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Alabama Nuclear Reactor Gets 'F' Grade
GatorSnake writes "The US federal government issued a rare red finding against an Alabama nuclear power plant after an emergency cooling system failure. 'In an emergency, the failure of the valve could have meant that one of the plant's emergency cooling systems would not have worked as designed (PDF).' Does this further erode the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age?"
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Does this further erode the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age?"
Modernity is irrelevant when the contracts go to the lowest bidder, who also cut costs in the name of profit.
The problem with nuclear reactors is that when things go wrong, it goes wrong in a way that's very hard to control and can have an enormous impact on the health of entire generations. Strong security measures are vital, but what Fukushima has shown us, is that greed and corruption can and will undermine those security measures.
I'm not fundamentally opposed to nuclear power, as long as it is safe and cost effective. But I really doubt whether it can be both at the same time.
that adds another zero to the zero deaths from nuclear this year. thats zero up from last year. gonna need some big design changes to catch up with fossil fuels.
When the nuclear power industry was stopped in its tracks by regulations about 30 years ago, development in nuclear power stopped.
However, no alternative exists for nuclear power in many places. All other sources are either too expensive, too polluting, or impractical. Therefore they kept using the same old designs and refurbishing old power plants that, by their original design, should have been decommissioned decades ago.
The first thing to do should be to remove the arbitrary regulations that make it impossible to develop and built new power plants.
The NRC initially became concerned about the plant when it realized that employees had begun logging maintenance work directly on thereifixedit...
We're already hitting crunch time. I sort of doubt even building nuclear plants is going to give us enough energy at this point. The only answer is going to be dirty coal/shale/etc and something like a couple orders of magnitude increase in research to find something else.
We're going to live in interesting times soon people.
There's no secure energy source in the world.
Even your fire place and a match box are not secure.
As a rule of thumb, the more energy they produce, the more unsecure.
Then if you take into account the byproducts of a nuclear power plant these considerations rise even more issues.
Even solar panels have drawbacks and generate pollution during the fabrication and the disposal phases. Not to talk about the needed batteries which are not part of the panels, but are a needed part of the setup. And a polluting one.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
This shows that the (American-designed) Fukushima plant has design faults replicated in other plants of similar design. The British regulator is now re-examining proposals for new build in the light of the Japanese disaster. It is not at all clear that other designs of reactor have the same problems.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
"Does this further erode the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age?" - Fukushima wasn't a "modern" nuclear reactor. It was designed in the sixties. I've don't know about the Alabama one, but I doubt this is a modern one either.
Modern nuclear age? What?
The Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant began construction in 1966 (Fukushima Dai-ichi dates from 1971). Furthermore, both use General Electric boiling water reactors. The major difference seems to be that Browns Ferry is/was expected to continue to operate until 2033.
Similarly designed technology dating from a similar time has similar flaws. In most areas engineers learn from their mistakes and upgrade regularly for precisely this reason. Then we actually would be in the 'modern nuclear age', and discovering a new flaw would be disturbing news as opposed to being a wholly predictable consequence of expecting to keep dodgy, ancient crap running for well over half a century.
There are no modern nuclear reactors running commercially in the United States.
And that's the problem - the United States is not part of any "modern nuclear age.". We're stuck in the 1950s and 1960s, design-wise - retrofits really don't substitute.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
We won't enter the "modern" nuclear age until we're actually allowed to build modern nuclear plants. Last time I checked the vast majority of reactors running today are old Mark I and Mark II designs from 20-50 years ago.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Firstly, this wasn't the primary, but one of several redundant backup systems. Granted any redundant system not fully tested is not to be considered tested.
Secondly, the NRC has a long and storied history of letting nuclear plants run with known issues based on the promises that they'd be fixed. Now that they're in the spotlight because of Fukishima they're doing this shocking thing and actually calling plants on issues that have been long standing.
Thirdly, as a country we need to take a honest look at our existing nuclear plants. They're old. We've made HUGE advancements in nuclear power (just look at any reactor on a navy vessel) What we need to do is use that knowledge to either reengineer our existing reactors or look to replace them in place with better reactors.
Fourthly, we need to take an honest look at our nuclear fuel cycle, which is retarded. We need to start reprocessing fuel, not just storing it in dry casks. There is a huge amount of wasted energy not being extracted from those rods.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
A site was inspected, a problem was found and a rating issued.
How else should this work????
With any luck, the problem will be fixed or the reactor will closed down until it is fit again.
I hope all correcting work will be monitored.
I guess if Alabama gets hit by a global axis moving event it may not work too well.
I think the US has more to worry from the Hanford site; but the clean up expertise must be phenomenal.
Sounds like oversight working as designed. A problem occurred, there was an investigation, and now a full inspection will occur to rectify any existing issues. This means that the safety review architecture is properly dealing with a potential problem before it can cause harm. Every system requires maintenance, and no maintenance is perfect. That's why review exists.
Much like for a teacher who only gives out A's being a phoney, having a review hand out a failing grade give me more confidence in the system. It shows that the USG is not glossing over problems.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
No, it merely underscores that we do not *have* a "modern" nuclear age.
People, please remember that the vast majority of nuclear reactors in use were built in the 50's and 60's. They were built based on early reactor designs. Reactor designs have improved considerably in the last 20 years but because the public basically has a "no nukes" position, very few new design reactors have actually been built. We are still basically running old reactor designs, many of which are long past their design lifetimes. Until we replace them with modern, safer reactor designs or forms of renewable energy, there will be a danger of another Fukushima/Chernobyl type of catastrophe.
Next Question!
Following the Fukushima accident I've asked several times about the Davis-Besse near miss. What happened there was that boric acid had beed leaking undetected from a crack onto the reactor chamber for more than ten year. When it was finally discovered, it had eaten through the 20 cm of the pressure vessel's steel (the so-called "first containment chamber"); the remaining barrier containing the reactor's material was the 1 cm (or 5 mm, not clear) internal stainless cladding of the vessel, bearing alone the 170 bars of internal pressure. The cladding had bulged but did not break - by mere luck one would say.
Had it eventually given, then the high-pressure reactor coolant would have escaped in a jet; due to the location of the leak, it could have jammed the adjacent control rod mechanism, preventing insertion of the rods. So the Davis-Besse plant was literally at that time half-an-inch away from a total loss of coolant accident with a core on full power and no way to stop it. Right in Ohio, in the middle of the US. What would have happened then? I've asked several times but the only response I got was basically Nothing to see here, move along.
Not that I like to dwelve in shaden-freude but really this kind of answer, coming from people who pride themselves so much of being smart and rational, looks disturbing. Shouldn't we try to assess the reality of the situation rather than build a fantasy world that suits our desires, conveniently ignoring uncomfortable facts?
From TFS: "Does this further erode the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age?"
The plant was build in 1974
These are old reactors and due to "environmentalist" blocking of building new (safe) ones they are kept functioning. Is it strange they start to rot?
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
R U an idiot? Seriously? ARE YOU AN IDIOT?
Or does the sun never set or clouds never float overhead where you life and/or work?
Just to clarify, where I live it is cloudy 200+ days a year. There are a few solar power panels in my neighborhood, but those folks simply have more money than sense. Oh, and they don't have batteries, but they don't get any power out of the solar panels at night.
BTW, the average wind speed here is less than 3 mph, so wind power is worthless too. There are 3 nuclear power plants within 250 miles of my home. I'm surrounded. None are closer than 150 miles, however. I just saw a report today that one of them had a failed cooling pump for over a year before anyone noticed. Nice.
Shipping electricity across a city has huge losses too - like 50%. Don't get me started about long distance transfers and those loss levels.
Though the NRC denies it at every turn, this is why it is basically a run-to-failure organization. Instead of replacing power plants before they degrade, the NRC expects maintenance to do what it can't.
As someone who spent years in the navy nuclear power program I can, from experience, say that the nuclear regulatory commission hands out grades on a very harsh grading scale. Its not like a health code grading system for a restaurant where a B really should be a C or D. Every system has a series of 3 and 4 redundant components on top of manually initiated backup procedures to those systems. This inspection process is part of the approach so that issues can be resolved before disaster strikes. Handing out an F, possibly a C in any other environment, is one means to ensure the plant would never ever actually get to a true F status. In fact, anything less than 80% is highly embarrassing and generates a litany of fixes. The biggest problem with these plants are not equipment so much as personnel. For example, the one accident that everyone thinks of is 3 mile island. Even with their large amount of equipment failures it wasn't the equipment failure alone that cause the incident. It was those running the plant violating one of the primary rules of being an equipment operator 'always believe your indications'. They saw the high temp alarms of the primary relief valves go into alarm state and ass-u-med it was just a bogus faulty alarm. Based on the incident report we studied while in nuclear power school, there were four other times that they violated practices and principles that led up to the perfect storm of stupidity that led to the partial meltdown. Instead of people embarking on a campaign against nuclear power they would be better served embarking on a campaign against hiring stupid people. There are many more dangerous things with fewer safeguards protected by even stupider personnel; the underground vaults housing the nerve agents we used to weaponize for one. Think those are well protected even from a moderate earthquake? They have the potential to kill far more than Fukushima ever will.
Which ones? The Banks or the Governments? Nobody else had any say remember. Those damned kids and their dog/hippies/whatever got no say at all in actual reality.
Also remember that it was two very strong nuclear power advocates that knew the science that ended up winding up the government run commercial nuclear programs in the UK and USA - Thatcher and Carter. You do the R&D until you can design something good and THEN you build it. Westinghouse and similar leeches instead spent far more money since the 1970s on lobbying to build TMI painted green at the taxpayers expense instead of doing R&D. That has left the civilian nuclear technology in the USA a decade or two behind even South Africa - a pebble bed design based on the work in South Africa is being deployed in China. Those who will argue that a modern US design is getting built in China are wrong because the technology was developed by Toshiba.
I've got no idea why some loud nuclear advocates like to pretend it's a solved problem that never needs to be improved. That's a very stupid and counterproductive attitude and that has left many of them arguing for things that were shown to be useless in the 1970s and completely ignorant of promising new developments that actually have some merit.
"The Browns Ferry Plant is known in the industry as the site where a worker using a candle to check for air leaks in 1974 started a fire that disabled safety systems."
See? Even high-tech nuclear facilities STILL use candle power to help them run properly.
ANCIENT POWER TECHNOLOGY for the win!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
There are no modern nuclear reactors running commercially in the United States. And that's the problem - the United States is not part of any "modern nuclear age.". We're stuck in the 1950s and 1960s, design-wise - retrofits really don't substitute.
Correct. Other countries are not so afraid to try newer technologies. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia article on pebble bed nuclear reactors:
At least they won't be freezing to death in the dark any time soon.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Here's an exercise for you which will help you understand things here. Find out about the most recent operating civilian nuclear plant in your country and find out when it's reactor design dates to.
The extremely offensive argument of "the thing was designed thirty years ago back when people were stupid" can be applied to that as well.
It's the "no true Scotsman" fallacy that you have been tricked into believing by some utterly unscrupulous weasel without the intelligence to know that they should be disgusted with themselves. Don't be tricked and don't embarrass yourself and show how naive you are by passing it on.
What you are pretending is "modern" is instead the unbuilt stuff of the future - what is really modern is the most recent stuff that actually exists in the form or real operating reactors.
did anyone really buy that argument anyway? srsly guys
Korma: Good
"Does this further erode the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age?"
The Fukushima reactors were 40 years old and based on a nuclear design that was even older. Please define "modern". The Alabama Nuclear Plant in question is also nearly 40 years old and probably more cheaply made.
Some may argue that the question is just asking if the Fukushima incident was isolated, but the use of the word "modern" makes it sound like an issue caused by modern nuclear reactors.
Next in news: "8086 takes hours to render a basic 3D scene. Was the 8086 just an isolated incident of a slow cpu, and will we reach real-time 3D in this modern computing age?"
I have lived in northeast Alabama for all but a couple of years of my life, and I am 37. We happen to have Tennessee Valley Authority power, and Brown's Ferry nuclear power plant provides a large proportion of this. During the recent severe storms, we were told our power was out primarily because of the damage to the nuclear power plant.
The point I want to make is TVA power is horrible, because it costs much more than Southern Company (Alabama, Georgia) power. Subjectively, the Southern Company seems to be more reliable, too, but that is only an opinion. If anyone cares to look into the matter, there was even a time in the past where TVA wanted to sue the Southern Company for providing power more cheaply than TVA could; the representatives of TVA tried to make the point that selling power more cheaply than TVA could was illegal, because it was a violation of the TVA charter.
TVA was started to provide power to rural farmers and the other various residents of the Tennessee Valley, and that may possibly have been a good decision at the time. However, TVA is bloated, too expensive and arrogant now, in my opinion. They try to use their government monopoly to bully people and offer inferior prices and service, because they have a government imposed monopoly. Socialism may work in some instances, but it functions very poorly in this one.
Furthermore, if anyone cares to look into it, politicians told some very silly lies to get TVA established in the first place. The funniest one was that once the equipment to generate power was paid off, TVA power would be totally free to everyone in perpetuity. This may have meant non-commercial users, however, the intention of the statement was not clear to me.
Brown's Ferry is also notorious for being poorly run in the past and present, and it probably will be in the future. We used to talk about it every year in our science classes, because the list of Brown's Ferry accidents would be funny if they were not so sad. The best one I remember is using a candle to check to see if the walls were air-tight and setting insulation on fire. I would invite anyone to look up the details and get the precise report of the incident, since my description probably does not do the incident justice. If anyone else who has TVA power would care to comment, you might get a more balanced viewpoint, but it obviously is no fun paying at least a third more than people in neighbouring counties who have access to a better state-sponsored power monopoly.
Because, as everyone knows, ten meter tsunamis are commonplace. Especially in Alabama.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
It seems every time there's a problem with a nuclear power plant, some people trot out the excuse "Oh, it was an old design", like that's supposed to make things better.
The fact remains, we keep nuclear power plants running for decades. Just like all power plants of that generating capacity, nuclear plants are hugely expensive to build, so you need to keep them running for decades to make them cost effective. If we're going to declare nuclear power designs obsolete and unsafe so soon after they are built, then there is no way they will ever be cost justified.
You can't handwave the problem away by saying "they're old".
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Does this further erode the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age?"
The principles of reliable and robust engineering and risk management do not change no matter how "modern" the device. Fukushima was fundamentally not a failure of technology but one of risk assessment and mitigation. They knew that an earthquake and tsunami combination was a virtual inevitability but they failed to build the seawall protections and backup generator system to withstand the most severe events that could reasonably occur. 9.0 earthquakes occur fairly regularly along the Pacific rim. It was absolutely possible for engineers to build adequate protections but for various reasons (cost undoubtedly among them) they chose not to. Despite the design being an older design the problems at Fukushima still could have been prevented with adequate backup systems and/or improved seawalls.
When auditing risks you evaluate three things: Frequency, Severity, and Detectability. When talking about nuclear plants severe events are fairly rare but the potential severity is extremely high. That's potentially ok if the risk is detectible but as Fukushima illustrates, sometimes flaws are only obvious to the people looking after the fact. Complexity typically increases frequency of problems and decreases their detectability. Nuclear plants are unquestionably complex and some parts of them are difficult to evaluate for problems.
The problem with the analysis is that it's still possible to underestimate or even completely miss a failure mode. The engineers at Fukushima clearly understood the severity part of the equation but they seem to have underestimated the frequency or likelihood of a 15 meter high tsunami and then failed to develop adequate mitigation plans. Sadly this sort of mistake is all too common in every human endeavor.
These are old reactors and due to "environmentalist" blocking of building new (safe) ones they are kept functioning. Is it strange they start to rot?
There is no such thing as a 100% safe nuclear (fission) plant. These plants are designed by people and even the best intentioned people make mistakes. We might decide the risks are acceptable but there will be risks. Newer designs have the potential to be safer (safer not safe) but without adequate risk analysis and maintenance, they can be every bit as dangerous as older designs.
I'm not sure if it's even providing power right now. $.08/kw-hr is cheep, but they claimed $0.06 at one point.
That's actually expensive for nuclear base load. They should be running in the $0.03-$0.04/kw/hr range; with a penny higher at absolute worst.
This is pure NRC "look at us, we're better than Japan's oversight" grandstanding. There was no active failure or danger; a bad valve in a redundant cooling system was found during a maintenance shutdown and replaced (that's why they inspect things while the reactor is down). It appears to have been a manufacturing defect, and all similar valves were also inspected after the bad one was found (no other failures were discovered).
This is the same Alabama plant that was shut down due to the recent tornadoes. They lost off-site power and ran the cooling systems on redundant diesel generators without any problem. Obviously the cooling systems worked. This plant had a horrible safety record decades ago and will probably always be under increased scrutiny, but they greatly improved things before bringing the reactors back online. I live about 30 miles east of this plant, and I have no problems with it.
What do those with "modern" reactors so with their waste? I'll bet you all dollars to doughnuts that they STORE it waiting for some "modern" answer to what to do with the highly poisonous for generations waste. When one factors in ALL of the bits in the equation, nuclear does not look so profitable or necessary. It only takes ONE mistake, earthquake, tsunami, terrorist/whacko, accident, and a very many peoples' lives are ruined. As stated elsewhere, there ARE viable alternatives that are not allowed to be developed because the bigs are invested in the old tech. To make profits in this "modern" world, one's venture has to make more money this year than it did LAST year or it is said to be losing money. A simple, honest profit is not enough any more.
Until we replace them with modern, safer reactor designs or forms of renewable energy, there will be a danger of another Fukushima/Chernobyl type of catastrophe.
All fission plants carry significant risks no matter how "modern" the design. They might be potentially safer but they won't be perfectly safe. Newer designs have the potential to be every bit as dangerous as older designs without adequate risk management. The only difference is that the failure modes change.
The risk can never be zero so the question becomes what level of risk is acceptable? Then based on the level of assumed risk, what mitigation plans are to be used? Fukushima occurred because the risk assessment and mitigation plans were inadequate. The plant (even with its older design) could have been adequately safeguarded even from a natural disaster of this scale. Our engineers have that ability. It survived the earthquake just fine but they failed to adequately protect against large tsunamis and the design of their seawall and backup generators did not adequately account for that risk.
Most if not all nuke plants are not efficiently in terms of thermodynamics that is the carnot cycle as opposed to modern coal plants. I think modern electric plants use steam to extract more electricity. Nuke plants just boil water which is less efficient. The only reason that nuke plants are built this way is because uranium is cheap.
Wow, just wow, being reading the Time cubeagain? Hint, steam is boiled water.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
wow, good car analogy!
Reminds me of the time that Feynman fortuitously identified a design problem in the plans for a uranium refinement plant
"Shame" is an obsolete word used in long lost times to denote a feeling of having acted dishonorably. Sorry, "dishonorable" is also an obsolete word. It's kind of difficult to define such words which have no relevance to modern life in the post-responsibility industrial-political complex.
The problem is that even though the basic principles have been known for over 50 years, nuclear power is still a 'new' technology. Not only are newer designs safer but more efficient. Perhaps the industry needs to accept that the lifespan of an early power plant is only 30 years, and that the lifespan of plants just off the drawing board today might also be in the same span. Nuclear power won't be cheaper than fossil fuel when compared to today's fuel costs, but years down the road the investment in building a new nuclear power plant could pay off as the cost of fossil fuel rises. The cost of replacing older nuclear power plants (or rebuilding them in place with newer components) needs to be factored in along with the 'real' life span of the installation.
One of the often cited problems with nuclear plants is the waste -- unlike coal plants whose waste is simply piled up around the plant (we used to use cinders on roads... but now we mine gravel and throw the cinders away) or blown into the air. But the waste from nuclear reactors is different in that even small amounts are intrinsicly dangerous. But since we have neither the political will to make one big pile, or even move it across country or allow reprocessing of the waste we just pretend that it isn't there. Untill we are reminded that it won't go away on its own. Oh my....
There are a number of silly things about this non-approach: it has to be dealt with one way or another so tying the process up in red tape or hysteria (or both) fixes nothing. And we close our eyes to the possibility that this material may be a resource that we are just not bright enough to find a benefit from.
And there is the other minor detail that perhaps we might reconsider our bigger is better fixation? Not everything scales up gracefully and I suspect that the cost and complexity of a nuclear plant large enough to power the planet probably hides some brittleness that will come back to haunt us. Problem with big is that everything connected with it is expensive and difficult to change -- maybe this is another example?
Personally I don't think we need the power from nuclear anywhere near bad enough to face the problems that our ignorance of it brings. Still too many alternatives that we think we understand and seem less dangerous. Remember, gasoline was once considered too dangerous to be used as a fuel... but we learned.
Does this further erode the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age?
No, because neither Fukushima, nor this plant are part of the 'modern' nuclear power age... all existing commercial reactors afaik are positively ancient as far as tech years go.
Fortunately Brown's Ferry didn't just almost get hit with an EF5 tornado and have to emergency shutdown. Oh wait...
Does this further erode the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age?
Yes.
Now, take a good look at the Alaska Oil Pipeline. It's well past intended use in current state, and is meagerly being looked after or repaired. Infrastructure maintenance is a lowest common denominator in the US. Do just enough to keep it functioning, rather then insure it's survivability or outright replacement with modern more efficient tech. US bridges (see Twin Cities bridge collapse in 2007), electrical infrastructure, gas-line infrastructure... All of these 'norms' must be actively maintained on the long-term scale. Politics and politicians pays minimal attention to such details up until the moment it's too late.
There would not have been a Fukushima, nor a Chernobyl, if they had used thorium reactors.
Thorium is far better than anything we have used and given the enormous, rock-steady, energy output and the inherent safety that comes from using thorium reactors, thorium is by far the best and most cost effective energy solution we have. Unfortunately there are demagogic greenies with their heads in the sand who are screwing up our future. Since there has been virtually no recent, intelligent discussion about thorium power, I can only surmise the so called greenies are ignorant of the technology. If they truly want to do mankind some good, they need to abandon their harmful poiltics and proceed forward, not sideways nor backwards. Solar and wind are merely band-aid solutions, not permanent solutions.
...they want their Soviet Union back.
I find it quite boring that so many discussions on Slashdot end with someone being modded "insightful" for bashing the free market.
Yup, the Free Market does work awesomely well. it might not be the ideal system, but it's like Winston Curchill said about democracy, it's the worst possible system, with the exception of all others.
Having said that, I never mentioned free market in my post. You should be modded (-1, offtopic). What I said was that the current regulations are holding back the nuclear power industry.
I didn't say the nuclear power industry should be left to the free market alone, with no regulations. What i said is that the current regulations are obsolete and inadequate.
Unfortunately, people like you and those who modded you up seem to suffer from a severe reading impairment in your haste to deny any harmful effect on any sort of government regulation. Sure, let's regulate everything without limits, any regulation is better than no regulation at all, right? If I mention any fault in any regulation it means I'm a Sarah Palin follower, ain't that so?
Stop lying. We all know that workers received fatal doses at Fukushima already this year.
Source: http://energycentral.fileburst.com/EnergyBizOnline/2008-5-sep-oct/Financial_Front_Failing_Infrastructure.pdf
Terrestrial nuclear plants are not safe because the failure mode is incompatible with the optimal human resource allocation system, which happens to be market capitalism. This is actually pretty typical of anything that has extremely long-term negative effects, such that a rich human can expect to avoid the consequences of improper action and faulty risk assessment. Governments exist to deal with this sort of thing, but our government has sold us down the river in order to build superweapons nobody should be using anyway.
Either give up the free market or give up terrestrial nuclear plants. You cannot safely have both.
I think most people agree that a nuclear plant can be operated safely, with a much lower environmental impact over its lifetime than a similar output "traditional" (coal/gas) power plant.
Where I think some are naive is in estimating the potential for human nature to do the things necessary to operate a nuclear plant safely for its lifetime. The problem is that most of the things required for safety (regular maintenance, proper decommissioning, technology upgrades) are high costs whose benefits do not show up immediately (or perhaps, ever) on the balance sheet. This means that no matter how well-intentioned a nuclear plant owner is at the outset, there is a chance that they will not do these things. Once an upgrade is skipped and there is no consequence, the next upgrade is even more costly, and even more likely to be skipped.
One solution to this might be more regulation, to try to force the companies to work toward goals other than the bottom line. Unfortunately, government changes over time and sometimes is clearly in the pocket of corporations rather than the public good. Assuming that you could prevent this from happening for a century or more is not realistic.
I could fault the owners of these plants for not having a perfectly spotless record of safety improvements and maintenance, or the government for failing to hold the companies to a high enough standard. But honestly, we should know better than to put our faith in any system that is inherently unstable, requires continuous inflows of money and manpower to remain safe, has an operational lifetime that spans generations, and has a large decommissioning cost.
The risk profile is asymmetric, same as with the banks that blew up lately - the company operating the plant reaps most of the profits of operation, and most of the risks are socialized. The risk profile is even more asymmetric for a manager who's likely to be in a different job in 5 years' time anyway.
Modern nuclear engineering is modern. You guys keep throwing first generation failures at us. Maybe if we actually could build modern plants we could persuade the owners to shut down or replace the old ones.
Got a job? Getting paid in currency? You're a capitalist. Spend your hard-earned money, by choice, on groceries? You're a capitalist. Got money in the bank? You're a capitalist.
Let's not kid ourselves and pretend that we're not "capitalists". You simply can't live in this world without being a capitalist. What's wrong with the world isn't capitalism -- after all, capitalism simply means voluntary trade for mutual benefit. What's wrong is coercion: force, fraud, theft, blackmail. Show me an example of "failed capitalism", and I'll show you an example of coercion at work, not voluntary trade.
That takes time and effort to safely dismantle.
True, but with nuclear reactors you have a fairly unique situation compared to chemical problems - Radiation sources degrade and become safer over time. If a chemical is stable, it's not going to degrade(without help).
Over the service life of an operational nuclear plant you can save up a humongous decommissioning fund, even if you only charge a fraction of a cent. You can expect a gigawatt nuclear plant to produce ~8B kwh a year. At .1 cents a kwh, for a gigawatt nuclear plant, thatâ(TM)s around $8M a year towards decommissioning. At 5% a year, that $8M should turn into just over $1T over the course of 40 years.
Even with todayâ(TM)s costs, $1T should more than pay for not only decommissioning the old plant, but building a new one.
As for the radiation, after you pull the fuel out you can save massive amounts of money simply by letting the reactor vessel sit for a decade or so, by which time the radiation will have dropped sufficienty that you don't need as extensive radiation control measures. Bonus points if you arrange things so that the reactor vessel is still on the grounds of an active power plant so you don't need seperate security measures. Then, in 30-40 years when you're looking to replace the now old replacement, you tear down the now relatively cold original reactor and build a new one in it's footprint.
I don't read AC A human right
First: Bloomberg's writeup
Browns Ferry could have been testing these valves but wasn't (not unlike me not testing those hot water heater emergency valves once a year). From the article above quoting the TVA guy, it would have taken an improbable scenario (involving Matthew Broderick no doubt) for it to "cause damage to the core". Regardless, they should just add it to their undoubtedly busy schedule. Something like Fukushima is more unlikely for it. I heard it was designed for around ~350 mph winds (those pesky tornadoes!) but I see stuff on the internet ~200 (older articles, before it was put online in the GWBush era, cite less wind protection). I don't know what they did for earthquake proofing due to the proximity to New Madrid Fault Zone ~Memphis, TN area. Map of 1812 Quake
Yet another take
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
...a pebble bed design based on the work in South Africa is being deployed in China.
Both South Africa and China licenced 50's German design, that had commercialy failed miserably in the 1980's (when it run out of subsidies). South Africa spent 12 years and 1 billion dollars before finally dropping it last year as completely unfeasible.
China planned originally have their's running last year, but the current target is 2013, if ever.
Pebble Bed Reactors are uncontrollable, and run at much higher temperatures than 'regular' LWRs. They have to be cooled by gas, and hope that no oxygen gets into the reactor running several hundred degrees over the autoignition temperature of the graphite moderator.
BBMR is not modern design, nor is it a viable design: even if all issues were solved and it could produce above the 10 MW of the only working PBMR ever made, it would never produce more than 100 MW per unit, so it would be around 10 times more expensive that current nuclear constructions. Remember, it's not the running of reactor that costs, but comissioning and decomissioning -- Germans estimate it takes 100 years to decomission the only working one!
I don't know about the anti-nuclear lobby in Japan, but as far as the US goes, all nuclear reactors are outdated designs because the anti-nuclear lobby has successfully blocked all attempts to build replacement reactors with modern designs. However, they've failed to get all the old reactors taken offline, because you can't have declining energy use with a growing population. Congratulations anti-nuke people. Instead of modern reactors that don't have a billion valves and don't need to be continuously cooled until shutdown+30 days, we have a fleet of aging TMI-type reactors with known flaws being operated until they fail.
I'm not saying pebble-beds in every town are the answer, but dammit, they have NO PUMPS AT ALL. It's like the anti-nukes want TMI reactors failing so they can kill nuclear completely. The reactors need to be replaced. LET IT HAPPEN.
*I am not saying they were identical scenarios so please don't point out the obvious.
"Does this further erode the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age?""
No, it shows like any complicated machine, it must be maintained.
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
Hey, where is the "ALARMIST!" tag?
Radiation is good for you. Everybody could take a hundred chest x-rays a year. Ought to have em too. Cesium-137? sprinkle it over your breakfast cereal for flavor in the morning. Makes you strong, like bull.
Dang tree-hugging whiners! If you had your way, we'd all be eating coal, and living in caves, and smearing our dung on eachother, and copulating with jellyfish like primitive apes! PROGRESS! Drill baby drill! Split them atoms! Yeah!!!
(this message has been brought to you by, one sarcastic bastard).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"1966 Ford breaks down on highway. Does this further prove that all cars suck?"
bun-fhuinneog agam!
I think it was reported that the majority of these reactors in the US are beyond their design lifetimes. Unfortunately capitalism says dont replace, keep using it, and take the risk.
The broader question is, can we afford to have a major chunk of the US off limits for hundreds of years?
The two linked articles give summaries, one from CBS boiling down what the NRC posted. Here's the actual NRC response to TVA:
http://adamswebsearch.nrc.gov/idmws/DocContent.dll?library=PU_ADAMS^pbntad01&LogonID=ddd68cc56fab25b578ba7c25d96ac246&id=111300164
Lots of good stuff on nrc.gov. Note that all inspections and enforcement actions for all power-generating plants are listed. Most plants have had a few issues over the years - most of which had minimal chance of causing a serious incident.
omg nuclear poniez!
Yes, already: radiation BAD, m'kay?!?! But just try to live without it.
Also bad: cyanide leach pits (half-life: infinity), TNT, mining tails, many industrial chemical processes, driving down the street, crossing the street, eating poorly, smoking, water, too much sunshine (omg nuclear poniez AGAIN!).
The world is risk. As the saying goes: if our first experience with gasoline was napalm, we'd all be driving electric cars. Overall, nuclear power is safe - not because it is inherently so, but precisely because it isn't.
Not quite. Moderntiy has new rules and failsafes that never existed in old designs and will often never be retrofitted due to the above cost cutting practices.
Simple example, how many of America's oil refineries have SIL rated emergency shutdown systems, very few. How many oil refineries built in the last 10 years have SIL rated emergency shutdown systems, nearly all of them, mandated by the standards of the time.
I'd rather those cost cutting bastards be in charge of a process with inherently safer design, than a 37 year old reactor like Browns Ferry.
The entire point is small reactor sizes. That decreases containment costs and improves safety while you still get your economy of scale on the turbine side by having several reactors per unit producing vast amounts of steam.
Also construction of the Chinese full scale prototypes started less than a decade ago. Even large coal fired plants take about that long. You can wait five years for a turbine since there are not many places that can make them.
There are other technologies going for the same idea since it has been incredibly obvious since the 1970s that large reactors are bad news from a safety perspective.
I happen to remember the thyroid thing. Thing about radiation induced thyroid cancer is that it's one of the easiest cancers to treat.
Going to the UN Source, I find that you're wrong on several counts
1. It's not 9000 cases, it's 6000
2. It's not thyroid cancer deaths, it's thyroid cancer cases. Most survived it. 15 per this report
3. The 6000 is all cases of thyroid cancer in the area, thyroid cancer is rare otherwise, but still occurs. The UN merely attributes a 'large fraction' to the radioiodine
I don't read AC A human right
The problem is how much damage can be caused by a technology.
Can I be concerned about how much damage IS caused by a technology? I mean, it's not like
We cannot make a 50 km radius around each reactor contaminated and still have enough space to life. I do not propose that every plant is going to explode, however the result of an accident can be so harmful that we are not really able to handle them.
Didn't you just propose just that? At the current rate we only need an exclusion zone every 25 years, and we don't mark off 50km even for Chernobyl. Chernobyl is 30km, and Fukushima is 20km. As for 'handle them', we did so for Chernobyl, we're doing so for Fukushima.
So comparing dead people in a coal mine with thousands or millions (depends on the location) of people to be relocated to other places.
I'd rather be relocated than take a 1/10th chance(or so) of being dead...
But the contamination of an nuclear accident effects the general public. And frankly we do not want to be radiated, because someone is not able to operate his plant safely.
What about the contamination from coal plants?
Beside that we have alternatives. One is hanging above our heads it is this yellow thingy it produces energy by nuclear fission. It works properly and we do not have to care about the waste for one or two billion years. Until then we can use energy supplied by that reactor.
Costs something like 10 times as much for the power, still need a method to generate electricity at night.
Germany will shutdown all its nuclear plants by 2020/2030 and replace it by renewable energy. Do you think they are going back to the stone age because of that. And no they are not building coal plants to replace the nuclear plants. they go to replace old inefficient coal plants by new ones.
I'll believe it when it happens; it was my understanding that the politicians were moving away from this before fukushima happened. We'll see in 9 years.
And if they're not building coal plants to replacement, what are they building? Just curious.
You have to stop to think that a nuclear plant has to be replaced by another plant with the same output. You have to build a grid and attach many wind turbines. In Europe for example, they interconnect their wind farms in the North Sea.
Off-shore wind power is probably still cheaper than solar, but probably more expensive than on-shore. On shore you're looking at taking up a huge amount of space - wind is 5GWh/year/km2 by my calcs, vs nuclear at 1,828 GWh/year/km2. When I figured out having a Chernobyl/Fukushima every 25 years, and them being uninhabitable for 100, wind power STILL took out 82 times more land area from development than nuclear.
Note, I'm not entirely against wind/solar - I think they should be part of the mix, but only part. I'm thinking something like 40% nuclear, 20% solar, 20% wind, 20% other(hydro, tidal, geothermal, biomass, etc...) for my 'CO2 neutral' power supply. Heck, I've even been looking at a solar heating system for my house.
I don't read AC A human right