: Nope.

Re:The sky is falling too.

[OriginalArlen]

Here's the thing that bothers me about nuclear power. They pretty much have to be sited on rivers or the coast to get water for cooling. The IPCC says we could be looking at 4-6m sea level rise in teh next century (they're not saying that's certain, they're saying it's a probability under particular CO2 emission scenarios.) Hansen says it's more like 15-25m, though the difference is fairly academic for sites at sea-level on the coast or on tidal rivers. So, how many of today's nuclear power stations will be under water in 100 years' time? And what level of probability - 5%? 1%??

Only idiots or the ignorant would claim, say, 1m rise is less than a 1% probability over the next century. All today's nuclear plants will still be there then - I should know, I within 25 miles of one of the first attempts to decommission an end-of-life facility, and it's a century-long process (and ends up with a 100' concrete sarcophagus holding the reactor core.) But say it's only 1%. A 1% chance of 10% of the world's installed reactors being under water is too much - much too much.

Re:The sky is falling too.

[IhuntCIA]

Naah...
They just forgot to grease the valve bearing. It is no big deal at all, the power plant has been running with 120% capacity for years. It is completely safe.

Imagine what could happened if they accidentally forgot to grease the safety shutdown mechanism.

Mr. Burns.

Frustration

[kidcharles]

I don't know who I am more frustrated with, the plant operators who allow safety/security to lapse, or the overreactors (no pun intended) who are knee-jerk anti-nuke and use every small thing to bash nuclear power. People need to wake up; we are facing massive climate change and in the short term (decades) there are two sources of energy that can serve as an energy backbone to meet global need: coal or nuclear. The only question is, do you want your pollution in the form of carbon, causing massive global warming leading to human and economic destruction in the form of wars over water and category 5 hurricanes, or do you want your pollution in barrels stored underground? How is this even a question at this point?

Re:Frustration

[Grishnakh]

The problem with nuclear is that the pollution will create a huge uninhabitable radioactive zone when you have a meltdown. Look at Chernobyl. This is why we have no business running nuclear plants in America.

Nuclear works fine in countries like France where they take safety seriously, and aren't worried about how to improve the next quarter's financials and create "shareholder value". Here, our plant operators will happily cut corners so they can save a few bucks. This is why we shouldn't be using nuclear power. In the right hands, it's perfectly safe. But our (USA's) hands are not the right hands.

We shouldn't be increasing coal power, either. Instead, we should just cut back on power production, and jack up the prices to astronomical levels. Americans need to learn to get along without air conditioning, and deal with rolling blackouts. We don't deserve clean, cheap, reliable power, because we've shown that we'll screw it up just to increase profit.

Re:Frustration

[kidcharles]

There are new reactor designs that are literally meltdown-proof (such as pebble-bed reactors. Also, while I agree that federal regulations at all levels have taken a beating under the current administration, we can't just sit back and go "oh well, can't trust the government" and just continue on an unsustainable path. That's defeatism. This country has the capability to do extraordinary things, good or bad. Also, this administration is coming to an end, I'm cautiously optimistic.

Re:Frustration

[Grishnakh]

I disagree entirely. I think "oh well, we can't trust the government" is absolutely the right choice to make. Yes, it's defeatism, but we need to admit to ourselves that we as a nation are just not capable of extraordinary things any more, and it'd be better to just sit back and allow someone else to take over. Our glory days are long since over, and our empire is in its decline. It would be nicer to the rest of humanity if we stopped trying to cling to it. The Roman Empire collapsed too, and so is ours.

Yes, this administration may be coming to an end (though not necessarily: Bush can easily issue an Executive Order and extend his Presidency as long as he wishes). However, the next administration is going to be more of the same; look at all the front-running candidates right now. Sure, if Ron Paul got elected, things would probably change for the better, but in all likelihood, he has no chance of being elected. Americans are too stupid, and easily swayed by the media who doesn't want anyone like Ron Paul in power. Most likely, Hillary will get the vote. And then we're going to pine for the "not-so-bad" days of GWB, just like we're now pining for the "not-so-bad" days of Bill Clinton. Hillary is going to take away our constitutional liberties even faster than Bush has. Things are going downhill, fast, and the leaders we continue to elect are contributing to this.

Call me pessimistic, but they probably said the same thing about the Romans around 300AD who said the Empire was going to fall and everything would go to shit. They were right.

It would be better for us to just accept our defeat, and give up trying, so that we don't realize our capability to do extraordinarily bad things as you note.

IAEA

[BlueParrot]

Ok, now call me naive here, but why not just do what everyone else does when they have trouble like this and ask the IAEA to inspect their power plants? This is what Sweden did after the incident at Forsmark, it's what Japan did after the leaks associated with the recent earthquake, and I believe quite a few other countries have done so as well. As an extra bonus, getting the thumb down from IAEA would be rather embarrassing for the NRC, so chances are it would make them actually do their job... Really, the US pays for a huge portion of the UN's budget, so why not actually use its services...

Re:IAEA

[turgid]

Someone with a clue.

Might I also add, that as a former Reactor Physics Engineer in the UK nuclear industry, the USA could learn a lot from the way we do things in the UK, IMNSHO.

Re:IAEA

[Registered Coward v2]

Actually, you'd want INPO or WANO to the inspections; they actually have an impact.

Well, that is not entirely accurate either

[WindBourne]

I am huge fan of IFRs (yet to be built), but I am no fan of those who spread dis-information. When you say that no deaths occur, that is just plain wrong.

In particular, the mineral had to be mined. Well, it was from the same mines that went into Gov. projects. A large amount of Cancer has developed not in just the miners, but local populations by these mines. To us in western USA, it is a BIG concern esp. since the feds will not pay for health care (in particular, they argue that some of the uranium went to private enterprise, so they are not responsible for all the digging, nor for the safety that did not occur). Now, we are looking at burying plutonium in Nevada, which still contains 98% of its energy. Well, that WILL cause issues down the road. Likewise, cancer has occurred in a much higher rate amongst early power workers (though the average American nuclear workers since the 70's are probably less exposed than I am living in Colorado (altitude, uranium, and radon) ). This is why I am a big fan of IFRs esp for the west; No more digging for 100 years as there is plenty of "waste" in America, Europe, Japan, etc to provide us for the next 100 years, very little waste issue (in 150 years afterwards, it is safe), and little to no health issues.

Re:The sky is falling too.

[WindBourne]

the oceans rise do not mean that rivers and lakes will rise. The truth is that few nuclear power plants are located that close to a nations borders (which would make them easy targets to take out during say a time of war) esp. the ocean. How many would be under water? I suspect that no more than 5 throughout the world.

There aren't any profit margins running a nuke.

[HornWumpus]

What the bean counters do to justify continuing operation is count the 'Fixed operation costs' as sunk costs (the plants going to run for 30 years at $/year, that's forgone). They dispatch on fuel cost and 'Variable O&M'. As the plants are generally designed and/or operated as 'baseload' (full power all the time) there isn't any 'Variable O&M' so you just dispatch on fuel cost. Abracadabra, expensive to run plants are operated like they were cheaper then Coal.

They say this all makes sense, even in a competitive market, as the money has already been spent.

I forget my Adam Smith, what is supposed to happen to industries that invest in uneconomic endeavors?

Unless costs change drastically we're just going to continue burning more and more coal.

Re:The sky is falling too.

[confused one]

Locating a reactor near a water source is a convenience, not a requirement. Besides, the rising sea level isn't going to affect units on rivers. By the way, you wouldn't be looking at on-site storate of the reactor components if the powers that be would allow the repository to open.

Sea level rise and nuclear power

[mdsolar]

The IPCC is saying no more than a meter, more like 0.4 meters. Hansen has been misquoted in a few places saying 25 meters, but this is a misinterpretaion of this paper: http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/l3h462k 7p4068780/?p=0f73dea5b8974dfa837377d459559a91&pi=1 . There the authors point out that 25 meters is where sea level got to the last time the Earth was as warm as we expect it to be. In that paper they discuss a few meters of sea level rise by the end of this century, and Hansen, in his paper on scientific reticents discussed 5 meters, but that group has not predicted 25 meters that quickly. They do make a persuasive case that ice sheets are lost in centuries rather than millenia.

A big problem for plants in tidal areas is that the London Dumping Convention does not allow nuclear waste to be dumped in the ocean, so existing waste, such as that stored at the decommissioned Humbolt 3 reactor will likely need to be moved. Humbolt 3 had a fairly quick decommissioning because it did not run all that long. Plants that have run longer may need a longer cool down time so getting a handle on how soon thier cores need to be moved to higher ground is something that needs to be done now so that their shut down can be scheduled. Building new plants in tidal regions seems pretty silly. I blogged on this not too long ago here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/08/cliffhanger.ht ml.

coal and nuclear power

[falconwolf]

f there's no review or auditing, they are going to give nuclear a very bad long term image. I'd rather live next to a nuke plant than a coal plant.

Yea, what most don't know or discount is that coal fired power plants both emit and leave as residue radioactive ash.

Meltdowns are expensive and its likely our tax paid EPA Superfund will pick it up rather than their insurance. The greed needs to stop and they will run a clean shop.

Yeap, those responsible need to be held accountable and pay for cleanups as well as injuries and other health problems caused by them.

Falcon

US power industry safety culture

[dbIII]

Throughout the world people use the EPRI books that go into detail about modes of failure in portions of power stations because they give you a huge amount of information about what can go wrong in nearly every situation and exactly how bad it can get. We get this information because there are a lot of plants in the USA where problems are left to run to destruction that would have been halted earlier in most parts of the world. Part of it is due to the wage cost fixation and the different rates of pay. In the US power system operators don't get paid much and more technical staff (water chemists etc) get paid a lot more - so there are plants where nobody knows that the tubes are rusting out at a rapid rate until a tube blows and you have to shut down for a few months for very expensive repairs. In a lot of the rest of the world the scientists are cheap and the operators are expensive - they are the guys who know how the entire plant works in great detail from years of experience and training. The US nuclear industry is supposed to run that way as well and the huge subsidies made it possible but some of the "crisis maintainance" culture has crept in. I would define "crisis maintainance" as fixing things after they blow up - a suprisingly common gamble taken, most likely a lot more expensive and the last stupid management fad you'd want to see in the nuclear industry.

Re:US power industry safety culture

[mdsolar]

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.

unnecessary

[martin_henry]

The plant's application for a 20 year license extension is also currently under review. This is a regular and scheduled process. Plants must apply for a licence a few years before their current one is expired, as the process is quite long. TFA makes it sound like they are under criminal investigation or something.

Re:unnecessary

[mdsolar]

In response to the cooling tower collapse, the NRC is adding scrutiny to the license application: http://www.wptz.com/news/14021491/detail.html. On the other hand, the NRC puts this sort of thing on OSHA: http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_6746693. To me, the idea of applying for a license extention while running a plant into the ground would seem to be something that might be intended to deceive potential investors, so the SEC would be the relevant agency to make the kind of inquiry you are raising.

And have American cars taken over the entire US

[falconwolf]

market? What about eco-friendly companies?

The US auto makers owned the US auto market until the 1970's oil shock. After than while the US makers kept building gas guzzlers Japanese manufacturers introduced fuel efficient vehicles. Since then the US auto industry has been in steady decline. While they are closing down plants Japanese companies are building more and more plants in the US.

So Japanese companies are giving US buyers what they want, fuel efficient cars, and eating the US companies' breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Falcon

Re:And have American cars taken over the entire US

[shmlco]

"... and eating the US companies' breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

Hey! That's MY quote!

FUD

[falconwolf]

We need more people who know what they're talking about to cut through the damaging anti-nuclear FUD

And what of the pro nuclear FUD? Whatever happened to "Too cheap to meter"?

Falcon

Re:The sky is falling too.

[dbIII]

but Vermont is NOT 1980s Ukraine.

Consider it: is the lowest bidder, not enough people to watch the contractors, the people in charge chosen by nepotism and some outright bribery always going to produce a better situation? Forget the blind patriotism - things can be just as bad unless care is taken so that they are not. The biggest problem as far as I can see it is those idiots that insist that it is "clean", "safe", "cheap" and who actually go out of their way to hide any evidence that it falls short on any of these. It would be better to improve things on all of these fronts instead of pretending that 1950s white elephants are perfect if you add a few widgets. There still remains the possibility to import better nuclear technology if the bribes of those pushing the antiquated solutions are ignored. "Clean" is for washing powder - using that word for something involving mining is really stupid, irrelevant and I would say fraudulent advertising.

Of course this is directed at the nuclear advertising industry and not the earlier poster that has simply been fooled by them.

I am huge fan of IFRs (yet to be built)

[falconwolf]

What of the waste? Nuclear waste is a big gripe I have with nuclear energy, along with massive government subsidies. If a way to eliminate the waste were invented, and not by taxpayer dollars, and most if not all subsidies eliminated I might support nuclear power. However I bet that if the money needed for the research and other subsidies were instead put into renewable energy the US could become energy independent and reduce pollution.

Falcon

repository

[falconwolf]

you wouldn't be looking at on-site storate of the reactor components if the powers that be would allow the repository to open.

And what repository would that be? Yucca Mt? Did you know it is in a geographically, seismically active area? Besides the earthquake near there several years ago, a government building was destroyed there in the 1970s from an earthquake. And people want to store nuclear waste for millions of years there?

Falcon

Re:repository

[confused one]

Simply put, we need to store it somewhere. If Yucca mountain is the best we got, then that's the best we got. It may not be a panacea, but storage in above ground casks in-situ is orders of magnitude worse.

So, now you're going to ask, would you say that, if it were in my back yard?

I've been trained as a rad worker. I've a degree in applied physics. I understand the risks. I live within 20 miles of 2 commercial power reactors and 13 naval reactors (counting ships in google maps satellite image). In addition, I'm down the street from Newport News Shipyard, where they build, test, and refuel nuclear aircraft carriers and subs.

It is in my back yard.

Renewables are not going to provide enough energy,

[falconwolf]

They better be able to otherwise we will run out of energy, or do you think other sources last forever? Once nonrenewable sources are gone, all that's left is renewable.

Falcon

nuclear power in France

[falconwolf]

Nuclear plants work great in cultures like that; France is a prime example. Most of their power comes from nuclear plants, and they haven't had any problems.

You may be interested in an article in IEEE's "Spectrum", Nuclear Wasteland .

Falcon

Take a look at IFRs

[WindBourne]

First, ALL energy is subsidized. Sad, but true. That includes Coal, Nuclear, Wind, Geo-thermal, Bio-ethanol, Bio-oil, and the largest subsidy is Solar. Now, with that said, America has SHIT loads of Energy. Most in coal, but we also have nuclear. We have large deposits of Uranium, but even more, we have large amounts of highly radioactive waste. That waste is nothing more than plutonium, which is nothing more than uranium that had about 1-2% of its energy used. That waste is what they are looking to bury in WIPP. That place will be polluted for 10s of thousands of years. I agree with you that this is a mistake. But there is a solution for this. The IFR (integral fast reactor). Basically, a fast reactor is a breeder. It is integrated because the fuel is loaded, and processed on the same site. The idea is to load the fuel once, and then have robotics separate the fuel and re-process it into the next level. In a nut shell, we allow all the fuel to burn all the way through. If America replaced ALL of todays power plants with IFR, AND put all of our cars on electricity, AND we grew them at the rate that we wanted, our current DUG supply of uranium (that is, already mined), all the plutonium that we consider waste (from bombs), AND all of the "waste" that is scheduled for WIPP, our supply would last 100 years. Interestingly, that would match up with the power plants expected lifetime. And what would be left? leftover material that would fit in the current WIPP and would have less than 150 years of radiation.

And can we provide all of our energy via alternative? Maybe? But, I would like to see us avoid maybes, and get going on getting America Off of Coal and Imports. While I am a huge fan of NREL ( or SERI in the old days ), I believe in not putting our eggs in one basket. IFR was started by Poppa Bush, and killed by Clinton (he did not want to do it, but kerry pushed it as part of a deal; BIG MISTAKE). W. is looking at starting it up again, but it is so far, just talk. It remains to be seen what will happen.

Re:Renewables are not going to provide enough ener

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Um, dude? You've got your scales backwards.

Here's a hint: why is the Earth's core molten? When answering, bear in mind that Mercury's, for instance, is not, and neither is Venus'. The amount of energy required to heat the Earth's core and keep it molten is many orders of magnitude greater than the solar flux at our surface. (Which is a good thing, seeing as the surface would be molten if it were otherwise.) Stumped? Go look up "Kelvin's age of the Earth paradox" and a guy named Becquerel.

We're going to still have enough U238 and Th232 to keep the core molten (barely) when the scales reverse, at the point when the Sun moves off the main sequence for good and all and evaporates the planet.

18 Tidal Plants

[mdsolar]

If you want to start counting, Calvert Cliffs on the Chesapeake, Diablo Canyon of the Pacific, Humbolt 3 on the Pacific, San Onofro on the Pacific, Seabrook on the Atlantic, Pilgrim on the Atlantic, Millstone on the Atlantic, Salem and Hope Creek on the Delaware Bay, Surry on the Atlantic, Brunswick on the Atlantic, Waterford on the Gulf, South Texas on the Gulf, at least 2 in Florida, St. Lucie and Turkey Point. In the UK, at least four new build sites have problems: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/reports/the-imp acts-of-climate-change-on-nuclear-power-station-si tes. That is 18 without trying too hard. Looking at a Florida map is very discouraging.

People need to wake up

[falconwolf]

we are facing massive climate change and in the short term (decades) there are two sources of energy that can serve as an energy backbone to meet global need: coal or nuclear.

Yes, we need to wake up. Conservation will do more than building new reactors. Something like 58% of the energy used in the US is used in the home. By using energy efficient building methods, appliances, and other electrical items energy needs can drastically be reduced. A properly designed home can reduce the energy needed for heating by more than half and can eliminate the need for ac. Geothermal heating systems can provide the rest of the heating needs. By using CLF, compact florescent lights, energy for lighting can be cut into a quarter. And LEDs cut it by 90%, unfortunately as of now most led lights are only good for spot lighting not area lighting. Other things can be done to reduce energy needs as well, such as plugging energy vampires, those things that always draw electricity even when off like most TVs and other entertainment equipment, into power strips that have an on off switch then using said switch. Those who build Off grid go through all this to reduce how much energy their home needs to be comfortable, as they produce their own energy they have to do this in order to avoid spending too much on building a large electrical system.

Falcon

sustainable nuclear power?

[falconwolf]

There are new reactor designs that are literally meltdown-proof (such as pebble-bed reactors [wikipedia.org]. Also, while I agree that federal regulations at all levels have taken a beating under the current administration, we can't just sit back and go "oh well, can't trust the government" and just continue on an unsustainable path. That's defeatism. This country has the capability to do extraordinary things, good or bad. Also, this administration is coming to an end, I'm cautiously optimistic.

Nuclear power is not sustainable! And meltdowns aren't the only reason people oppose it. Another concern is long term storage, like the hundreds of millions of years some waste has as a half-life, not the 10,000 years Bush wants just so Yucca will be approved. Yes, the US is capable of extraordinary things, and I bet if the US were to start an Apollo or Manhattan project in renewable energy, by 2020 it would be solved.

Falcon

Re:sustainable nuclear power?

[Mike Van Pelt]

You should probably not enter a grocery store or pharmacy. Every one of them has Pepto Bismol for sale, which is a compound of bismuth, a radioactive element with no stable isotopes, which has a half-life of over 20 billion billion years!!

Unless you figure out the fact that "long half-life" is exactly the same thing as "weakly radioactive." Non-radioactive substances, after all, have a half-life of infinity.

Re:sustainable nuclear power?

[falconwolf]

You should probably not enter a grocery store or pharmacy. Every one of them has Pepto Bismol for sale, which is a compound of bismuth, a radioactive element with no stable isotopes, which has a half-life of over 20 billion billion years!!

And the quantity of radiation in Pepto Bismol is a very small fraction of that in a nuclear power plant. But I rarely ever go near the pharmacy section of grocery stores and haven't been in a stand alone pharmacy in more than a year. That overlooks the fact that there is radiation that is good in small quantities such as solar radiation and radiation that is bad when concentrated as in the uranium in nuclear power plants.

Falcon

nuclear power

[falconwolf]

Once again, what goddamn use is safe nuclear power if it's a niche market?

None, until it becomes environmentally responsible I'll oppose nuclear power. And that includes the mining and long term storage of waste.

Falcon

Re:nuclear power

[Goaway]

With the possible exception of mining, nuclear power is by far the most environmentally responsible kind of energy production right now. But that was not really the topic, now, was it?

Re:nuclear power

[falconwolf]

With the possible exception of mining, nuclear power is by far the most environmentally responsible kind of energy production right now.

How so? Both solar and wind power are more environmentally responsible.

But that was not really the topic, now, was it?

Oh, but seeing as how TFA is about accidents in nuclear power plants, it is part of the topic. Accidents in these plants have health as well as environmental consequences.

Falcon

Re:nuclear power

[Goaway]

How so? Both solar and wind power are more environmentally responsible. I was only counting the realistically large-scale ones.

Oh, but seeing as how TFA is about accidents in nuclear power plants, it is part of the topic. Accidents in these plants have health as well as environmental consequences. This sub-discussion is about how the free market is incapable of keeping nuclear power safe and in fact encourages unsafe nuclear power. It is more about free markets than nuclear power.

Re:nuclear power

[falconwolf]

I was only counting the realistically large-scale ones.

Ah, so it has to be large scale to be realistic? Small scale distributed electrical generation, as solar and wind are capable of, are quite capable of producing enough electricity. Those building homes Off the grid prove it every day. And more and more people are doing just that.

This sub-discussion is about how the free market is incapable of keeping nuclear power safe and in fact encourages unsafe nuclear power. It is more about free markets than nuclear power.

So my topic was off topic but this one isn't, is that it?

Falcon

Re:nuclear power

[Goaway]

Ah, so it has to be large scale to be realistic? If it is to replace our current coal power plants and power our industry, yes, it has to.

So my topic was off topic but this one isn't, is that it? Do you understand how threaded discussions like those at Slashdot work? Each sub-thread can have its own topic.

Re:nuclear power

[falconwolf]

Ah, so it has to be large scale to be realistic?

If it is to replace our current coal power plants and power our industry, yes, it has to.

Like too many others, you're focusing on the 1 BIG Thing, energy source in this case, when instead people need to think of it more as a puzzle. Take a bunch of small peaces and fit them together. Use solar where feasible, wind where feasible, and others where feasible. Heck I read of a study by the DOE, Department of Energy, that concluded the wind potential in just the Rockies is more than enough to power all the the US. The northern midwest is a great place for wind as well. Minnesota produces several gigawatts of wind power and next door in the Dakotas, North and South, produces even more. In western Texas there are wind farms producing producing more. California is another state with good wind potential. Yet none of these state have filly utilized their potential. Why, during the rolling blackouts in CA a few years ago there was a wind farm sitting idle when it could of been producing electricity. Why was it idle? Because the wires, cabling, wasn't available to transmit the electricity. California along with AZ, NM, Texas, and Florida are great spots for solar power. Remember when the northeast had that blackout because the power grid failed? There were some who it never affected, they didn't suffer power outages because they produced their own power. Cod Cod is a great place for a wind farm but some NIMBYs are fighting siting a wind farm there. Although many can be called environmentalists, they don't want a wind farm in their backyard, someone else's backyard but not theirs.

So my topic was off topic but this one isn't, is that it?

Do you understand how threaded discussions like those at Slashdot work? Each sub-thread can have its own topic.

Just like you can start a subthread, so can I. Or are you saying only you and those you say can start one?

Falcon

Re:nuclear power

[Goaway]

Like too many others, you're focusing on the 1 BIG Thing, energy source in this case, when instead people need to think of it more as a puzzle.

Here is a puzzle piece for you: A couple aluminium smelting plants that draw several gigawatts of power to operate.

But, I would like to see us avoid maybes,

[falconwolf]

I'd like to avoid "maybes" as well, like "maybe no more nuclear accidents will happen." Maybe no more land will be ruined from uranium mining. Maybe we'll figure out what to do with the shell of the nuclear plant in 20, 50, or 100 years.

and get going on getting America Off of Coal and Imports

Same here. I read of a study that concluded the Rockies only, contain more than enough potential wind power to energize the whole USA. Minnesota produces several gigawatts of wind power as does both of the Dakotas and Texas. Several years ago while California had those rolling blackouts, there was a wind farm just sitting idle when it could have been producing energy. Why, because there wasn't any power cables to distribute the power. Cape Cod is a good site for an offshore wind farm. Most if not all southern states are good for solar power. Fact is is there is no One energy source that with replace either oil or coal but if a bunch of smaller projects using alternative energy sources are put together they can significantly have an impact, if not eliminate any need to burn fossil fuels and build more nuclear power plants.

I believe in not putting our eggs in one basket

I think that's the biggest problem alternative sources of energy has, people think in absolute terms and they want one thing to fix everything when what it will take is a number of things done together.

Re:But, I would like to see us avoid maybes,

[WindBourne]

First, the nuclear accidents are pretty silly. With the next level of nuc design, it will be next to impossible. As to the uranium mining, well, you obviously did not read my post. We would not have to mine for over a 100 years. And the shell, would have to be taken care of.

I have seen a number of studies about the wind as well. It makes the underlying assumption that we will cut back on energy, AND we do not grow. OTH, better studies have been done on a NUMBER of alternative energies. In particular, my fav is the MIT on geothermal. It would allow us to generate 20% or more of our energy at a fraction of the costs. But as you point out, ONE of the issues holding these back is a lack of a grid. Probably a bigger issue is that nearly all alternative energy (save geo-thermal) comes on its own schedule. As such, we need storage. www.skyfuel.com has what I consider, to be one of the better answers; using hi-temp salts to power generators. Of course, even better would be capacitors. In the end, if we can get inexpensive energy storage, then we can flatten our loads out. I would think that one idea would be to move away from the generator->user, and move to generator->storage->user, which would allow us to have different grids.

Re:Renewables are not going to provide enough ener

[falconwolf]

Um, dude? You've got your scales backwards.

Here's a hint: why is the Earth's core molten?

And how will all that nuclear stuff in the core be gotten to? Mining? Do you know what the deepest humans have drilled into the crust, and what the size of the bit was? You can use the geothermal energy you get to before you drill so deep to generate electricity. Here are some houses being built in New York that use geothermal energy. Instead of mining uranium or other radioactive metals, the geothermal energy can be used. That energy will be there just as long as the material in the core stays hot.

Falcon

energy storae

[falconwolf]

if we can get inexpensive energy storage, then we can flatten our loads out. I would think that one idea would be to move away from the generator->user, and move to generator->storage->user, which would allow us to have different grids.

I think it was Norway that came up with a novel idea on storing energy. There wind produces a lot of energy however because it's periodical or cylindrical what they did was to use excess wind energy to pump water above a dam. When the air dies down they let the water flow through the dam generating electricity. I hate dams but liked the idea still. Also usually when wind is slow it's usually sunny and when there's not much sun it's windy. You'd still need storage to smooth out the roughness though. However without a lot of work many won't accept this, they want one thing that fixes everything, but there isn't one that does not introduce problems itself.

Falcon

Re:energy storae

[WindBourne]

It was italy and sweden and it was done in 1880's. But that does not work everywhere. In particular, here in the west, water is more important than is energy. By exposing that amount of water it causes high loses. In light of what is expected, it is best to not use that.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

"Too cheap to meter"

[Scareduck]

is a bogus shibboleth.

Are you sure?

[mdsolar]

If you are concerned about the use of coal and want to replace it quickly, renewables are really your only choice. Nuclear power takes a long time to build, and the approval process is a bottleneck. Solar and wind are growing at 45% per year. For solar, this means replacing all generating capacity in 22 years, for wind sooner because it has a head start. Nanosolar is coming on line this year with a wholesale price of $1/Watt and prices are expected to fall further and faster than any other power source so that converting to solar is going to have a big market push. At a system efficeincy of 17%, residential roof space is adequate to cover 46% of current generation http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/08/roof-pitch.htm l. Production of 40% efficient panels is planned for 2010 under a DARPA program, sooner than any new nuclear power can be built, and this makes residential roof space sufficent to cover 100% of current generation. Nuclear power just can't cut it when it comes to impacting CO2 emissions.

One obvious thing that the nuclear industry seems to miss is that sea level rise can impact site selection. Thus, they are leading their proposal for new a license for nuclear construction in a tidal region on the Cheseapeake. The need for expensive review seems pretty plain when the industry makes such obvious blunders. It is the industry which displays cluelessness. This may be a consequence of a regulation culture.

It is hard to be respectful when calling people stupid. Consider looking a little deeper into the issues people raise before coming on the way you do and you might learn faster.

Re:not safe, not clean, and not cheap

[MachineShedFred]

Sounds like you aren't happy with ANY power generation, as they ALL have problems.

I would suggest the following in order to make you happier (and not as much of a hypocrite, since you're using said power to post this rant):

1. Find your breaker box.
2. Put your hand squarely on the biggest switch inside.
3. Move it to the "off" position.

Now you are no longer part of the problem. Also, sell your car.

Public schools = capitalism?

[unassimilatible]

How can capitalism be blamed for a problem at public schools? Most public schools, like my local LAUSD, have unionized county employees doing all the construction and maintenance. The district employs lazy dimwits who can't be fired unless they kill someone, driving around in big, Soviet-looking trucks, instead of farming jobs out to contractors.

Chernobyl was the result of socialist incompetence, BTW.

Re:energy storage

[falconwolf]

It was italy and sweden and it was done in 1880's. But that does not work everywhere. In particular, here in the west, water is more important than is energy. By exposing that amount of water it causes high loses. In light of what is expected, it is best to not use that.

That's oh so true especially in the western US. The Ogalala Aquifer is being pumped faster than it can be recharged. The same is happening not just all over the US but over the entire earth. This is getting to be critical in India, especially when a Coca Cola or Pepsi bottling operation starts up. Indian farmers see their water wells running dry.

Falcon

Yucca Mt

[falconwolf]

Simply put, we need to store it somewhere. If Yucca mountain is the best we got, then that's the best we got. It may not be a panacea, but storage in above ground casks in-situ is orders of magnitude worse.

But it's not the best site. When storage was originally proposed several sites were studied and the list was narrowed down to Nevada, Texas, and Washington. Both Texas and Washington had relatively strong congressional power and they had their states removed from the list leaving only Nevada which didn't have the congressional mussel. In the end it was politics not science that picked Yucca as the storage site for nuclear waste. However now, because it's so close, California is fighting using Yucca as well as those in Nevada.

So, now you're going to ask, would you say that, if it were in my back yard?

I live in Minnesota, quite a ways from Nevada and if anything were to happen it's have to go over the Rockies to reach me. So I'm not just saying Yucca is bad because it's in my backyard. Currently I oppose nuclear power but because waste already exists it needs to be stored somewhere and I want it stored in the best place for it. Yucca doesn't fit that by a mile, er several hundred miles.

Falcon

The hippies of vermont deserve a melt-down

[tiqui]

When you let a fictional movie (The China Syndrome) and an accident that killed, um, well... nobody (Three mile Island) convince you to abandon the world's best source of clean power there are bound to be consequences. Old plants like that should have been retired long ago and replaced with far better, safer, facilities. If we had treated ANY other technology like we have treated nuclear technology, we would all be living in caves.

Look at the one place where the U.S. nuclear industry has been free to design new systems and keep developing the technology: The U.S. Navy. We have nuclear plants that we operate all around the world, in moving vehicles, rolling and pitching, surrounded by corrosive seawater, sometimes in war zones, and operated by 18-year-old kids (for over 40 years). We have never had a meltdown or explosion. There has never been a fatality.

If we had a collective brain, we'd build several very large well-protected clusters of plants (probably underground where they cannot be hit by planes or truck bombs) with the best tech available and double-layer containment structures and we would staff them with retirees from the U.S. Navy nuclear program. This would give retired sailors good jobs and the ability to settle-down in one place with their families and would mean our plants would all be staffed with people with decades of discipline and experience (in far tougher situations). The facilities could be far from populations and very well guarded like military weapons depots.

large power plants

[falconwolf]

Here is a puzzle piece for you: A couple aluminium smelting plants that draw several gigawatts of power to operate.

Giant solar power concentrators. Solar Energy Generating Systems are able to concentrate the energy to create the power needed. This one has a 354 MW installed capacity, and it is being expanded. "The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that by 2020 there may be as much as 20 gigawatts of concentrating solar power capacity installed worldwide." However this can be ramped up.

Falcon

Re:large power plants

[Goaway]

Right, "by 2020" we can power a handful of these plants, worldwide. We can't really afford to wait that long. I'd love to see most of our power being solar and wind based, but you've gotta be pragmatic: It ain't happening any decade soon. In the meantime, we still need to get rid of the coal. And that means nuclear.

Re:large power plants

[falconwolf]

Right, "by 2020" we can power a handful of these plants, worldwide. We can't really afford to wait that long. I'd love to see most of our power being solar and wind based, but you've gotta be pragmatic: It ain't happening any decade soon. In the meantime, we still need to get rid of the coal. And that means nuclear.

If we can't wait that long nuclear won't work either, a nuclear power plant can't be built in a day. Not only that but if the power is needed now building one will take up a lot of power. The manufacture of concrete requires large amounts of energy. The steel required also uses energy. Though it's been more than 10 years I used to work in concrete construction for a concrete and masonry subcontractor.

Falcon

Here's your new law

[Randym]

"After January 1, 2008, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is hereby barred by this Act of Congress from granting any licenses for the construction of nuclear power plants within the boundaries of the United States."

There, that ought to do it. I'll throw this one in too, for pre-existing plants:

"The limitation of damages arising from a nuclear incident, which was limited to $560 million dollars, is hereby repealed. An enterprise engaging in nuclear power development is now liable for all damages arising from any nuclear incident occurring at a facility under its control. No exemption to this rule will be granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."