Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
That is exactly the problem. This is no different from the tragedies frequently encountered in coal mines. They cut corners and costs in the name of greater profits. And then when bad things happen, they say "whoops! This is an isolated incident. And we will fire someone for doing what we encouraged and even told them to do!"
The nuclear industry in the US has amazingly fearsome oversight. It happens that I word for a nuclear technology company and I can tell you first hand that "NRC" is mentioned in seemingly every business conversation with numerous and frequent meetings that involve NRC. So if the NRC didn't find this sooner, I have to wonder why. Has the government been cutting back on the NRC? I hope not and if they have, they need to reverse it and fast.
Nuclear energy is the best we have right now. But it also needs to be regulated and monitored closely. No one questions that fact.
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.
All nuclear plants are not created equal. The far far bigger problem is continuing to use early reactor designs past their end of life! It's like a 30 year old car that has not spent those years in a garage. It needs considerable work to stay usable, often to the point of requiring it to be rebuilt. Well the same thing holds true to nuclear plants, but we just don't spend that sort of money renovating the old ones. So they start to fail. How much effort is actually required to have severe problems is rather interesting, but I for on do not expect them to simply keep working.
We should have continued building and updating designs over the last 30 or 40 years, but anti-nuclear nuts have left us all pretty damn screwed.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
I tend to agree in many ways. It's not entirely an engineering problem.
The real risks come as a result of our system, which is squarely rooted in human greed and fallibility. We're risk-takers by nature, and the risk/reward equation is skewed toward danger.
For example:
If I'm a CEO and build a reactor, cutting costs by attenuating the safety systems specified by the engineers (e.g. using cheap materials for failsafes, or not installing them at all), my profit goes up. I saved a lot of money during construction, didn't I!
However, if something goes wrong and my poorly implemented safety mechanisms fail, my personal risk is actually quite low. I probably won't notice an impact on my earnings, I certainly won't go to jail, and once the media is done feeding on the corpse of my disaster, it's back to "business as usual."
This is a far cry from the careful designs of the engineer, and the scenario gets played out all the time, in various disciplines (see also: BP oil spill, mortgage-backed securities, etc).
Maybe the solution is to let the engineers control the nuclear industry, soup-to-nuts, and send the MBA's packing?
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
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
It isn't just the "nuclear nuts", though they probably haven't improve the R&D supply. Properly decommissioning a plant, especially one that really deserves it, is not inexpensive, and turns a reasonably profitable(once the construction/startup expenses have been amortized or written off) baseline unit into a big cost center. There is, thus, a strong built in incentive to keep patching and running as long as possible. Best case, you can continue to use the plant as a generating asset. Worst case, if you've had to make a number of repairs that compromise capacity, it may well still be cheaper to keep the lights on and the plant "operating" than it is to tear it down.
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
We should have continued building and updating designs over the last 30 or 40 years, but anti-nuclear nuts have left us all pretty damn screwed.
Blaming anti-nuclear people for the lack of upgrades/maintenance of existing nuclear plants is wrong.
The real problem is that energy companies don't allocate enough money to that matter. As long as it works and produces energy, they keep maintenance to a minimum level to maximize profits.
Aye, I am all for it. Especially remove the arbitrary regulations regarding liability and let the power companies fully insure their reactors themselves. Wait, what? No insurance company would be willing to do that? Score one for the free market!
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.