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NRC Relicensing Old "Zombie" Nuclear Plants
mdsolar writes "In the Dec. 7 edition of The Nation, Christian Parenti details what he considers to be the real problem with nuclear power as a solution to carbon emissions in the US: Not the high cost of new nuclear power, but rather the irresponsible relicensing of existing nuclear power plants by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The claim is that the relicensed plants — amounting to more than half ot the 104 original 1970s-era nukes in the US — operate like zombies beyond their design lifetimes only because of lax regulation spurred by concern over carbon dioxide emissions. But these plants are actually failing, as demonstrated by a rash of accidents. And some of the ancient plants are now being allowed to operate at 120% of their designed capacity. There is a video interview with Parenti up at Democracy Now."
The Chernobyl disaster happened because of a test that was being run outside of safe parameters plus some other coincidences. The plant was not being shut down permanently, it was being taken down for maintenance, nor was it anywhere near its designed life time at 3 years of operation for reactor 4.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Once again, the crowd that wants us to cut back our carbon emissions comes up with things we can't do rather than some suggestions. And their alternatives aren't viable for 10 years or more when they finally get all the kinks worked out, or electricity becomes so expensive they become economical.
.. mdsolar ... go back and stick your head in the sand until you have grow some more FUD.
We can't build new nuclear because of the NIMBY crowd. We can't build new coal fired because of the eco-nuts. We can't drill for more oil because of the morons in congress. We don't have to wait for Obama to ruin this country, these groups are doing it for us.
Hey
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
The design capacity is irrelevant if subsequent advances in technology have increased that capacity.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Chernobyl happened because engineers bypassed safety devices and did stupid things in a plant without a containment vessel. I've not read that the overrating had anything to do with the disaster. Pure, unadulterated human stupidity did.
Back to the TFA. Color me unimpressed. Using terms such as 'zombie', "decrepit" and 'unprecidented' without a shred of evidence makes me think that the article and the author have a bit too much bias to really believe. Sure, it could be true, but we run things past their design lives all of the time. With careful maintenance and modification it works well. Perhaps maintenance isn't being done correctly as the article suggests, but lets see a bit more evidence, shall we?
Even though the operators of nuclear plants are shielded from much of the liability of a reactor failure by the feds, no operator wants to Wilson a plant - it's just too expensive.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Thanks for linking to the Wikipedia article, we hadn't heard of this "Chernobyl" thing before now..
Reports into Chernobyl at the time of the accident were that the US had nothing to learn from it, reactor lifetimes have been extended because they underestimated the lifetimes when they were first built.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Oh no, nuclear energy is being used, the world will end! Must stop this at all costs, or mother nature will be unhappy. Nuclear is evil because it has the word nuclear in it and somehow related to the military! Now that thats settled it's back to firing up some more coal power plants to meet the needs of society....
What do you mean the greens are the ones stopping the building of new nuclear power plants? The FUD power trip on nuclear is so much more important than letting people have clean power.
Greenes did huge damage to this country by instilling fear in nuclear power. While Greens mostly support good things to protect environment their opposition and fearmongering of nuclear plants caused us to build economy on oil.
Besides that we canceled all large-scale development of next generation reactors (breeders, lead-cooled, etc.) capable of burning 99% of fuel and leaving almost no waste.
On the bigger picture in the last twenty-thirty years people became more comfortable and lazy and unwilling to take any risks. This affected everything in the society - cancellation of Space Shuttle program, public safety even kids wearing helmets on the bicycles. If there is no risk there is no reward but it seems we kind of forgot about it.
One of the lessons learned was don't let communist bureaucracies call the shots for management of nuclear reactors.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
I'm a supporter of nuclear energy, but don't let anyone dumb too close a nuclear power plant.
It's good we have this guy in control of a nuclear power plant.
Why not streamline the process to upgrade to newer reactor technology? The basics are there at these sites now (power lines, steam turbines, etc).
The real problem with nuclear power is and was (and will always be!), that there exists no solution for radioactive waste. Maybe we won't have a Chernoby like desaster again - however with every single hour we have nuclear power plants running, we are producing toxins that will be lethal for centuries. So come on, using nuclear power was a failure straight from the beginning!
1266953+17
Sorry to say that, but you are wrong. The Chernonbyl disaster happened when they were testing a new reactor. Reactor 4, where the disater happened was commissioned in 1983 and the disaster happened in 1986. The reactor has not passed it's design life time at the time of the disaster.
Summarizing, your post is just scaremongering.
The EPA won't let new nuclear plants to get built. If the plants get decommissioned it will literally cut our energy production by 1/2. It takes 10-15 years to build a new nuclear plant by EPA guidlines, and the population in that zone won't let it get built just as they refuse to let wind turbines to get built.
So our only short term solution is to let the NRC extend the lives of the plants. It is either that or force new nuclear plants to get built but it isn't cost efficient to do so.
there is a real energy crisis looming. Simply because people won't plan ahead, the oil will start to run out roughly when all the fission plants have to go offline do to safety reasons.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster in Pripyat happened because one of its reactors was running at a higher capacity than allowed and after its designed life cycle
No.
The Chernobyl reactor disaster happened because the operators decided to run a test, and turned off the automatic safety shut-down.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
That was the cause of the Chernobyl accident. The cause of the Chernobyl disaster, however, was the poor design of Russian nuclear power plants. Every reactor in the west is designed not only with several more layers of fail-safes but also encased inside of a steel reinforced concrete containment vessel. These vessels are built stronger than many bunkers and are designed to prevent the release of radioactive materials in case of an accident.
If the Chernobyl accident had occurred in every detail identical to history except with a reactor inside a western style containment vessel the only people injured would have been some of the reactor staff.
Also worth noting is that Chernobyl was quite exceptional in that the accident occurred during a test where staff had intentionally overridden several safety protocols.
The high cost of nuclear power is mainly due to the cost of meeting regulations. Note that a typical coal-fired plant would not meet nuclear regulations because they emit too much radiation. How stupid is that.
Admins, if this cockspasm insists on using the same href url for all his spam, how about writing a script to nuke anything referring to coolforsale.com?
It's still a long time to Christmas, and this jackass doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
According to him, if you're still running your car after the warantee expires, you've got a "zombie car"-- regardless of how much maintanance you put into it. He says a lot of scary things, but doesn't really have much real information.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Reprocessing fuel reduces the waste stream. And you can bury the waste (after you vitrify it) that you can't reprocess, say in Yucca Mountain.
Nuclear plants emits green radioactive smoke that mutates men into zombies! wait... since when has water vapour become green?
Industrial plants almost always run at rates greater than nameplate capacity Think of this: 5 plants running at 120% is like getting one plant free. Capital cost are huge for these project, and eking out every We out of plant so another plant does not need to be built is a always a goal.
Large plants are complicated and increasing rates are not as easy was moving a dial from 100% to 120%. An increase in rate takes time, for a 20% it would be several weeks of slowly ramping up, modifying protocols and even plant modification (if capital spending is allowed for the project). While to a lay person 120% sounds like the plant is 20% more likely to meltdown there are plenty of things that would go wrong first.
This will not end well
And they were using a HIDEOUSLY old technology for a reactor that would allow for a runaway reaction to happen. It is suspected the reactor was not a normal power reactor but a breeder reactor designed to make weapons grade.
Most of the American old reactors are NOT of a horribly bad design like that. Is there a risk? kinda. but if all we have are 3 mile island incidents that the worst was undetectable by most instruments then I'm all for it. Honestly the damned NIMBY and green idiots that kept us from chasing the nuke power option for the past 40 years are the ones to blame. we would have been mostly nuclear plants now all operating profitably. I guess that is what you get with a very undereducated populace. They get easily scared of technology.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I am a nuclear engineering/physics graduate student. Whether that makes me uniquely qualified to comment or just another industry shill is, I suppose, a question of which color Kool-Aid you drank with your Post Toasties this morning. That disclaimer out of the way:
This article is garbage. Others have noted the inflammatory language ("Zombie nukes?" really?). The author is misleading his readers on the issue of radiation-induced embrittlement and stress-corrosion cracking -- whether through ignorance or deliberately deceptive language, it's hard to say. You'll note that of the "shocking" lapses in power plant operations, ZERO led to significant releases of radioactivity. ZERO led to any worker deaths or major injuries. The worst of the bunch, the "six inch deep hole" in the Davis-Besse pressure vessel head, wasn't caused by lax regulation -- it was caused by deliberate fraud. Inspection records were faked, and the people responsible are currently serving time in federal prison. That does point out a legitimate concern: if the operator is willing to lie to the NRC, then bad things can happen. NRC could probably use a shot in the arm, but to suggest it's merely a lapdog of the industry is highly inflammatory, and evidence suggests, not especially accurate.
These reactors were licensed to operate for forty years because that is the maximum time permitted by law. Why was forty years written into the law? Because there was significant uncertainty as to how reactors would hold up in the long haul. The law was written conservatively. Designers built large safety margins into their designs to ensure compliance. Forty years of operational experience has demonstrated to everyone but the most anti-nuke environmentalists that there is sufficient safety margin to operate safely for another twenty years.
As for the 120% operating capacity... sheesh. These plants have had steam generator upgrades. More efficient heat removal allows the turbines to produce more electricity. The nuclear side of the plant is essentially unchanged. They probably drive the primary coolant pumps a little harder, but still well within their designed capacity. So yes, we're getting 20% more energy out of the same number of fissions. No, we're not jamming 20% more fuel into the core. Again: deliberately misleading, or poorly informed? Hard to say.
This is about squeezing every last cent out of existing power plants. New plants are extremely expensive to build and license so it's seen as just cheaper and easier to keep the current reactors churning out power. We aren't talking about offsetting fossil fuels just maintaining the power nuclear is contributing now. Under a best case scenario it takes around 10 years to build and license a nuclear reactor. Most also go radically over budget. I was around the unfinished reactor in South Carolina. Most think it was anti nuke people that killed it. It actually was the fact that they were 200% over budget and they only had one reactor half finished and were still many years away from producing their first watt of electricity. We literally can't build and license plants fast enough to meet demand. I know people don't want to hear wind and solar even though they are the fastest and easiest to get on-line. What does that leave us with? Coal. Coal doesn't just release CO2 there's heavy metals like lead and mercury that are released. Also guess how a lot of it is mined? They cut off the top of a mountain then fill in a neighboring valley with the mine tailings. Not only does it destroy the landscape but the tailings pollute the water supply. There is no simple and painless solution but we have to get it out of our heads that nuclear power is some magic bullet that will let us all us as much power as we want cheaply. It's slow to roll out and is very expensive to build the plants. It would cost north of a 100 billion just to replace the existing plants and that won't reduce dependance on fossil fuels. We simply don't have the money to replace all the coal plants with nuclear plants. Do the math and you'll be in for a shock. To replace coal it would cost more than the Iraq war and that doesn't cover clean up and storage. As a nation we simply don't have the cash to spend on replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power. The catch-22 is we have to get off fossil fuels. We need to embrace cheaper clean options. The problem is the lobbyist are forcing us onto things like corn ethanol which is a joke and just lines corporation pockets. I always hear nuclear called "cheap". It's hard to call it cheap when we're talking around a billion dollars for one reactor. For the cost of one reactor we can put 30K in solar cells on 30,000+ roofs. Just using the cash needed to replace existing nuclear plants would put solar panels on 3 to 5 million roofs. The service life is similar to a reactor and they require little maintenance. Reactors still need fuel and constant care. We can't keep depending on 30 to 50 year old reactors that have already passed their life expectancy and we can't aford to replace coal with new nuclear plants. We need to consider other options. We need other options than solar but it makes more sense to put the cash into other high tech solutions instead of propping up the nuclear industry.
Actually there is a solution for nuclear waste.
It is called fuel reprocessing.
With proper reprocessing the waste is much easier to handle. We are not doing it right now because it is cheaper to just let it sit and or to bury it.
The problem is most people have been fed a line of manure from the anti nuclear folks. Do you have any idea how much money some of them are making off of book deals, speaking fees, and "donations" that people make to keep the world and the coal companies safe from the evils of nuclear power.
If you want a test to see if they are using fear and ignorance as a tool there is a simple one.
If they mention Chernobyl when speaking about the safety of western nuclear reactors they are using fear and ignorance.
Chernobyl has as many simulates with a western nuclear power plant as the Hindenburg has with a 777.
It is impossible for a western reactor to fail like Chernobyl because no Western country would ever allow a commercial graphite moderated reactor with out a containment building to be put into service!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
technology is irrelevant unless the design is updated to take advantage of it.
Reboot macht Frei.
I don't feel like nuclear power itself is dangerous. I'm worried about the people who own and operate the plants. Most companies in this world focus on one thing: increasing profits at the expense of everything else. Forget safety. Forget responsibility. Whatever the industry just cut things to the absolute razor's edge to line the pockets of the owners and executives.
The repercussions of this attitude in the nuclear power industry are far greater than other energy producers. Mistakes (or outright negligence) in the handling of materials related to nuclear power production become the legacy of generations, and as usual we will only find out about these problems when it's too late.
Nuclear power can be clean. It can also be relatively safe. It's the people in the equation that make me anti-nuke. I just don't trust the owners, operators or regulators.
The Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster in Pripyat happened because one of its reactors was running at a higher capacity than allowed and after its designed life cycle. It was in process of shut down, but it was too late already then.......
This first part is incorrect. The reactor (no.4) was almost brand new having been completed in 1983.
The Chernobyl accident occurred while they were doing a test to see if with the reactor shut down the steam turbine had enough momentum to produce power to run the main cooling pumps for the 60 seconds before the backup diesel generators kicked in.
As part of this test they switched off the reactors safety devices and the rest is history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
On the contrary - the reactor was running essentially un-loaded. What the engineers performing the ill-advised test was that in the un-loaded state the reactor was highly unstable. The water being pumped through to make steam when the plant was on load acted as a stabiliser. Without this steady flow, the reactor was very prone to run away in the way it did.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Using terms such as 'zombie', "decrepit" and 'unprecidented' without a shred of evidence makes me think that the article and the author have a bit too much bias to really believe.
On the other hand, maybe they're onto something.
Should I stop driving my 'zombie' car now that the warranty has expired?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Using terms such as 'zombie', "decrepit" and 'unprecidented' without a shred of evidence makes me think that the article and the author have a bit too much bias to really believe.
yes ... "rash of" also indicates negative bias ... could have written "series of", "number of", but it had to go into the colloquial register ...
Happens all the time 1 2 3.
Also worth noting is that Chernobyl was quite exceptional in that the accident occurred during a test where staff had intentionally overridden several safety protocols.
Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be so exceptional, even with Western reactors. The Dutch have just admitted recently to accidentally turning off critical systems in the dark in 2001 (English article). Yes, that was a research reactor, not a power reactor, but "it's exceptional" seems to be a very bad thing to rely on for safety.
The cause of the Chernobyl disaster, however, was the poor design of Russian nuclear power plants.
Yeah, cooling your reactor by pumping oxygen-laden air through a red-hot carbon lattice is a really good idea. Excuse me, I need to go slap someone.
France generates pretty much all of its electricity from nuclear, with reprocessing, using pressurised water reactors. Not only do they have a number of handy engineering benefits such as isolating the water loop through the reactor from the water loop through the turbines, but they also have a particularly useful safety feature in that they're self-regulating --- temperature goes up, power output goes down. France has an excellent safety record; I can find only one major incident, which was a coolant spill in 2008.
They even do their own waste reprocessing into plutonium, which is then reused to generate more power. Unaccountably, terrorists don't seem to have stolen any of it.
The article mentions the mishap-plagued Vermont Yankee, currently near relicensing and with a 120% uprate a couple of years ago. Entergy, the current owner, plans to spin off ownership of half its plants, including Yankee, to a new firm financed by massive debt. This way Entergy will no longer itself be financially responsible for any aspect of these plants, while pocketing most of the projected profits from their next two decades of licensed operation in advance.
So Entergy's got little reason to concern itself with whether Yankee will work as advertised after relicensing. Relicensing is merely a requirement to spin it off, and relinquish Entergy of any responsibility at all, beyond immediate, massive profit.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
By having zombies run the places you don't have to give the workers protection against radiation since they're already dead. I hear they work pretty cheaply too, just give them some cow brains and they don't know the difference.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
IS SNPP on the list?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ding ding ding, give wytcld a prize.
Comparing Chernobyl to any American commercial reactor and talking about what could happen, without mentioning the severe differences, is just like mentioning a prior dam failure, hinting at the imminent collapse of Boulder dam, and not mentioning the little detail that the prior dam was made of packed dirt and not concrete.
Whoops, it's Slashdot, better go with a car analogy:
It's like planting explosives under one make of car, claiming that model blows up more than another brand, and not mentioning the explosives part.
Who is John Cabal?
No. See, there's something important you need to understand about engineering, which apparently the submitter doesn't understand either:
The plants were designed back in the days of tables and slide rules. They were designed with large safety margins, because the understanding of the science and the engineering was imperfect. Today our understanding is much greater, and we have very advanced computer models to help the design process. Ever wondered why modern bridges and buildings are much more 'delicate' than older behemoths? Because we can compute the actual behavior of the structures to much higher precision and accuracy, so the needed safety margin is less. It's the same with nuclear plants.
The plants were built to a certain design that had large safety margins... not because they were needed per se, but because the designers couldn't prove they weren't. Today, we can model all the behavior of the plants to a high degree, so we don't need the same safety margins to keep these plants safe. You don't need a cooling system with 50% excess design capacity, since we can prove that 25% is sufficient. We know now that the containment wall is twice as big as it needs to be, for the original design load. So, we can use the safety margins to run the plants longer and to higher capacity than the original design.
In the engineering world, this is done all the time. The only 'news' here is that it's being done with nuclear power plants. But still, that's no big deal. This is just the new anti-nuclear luddite rallying cry.
Using terms such as 'zombie', "decrepit" and 'unprecidented' without a shred of evidence
Hoping to fool people who didn't read the article?
It presents copious evidence by citing numerous specific incidents at various facilities, and clearly detailing how these incidents are related to age and lax safety culture.
Hence "decrepit."
It also discusses specific regulators at NRC, their backgrounds, and their resumes (which involve jumping between the regulatory agency and cushy jobs at the companies they regulate). It cites a specific ethics violation.
"Zombie" is perfectly valid analogy considering that these plants are unquestionably operating beyond their original design "lifetime." Quite a bit less vivid than many other terms and analogies I've been subjected to by the news media lately: i.e. who "hates America," who'se part of a "Nazi regime," who'se "socialist," who "sides with terrorists," and so forth.
The events described in the article, both in terms of safety incidents and regulatory activity, are prima facie unprecedented.
You fail. Good day, sir.
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Please note that all the time I'm talking specifically about the biosphere.
One that hath name thou can not otter
...the most salient criticism raised by the "Greenes" was that we were not, as a people, disposed to live up to the "zero tolerance" policy for failure that large scale industrial use of nuclear materials really demands. We always make mistakes eventually. Even if it takes 50 or 100 years, then it means we only have 50 or 100 years until a major nuclear disaster and i.e. epic human suffering, unprecedented economic calamity, the depopulation of a major urban area, the success of a fanatical act of terrorism, etc.
This article rather underscores the point. We have become complacent that we are smart enough and organized enough to use nuclear power safely. As we become complacent, this leads to a false sense of security, laziness and corruption on the part of operators and regulators, apathy on the part of the public, and the decline of safety culture. Now I am sure you will have no problem moving your family in down the street from one of these plants, right?
Right?
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Most of the American old reactors are NOT of a horribly bad design like that. Is there a risk? kinda. but if all we have are 3 mile island incidents that the worst was undetectable by most instruments then I'm all for it.
Undetectable by most instruments the radioactive contamination at the site ?
I think you would have some cleanup crews who would disagree with you there.
You also should use the term accident not incident as it was rated as a 5 on INES scale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale
When I read about the Three mile island accident it chills me to the bone.
What happened at Three mile island was the partial melt down of the rector core and then a hydrogen bubble formed in the reactor vessel . By "sheer dumb luck" this bubble did not explode.
it took them until 1993 to cleanup the site and the accident occurred in 1979.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
While the post says I wrote that, your edits are a big improvement.
no, that's what happen if you use all your uranium and plutonium for atomic bombs :)
Have none of these people played Sim City? Running your power plants over capacity never ends well!
No sig here...
Yeah and "zombie" processes. I'm looking at you Transmission!
The approval of license extensions for plants with substandard and inadequate containment like Oyster Creek is the point of the article. You are making the case for Parenti.
It's gratifying to read some comments by someone familiar with the issues.
I have a few questions:
I am inured to metaphors in the news. I'm afraid Fox News, etc. has these guys beat by about 100x, so "zombie" doesn't impress me particularly. But as a story about a decaying regulatory agency, and the complexities of determining a safety regime for a set of fiercely complex 40 year old machines (which incidentally could cause a spectacular incident that would very likely end your industry, and thus your civilian career, if allowed to fail), it comes across to the layman as entirely plausible - and I do not exactly see your counterarguments yet - assuming you actually disagree with the premise, which as far as I read, was only that we need more stringent oversight of the industry (and not even that the extensions and capacity upgrades should be stopped or rolled back).
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The Martian rovers are operating years past their 90 day expected lifetime. Why no "zombie" smear against them?
'Do you have any idea how much money some of them are making off of book deals, speaking fees, and "donations" that people make to keep the world and the coal companies safe from the evils of nuclear power.'
FOLLOW THE MONEY is always a good rule. In the case of "green" or "anti-whatever" energy, the money trail invariably points at some special interest (including the aforementioned professional fearmongers) that can't make it in the open market, but stands to make a killing if the competition is made to look bad, or better yet is subjected to more than their fair share of restraints.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
79%, most, not "pretty much all".
I think it is odd in this, our age of progress and technological prowess that we can no longer afford the infrastructure of the past.
New nuke plants are now somehow out of reach, as are new oil refining facilities, rail, bridges, sewers. Somehow in the last 30 years we lost the ability to undertake large infrastructure, which you would think given the wealth, technology, etc... that it would be easier.
I wonder if this is political or simply part of a new phase. It just seems to me that everything was constructed in the 60's and 70's and now everything is crumbling and falling apart around us, and we lack the ability or will replace it.
I happen to think the story is controversial as well, but because it attributes the irresponsible relicensing of nuclear plants to concern over carbon dioxide emissions when actually it appears that it has more to do with profits and a lack of concern for safety. The big issue with carbon dioxide emissions actually has to do with the opportunity cost related to new nuclear plants which, when subsidized with loan guarantees that will surely be exercised at taxpayer expense, lead to postponing the use of less costly low carbon energy generation and thus leads to an increase in accumulated emissions. We are due for another meltdown and that will reverse the relicensing that has been going on, existing natural gas generation capacity will fill in temporarily, but effort wasted on new nuclear power is a serious problem for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Nevertheless, the article is worth reading since it chronicle the ongoing and frequent safety violations at our aging nuclear plants. The Nation is the oldest weekly magazine in the country and has a long history of investigative journalism.
Actually, no. The disaster happened because a test was carried out less experienced night operators who did every don't in the manual trying to follow a test procedure they did not understand. The last straw was removing more control rods completely from the core than was permitted for any reason in an attempt to brute force their way past xenon poisoning rather than scrubbing the test and allowing the iodine and xenon to decay before attempting to increase output as the manual required. At that point the reactor was in an extremely unstable condition.
They then made matters worse by reducing the coolant flow to the point that voids formed in the core (the reduced flow was part of the test procedure). In that particular reactor design, voids increase the reaction rate. That taken together DID "burn off" the xenon and suddenly the reacter was way over it's design limits. Compounding the problem, the tips of the control rods were inert but displace water (effectively a void), so when they tried to scram the reactor it exploded instead.
During all of this, several safety systems that would have scramed the reactor in time were manually disabled.
Put another way, they started with an intrinsically dangerous reactor design (not permitted in the U.S.), overrode a number of safety systems, mis-handled the power level, then attempted to recover by performing an absolutely prohibited operation. Finally now that the reactor was in an incredibly precarious state they further provoked disaster by performing an experimental test procedure (whose carefully planned pre-conditions were not in any way met).
Notably, the reactor went prompt critical rather than supercritical as a nuclear weapon would. The explosive yield was about a ton of TNT (compared to 10 kilotons for a small weapon).
So, unsurprisingly it shows that it's a bad idea to have insufficiently trained operators overide safety mechanisms and then ignore every rule in the book in order to carry out an experiment on a dangerously designed nuclear reactor. Particularly in a bureaucratic culture where supervisors would be more upset by a scheduled test being scrubbed than they would be at safety procedures being ignored. A deliberate plan to cause a disaster couldn't have come up with a better procedure.
The funny thing is that nuclear is a green option. When operated well, reactors have potentially the least environmental impact of any energy tech including solar and hydro.
Without transparency and oversight of the Nuclear generation industry, we will only suffer as a captive population.
The first operating US nuclear energy plant, northwest of Los Angeles in the Chatsworth (Santa Susana Hills) Atomics International field laboratory began leaking radioactive gas on July 14, 1959. Some area residents blame the facility for their health issues and say the site remains contaminated.
In August 1959, about five weeks after the accident, the Atomic Energy Commission published a press release indicating that "a parted fuel element had been observed," a reference to damage. But it added that there was no evidence of radioactive releases or unsafe operating conditions.
Lab officials kept switching the reactor off and on until July 26, when it was shut down and dismantled. There was evidence of melting in a third of the reactor's fuel elements.
For about two weeks, the facility, which employed several thousand people, had been venting colorless and odorless radioactive gas into the environment.
Scientists at the site, originally operated by North American Rockwell, conducted nuclear research for the federal government for more than four decades before ceasing those operations in the late 1980s.
Radioactivity levels during the accident went off-scale. We thus do not know to this day how much radioactivity was released.
Details of the incident were not disclosed until 1979, when a group of UCLA students discovered documents and photographs that referred to a problem at the site involving a "melted blob."
Ever since, residents have worried about downstream health risks associated with soil contaminated by years of rocket and nuclear testing.
Radioactive emissions from the accident could have resulted in 260 to 1,800 cases of cancer within 62 miles of the site over a "period of many decades," according to a study released in 2006.
Boeing officials disputed the findings, saying the study was based on miscalculations and faulty information. They cited a Boeing-commissioned study released in 2005 that found overall cancer deaths among employees at the field lab and at Canoga Park facilities between 1949 and 1999 were lower than in the general population.
A Boeing official said the company was committed to a timely and thorough cleanup of the site in a way that protects public health.
Half a century after the accident, nuclear cleanup operations and chemical decontamination remain incomplete.
A cluster of leukemia and other cancers in neighbors and employees remains ignored 50 years later.
Using computer modeling, a CA state-funded study released in August 2009 estimated the meltdown released 300 times more radiation than the infamous accident at Three-Mile Island -- considered the worst in the nation's history -- and may have triggered at least 260 cancer cases.
Boeing Co., which now owns the lab, and the Department of Energy, which contracted for its work, dispute the study's key findings.
Yet the mystery around the accident remains, tangled by missing data and what some say has been bureaucratic foot-dragging and cover-ups. And the new studies have only reignited debate over what happened on the hill in July 1959.
The Santa Susana Field Laboratory, located on 2,900 acres in the hills between Chatsworth and Simi Valley was developed as a remote site to test rocket engines and conduct nuclear research.
The Atomic Energy Commission Atomic Energy Commission built the nation's first nuclear power plant to deliver energy to the commercial grid at the lab. Called the Sodium Reactor Experiment, the plant was featured on Edward R. Murrow's television documentary show ``See It Now'' as it delivered electricity to the then-tiny town of Moorpark.
But during a run from July 14 through July 26, 1959, workers experienced problems with the reactor overheating. On July 26, they shut it down and discovered that 13 of its 43 fuel rods had partially melted, releasing unknown levels of radiation into the reacto
I love the crux of their argument being that the plants are operating at 120% of their initial design... Unfortunately, the author has no clue as to why that output figure was increased. The actual generators (i.e. the turbines, wires, etc., that are turned by the steam which produce the electricity) have been updated using today's technology. Generator technology has increased dramatically over the last 40 years from when the original plants were produced. In fact, generators have been updated in the plants during most refueling cycles in their normal operation. As those generators increased in efficiency, so too has the output power gone up at the plants. That increased efficiency has allowed the same power from the nuclear reactor to create more output power.
Tritium laced water is bad in the water supply, I agree. But as the author said, these happened at one location which the original owner thought was going to be decommissioned. It should have been made know to the new purchasers that some maintenance was not done. I mean, really, would you put a new exhaust system on a 15 year old car which has over 250,000 miles on it? No, you would patch up the one you got and get ready to buy a new car, which is what the previous owner did. They did neglect to tell the new owner of the "car" about the issue and that there was only a temporary patch in place...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The entire accident happened inside a containment building on a controlled site. Even if the thing did blow up, there wouldn't have been a release outside the building. That is the #1 reason why Chernobyl is a terrible argument against American nuclear power: That giant sarcophagus over the site that was built at ruinous human cost already exists over every reactor in the States (and most of the rest of the world too), and will prevent the release of radioactive material should everything that could possibly go wrong did.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
The cause of the Chernobyl disaster, however, was the poor design of Russian nuclear power plants.
The most basic designs problem with the RBMK reactors were that the reactors could remain critical with a complete loss of coolant and that under some operating conditions they had a positive void coefficient of reactivity. In addition, the initial insertion of the scram rods increased reactivity. These all contributed to the prompt critical excursion that led to the destruction of the reactor and release of large amounts of fission products.
Inherent to the design of light water reactors is that they will shut down with a loss of coolant (coolant and moderator being the same thing), with the worst consequenc being a meltdown.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
More specifically, modern safe reactors have a negative void coefficient. As water vaporizes in an critically hot reactor, it reduces the rate of reaction. The hotter the reactor gets, the larger the void(s) in the coolant, the less reaction occurs.
Chernobyl had a positive void coefficient.
B.S. Yes, hydro has a big impact. Yes, you have to find some large plot of land to "impact" to set up a solar collection grid. However...you are completely disregarding that solar plants have very little byproduct once up and running (unlike nuclear), and that the FUEL for the nuclear plant requires mining and refining operations which DO have a Very Real environmental impact. And I think you are also disregarding the impact often caused to local bodies of water which are often significantly affected by the hot-water discharge from the plant. I'm not saying nuclear doesn't have some pluses, but you seem to have a completely one-sided view of its environmental impact.
this ^ A lot of the improvements to core operating powers is because of being able to reclaim safety margin and still prove it is safe. Random yet somewhat related side note....nuclear online capacities is on average in the 90% range through 2000 to 2009, where as in the 90s was about 60% for the whole industry. This improvement comes from better performance, maintenance, and understanding of the plant.
good luck trying to turn down the reactor protection system in the US. not only is it strictly disallowed while operating, but its one of those things that can get you put in jail. if you are allowed to do it, you can only jumper 1 relay out at a time, and if you mess with too much at once it will automatically scram anyways. I swear the thing is 'ticklish' and will just trip the plant if you look at it wrong.
Chernobyl happened because engineers bypassed safety devices and did stupid things in a plant without a containment vessel. I've not read that the overrating had anything to do with the disaster. Pure, unadulterated human stupidity did. it is a good thing that only Russia has a lock on stupidity? it seems your argument hinges on an unstated.."and in the US, people could NEVAR be stupids."
There was a perfect storm of design flaw and poor decision making that lead to the Chernobyl disaster.
The experiment the reactor was running was designed to test whether the pumps could circulate current through the reactor after a power loss on inertia alone (without using the backup diesel generators.)
It was surprising to find out that the direct death toll (discounting the increased cancer rates following the release of radiation) was 56 people, including the responders to the event, and workers on-site when the accident occurred.
Although the nearby town of Pripyat was abandoned after the disaster, Reactors 1-3 continued operation. Reactor number 2 was damage in a fire, and shut down in 1991. Reactor 1 was decommissioned in 1996, and reactor number 3 was shutdown in 2000.
Personally, reading heavily into the Chernobyl accident has gone a long way towards improving my opinion on nuclear power. To see what it took to cause the most recognizable and most cited disaster, really puts things into perspective.
chernobyl also had a design where when the emergency shutdown system started, it actually increased reactor power for a split second. When Chernobyl had its accident, the plant was extremely close to a dangerous condition, then when they did allow the automatic shutdown to occur, it spiked power and caused the incident. US plants have negative operating coefficients in almost all operating regions. Thats void, temperature, and doppler coefficient. These things do an amazing job at controlling reactor power during transients.
Chernobyl was a vigorous demonstration of the failure to apply Montemerlo's Law: "Don't do nuthin' dumb."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Too bad the RSS feed doesn't let you exclude his shite.
For Calvert Cliffs, Turkey Point, and the South Texas Project, there is a problem with sea level rise this century since these are in tidal areas. http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2007/Hansen.html So, there are environmental concerns at these sites.
the very same scenario here, with specific laws voted to expand EOL'ed plants by more than 10 years without any improvements, etc.
But the most incredible part is, at the time of voting, the surrounding discussions only have addressed the financial part of the trick (giving more value to the private owner), not really the safety...
At present some 15 plants out of a total of some 80 are stopped for repair after (obviously minor) failures, an all-time record here, and the consequence is for the first time in my personal lifetime, predictions for this winter are we'll have to import energy from european neighbors -yet another all-times first...
H.
Herve S.
btw, France silently voted last year a law allowing the very same process to be undertaken: continue using 10 years more the EOL'ed power plants, since they are so nice and this saves plenty of investment need for the responsible company, whose CEO was to leave the year after (ie, now)...
Herve S.
Three Mile Island was also caused by operator error and violation of safety rules. From your Three Mile Island accident link:
Once the primary feedwater pump system failed, three auxiliary pumps activated automatically. However, because the valves had been closed for routine maintenance, the system was unable to pump any water. The closure of these valves was a violation of a key NRC rule, according to which the reactor must be shut down if all auxiliary feed pumps are closed for maintenance. This failure was later singled out by NRC officials as a key one, without which the course of events would have been very different.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
It's also one of the major costs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment_building#Design_and_testing_requirements
In 1988, Sandia National Laboratories conducted a test of slamming a jet fighter into a large concrete block at 481 miles per hour (775 km/h) . The airplane left only a 2.5-inch deep gouge in the concrete. Although the block was not constructed like a containment building missile shield, it was not anchored, etc., the results were considered indicative. A subsequent study by EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute, concluded that commercial airliners did not pose a danger.
The Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station was hit directly by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Turkey Point has two fossil fuel units and two nuclear units. Over $90 million of damage was done, largely to a water tank and to a smokestack of one of the fossil-fueled units on-site, but the containment buildings were undamaged.
When I was industry, I was told that the design for the containment dome exterior equipment hatch ( used to move very large equipment in and out of containment ) at the plant I worked at was tested for hurricane and tornado damage by using an old aircraft carrier catapult to fire telephone poles at 200+ MPH at a mock-up.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
The solar panels themselves require a manufacturing process with a significant impact, just as uranium mining does. There are more opportunities to mitigate thermal effects from a nuclear plant than there are to mitigate the effects of clear cutting to install solar.
Fast reactors could run for a considerable time just on our existing "spent" fuel (still 95% fuel) and our considerable stocks of depleted uranium.
Rooftop solar makes a lot of sense for auxiliary power for many situations. I considered it for my house, but I would have to clear cut my front yars and the many animals that inhabit it wouldn't be very happy about that (nor would the neighbors or me).
Warming a stream or a lake will change the balance but not destroy all life. Clear cutting (and maintaining that clear cut) has a much bigger impact.
I work as a plant operator at a boiling water reactor. The re-licensing of plants for an extra 20 years is based on the life span of the pressure vessel. The author is correct about neutron embrittlement. It does cause materials to fail by causing interstitial point defects in the grain structure. However, the point defects reach an equilibrium over the life of the plant. As more defects are created by collisions with neutrons, others are filled again by a collision. This has been observed through mechanical testing of test materials that are placed in high neutron flux zones in the core. These are removed and mechanically tested every 2 years. Calling these old plants 'zombies' is indicative of a serious lack of knowledge about materials, engineering and nuclear power in general. As to the horrific sounding 120% power levels that plants are running, you can thank digital technology for this extra power generation. When the plants were designed in the 60s, analog controls required tremendous safety margins to ensure save operation. Coolant flows and many other variables had a large margin of uncertainty when being measured and computed to show reactor power. With modern computers, we can get extremely precise readings on coolant flows, neutron flux, etc, which allows us to increase the power of the reactor without reducing the margin of safety we operate under.
And THOSE kinds of stories are the ones we need to be highlighting because the NIMBYs will kill any chance of getting new reactors screaming "China Syndrome" and "Chernobyl". I have had friends over the years who have worked at AR Nuke One and they say the security and caution they instill in workers is really impressive. they have built a giant simulator where they can drill the teams on every problem scenario anybody can think up until their actions are automatic, everyone goes through almost constant safety reviews, it really is top notch from what I've been told.
Considering how much poison a coal plant spews out I am really worried that stories like this will just give the NIMBYs more ammo to make sure NOTHING ever gets built. And lets be honest here-wind, solar, these techs simply haven't reached the stage where they can replace current tech for the amount of power generation required to allow us to keep even our current lifestyle, much less continue to advance. Nuclear power is clean power when compared to coal and other fossil fuel plants (if you have ever been in a coal fire plant they are truly disgusting places as you know) and we need something until better tech becomes available.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Existing proven nuclear power is fine by me; except for the BIG PROBLEM that it COSTS TOO MUCH MONEY. The reason people don't hear sanity that often anymore is because the media focuses on opposing nutcases and leaves out reasonable less entertaining voices.
I'm happy to see some sanity posts on /. on nuclear power; democracy now is the only place where I have heard sanity and the 2 mainstream sides.
Nuclear power is unproven as far as the super-duper next generation promises that have been made for over a decade (at least) without any proven results. Alternative power and grid storage technology is proven and CAN PAY OFF long term; sure it has high starting costs-- but they PAY OFF, nuclear NEVER HAS! (and never will-- you'll have to actually prove it before I believe it can.)
As far as scare tactics-- I bet the coal industry has been ironically helping greens to bash nuclear...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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Once again, we see that the core of the environmental movement in reality cares nothing about the environment. Artificially created enviro-panics like the hole in the ozone layer (which hasn't shrunk after 15 years of CFC bans), and the comical global warming hoax (now revealed to be the result of research chicanery and fraud) are in reality all just excuses. They are ruses used in an attempt to panic and frighten the world into dismantling our technological infrastructure and returning to a hunter-gatherer civilization. All in a lunatic attempt to atone for the sin of being human to the demon-goddess gaia. When enviro-kooks develop a head of steam behind a good scare-story, the LAST thing they want is for the problem to be SOLVED through technology. The point is to make us all give up using earth-hostile amenities like cars and electricity, kill off 9/10ths of the human population through starvation and disease, and then go back to living in tee-pees and using our own dung as fertilizer for our maize. Then MAYBE gaia will forgive us for living on her surface and leave us alone. WAKE UP people! Environmentalism isn't science, it's a religion. One of the most barbaric and scary religions on the face of the earth. If they ever get control of public policy their death-toll will make the Taliban look like a kindergarten class.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
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So Entergy's got little reason to concern itself with whether Yankee will work as advertised after relicensing.
That's not really true. It's not the way the legal system works in this country, and you probably know that. Look, if there is an incident under the new ownership, you can bet your bottom dollar that they'll do everything they can to shift liability, at least partially, back to the original owner. That's the way it works, and odds are that they'll be able to do it too, especially if they can show that they performed their own due diligence after the acquisition. It would take years, enrich more than a few trial attorneys, but Entergy would be unlikely to get away unscathed. Consequently, it would behoove the new operators to keep their noses clean.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
yes but you can't contain the mess for the rest of eternity, and besides if u get a really bad melt down plus another natural disaster they will break, ever here about radiation leaching into the water table? wana drink some homade lemonade one day not realizing, you just drank some radioactively contaminated water, and watch you vital organs fail one by one, like a assassination attempt in russia, using a rare isitope that painfully killed the political targets organs one by one, they only discovered that by sending eurine samples to Los Alemos labetories, and only there after many many other places did they discover he was poisoned by a radioactive isatope.
Try cleaning one of those up, as you can't contain a melt down for the rest of eternity, a thousand years down the road, some poor archeologist will discover this lost tomb, and start expoloring it only to be killed, feel sorry for that poor guy. what about 3 mile island while i'm at it? there's a western powerplant that hadd an accident.
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Not to mention, maintaining reactors gives us a chance to make upgrades. The new steel/concrete is chemically better designed, more stable, and able to do its job better. Weakened anchor points get repaired and reenforced.
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"Today our understanding is much greater, and we have very advanced computer models to help the design process. Ever wondered why modern bridges and buildings are much more 'delicate' than older behemoths? Because we can compute the actual behavior of the structures to much higher precision and accuracy, so the needed safety margin is less."
Which sounds remarkably like the logic which led to the banking collapse. Increasing modelling sophistication leading to increased "returns on investment" by stripping away the "inefficient" safety margins.
Fortunately, the world is rapidly becoming a safer, more predictable place, in which black swan events never occur. All in all, this sounds like a sound way to run an industry and I heartily approve!
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
...just refurbished stuff. It works for IT why shouldn't it work for nuclear power plants ?
Except among other flaws not inherent in a large engineering project, the banks depended on people to react the way they thought they would. A very stupid thing to do in finance outside of large generalizations.
The solar panels themselves require a manufacturing process with a significant impact, just as uranium mining does.
Solar thermal energy generation only requires plain mirrors and is very environmental friendly. It is definitely looked poorly upon by the nuke-hugging slashdot crowd, although the true reason for this still eludes me.
chernobyl also had a design where when the emergency shutdown system started, it actually increased reactor power for a split second
That was due to the stunning design of the control rods.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
FYI supercritical is NOT worse than prompt critical. Supercritical means power level is going UP (more atoms being split as time goes on). Prompt critical is when the reactor is critical on prompt neutrons alone. The severity of this is affected by the delayed neutron fraction, but it's never a good thing. Look up the difference between prompt and delayed neutrons to learn more about this. The problem with nuclear power is that understanding it requires more learning than most people are willing to do, and so they fear it instead.
Total, total, total rubbish.
The Chernobyl accident happened because the reactor was actually dropped to exceptionally LOW POWER far less than it was supposed to operate, and in the attempts to pull the reactor's rate up, the control rods were removed (and later reinserted in an attempt to stop the reactor).
A nuclear weapon's uncontrolled fission reaction is *nothing* like the controlled conditions inside a nuclear reactor, and at no point did reactor 4 explode like a nuclear bomb - it was obviously running above criticality (it's a nuclear reactor) but it did not explode that way - the reactor was crippled by disabling several of the safety systems to attempt a test (trying to see if the reactor could be cooled by the water pumps if they were powered solely by the inertia of the turbines in the event of total power loss until the diesel generators could fire up) - the reactor was dropped lower and lower in power, until it reached a point where it suddenly spiked momentarily in a huge generation of heat.
This flashed all the water in the reactor to steam, which is much less dense than water, which blew the lid off the top of the reactor and broke all the water pipes. The graphite core, which is very hot, was now exposed to the air so burst into flames.
The burning, radioactive graphite is what belched tons and tons of radionuclides into the air (with the bulk of the reactor's guts and building debris being strewn around the immediate local area, heavily contaminating it).
Reactor 4 was never running at beyond design capacity - at any rate, that had nothing whatsoever to do with the accident.
Initiating a nuclear bomb involves compressing a lump of radioactive material into a critical mass - a nuclear reactor is nothing like this.
But there's a major difference between bankers and engineers.
Excelling at engineering doesn't involve things like hedge funds, which worked based on betting against success of other companies, or loaning large amounts of money to people who you know cannot afford it, and assumptions that the price of houses would go up indefinitely.
When you design a bridge, you don't have to bet against the universe that F=ma.
It really depends on the situation, but in general supercriticality is necessary to get an atomic bomb like explosion. Mere prompt critical will tend to "disassemble" itself before it can reach a full yield. Bad for a bomb, not as bad as it could be for a reactor, but certainly nothing like good.
Actually, I prefer solar thermal to PV where it can be used. I'm still not fond of the clear-cutting aspect but it certainly is safe.
Unaccountably, terrorists don't seem to have stolen any of it.
Honestly the U S government seems to want everyone to thing that all you need is a little plutonium to build a Fat Man bomb. It also takes some pretty sophisticated electronics, some U238 for the tempers, and a beryllium polonium-210 initiator. Being successful in putting all this together gets a 21 kt bomb that weighs 10,200 lb and is 5 feet in diameter, far from practical. A lot more money and engineering expertise can get you something like the B-61 , which at 13 inch diameter and a weight of around 700 lbs might actually be deliverable. Interestingly while everyone whines and cries about plutonium in regards to nuclear weapons proliferation, it's the polonium that's much more difficult to acquire and thus the limiting factor if you want to go the easy route of using an urchin initiator
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Both Chernobyl and Hindenburg were learning points.
Lesson learnt we became smarter.
Don't also forget that Chernobyl has happened when Russia was in a steep decline economically and morally.
Don't also forget that Chernobyl has happened when Russia was in a steep decline economically and morally.
The bankers responsible for the financial crisis used shitty models. Engineers designing power plants don't.
Suggesting their is an equivalence between the two is akin to throwing out all modeling because some bankers let their greed get ahead of their prudence. That's just retarded.
Honestly, I really don't mind the inflammatory lead-ins, because I know that, in general, I'll get a good couple of laughs from the comments, and some star or a dozen will pop up and inform me, often with references, of what the situation really is. I don't understand why you fucking nazis have to throw hissy fits like you do all the time. If you don't like the article, don't read it, just ..... PISS off. Slashdot doesn't belong to you personally. I get so much more real info out of an inflammatory article than out if what you seem to so zealously cherish as The Truth(TM). Next you'll be whining that there's an "incorrect" population of soviet jokes, or beowulf jokes, or overlord jokes. Or maybe, just maybe, you're new here. This is NOT a news site, it is a DISCUSSION site. Now go smoke a fat greenie and chill out, numb-nut. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: you talk like a fag and your shit's all retarded.
And lets be honest here-wind, solar, these techs simply haven't reached the stage where they can replace current tech for the amount of power generation required to allow us to keep even our current lifestyle, much less continue to advance.
Let's try to really be honest like you suggest and admit that solar energy could get rid US and EU of fossil-fuel dependency right now (from here):
But if it is all so simple, then why do countries with enough solar radiation build expensive and dangerous nuclear power plants, instead of investing in this simple technology? Are there not deserts in the US? Why are Americans not freeing themselves from their oil dependence through solar power? And why has no one really started to exploit the technology?
"After the solar thermal power plants were built in California and Nevada, people lost interest in solar thermal power because fossil fuels became unbeatably cheap," says Müller-Steinhagen. Solar power was neglected even though the US was in the advantageous position, compared to the MENA region, of being a single political entity rather than a conglomerate of countries with differing interests. The US could achieve energy self-sufficiency through solar thermal power plants in the sunny south-west.
That won't actually work unless you are willing to have the government just take huge amounts of land away from folks in the desert regions to build these massive solar generators. What if they don't want to sell? Do you support just stealing it from them? And solar generation using molten salt, while I agree should be tested and built where it is feasible, simply can't scale. there is too many places that don't get enough constant sun to make those work, which means huge energy loss due to transmission distance. You DO know that power loss over long distances can be quite huge, yes?
So while I have no problem with solar or wind in places where it actually makes sense, there are plenty of states out there that simply don't get Nevada amounts of sun. My own state pretty much had 0% sun for the entire month of October. It was nothing but rain, rain, rain. But if we were to do like France and reprocess spent fuel we could get even more efficient with nuclear and finally get rid of those toxin spewing coal plants along the southern coast. So right now it looks like we're sticking with coal or going nuclear...which would you prefer?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
IIRC, there were direct subsidies to operators written into the 2005 energy bill for the first half dozen or so new nukes to go into operation (a couple of cents per KWH generated.) Certainly not eighteen billion dollars worth, though.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
That won't actually work unless you are willing to have the government just take huge amounts of land away from folks in the desert regions to build these massive solar generators.
Are you seriously suggesting that we don't have enough undeveloped land in the desert to build a significant number of solar plants? Really?
So right now it looks like we're sticking with coal or going nuclear...which would you prefer?
Talk about false dichotomies! We don't need to choose between "nuclear or coal". Why are we extending nuclear plant lifetimes in California and not planning to replace them with solar thermal? Why aren't we making use of our vast wind resources across the country? Why aren't we building more than a couple solar thermal plants?
I agree that in some areas nuclear probably still makes some sense and we should be pursuing it as a medium-term solution, just recognize that it's much more expensive. Most large population and industry centers have other massive sources of untapped energy nearby and we would be wise to tap into them.
We (the western world) pushed for massive nuclear power plants to get energy independence. If we made a similar push for renewables, we'd have more energy than we'd know what to do with.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
So Entergy's got little reason to concern itself with whether Yankee will work as advertised after relicensing.
That's not really true. It's not the way the legal system works in this country, and you probably know that. Look, if there is an incident under the new ownership, you can bet your bottom dollar that they'll do everything they can to shift liability, at least partially, back to the original owner. That's the way it works, and odds are that they'll be able to do it too, especially if they can show that they performed their own due diligence after the acquisition. It would take years, enrich more than a few trial attorneys, but Entergy would be unlikely to get away unscathed. Consequently, it would behoove the new operators to keep their noses clean.
Highly arguable and the outcome would depend largely on politicians in office at the moment. Legally, they can pass most of the buck by blaming the federal agencies that regulate them. As long as they can say they complied with all regulations, they're in the clear... so what's happening with the regulations right now? Politicians are slashing the regulatory "red tape" because it's political suicide to do otherwise.
Of course I am not a nuclear regulator, so I can't say whether or not they've gone too far in relaxing restrictions.
It seems evident, though, that they have shifted at least some of the liability (fiscal and legal) with this move. Reduced liability almost always means increased risk taking, and we're in a political period where increased risk taking is going to be encouraged. The smart thing to do now would be to watch them carefully.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Most of the American old reactors are NOT of a horribly bad design like that. Is there a risk? kinda. but if all we have are 3 mile island incidents that the worst was undetectable by most instruments then I'm all for it. Honestly the damned NIMBY and green idiots that kept us from chasing the nuke power option for the past 40 years are the ones to blame. we would have been mostly nuclear plants now all operating profitably. I guess that is what you get with a very undereducated populace. They get easily scared of technology.
We've already had worse. I submit to you: The Santa Susana Field Laboratory
Let's see some nice quotes from the report:
Lochbaum’s bounding estimated release fraction of 30% would equal approximately 13,000 curies of iodine-131 and 2600 curies of cesium-137, based on the inventories and power history asserted by Atomics International. (A curie is that amount of radioactivity that emits 37 billion disintegrations per second.) His best estimate of 15% release would thus mean 6500 curies of iodine-131 and 1300 curies of cesium-137 were released. By contrast, the official estimate for the Three Mile Island accident is 17 curies of I-131 and no cesium released.
Approximately a million gallons of TCE, a toxic solvent, were used to wash off rocket test stands, with roughly half that amount estimated to have entered the soil and groundwater. Dozens of toxic chemicals have been found in soil, groundwater, or surface water at the site.
And one last one in case you haven't crapped yourself yet:
typical clean-up procedures executed by Field Lab employees in the past. Workers would dispose of barrels filled with highly toxic waste by shooting the barrels with rifles so that they would explode and release their contents into the air.
How much more evidence do you need that we can't trust the government OR the industries they're in bed with to protect us from this crap? BTW, no containment on these reactors because they were experimental.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Solar power plants need panel replacement annually. There is a swap out program. and the selenium and other metals in there makes Uranium mining and waste look eco friendly.
Liquid SALT power plants on the other hand are far more eco friendly... problem is we wont build any here.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You dont have to clear cut, just trim. you would be suprised how tall the trees can be with rooftop solar still working unshaded.
I had 4 200 foot trees in my front yard and still had working solar. Plus the shading benefit of the house is replaced by the solar panels.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In my neighborhood, a yard with 4 trees is clear cut by comparison. While my roof isn't in perpetual shadow, the costs would have to come down a great deal to make it ever pay off given how much of the time it is in shadow.
The problem with nuclear power is that understanding it requires more learning than most people are willing to do, and so they fear it instead.
Do you have a place where someone could start to learn about it?
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
What we learned from the Hindenburg was. "Don't makes mistakes in front of the press."
A lot more people had already dies in plane crashes before the Hindenburg and a lot more after. Not everybody died in the Hindenburg so as crashes go it wasn't that bad. It happened in front of cameras so it really killed the zeppelin.
That and planes where faster and cheaper.
There really where no lessons for western reactor designers to learn from Chernobyl. They had learned those lessons decades ago without creating such a huge disaster.
1. Don't build graphite moderated power reactors. Power reactors in the west are light water reactors. The difference is that when a light water reactor looses coolant it looses it's moderator so the reaction stops. If you loose the coolant in a graphite moderated reactor the reaction actually speeds up!
2. Don't build a reactor with out a containment building. In the US and as far as I know all other western nations reactors all have containment buildings.
The only lesson to be learned from Chernobyl is that you shouldn't ignore every safety regulation in the manual for a test.
But anybody that actually brings up Chernobyl in a discussion of nuclear power plants in the US is just using fear and ignorance as a tool to control people.
That is the big lesson we can learn from both Chernobyl and the Hindenburg. The press and others love to scare us but they don't really want to inform or educate us.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Waste, what do we do with the waste? The spent rods? Keep burying it in the ground, along with our heads? Nuclear power is extremely dangerous, and so are the by-products. That's why it needs so many safety precautions. Plus, it's just another finite resource that will eventually run out.
The reason we are in this mess is NOT because "Greens" stopped production on more Nuclear plants, it is because "Browns" topedoed production and research and funding on any kind of alternative.
Started with the ill-conceived Reagan "Revolution". We are in trouble in every area of our society because of conservatives deregulating everythign in site while dismantling any safety precautions that cost their corporate overlords even a small percentage of their profit margins. Careful going over that bridge now.
It depends what aspect of nuclear power you are seeking to learn about: (Not sure about slashdot's policy on posting links) Wikipedia: Nuclear_Safety has a pretty good run down of the safety features. If you're interested in the terminology and general theory behind nuclear reactors, check out Wikipedia: Nuclear_reactor_physics Based on my experience in the Naval Nuclear program, the information presented in those articles should be good enough. If you want information on the physical layout of the reactor systems, go to the NRC website, under "Reactors" --> "Power reactors."
It depends what aspect of nuclear power you are seeking to learn about:
(Not sure about slashdot's policy on posting links)
Wikipedia: Nuclear_Safety has a pretty good run down of the safety features.
If you're interested in the terminology and general theory behind nuclear reactors, check out Wikipedia: Nuclear_reactor_physics
Based on my experience in the Naval Nuclear program, the information presented in those articles should be good enough.
If you want information on the physical layout of the reactor systems, go to the NRC website, under "Reactors" --> "Power reactors."
Slashdot doesn't care about posting links, but we might get modded off-topic by some stupid mod who doesn't understand how to moderate correctly.
Thanks for those links, I'll start there.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.