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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.
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.
Solar doesn't require batteries. It can feed directly into the grid via an inverter. Solar panels are near 100% recyclable and most manufactures have free recycling schemes. The carbon payback from manufacturing is as low as 1 year.
You also need to stop thinking of solar as a domestic production source - that's just perverse. Solar on industrial scales is already approaching parity with coal power stations and was cheaper than nuclear last year.
And yes, yes, it doesn't produce power at night. Maybe you've heard of power storage, which is already used in many places to help balance grid loads.
There are plenty of challenges, but so many geeks have blinkers on when it comes to solar.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
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.
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
Solar doesn't require batteries
Maybe you've heard of power storage
What do you think batteries are? Masturbatory aids?
Sure, there are a number of grid storage technologies, but batteries are definitely one of them.
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.
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?
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.
Just did a quick wiki of your list.
Looks like there are currently FOUR reactors online that are Generation III. All of the same type, all in Japan.
No, Generation IV online, or even under construction.
Note that even the four Gen III reactors online are using 20+ year old designs.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
"Maybe you've heard of power storage"
There's that whole consumption smoothing business that's a real bitch with solar. Power storage capacity in even Germany or Spain, with their huge amounts of renewables, is pitiful. Ideally you would have enough power storage to smooth consumption between the peak and trough loads in your area... in practice, that kind of infrastructure is expensive and largely nonexistent. The biggest consumption smoothing mechanism is calling up power plants and paying them to shut down, or paying power plants to have "spinning reserves," operations running at unprofitable levels that can be quickly ramped up.
This is a problem not just with solar, but with most forms of power production. Nuclear plants can't quickly change their power production to suit demand either. Only gas plants can really do that well. Oil possibly, but not coal.
But we're not yet at the point where this is actually a problem for solar. For the time being, it makes the most sense to take coal plants offline as soon as possible, and invest in a lot more solar. In the mean time, gas can take care of the variations in supply and demand. By the time we got rid of the coal plants and start receiving a significant amount of our energy from solar, the world will look very different, and then maybe we can start worrying about what to replace the gas plants with. But that's not an issue right now.
The precise degree of regulatory capture at any given time is going to be a politically determined matter; but you really can't expect any other stance: Nuclear plants are very expensive to build, and very expensive to decommission; but the cost of fuel is low, and the cost of temporary-turning-into-permanent-on-an-installment-plan 'disposal' of fuel is also fairly low. Thus, unless the maintenance situation is so bad that you have a crack squad of Godzilla slayers on staff, the economics are basically never in favor of replacement if you can keep the sucker running. Even if you can't, decommissioning costs are likely t dwarf the costs of putting it on some sort of "standby" and leaving it until you can retire away from the problem.
It's very much unlike, say, gas units, which are pretty cheap to put up and tear down; but burn fairly expensive fuel(and, worst case, just sort of explode a little bit, spreading not-very-scary natural gas combustion products), where the economic incentives to take down old plants and put up more efficient ones work out comparatively well.
The NRC, on the other hand, is pretty much in the business of delivering bad news in order to head off low-probability, but very bad, potential accidents. People that unpopular need institutional cultures of iron to avoid subversion.
There's a power storage plant a little way from here. It pumps water up a hill when electricity is cheap, and lets it flow down when electricity is expensive. It takes about 15 minutes to completely empty the lake, and doing that doesn't come close to supplying the entire grid load - you'd be amazed at how much power storage is required just to smooth over the current set of power plants' inability to increase supply instantly. With more wind and solar, this requirement would be vastly higher.
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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".
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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.
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.
Easy. You compare it to the 100% chance of large radiation releases from coal plants every year, the 100% chance that massive amounts of CO2, mercury, and fine particulate matter will be released, etc.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
I live about 11 miles from a nuke plant. I would not even consider living that close to a coal plant.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
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.
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.