Russia Set To Extend Life of Nuclear Reactors Past Engineered Life Span

Harperdog writes "Yikes! Russia is extending the lifetime of nuclear power reactors beyond their engineered life span of 30 years, including the nation's oldest reactors: first-generation VVERs and RBMKs, the Chernobyl-type reactors. This goes against existing Russian law, because the projects have not undergone environmental assessments. 'Many of the country's experts and non-governmental organizations maintain that this decision is economically unjustifiable and environmentally dangerous — to say nothing of illegal. The Russian nuclear industry, however, argues that lifetime extensions are justified because the original estimate of a 30-year life span was conservative; the plants have been significantly upgraded; and extensions cost significantly less than constructing new reactors.'"

Comments

Laws...

[Anonymous Coward]

Laws are for people to follow, not corporations or government organizations.

Re:Laws...

[MacTO]

There are two types of laws that engineers have to consider, and I'm pretty sure that corporations and governments cannot violate the laws of physics.

Re:Laws...

[eliphalet]

But corporations are people too!

Re:Laws...

[EdIII]

I'm pretty sure that corporations and governments cannot violate the laws of physics.

You fool!

Black Mesa, Aperture Science, and UAC mean nothing to you?

Re:Laws...

[davester666]

More like super-people. Or people+.

Re:Laws...

[Anonymous Coward]

hey, our Congress is doing the same thing, with themselves!

show me an ideology that isn't obsolete
    campaign contributions to extend life of Luddites?

(besides, Conservatives are exempt from all regulations, laws & reality)

Re:Laws...

[rapidreload]

Black Mesa

Big deal. I'm a physicist. If the shit hits the fan just give me a gun and a crowbar and I'll take care of things. Don't worry about firearms training either - as a physicist in a desperate situation I'll magically obtain amazing combat skills that go beyond what the US Marines are even capable of, so I'm sure I'll be fine.

Re:Laws...

[ne0n]

I'm making a note here, "HUGE SUCCESS!"

It's hard to overstate my satisfaction with Russian nuclear engineering these days. Doing what they must because they can.

Re:Laws...

[CapuchinSeven]

Freeman wore a special HEV suit designed by himself capable of keeping him alive better than most combat armours and enhancing his abilities, which is where most of his physical abilities are meant to have come from.

So does Canada.

[slackware 3.6]

The Chalk river reactor.

Re:So does Canada.

[Anonymous Coward]

As does the US, which has re-certified multiple reactors, including both at Nine Mile Point, which were re-certified for an additional 20 years after their initial lifespan.

Re:So does Canada.

[decipher_saint]

I think they keep that mess limping along because it's one of the few plants still capable of producing isotopes for medical purposes?

I could be wrong, but still pretty scary.

Re:So does Canada.

[Cochonou]

And so does France, with the Fessenheim reactor, which is also 30 years old.

Re:So does Canada.

[icebike]

Design life span is a best guess.

Actual use reveals the true life span. Aggressive maintenance can stretch life span even further.

The same is true of small to medium sized hydro dams. They were so over-built that many of them have exceeded their design life. Some have doubled their design life without showing significant degradation, especially with new resurfacing technologies.

It is said that "Engineering is the art of finding the least safe design".
By which it is meant that engineers design to use the least materials, cost, labor, and still achieve a safe result.

When actual measurements and data are poor, or not available, engineers (the good ones) over build.
They design in extra safety factors, excessive strength. The result is you have Brooklyn Bridges, (a whipersnapper compared to the Ponte Fabrico B52s, the aqueducts (some still in use) and similar very over-engineered projects.

That some reactors that were designed when the industry was in its infancy are still safe and suitable today is not all that surprising. People didn't push the envelope as often then.

But it remains to be seen expect that of future designs.

Re:So does Canada.

[Anonymous Coward]

At least PIckering also. Probably Darlington.

Re:So does Canada.

[gman003]

Ponte Fabrico

Shit, I remember reading about that in school. Latin class, to be specific - translating a section of Cassius Dio's Historia Romana about its construction. That alone tells you how incredibly old and overdesigned that thing is.

Re:So does Canada.

[GameboyRMH]

But was that done illegally with no environmental assessment? I'm all for nuclear power, but with rigorous oversight.

Re:So does Canada.

[Anonymous Coward]

... and the US Navy. When I left my submarine two years ago it was on year 34 of its intended 30-year lifespan. It's scheduled to stay in operation for another 2-3 years.

Re:So does Canada.

[c6gunner]

Eh. In Canada, we do that with pretty much everything. The US has been sending people up here to try and figure how we keep our military aircraft flying as long as we do.

Note to government: I know healthcare is expensive, but that doesn't mean you have to cheap out on everything else!

Re:So does Canada.

[kiwix]

That's one of the side effects of the anti-nuclear lobbying. We don't build new reactors, but we still need electricity, so we keep the old ones running longer than they're supposed to...

Re:So does Canada.

[Anonymous Coward]

Chalkriver is kept operational by political decree.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk_River_Laboratories#2007_shutdown

On December 11, 2007, the Canadian House of Commons, acting on independent expert advice, passed emergency legislation authorizing the restarting of the NRU reactor and its operation for 120 days (counter to the decision of the CNSC), which was passed by the Senate and received Royal Assent on December 12. Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticized the CNSC for this shutdown which "jeopardized the health and safety of tens of thousands of Canadians", insisting that there was no risk, contrary to the testimony of then CNSC President & CEO Linda Keen. She would later be fired for ignoring a decision by Parliament to restart the reactor, reflecting its policy that the safety of citizens requiring essential nuclear medicine should be taken in to account in assessing the overall safety concerns of the reactor's operation.

This reactor suffered 2 major emergency shutdowns since this incident already. Each resulted in many months downtime.

Basically, it's a reactor used for medical isotopes built back in the 50s kept limping along into 2nd decade when it should have been completely shut down and replaced. But that effort failed,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAPLE

so we are stuck with a leaking, 50+ year old machine.

Re:So does Canada.

[shutdown -p now]

Actual use reveals the true life span. Aggressive maintenance can stretch life span even further.

The same is true of small to medium sized hydro dams. They were so over-built that many of them have exceeded their design life. Some have doubled their design life without showing significant degradation, especially with new resurfacing technologies.

See, the key word here is "maintenance". Yes, you can stretch it for a while longer if you have the money and the inclination to maintain it. Problem is, Russia didn't exactly have much of that back in 90s, and maintenance is not really back to USSR levels even today.

It's ironic that you had to mention hydro dams, since they kinda showcase the problem. Of course, this will look much more spectacular when an RBMK reactor goes down in a similar fashion.

Re:So does Canada.

[SeaFox]

Design life span is a best guess.

Actual use reveals the true life span. Aggressive maintenance can stretch life span even further.

I don't expect commercial power companies to do anything "aggressively" except try and make money while spending as little as possible on the actual running of their business.

Re:So does Canada.

[icebike]

Commercial power companies are some of the oldest companies in the world in most countries.

You don't survive as a company by neglecting your physical plant.

Your cynicism is misplaced.

Re:So does Canada.

[SeaFox]

But do we know if there's any real auditing of records here to see if these operators were "aggressive" enough with their maintenance? I predict some kickbacks and a bunch of rubber-stamping.

Re:So does Canada.

[makomk]

It seems that one of the problems with the Russian reactors is similar to that which did MAPLE in - we don't have an accurate way of modelling their behaviour, and in the case of the Russian ones we don't have the ability to monitor them in enough detail to spot divergence from the model even in normal operation. Then there's the problem of whether failure modes will be more dangerous than anticipated by the model...

Re:So does Canada.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because the NIMBYs have soooo much say in Russia.

Re:So does Canada.

[Anonymous Coward]

As does the US

As does all of the world with nuclear reactors. And stated below, design life is an estimate, not a factual assessment. In most countries extensions are based on factual assessment.

The fact this story was posted here says more about nuclear ignorance and anti-nuclear scaremongering than anything else.

Well,

[SJHillman]

What could possibly go boom?

Re:Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as it costs less...

Re:Well,

[wanzeo]

Good question. The article says nothing about what makes a reactor have a "lifetime". What keeps them from running them for hundreds of years?

Re:Well,

[HornWumpus]

Most metals become brittle when irradiated.

Someone will be along with more details then I can recall offhand.

I would just design the plant to run with brittle metals from day one. Nothing that can't be solved with thicker walls (in many cases anyhow).

Steel also becomes brittle through work hardening. Which is often overbuilt to accommodate the loss of toughness. Nothing lasts forever.

Re:Well,

[roman_mir]

Except it does:

During life-extension projects, engineers determine which components are in need of replacement, and which can remain in service if maintained regularly. Some parts of a reactor, however, cannot be replaced -- including the reactor casing and its internal elements, the graphite stack (found in RBMK reactors), primary coolant circuits, primary coolant pumps, and biological shield systems. These parts are crucial for the safe operation of a reactor, particularly a first-generation reactor.

In the case of the Kola nuclear power plant in northern Russia, for example, the reactor casing should be replaced in order to ensure safer operation, but that cannot be done without building a new reactor. In addition, the proximity of the fuel assemblies to the steel walls in the VVER-440 reactor tank -- such as those used in two of Kola's reactor units -- results in higher neutron irradiation than in other types of reactors, so the walls of the VVER-440 become brittle more rapidly.

Re:Well,

[sidnelson13]

Russians reactors: 140% lifespan!

Re:Well,

[NonUniqueNickname]

The lifetime of Russian nuclear power reactors, by design, goes up to 140%.

Re:Well,

[Arancaytar]

Material decay under long-term exposure to radiation, most likely. Also, as new technology becomes available, they may expect the plant to be out-dated and no longer worth the necessary modifications to match newer standards after thirty years.

Re:Well,

[vlm]

No technical limit. Eventually you get to replace the reactor vessel, which for all practical purposes involves disassembling nearly the entire plant, and reassembling it, so you may as well be honest with yourself and call it a brand new plant on the same site. Kind of like the old joke, which is true in my case, that I own my great grandfather-in-laws wood cutting axe, of course its had like 4 new handles and two new heads so there's not much of it older than 50 years or so...

Standard /. car analogy is that eventually a $5 bearing goes out deep in the car innards, and the labor costs to get in there, replace it, and get out, exceed the costs of a new car, or at least exceed the cost of an unbroken car of similar age and quality car.

Much like "reusable" spacecraft have kind of fizzled out because it turns out the recertification process is more expensive than making a new one.

Much like people can spend $75K on a model T restoration, where most people would just buy a much better kia, you could spend the cost of three new nukes trying to rebuild one old nuke, if you really want.

Re:Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that has to do with the high pressure steam (turbines, pipes etc). Which is what blew back in '86.
What worries me is that the old RBMK reactors have no containment bar a thin walled building. They were built mostly upwards rather than outwards making them too costly to encase and contain like we do in the west. In other words if something were to happen with those the WORST happens.

But other than the steam parts, not that much.

Re:Well,

[y86]

Most metals become brittle when irradiated.

Someone will be along with more details then I can recall offhand.

I would just design the plant to run with brittle metals from day one. Nothing that can't be solved with thicker walls (in many cases anyhow).

Modern reactors use a neutron shield that goes with the fuel basket. It can be replaced and greatly decreases vessel embrittlement by becoming the sacrificial element to first absorb/slow the errant neutrons.

The problem is with shutdown and startup. This needs to be done with control as things become harder and have less flex.

Re:Well,

[makomk]

As I understand it, the RBMK reactors are already a long way from meeting modern safety standards. They have no containment building, they still have a positive void coefficient, the monitoring and control systems are quite limited despite being upgraded and this can't really be fixed, there appear to be a bunch of single points of failure that can't be fixed either, and so on.

Re:Well,

[leucadiadude]

You can also choose to anneal the reactor vessel in place. This will restore much of the original ductility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annealing_(metallurgy)

Re:Well,

[leucadiadude]

"Eventually you get to replace the reactor vessel, which for all practical purposes involves disassembling nearly the entire plant, and reassembling it, "

Or you can just anneal it in place to remove much of the neutron damage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annealing_(metallurgy)

Re:Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

No need for exhaustive risk analysis reports here. The Russians can use them as weapons combined with new HAARP technology and old Tesla beams. Just add plenty of Strodium and a little Barium and light up that beam anywhere on the planet bouncing it off the ionosphere. Nostrovia, like they say! How about a little particle beam in your face?Besides that, they can store the newly enriched Iranian rods there as well. Ciou!

Re:Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

Of cause how obvious, so how do you re-anneal the vessel of nuclear reactor in place? You either have to spend stupid money heating the vessel outside the nuclear cycle. Or you use the nuclear reaction heat, with less cooling, to push the vessel to the limit and then return. The first one is very difficult and expensive, the second is a disaster waiting to happen see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire.

Re:Well,

[roman_mir]

yeah, good idea, why don't they put the reactor on fire and heat it up to whatever, 1000 degrees C and cool it down quickly and see how that works out for them while trying to contain the reaction inside.

Re:Well,

[jo_ham]

Just take out the fuel rods...?

It's hardly rocket science.

Also, who said anything about "putting the reactor on fire"?

Annealing doesn't have to be done with fire, and it's something that has been done with nuclear piles before.

Re:Well,

[jo_ham]

To be fair to the annealing process, the Windscale disaster was down to cutting corners, pushing the design limits of the pile too far, and inadequate instrumentation for monitoring it.

Re:Well,

[atisss]

Easy - they are nuclear, so they don't have a defined lifetime, it's half-life, so it's just decaying more and more slowly. Now they'll extend it 30 years, then 60, then 120..

Re:Well,

[leucadiadude]

It's been done numerous times already jackass. It's called electromagnetic heating. You offload the core, remove the vessel internals, and lower essentially a big electricmagetic coil to generate currents in the vessel wall to heat it up. It's not rocket science, it's not even nuclear science, it's basic metallurgy.

Re:Well,

[leucadiadude]

And also the fact that no one knew about Wigner energy at the time those graphite cores were designed, so no method for efficient annealing was designed in.

Re:Well,

[subreality]

Modern updates greatly reduced the positive void coefficient. It used to be wildly positive (4.7), which allowed running unenriched uranium on a non-heavy-water reactor. Now it's around 0.7, which gives you a lot more room for error.

The controls are considerably upgraded: no more graphite tips on the control rods, more manual control rods, more neutron absorbers, no more safety overrides, and more.

There aren't many single points of failure, but the safety margin and redundancy is much lower than western designs. A PWR can be leaking like a sieve and still maintain adequate cooling; a RBMK can hit trouble with only a few broken pipes, and as you say, there's no way to mitigate it, since it's part of the design.

They actually do have some some containment. It's not a heavy-duty all-encompassing concrete bunker like a western reactor, but there are high pressure management channels, steam condenser pools, etc. Any routine blowout will be contained... Just don't pull a Chernobyl. :)

I'd say RBMK safety has been upgraded from "Insanely Irresponsible" to "Poor".

Re:Well,

[makomk]

The RBMK reactor vessels are full of graphite blocks that can't be removed. As in, carbon.

Re:Well,

[makomk]

It used to be wildly positive (4.7), which allowed running unenriched uranium on a non-heavy-water reactor. Now it's around 0.7, which gives you a lot more room for error.

More precisely, it should be around 0.7 if the reactor is operating correctly. The IAEA's experts seem to be rather nervous about their ability to reliably keep the void coefficient low enough due to a combination of dubious models, limited monitoring and control systems, and poorly trained employees.

Re:Well,

[makomk]

You offload the core, remove the vessel internals

See, there's your problem. The RBMK reactors are filled with tons of graphite that was not designed to be removable.

Re:Well,

[drinkypoo]

Standard /. car analogy is that eventually a $5 bearing goes out deep in the car innards, and the labor costs to get in there, replace it, and get out, exceed the costs of a new car, or at least exceed the cost of an unbroken car of similar age and quality car.

That's not how it really works though. The truth is that the vehicle has been designed to be cheap to assemble and cheap to do minor maintenance on, and prohibitively expensive to keep forever. The suspension is put together with silicone-filled rubber bushings instead of air-filled polyurethane (or even something harder, like teflon) that would last forever. You get the ride quality from the shocks, and you get better handling too. If the car were designed to last then it would be worth putting a new or rebuilt motor into it later, and the price for a new motor would be cheaper. But the car is designed to fall apart so that another has to be purchased. From some comments I've read above this is how nuclear reactors were built, but they're starting to include features designed to make it possible to service them now that it's clear what the issues are and how to cheaply mitigate them.

Re:Well,

[AmiMoJo]

There are other problems with the known lifespans of critical machinery like pumps and the motors that move control rods. We have a good idea of how they age, but know less about the long term effects of radiation because they are already among the oldest irradiated parts we have to observe.

As their age increases the chances of them failing also increases. In theory it should be okay because there are emergyency procedures to deal with such an event and cool the reactors safely, but that assumes that the staff are up to scratch, the monitoring equipment works, that mistakes won't be made in an accident and so on.

Problems with instrumentation and operator error account for about 90% of accidents in engineering.

Re:Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

Annealing...has been done with nuclear piles before.

Yeah. Like Windscale

Re:Well,

[AmiMoJo]

Unfortunately it is difficult to build a new reactor on the site of the old one because clean-up of the decommissioned one takes so long. In the UK we are currently looking at about 80-90 years for reactors turned off in the late 80s. The US has a maximum limit of 30 years but that only requires entombment of the most hazardous parts, so the site is unusable indefinitely. I suppose in the US where there is plenty of land available that isn't as big a problem as it is for us.

Part of the problem with ageing reactors is that the operators are not held liable for most of the cost when things go wrong. The UK limits liability to £140m and the government pays the rest, so there is little incentive to replaces the power stations you have with safer ones that cost far more.

Re:Well,

[jo_ham]

Yes, those are some of the parts you need to anneal, so you wouldn't want to remove those.

The fuel rods, however, can be taken out. You can even take them out while the reactor is running (on other rods) with the RBMK design.

And yes, carbon. Presumably you were going for some sort of "boom! gotcha! carbon is flammable!", but that's beside the point - under normal operating conditions it has the potential to burst into flames if exposed to oxygen. It's why it's sealed inside the reactor vessel.

Graphite can be switched between alpha and beta forms (changing the lattice) by heating to over 1500 K or something like that. This is done without it burning. Annealing it is not an issue as long as you don't expose it to oxygen.

What was your point?

Re:Well,

[leucadiadude]

RBMK reactors do not have a reactor vessel anyway. It's a POS pressure tube design, the above pots never applied to it.

Big deal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most all power plants are life-extended past their first thirty years. Why should nuclear be different?

Re:Big deal...

[v1]

The Russian nuclear industry, however, argues that lifetime extensions are justified because the original estimate of a 30-year life span was conservative; the plants have been significantly upgraded; and extensions cost significantly less than constructing new reactors.'"

1. Conservative estimates are appropriate for things that can melt down. Bigger impacts from "catastrophic failure" justify wider safety margins.
2. The original estimates already factored in maintenance and upgrades over their lifespan. Trying to factor them in again is just plain wrong.
3. Meltdowns are more expensive than construction. See also: Fukushima

Most all power plants are life-extended past their first thirty years. Why should nuclear be different?

4. Nuclear is a comparatively new technology, and there have been a lot of fundamental changes and advances in reactor design in the last 30 years. A coal plant may change out a turbine for a more energy-efficient model during its term, but you can't just pull a reactor core (along with all its infrastructure) and swap in a totally different design as part of an upgrade. Changes like that generally call for outright replacement anyway.

Re:Big deal...

[Urza9814]

You say this other nations haven't been doing the exact same thing for YEARS. Like the SIXTY+ granted by the US:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/15/news/economy/nuclear_plants_us/index.htm

Re:Big deal...

[icebike]

2. The original estimates already factored in maintenance and upgrades over their lifespan. Trying to factor them in again is just plain wrong.

Nonsense.

The original estimates factored in some maintenance, virtually no upgrades, and much of it based on theoretical guesswork.
Now they have operated these plants for years, They can measure the actual degradation of the materials, and the history of failures
of actual parts in all of these reactors.

What you call just plain wrong is just plain engineering and advancements in materials science.

Re:Big deal...

[MobyDisk]

You say this other nations haven't been doing the exact same thing for YEARS

Where did he say that?

Re:Big deal...

[rtfa-troll]

Most all power plants are life-extended past their first thirty years. Why should nuclear be different?

There are several things here.

• a) nuclear plants suffer from neutron damage. Almost any material can be degraded by long term neutron bombardment through neutron capture; this means that over the long term parts of nuclear reactors have failure modes that may not be present in any other power plant
• b) nuclear reactor cores are highly radioactive to the level that can even destroy electronic equipment, certainly causes contamination and makes human inspection impossible. This makes it extremely difficult to be sure that equipment degradation has not become serious (compare with aeroplane inspection which uses detailed visual inspection at close range combined with large devices wheeled right up to the plane)
• c) the parts which are likely to fail (those close to the reactor core) are precisely the ones which really matter and can have worse consequences than the typical failures in a conventional power plant
• d) reactor physicists (the same ones that guaranteed us that Fukashima was safe) tell us that the new generations of reactors are much safer than the old ones; hydro power, for example, hasn't really had a massive safety change in the last fifty (or even hundred) years
• e) nuclear reactors are incredibly complex, difficult and precise mechanisms. They have a huge setup and teardown cost which means that the capital investment is huge, even compared to other large power plants. The more often this is done the more likely that it will go wrong.
• f) nuclear reactors leave large amounts of radioactive waste during decommissioning; one part of this is the fuel, but probably more important is all of the other parts which become radioactive during the lifetime of the reactor (remember neutron capture). The fewer plants that are decommissioned the lower the volume of this waste.

Obviously a), b) and c) push in the opposite direction from d), e) and f). What this means is that basically we should have a smaller number of safer nuclear reactors run for longer by people who we can trust to ensure that a) and b) don't become a problem. Unfortunately people who support nuclear power tend to be in denial about the potential risks and so aren't the right people. I guess it's like politicians. Anybody who wants to be a politician should probably be ruled out from the job / anybody who wants to run a reactor should probably be banned from doing so :-)

Re:Big deal...

[makomk]

The original estimates failed to factor in Chernobyl and a whole bunch of other safety problems waiting to happen. They needed major safety improvements in order to make the reactors even close to safe to run for their intended lifespan, and it appears that even then it was probably a bit questionable as to whether they should have continued to operate them.

Re:Big deal...

[leucadiadude]

"but you can't just pull a reactor core (along with all its infrastructure) and swap in a totally different design as part of an upgrade. Changes like that generally call for outright replacement anyway."

Of course you can.

Re:Big deal...

[leucadiadude]

• a) nuclear plants suffer from neutron damage. Almost any material can be degraded by long term neutron bombardment through neutron capture; this means that over the long term parts of nuclear reactors have failure modes that may not be present in any other power plant

• So? There is nothing new scientifically here, you design for a level of neutron damage and periodically verify your assumptions are correct. And you can always anneal the reactor vessel in place to remove much of the neutron damage and regain operating margins. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annealing_(metallurgy)

• b) nuclear reactor cores are highly radioactive to the level that can even destroy electronic equipment, certainly causes contamination and makes human inspection impossible. This makes it extremely difficult to be sure that equipment degradation has not become serious (compare with aeroplane inspection which uses detailed visual inspection at close range combined with large devices wheeled right up to the plane)

• Complete B.S. Radiation hardened underwater camera systems have been available for 30 years. And there are fiber optic methods available for remote inspection as well.

• c) the parts which are likely to fail (those close to the reactor core) are precisely the ones which really matter and can have worse consequences than the typical failures in a conventional power plant

• More B.S. The most likely parts to fail in a reactor are never in the core. The nuclear industry is well away of which parts are closest to their long term operating margins and which require the most frequent inspection and repair. And the stuff inside the reactor vessel ain't it.

• d) reactor physicists (the same ones that guaranteed us that Fukashima was safe) tell us that the new generations of reactors are much safer than the old ones; hydro power, for example, hasn't really had a massive safety change in the last fifty (or even hundred) years

• Nuclear power is the only industry that is not permitted to improve, it must be perfect from day one. FYI, hydro has killed more people than multiples of all other power generation methods combined. It's not even close. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

• e) nuclear reactors are incredibly complex, difficult and precise mechanisms. They have a huge setup and teardown cost which means that the capital investment is huge, even compared to other large power plants. The more often this is done the more likely that it will go wrong.

• Ehh? High capital costs are from what? High interest rates. Delays in plant construction and operation many times a result of frivilous lawsuits DESIGNED by environmental organizations to intentionally run up costs. Talk about self fulfilling criticisms. The current generation of plants are avoiding this by getting all that crap doen up front and also by self financing. We'll see.

• f) nuclear reactors leave large amounts of radioactive waste during decommissioning; one part of this is the fuel, but probably more important is all of the other parts which become radioactive during the lifetime of the reactor (remember neutron capture). The fewer plants that are decommissioned the lower the volume of this waste.

• This is true, but to put some context on this, the volumes are simply insignificantly small. We have many many many times the volume being buried from nasty municipal waste that have chemicals in it that do not decay away, but thats ok right?

Obviously a), b) and c) push in the opposite direction from d), e) and f). What this means is that basically we should have a smaller number of safer nuclear reactors run for longer by people who we can trust to ensure that a) and b) don

Re:Big deal...

[rtfa-troll]

Thanks for your comment most of which is interesting and lucid, however I don't think you are even able to recognise a favourable comment when you see one. I was quite specifically trying to rule out the extension of these power plants because I simply don't yet know enough of the details to judge.

Let's have a look at one point.

• b) nuclear reactor cores are highly radioactive to the level that can even destroy electronic equipment, certainly causes contamination and makes human inspection impossible. This makes it extremely difficult to be sure that equipment degradation has not become serious (compare with aeroplane inspection which uses detailed visual inspection at close range combined with large devices wheeled right up to the plane)

• Complete B.S. Radiation hardened underwater camera systems have been available for 30 years. And there are fiber optic methods available for remote inspection as well.

I was in no way trying to suggest there's no inspection possible. I said "can even"; in other words it's not inevitable that electronics will be destroyed. Basically something you more than admit by saying that special systems are needed. That means that, instead of having the most advanced off the shelf tools, inspection can only be done with a more limited set of tools. When you inspect a plane, you walk around it; you look for anything suspicious. If you find something, you take it apart and view it with a special tool (e.g. an ultrasound scanner). When you do the same to parts of a reactor you end up limited to remote viewing and those tools that have been prepared and radiation hardened for you. This simply does make inspecting the inside of a nuclear plant harder than most other situations. Certainly harder than either aeronautic inspection or inspection of a conventional plant.

This makes no sense at all. So you are saying the people who you recruit who show the proper dedication and professionalism cannot be trusted to be nuclear plant operators BECAUSE of that professionalism? What B.S. Wow.

No; dedication and professionalism are fine. However, paranoia and an inability to communicate and discuss risk are not. The perfect example is point d). I'm clearly making a point in favour of new reactors. I'm precisely saying that reactors are improving and that that's a good thing. Instead you seem to take it as an attack on the nuclear industry. I am sorry, but I wouldn't want you to be the person judging if a new reactor is safe or not.

Re:Big deal...

[lastx33]

Where I live we still have (mildly) radioactive sheep from Chernobyl which farmers can't sell. I would suspect that our masters wish to extend the life of nuclear plants for two reasons - lack of people willing to invest in new ones and the cost of decommissioning. I remember reading last week in the paper (one editorially in favour of nuclear power) the soothing news that that the land around Dounreay plant in Scotland which has now closed should be relatively safe in 330 years. Also the decommissioning cost at today's estimates will only set the UK taxpayer, or perhaps soon the Scottish taxpayer, back by around £3 billion. That's for one plant. You can see how the costs will rack up as lots come to the end of their useful life.

Re:Big deal...

[leucadiadude]

No; dedication and professionalism are fine. However, paranoia and an inability to communicate and discuss risk are not. The perfect example is point d). I'm clearly making a point in favour of new reactors. I'm precisely saying that reactors are improving and that that's a good thing. Instead you seem to take it as an attack on the nuclear industry. I am sorry, but I wouldn't want you to be the person judging if a new reactor is safe or not.

Too late.

Muhuhuahahaha.

Re:Big deal...

[Anonymous Coward]

>b) nuclear reactor cores are highly radioactive to the level that can even destroy electronic equipment, certainly causes contamination and makes human inspection impossible. This makes it extremely difficult to be sure that equipment degradation has not become serious (compare with aeroplane inspection which uses detailed visual inspection at close range combined with large devices wheeled right up to the plane)

We (nuclear industry) have ASME codes that require inspection of the core and internals every outage.
We (engineering at a nuclear plant) and a dedicated engineering programs group who maintains and tracks the fatigue and life, and performs and reviews inspections of the reactor internals.

My co-worker spent most of the last 6 months reviewing footage from the last outage to ensure there were no cracks or fractures or damage that needed attention.
We also performed ultrasonic and NDE testing of several welds and structures to look for damage.

Anyone who says we cant get in the core is BS. yes you cant send a human physically into the core while fuel is loaded, but we can put cameras and other components down there. I've PERSONALLY been on the refuel bridge with the core off and seen the camera go into the core. you can see VERY clearly whats going on down there.

Re:Big deal...

[CrimsonAvenger]

but you can't just pull a reactor core (along with all its infrastructure) and swap in a totally different design as part of an upgrade.

When I was doing prototype duty as part of the Navy's Nuclear Power School, the reactor I was assigned to had had exactly that done to it.

Worked fine when I was there (~20 years after that core change). Only reason it's not still in use is that we don't have any operational boats that still use the design....

Re:Big deal...

[Ja'Achan]

I think he meant "You say this like other nations haven't been doing the exact same thing for YEARS"

Re:Big deal...

[makomk]

Nuclear power is the only industry that is not permitted to improve, it must be perfect from day one. FYI, hydro has killed more people than multiples of all other power generation methods combined. It's not even close. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

That's a popular nuclear industry talking point, but it's not really accurate because Banqiao Dam was constructed in part as a flood defense mechanism. They actually ended up essentially rebuilding it a few years later due to catastrophic flooding downstream that couldn't be prevented without it.

Re:Big deal...

[leucadiadude]

It's not a talking point if it killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Re:Big deal...

[MobyDisk]

ahh yes, I see it now.

Re:Big deal...

[rtfa-troll]

I was quite specifically not trying to rule out the extension of these power plants because I simply don't yet know enough of the details to judge.

ARRRRGGGHH... ..

Re:Big deal...

[makomk]

The UK nuclear industry has been rather careless at times, especially the military parts of it and especially with nuclear waste. Still, I guess we taught the rest of the world important lessons like "never build an air-cooled nuclear reactor, especially not with a graphite moderator", "don't dump radioactive waste in the sea", and "it's a lot cheaper to track what's going into your nuclear waste storage than to have to figure it out later, unless you're not the one paying the bill"

Re:Big deal...

[makomk]

It's not a talking point if it killed hundreds of thousands of people.

It's a talking point because the lack of it killed people as a result of flooding, they needed a flood control system of some kind anyway, and it would've been fairly effective as such if they hadn't cut corners on the engineering, had worse flooding than it was designed to protect against, and failed to operate it correctly in the face of that flooding. They also apparently didn't actually manage to evacuate the areas that were meant to be evacuated.

China's handling of natural disasters is... well, you remember the 2008 earthquake, complete with collapsing schools?

Awesome! glow in the dark babies!

[youn]

coming soon near a reactor near you... we may finally get started on this super comics they have been writing about... it's about time :p

Sweet!

[Lab Rat Jason]

Apparently everyone wants to be like the Japanese...

Re:Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

(must post anonymously!)

Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so....

(if you don't recognize it, then you're too young! So, go do that goggle thing on the intertubes and stay off my lawn).

Re:Sweet!

[Tablizer]

Turning Day-Glo green, I think I'm turning Day-Glo green, I really think so....

In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

People go nuclear about reactor!

Deja vu...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are quite a lot of stories of Russian failing to take incredibly obvious safety measures that were set down in official guidelines. Especially for huge, safety critical installations.
Please can some international power stop them before it goes wrong!

Re:Deja vu...

[Lab Rat Jason]

Sure, Russia is an international power that could stop them before something goes wrong... right?

Re:Deja vu...

[rtfa-troll]

Please can some international power stop them before it goes wrong!

But; they have a really big army and might not agree to be ordered around by the Yanks. I know; Let's attack them with Nuclear weapons. It's the only reasonable response to countries which create a radiation risk by building reactors without permission. Of course they might retaliate a little bit, but safety must always be number one priority, so sacrifices have to be made.

Insane

[lucm]

A friend of mine was doing electrical panels inspections in Russian nuclear plants (some NGO program), and one time he was in a control center and noticed a door that had no sign. He asked what it was, but nobody knew. He opened it and saw a big rusty pipe. He found out that the pipe was carrying cooling water out of the machine room... The radioactivity level was so high that my friend got a 3-month paid leave to get it out of his system.

I'm no sissy, I could sleep in a haunted houses or dig out bones from indian sacred land, but there is just no way I'll ever set foot in a Russian nuclear plant or a Chinese chemical plant.

Re:Insane

[Anonymous Coward]

So... does your friend have any new super-powers?

Re:Insane

[Genda]

Yeah, his hair and teeth fly out so fast that they can injure you!!!

Re:Insane

[martin-boundary]

If he's turning into a penguin, someone please tell him to stop it!

Re:Insane

[oldmac31310]

Could be worse. He could be turning into a bed sitting room!

Re:Insane

[Cyberax]

Sorry, that's a fairy tale.

1) There's no way a 'room which nobody knows about' can exist in a nuclear power plant.

2) Especially if it contains components from the freaking primary contour. And the secondary cooling contour is absolutely safe - you can drink water from it.

3) There's no way radiation levels can be large enough to cause significant irradiation in several minutes. Absolutely none at all - primary cooling water is radioactive, but not that much (it's continuously monitored).

4) Power plant operators after Chernobyl are _very_ careful. For a reason.

But what do I know? After all, I have actually worked on a Russian nuclear power plant.

Re:Insane

[lucm]

Not far. He almost got killed in a freak accident after coming back to America. He was working in a power plant (not nuclear), and one day a newbie noticed that a big breaker was off, he flipped it on and the breaker actually popped out of the socket, hitting my friend in the back of the head. Severe head trauma.

The breaker was off because there was a short on a power line following an ice storm. Power is powerful.

Re:Insane

[DerekLyons]

The radioactivity level was so high that my friend got a 3-month paid leave to get it out of his system.

That sounds, really, really, impressive and scary to the uninformed. But it's not actually. If your friend exceeded his quarterly allowed dose, it means he took the equivalent of a few transcontinental flights or chest X-rays. (I.E. practically nothing.)
 

I'm no sissy, I could sleep in a haunted houses or dig out bones from indian sacred land, but there is just no way I'll ever set foot in a Russian nuclear plant or a Chinese chemical plant.

No, you're not a sissy. Just badly misinformed and prone to EWW RAD1AT10N !1!11! syndrome.

Re:Insane

[y86]

3) There's no way radiation levels can be large enough to cause significant irradiation in several minutes. Absolutely none at all - primary cooling water is radioactive, but not that much (it's continuously monitored).

This is mostly true. Spent fuel pools can be pretty hot near new and old fuel. Also, the resin in demineralizers can be very raidioactive.

Re:Insane

[lucm]

Sorry, that's a fairy tale.

I am always impressed when someone make that kind of statement, knowing almost nothing of the actual event. This is a two-way street, so for the sake of the discussion, I'll say that you working in a Russian nuclear power plant is also a fairy tale.

Re:Insane

[lucm]

I'm no sissy, I could sleep in a haunted houses or dig out bones from indian sacred land, but there is just no way I'll ever set foot in a Russian nuclear plant or a Chinese chemical plant.

No, you're not a sissy. Just badly misinformed and prone to EWW RAD1AT10N !1!11! syndrome.

Well, thinking of that, haunted houses are not that scary either. I'm still on the fence for the indian sacred land thing.

As for my friend, he did not lose his hair or got leukemia, but still, eww.

Re:Insane

[Cyberax]

Spent fuel pools are even more carefully monitored, and are also much simpler in construction. So chances of uncharted pipework leading to/from them are essentially nil.

Ion-exchange resins in filters of course get pretty hot (and are classified as high-level waste), but I somehow doubt that they can be found in a closed room with rusting pipe.

Re:Insane

[Cyberax]

Of course. Yesterday I saw a squad of Martians landing on the Red Square in New York (what? Red Square is in Moscow? Never mind).

Actual event may be anything from "stumbled and got burned by a hot pipe" to "smoked a few pipes of weed with friends". However, some things are just impossible.

Re:Insane

[sloth jr]

Surprised the breaker wasn't tagged. Poor safety culture....

Re:Insane

[lucm]

Of course. Yesterday I saw a squad of Martians landing on the Red Square in New York (what? Red Square is in Moscow? Never mind).

Actual event may be anything from "stumbled and got burned by a hot pipe" to "smoked a few pipes of weed with friends". However, some things are just impossible.

What you describe is unlikely, not impossible. Maybe you need to understand the difference, and stop trying to pass your opinions as facts.

Re:Insane

[Dyinobal]

Any idea which reactor it was?

Re:Insane

[lucm]

Not sure, but it happened in the 90s, and my understanding is that the project was to upgrade the command & control stuff, heavily subsidized by some consortium. My friend is an electrical engineer, not a nuclear stuff expert.

Re:Insane

[lucm]

There is a saying: "at the door of the obvious, no one should have to put up a sign".

It's like those rookie mechanics that stand in front of a semi tire while removing the nuts, and they are pissed when they lose a kneecap. Common sense is the best defense.

Re:Insane

[c6gunner]

What you describe is unlikely, not impossible. Maybe you need to understand the difference, and stop trying to pass your opinions as facts.

You realize he was talking about Martians landing in a place that doesn't actually exits, right?

If that fits in your definition of "unlikely", it's safe to say that there is nothing which is impossible. Really, the main difference between "unlikely" and "impossible" is that people with no evidence grip on to the former and claim that it's not the latter, while failing to understand that even "impossible" events are just really, really, really unlikely.

Re:Insane

[jo_ham]

Even if we assume the part about the "unknown room" is true, the physics behind the way radiation works (that we know a lot about) are strongly against this being a true story, unless there's an exposed piece of the core sitting on a table in that room which I find unlikely.

Re:Insane

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like those rookie mechanics that stand in front of a semi tire while removing the nuts, and they are pissed when they...

Wait... whose nuts are being removed? No wonder you make teh rookies do it.

Re:Insane

[Zomalaja]

Every large breaker I have seen (1000 to 4000 Amps) has a way to padlock in the off position.

Re:Insane

[Anonymous Coward]

3) There's no way radiation levels can be large enough to cause significant irradiation in several minutes. Absolutely none at all - primary cooling water is radioactive, but not that much (it's continuously monitored).

Primary coolant contains large amounts of N-16 and other radionucleides.

The N16 itself causes fields in excess of 100 mRem/hour, which classifies it (based on US NRC requirements) as a high radiation area.

In fact, primary coolant is so hot, that BWRs completely seal off their main steam lines and heaterbay/condenser. They will let people in for minutes at a time for checks or emergent work every few months and thats it.

Re:Insane

[lucm]

It is my experience that frequently, people with an above-average level in science tend to be as tedious as religious nuts when a discussion involves something that is even remotely related to a topic they feel they understand. They focus on keywords and lose sight of the context, just like Bill O'Reilly when someone includes the acronym "ACLU" in a sentence (you know, those terrorists).

If you think that "an exposed piece of the core sitting on a table in that room" was really the only way to get radiation poisoning for my friend, I would have to challenge your understanding of how radiation poisoning occur. If you have some free time, I suggest you read about the French aircraft carrier (the R91), it is a very interesting piece of history regarding how people deal with this issue.

Re:Insane

[Cyberax]

>Primary coolant contains large amounts of N-16 and other radionucleides.

No it doesn't. Especially no sodium and nitrogen. Coolant water is continuosly filtered through ion-exchange resins to remove impurities exactly because of impurities.

>In fact, primary coolant is so hot, that BWRs completely seal off their main steam lines and heaterbay/condenser. They will let people in for minutes at a time for checks or emergent work every few months and thats it.

BWRs do not usually have a secondary loop (that's why they are BOILING water reactors) and steam from the reactor directly drives turbines, Russia has 10 reactors of this type right now. And since the steam from the reactor directly goes into a large pipe network, water purity is tightly controlled and steam is only borderline radioactive.

In PWRs with two cooling loops water is more radioactive in the primary loop. But again, it's not even close to levels that would give you a significant dose if you stand a few minutes near a coolant pipe. It's also mostly caused by neutron activation of oxygen which has very short half-life (around 2 minutes) so it falls off immediately after the shutdown.

Re:Insane

[jo_ham]

To put this in context for you, I'm a chemist. So I'd hope that I was "above average level" in science, since it's what I do professionally.

Re:Insane

[lucm]

To put this in context for you, I'm a chemist. So I'd hope that I was "above average level" in science, since it's what I do professionally.

It's a good thing then that your profession does not involve designing protective gear for people working in nuclear plants, since you think that one needs to be in the same room as "an exposed piece of the core" to get radiation poisoning...

Re:Insane

[jo_ham]

Where did I say that?

Please quote it carefully. You'll note the subject of my comments relates to a specific incident, oh you may also want a dictionary to look up the word "hyperbole".

I can wait.

I'm leaving out the whole part about the room containing a part of the primary loop and supposedly being "unknown".

We'll also leave out any discussion about the nature of the radiation in question, the distance from the source, the clothes or any other sort of gear the guy was wearing and the time he was exposed for. None of those things are important.

Re:Insane

[lucm]

Where did I say that?

Verbatim from your post:

Even if we assume the part about the "unknown room" is true, the physics behind the way radiation works (that we know a lot about) are strongly against this being a true story, unless there's an exposed piece of the core sitting on a table in that room which I find unlikely.

If you have a hard time remembering your own posts, maybe *you* have radiation poisoning. You should see a chemist about that.

Re:Insane

[jo_ham]

Right, so where does that state that the only way to get radiation poisoning is being exposed to core material?

That suggests a possible explanation for the very unlikely story (using hyperbole as a device - it's a common tool, often used in examples). It says nothing about what I think causes radiation poisoning definitively.

Re:Insane

[lucm]

Right, so where does that state that the only way to get radiation poisoning is being exposed to core material?

That suggests a possible explanation for the very unlikely story (using hyperbole as a device - it's a common tool, often used in examples). It says nothing about what I think causes radiation poisoning definitively.

What is even more unlikely than the story is that at some point this discussion will lead somewhere, because you are not even remotely open to the idea that it did happen and that all that was needed was a bit of clarification - you are on a mission to prove someone wrong. This is a behavior to which I usually refer as "being tedious", and my reference to Bill O'Reilly and the ACLU acronym in that context could qualify as what you call an "hyperbole".

Re:Insane

[jo_ham]

I'm not sure what sort of "clarification" can be added to a story that has so many (to be kind, 'embellishments') to it.

I've spent the rest of the time in an argument over my "average" science knowledge for throwing in a little hyperbole in my initial incredulity at the source story being taken as my sum knowledge of radiation. I was obviously unaware of the requirement to post credentials and sit a written exam first.

I welcome some "clarification". This cooling water from the machine room - was it pooled on the floor? How was it active enough to give him a 3 month sick leave? What was his exposure time? If the primary circuit was leaking this badly, why wasn't the room full of steam? Why wasn't the plant detecting the leak? Why was there an "unknown" room that had part of the primary circuit running through it? What was his dosimeter reading?

Re:Insane

[lucm]

I'm not sure what sort of "clarification" can be added to a story that has so many (to be kind, 'embellishments') to it.

I must be an awesome writer to have so many "embellishments" in a 3-line story. Unless the "embellishments" you refer to as those things that occurred in your mind as a result of your obsession with proving the story to be untrue.

This being said, I am totally fine with you not believing the true story. Somehow I have this feeling that this is not unusual for you to label things as being untrue before asking for clarifications.

On an unrelated matter: I have to admit: you are very impressive at the "between quote" approach, especially with that mix of single and double quotes. Some could call this chaos, but to me, this is 'art'. (see, I'm a fast learner).

meanwhile ...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3D9ZC3eXI2tC8

Re:meanwhile ...

[CodeReign]

So funny and yet so far off topic.

earthquake anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone else feel that?

That's easy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just have another engineering study done to prove that the reactor is safe to use... keep repeating this until, eventually, under pressure to provide a cert, one engineering team approves the reactor for use even though it has a giant gaping hole in the side.

Summons Scotty

[Machtyn]

"A good Engineer is always a wee bit conservative, at least on paper." - Scotty, to La Forge, regarding IRC Tank Pressure Variances Regulation 42/15

This story brings this quote to mind.

Re:Summons Scotty

[pixelpusher220]

My favorite exchange was this (Paraphrased from memory):

La Forge: But the specifications say no more than X!
Scotty: Who do you think WROTE the specifications?

Re:Summons Scotty

[Tacvek]

I'm pretty sure that was the same exchange. Quoted in full:

Scotty: Shunt the deuterium from the main cryo-pump to the auxiliary tank.
La Forge: Er, the tank can't withstand that kind of pressure.
Scotty: [laughs] Where'd you... where'd you get that idea?
La Forge: What do you mean, where did I get that idea? It's in the impulse engine specifications.
Scotty: Regulation 42/15 - Pressure Variances on the IRC Tank Storage?
La Forge: Yeah.
Scotty: Forget it. I wrote it. A good engineer is always a wee bit conservative, at least on paper. Just bypass the secondary cut-off valve and boost the flow. It'll work.

Russian technology is WAY behind the US . . .

[mmell]

. . . we've been doing that for years.

Just sayin'.

Damn those Russians

[Anonymous Coward]

For being just like Americans!

Chernobyl2 on the horizon.

[Annirak]

n/t

Re:Chernobyl2 on the horizon.

[vlm]

Laughably I remember after Chernobyl 1, hearing how they'll decommission those icky RBMKs real soon now. The day the last RBMK is shut off will be a good day for humanity. Hope I live that long (I figure I only got 50 good years left in me)

Billions for politician's mansions

[roman_mir]

Billions of dollars are spent on mansions of certain politicians (think, what possibly that is legal, could Putin do to be able to build a billion dollar house at the Black sea side) and nothing will be spent to shut down the old nuclear powerplants and secure their remains and build new ones with new designs.

That's as good a reason as any to get rid of this troll from the government.

I can speak with authority on this...

[dmomo]

Having Played SimCity, I can say from experience that this is a terrible idea. They clearly did not consult their advisers who would certainly have recommended upgrading to Microwave or Fusion. But, to be fair, it could be that Russia didn't unlock those yet.

Re:I can speak with authority on this...

[Impeesa]

Yeah, everyone knows that all power plants fail catastrophically at 50 years on the dot.

Par for the Course Sadly

[decipher_saint]

USA, Canada, Russia... so on and so on...

Can we please build modern reactors? Y'know the kind that can actually use waste fuel so we can reduce the existing stockpile and are physically incapable of runaway reactions.

In the long standing tradition of auto comparisons: you wouldn't feel safe in a 35+ year old car if you drove it every day for all those years would you?

Re:Par for the Course Sadly

[Stalinbulldog]

In the long standing tradition of auto comparisons: you wouldn't feel safe in a 35+ year old car if you drove it every day for all those years would you?

I would mention that you dug up an astoundingly horrible analogy. Most people would feel safer in a 35+ year old car that they'd driven every day than they would in a new one, simply because it hasn't failed yet... and you know they don't build them like they used to.

In fact, after taking your analogy into account I'd advise Russia not to replace their reactors, as they haven't failed yet-at least the ones that haven't failed haven't failed. The ones that did... well, they were clearly shoddy craftsmanship.

Re:Par for the Course Sadly

[Anonymous Coward]

Your train of thought was utterly derailed by the jokey bit

congrats

Re:Par for the Course Sadly

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people would feel safer in a 35+ year old car that they'd driven every day than they would in a new one, simply because it hasn't failed yet... and you know they don't build them like they used to.

Assuming you weren't joking, a 35+ year old car that hasn't failed hasn't failed because it was well-designed; it's because it's been well-maintained.

Re:Par for the Course Sadly

[mug funky]

as was your sense of humour.

Re:Par for the Course Sadly

[shutdown -p now]

Russia doesn't build modern reactors because of green politics or somesuch. It doesn't build them simply because it doesn't have money to do so. In fact, it barely has money to maintain existing ones (and the maintenance is sub-par in practice).

We do this too...

[Urza9814]

So far the US has granted extensions like this to more than SIXTY reactors. How many has Russia given out so far?

http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/15/news/economy/nuclear_plants_us/index.htm

Re:We do this too...

[0123456]

So far the US has granted extensions like this to more than SIXTY reactors. How many has Russia given out so far?

To be fair, no US reactor has yet exploded, caught fire and spread radiation across half of Europe.

Re:We do this too...

[malraid]

Yep, never have we spread radiation across half or Europe, only our east coast

Re:We do this too...

[Anonymous Coward]

US reactors were generally much safer and better-designed.

Re:We do this too...

[0123456]

Uh, you do realise that comparing Three Mile Island to Chernobyl is like comparing spilling your coffee to burning your house down, right?

Re:We do this too...

[coldsalmon]

The original article regarding the Russian reactors is talking about engineered lifespan, whereas your article is talking about license to operate. This is like the difference between renewing your car's inspection sticker and replacing your tires. One is a legal requirement and the other is a physical requirement. Neither article talks about this distinction, and I'm not sure that they're making it. The Russian plants were licensed for 30 years, and according to the article, their physical lifespan is also 30 years. The USA plants were licensed for 40 years, but that article doesn't make any mention about their engineered lifespans, and I don't know enough to say what the engineered lifespan of a USA vs. Russian plant is. It's certainly possible to keep machines working properly for many decades as long as they are designed that way. If the Russian reactors really do have irreplaceable physical parts that are expected to fail after 30 years, it would be madness to operate them after that time. However, this may not be the case with other reactors which have received license extensions.

Re:We do this too...

[malraid]

Sure, I'm just saying that because Three Mile Island was very mild to Chernobyl, it doesn't mean that the US is invulnerable to a nuclear disaster. It has happened, and we were lucky. The Russians were not lucky. The Japanese were not lucky. It can happen again. But then I'm sure Chernobyl caused less deaths than coal mining causes every year. It's just a risk that we have to manage and live with.

Re:We do this too...

[maztuhblastah]

You're technically right, but you're being misleading by comparing TMI to Chernobyl and you know it. From the article you linked to:

The average radiation dose to people living within ten miles of the plant was eight millirem, and no more than 100 millirem to any single individual. Eight millirem is about equal to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the average background level of radiation received by US residents in a year.

So did it spread radiation to "our east coast"? Yes. Did it spread any significant, or even slightly meaningful radiation to our east coast? No.

Re:We do this too...

[makomk]

Three Mile Island had a containment building and a generally less hair-raising design than the RBMK reactors, lacking such misfeatures as a highly positive void coefficient of re-activity. This was probably fortunate; I'm not sure quite how serious a Three Mile Island-style incident would've been in an RBMK, but it's unlikely to have been pretty.

Re:We do this too...

[Alex Belits]

And how much contamination, do you think, was caused by Chernobyl outside the plant itself, Pripyat city and some swamps for few tens of kilometers around it?
There was a massive push to make it into an anti-Soviet (it was still USSR then) talking point, so everywhere from Poland to UK people were told that big bad radiation is everywhere.

Re:We do this too...

[RobinEggs]

I'm not sure quite how serious a Three Mile Island-style incident would've been in an RBMK, but it's unlikely to have been pretty.

Three Mile Island was a literal core meltdown, if only a 'partial' one. You clearly know more nuclear engineering than I do, but I'd hazard a guess that if Three Mile Island were an RBMK the safe Zone of Exclusion would be at least fifty miles, and the only safe path up the east coast would have to bypass Pennsylvania almost entirely.

So pretty damn bad. Look at where the island sits; only 75 miles from Wilmington and 100 miles from Philadelphia.

Re:We do this too...

[mirix]

Engineering lifespan on something like this is more of an educated guess, and is( or should be) fairly conservative.

For your example, it's more like when a company produces a radically new tire, with little to no prior experience in the rubber business has to tell the first consumers how long they will last. I'm thinking they're going to err on the side of caution.
Now, after years of running these tires, with regular valve-stem replacements and such, they realise there is a lot of life in them at the end of their original conservative estimate, and extend the rating.

Re:We do this too...

[stooo]

>>> Three Mile Island had a containment building and a generally less hair-raising design than the RBMK reactors...
Fukushima had a containment building and a generally less hair-raising design than the RBMK reactors.
Yet, 4 reactors exploded (included a discharged one), and spread more radiation than Tchernobyl.
Yet, USA continues to extend the very same flawed design. They should look at the plank in their eyes.

Re:We do this too...

[stooo]

No
In france, people were told there is no radiation. But there was. A lot. And still, hundreds of thousands of children had thyroid deseases, vomiting, nose bleeding, etc. I am one of them.

Re:We do this too...

[Alex Belits]

No
In france, people were told there is no radiation. But there was. A lot. And still, hundreds of thousands of children had thyroid deseases, vomiting, nose bleeding, etc. I am one of them.

If that was the case, you would be long dead by now.

You are talking to a person who not only lived in Gomel when it happened (less than 100km from the power plant) but also performed measurements soon after the disaster, and years later worked in an organization that monitored food and environmental safety in Gomel area.

Any noticeable contamination was directly around the plant and in few spots in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Everywhere else, for all practical purposes, there was no effect whatsoever.

Re:We do this too...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tires are actually a terrible example seeing as most tires last half their warranty period, at least if you drive any less conservative than a grandma who only goes to church.

Re:We do this too...

[mug funky]

heaven help the inland USA if a 10 metre tsunami ever hits!

Re:We do this too...

[stooo]

Shure, shure

You just have absolutely no proof of what you're talking about. I have.
In surrounding fire stations, radiation detectors alarmed, the state just had them shut off. In france.
In France, thyroid doses got up to 600mSv for 1 year children :
http://s1.e-monsite.com/2009/02/07/01/53498822numeriser0008-jpg.jpg
I live near one of the highest of the listed sites, and althrough my thyroid was not affected, i had heavy nose bleeding, and i have 4 of my friends (also small children at the time) who have had the thyroid removed before being 20.
Just continue to takl nonsense...

Re:We do this too...

[Alex Belits]

You just have absolutely no proof of what you're talking about. I have.

Look up any data on radioactive contamination around Chernobyl, and don't forget to compare giant scary blobs on some of them to naturally occurring ionizing radiation levels at, say, any area with granite.

In surrounding fire stations, radiation detectors alarmed, the state just had them shut off. In france.

Do you realize what is the sensitivity of those detectors?

In France, thyroid doses got up to 600mSv for 1 year children :

Based on what, and in what year? I-131 (the isotope that accumulates in thyroids) has a half-life of 8 days, most long-term contamination was from Cs-134, Cs-137 and Sr-90, and those three have no specific effect on thyroids.

I live near one of the highest of the listed sites, and althrough my thyroid was not affected, i had heavy nose bleeding,
Just continue to takl nonsense...

If you had nose bleeding as a result of anything related to ionizing radiation or radioactive contamination, you would be dead in hours. Thyroids would be the least of your problems.

and i have 4 of my friends (also small children at the time) who have had the thyroid removed before being 20.

But did they actually have cancer, or just nuclear paranoia?

Re:We do this too...

[Frangible]

That is utterly ridiculous. Of course there is radiation in France. There is no place in the universe without radiation. Only around the reactor itself could you be exposed to enough radiation to develop acute radiation sickness. The nosebleeds etc you talk about happen at like 2 Sv+ of exposure. That's crazy amounts of special nuclear materials. France has an extensive national radioactivity monitoring network and the data is publicly accessible. Hundreds of thousands did not develop symptoms, there have been numerous studies on this.

Re:We do this too...

[Frangible]

It is physically impossible for you to have developed symptoms of acute radiation sickness in France due to Chernobyl. I also find that 600 mSv exposure figure to be extremely suspicious -- the highest regional I-131 dose equivalent in infants in the US from all of our nuclear testing was 160 mSv and that was far more I-131 than Chernobyl.

I'm not sure where the data in that image you are citing comes from, but please link to the original peer reviewed journal article if there was one.

Re:We do this too...

[Frangible]

Ironically, the very WIkipedia article you link to disputes your claim.

Re:We do this too...

[Frangible]

Yes, a 9.0 earthquake and giant tsunami tend to break things and people, whether nuclear power is involved or not. Our freeways fall apart to a lowly 6.8 quake.

Re:We do this too...

[Anonymous Coward]

French doctors remove thyroids to cure paranoia? Who is really paranoid here?

Re:We do this too...

[Alex Belits]

French doctors remove thyroids to cure paranoia?

I don't know if they do, however I know what you definitely won't cure by removing thyroids from anyone in France -- anything related to Chernobyl.

Re:We do this too...

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither has Russia. Chernobyl is in Ukraine.

Re:We do this too...

[dunkelfalke]

My ex from Belarus hasn't got a functioning thyroid gland since 1986. Maybe a coincidence, maybe not.

Re:We do this too...

[Alex Belits]

What do you mean "functioning"? Does he (or she) have thyroid cancer, inflammation or is it some other disease? Where exactly in Belarus did he live? I-131 can cause thyroid cancer or inflammation by accumulating in thyroid and producing ionizing radiation, however in all other aspects it acts exactly like non-radioactive iodine.

Re:We do this too...

[AmiMoJo]

Yes, a 9.0 earthquake and giant tsunami tend to break things and people, whether nuclear power is involved or not.

Sure, but a nuclear accident tends to be more serious. That is why so many people in Japan opposed nuclear power. They have regular large earthquakes and tsunami, and did not believe that the plants could withstand them all. That turned out to be true.

What really worries people is that Fukushima and many other plants were designed to withstand an earthquake of magnitude 7.5 or even a bit lower. Luckily most of them were largely undamaged after that magnitude 9 quake hit, but it has come to light that some didn't fare so well. Keep in mind that the epicentre was out at sea too, so what they actually experienced was more like a magnitude 7-8 quake.

Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to design a system that could withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake centred near the plant. There are other hazards like tsunami and rock/mud slides too. Scientists and engineers told the public it was safe, so you can see why people distrust them now.

Re:We do this too...

[Anonymous Coward]

You cant compare the two. Its apples and oranges. The PWR reactor used at TMI was so totally different from the Soviet RBMK that you can't compare them. It's like comparing an airplane and a golf cart. Yes they can both get in accidents, but the plane when it crashes will totally destroy itself and everyone around it, the golf cart could possibly kill someone but it's not able to go that fast to prevent that from occurring. And Witt the golf cart it's much harder to do and there's not going to be a big explosion that kills everyone around it. The Babcock and Wilcox designed PWR at TMi showed that even a full blown worse case resulted in very little effect outside the plant and no deaths, whereas the RBMK was such a terrible and irresponsible design it not only lead to an event that can't happen with other designs, but it killed people and irradiated the surrounding area.

So please keep in mind that the RBMK was a fundamentally faulty design, fundamentally. It had no containment, the core itself was nothing like TMI. It's literally apples and oranges. You simply can not compare Chernobyl with any western designed reactor. They are nothing alike and therefore you can not infer that the same flaws must exist in western reactors, they don't, or that the same thing could occur, it can't. No western reactor is like an RBMK.

Re:We do this too...

[epine]

Regarding TMI, there's a huge difference from what the official report concluded in the immediate aftermath to what they actually found when they finally cut the reactor core into pieces for shipment to Idaho--at a cost of $300 million of which I imagine a fair chunk was spent on rad-hard remote-controlled cutting robots with state-of-the-art dust suppression systems carving slow precise grooves at the bottom of the reaction vessel just a few inches away from the outside diameter. I vaguely recall it was less than a day away from dripping molten steel off the snub end of its radioactive nut sack had they not finally turned the right valve. The official story, at first, was that none of the internal fuel assemblies had melted and sagged to the bottom.

Is the island big enough to build a supercolider with meter thick walls that run 100m deep? Make lemonade from lemons. We could be crowing about the Higgs instead of those snotty Europeans.

Also, the monumental confusion in the control room about the correct mitigation measure matches anything that went on in Japan. The situation was not helped by politicians showing up to look important and tying up all the phone lines. Our phone systems are better now.

We also matched the Russians in the high-stakes game of "rules are for sissies".

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.

Rather than trying to meet a five year plan, the TMI site in America was rushed to completion to satisfy executive bonuses concerning the delivery of operating revenue to impatient banks and investors, following capitalist dictates that have since matured into a healthy, insolent puberty that's too big to spank:

Trillion-Dollar Jet Has Thirteen Expensive New Flaws

In a democracy, the public good is a hefty, highly-visible surface containment structure. Inside that giant structure, the profit motive wanders around with no pants on and you only find out when they really fuck up. Bankers and physicists, you'd think they were related somehow.

The less highly visible sub-soil containment structure was not so impressive. It largely amounted to "publish the report damn quick before we learn anything we'd rather publish under dimmer lights when the mayfly media are feeding on a different frenzy". It worked a charm. The post-autopsy report was largely ignored.

In a subsequent incident high over head, the White Physicist cracked the quench code in the sodium hypocritite blame suppression system, but our avarice to Feynman ratio has since gone from poor to divide by zero.

Re:We do this too...

[The Master Control P]

The Fukushima disaster did not spread an amount of radiation comparable to Chernobyl. Not even bloody close. Nearly the entire Fukushima evacuation zone (which, stupidly, is a circle even though we now know the plume is a teardrop facing northwest; 80% of that zone has little to virtually nil contamination) would fit inside the big red exceeds-40Ci/sq. km. splotch centered on Chernobyl NPP.

Estimates are that roughly 10% as much radioactivity escaped from Fukushim as from Chernobyl. Furthermore, Chernobyl released vast amounts of plutonium/uranium/graphite/fission product materials while it burned; The only things to escape in any quantity from Fukushima were volatile cesium and iodine.

Re:We do this too...

[Lanteran]

............ you think that Fukushima released more radiation than Chernobyl? Are you stoned, trolling, or just very very badly informed?

Trust ME!

[na1led]

Cmon now! You can trust the Government and Corporations, they are only looking out for your best interest! Don't be a wussy!

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[almitydave]

... nuclear reactors reengineer your lifespan!

US Navy does it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the NPTU facilities at the Naval Weapons facility in Charleston. They are two old converted submarines. I went there about 15 years ago so my memory may not be correct but I believe there was some "extra" engineering and inspections done on them and quite a few operational limits imposed to maintain the required safety margin. I will say that reactor design was probably one of the most over engineered and most documented, tested, and retested design of any nuclear power system in the world so I assume they know what they are doing with it. Designed in the early 60's and still going today....

Re:Wilkommen!

[Mojo66]

Deutsche Sprache schwere Sprache!

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Mojo66]

reactor outlives you!

cost cost cost

[Anonymous Coward]

"...and extensions cost significantly less than constructing new reactors."
 
That being the key argument

Re:cost cost cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Extensions cause also less manifestations from ecologists.

The reactor vessel might fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reactor vessel material becomes more fragile over time because of the radiation. It is under pressure. There is a chance that it might fail if. It might not fail when the reactor life is extended the first time. But I have a feeling that they will continue to extent the life of the reactors until one fails totally.

Not clever

[stooo]

Does not mean it's the right thing to do.
Push it to the limit until it breaks...

Have a look at : http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2010/27c3-4187-en-your_infrastructure_will_kill_you.html

Re:Wilkommen!

[Anonymous Coward]

duolingo.com welcomes you in Russia

Well...

[ZonkerWilliam]

Russia is extending the lifetime of nuclear power reactors beyond their engineered life span of 30 years

What could possibly go wrong ?

Re:Well...

[shutdown -p now]

Nothing whatsoever to worry about, just move along.

Re:Well...

[RockDoctor]

Russia is extending the lifetime of nuclear power reactors beyond their engineered life span of 30 years

What could possibly go wrong ?

My wife was working in the orchards about 100km down-wind of Chernobyl for the week when and after it blew. I'll ask her.

(Actually, touch wood, nothing much, yet. Probably.)

Rigorous

[stooo]

There is no such thing as "rigorous oversight" in the nuke industry.

Re:Rigorous

[mug funky]

there is no such thing as FUD

Re:Rigorous

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right. All you need to run a plant is to hop on www.chepenricheduranium.com, buy a couple of tons, and then just sort of pile it up and connect it to a hose.

isotopes

[stooo]

What could possibly go boom?
Some hundreds of tons of isotopes.
Russia does not really care. Unlike Japan, they can afford to sacrifice (again) tens of thousands of square kilometers.

In Soviet Russia

[RobinEggs]

They understand when a trope is so spot-on it isn't actually funny in that instance; there's no wit, none of the millisecond long confusion and subsequent cognitive leap that makes your brain say "what the fuc....Hahaha that's hilarious!" Not that Soviet Russia jokes were ever hysterical to begin with...

Anyway, in Soviet Russia they get this rule of humor, unnlike on slashdot where I've already seen five Soviet Russia comments in this post...

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[mug funky]

how about "longer lifespan kills you sooner!"

These Reactors Were Dangerous When They Were New

[careysub]

This isn't really an issue about extending reactor life - a perfectly reasonable process if the reactors were safe to begin with. These Water-cooled graphite reacotrs are inherently unstable and were dangerous the day they powered up. They should be shut down ASAP.

Re:Fukushima 2 on the horizon

[mug funky]

good luck with your next CT scan.

Re:Fukushima 2 on the horizon

[jo_ham]

Hope you never need an MRI again or anything else requiring a radiolabelled contrast agent.

It's also going to be a shame that we'll have to get by without (cheap) smoke detectors too.

Oh well, if it's for the good of humanity!

Re:In Soviet Russia

[kyrio]

I'm pretty sure all reactors that have a catastrophic failure do that.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[Tablizer]

I like it. Catchy. Please cancel his/her/bot's -1

Re:Fukushima 2 on the horizon

[Frangible]

Make sure to insist to anyone in your family who ever gets cancer that they can't use radiotherapy or diagnostic imaging / isotopes because that's supporting those evil nuclear reactors, and they should just suck it up and die for the good of humanity.

After all, you wouldn't want to be a hypocrite, would you?

Re:These Reactors Were Dangerous When They Were Ne

[Frangible]

Void coefficients aren't everything. Non-RMBK reactors can fail catastrophically, and RMBK reactors can be run very cautiously without incident. In the case of Chernobyl, it took a lot of human error and many safety systems being disabled to cause the incident.

And why did that happen? Because Chernobyl was testing a new backup power system, for cooling the reactor when main power was lost. The idea was to use the energy already present in the system before having to rely on backup generators.

But I guess if you have a better void coefficient you don't have to worry about things like backup generators failing. Perfectly safe unlike those Russians, nothing similar could happen, amirite?

Re:These Reactors Were Dangerous When They Were Ne

[shutdown -p now]

They should be shut down ASAP.

Where do you suggest they get the energy instead, then?

Oddly enough ...

[dbIII]

Oddly enough the people that taught me how to do remaining life assessment of high temperature, high pressure pipework were from a nuclear facility. They took it seriously.
A lot of power stations run well beyond their originally expected life. Nobody outside of China wants to put down the capital to build a large power station of any kind anymore.
Also some reactors, most famously the liquid sodium cooled ones, have so much replaced over the years that they are like the proverbial grandpa's axe (on the third head and fifth handle but still considered the same axe grandpa had).

Overdesign

[NikolaiKutuzov]

Shit, I remember reading about that in school. Latin class, to be specific - translating a section of Cassius Dio's Historia Romana about its construction. That alone tells you how incredibly old and overdesigned that thing is.

If you build something to last, its not overdesign, its good architecture. The concept of calulating the lifespan of a building is a very new and sad one, since it means you only build stuff that will make you "get your money back" before that time, preferrably within a generation. I know we cant have the old times back, but I am living in a city quarter that was built in the 1880s and most people in my town woul rather live in those "overdesigned" houses than the overprized concrete crap investors spray into the cityscape here. And, honestly, I would sincerely wish my government would build bridges and buildings that were designed to last, not to crumble after 50 years. What are we going to show our grandchildren? "And here was a building called 'the green mall' when I was a child, but when I was fourty they tore it down to build a school there, and now as you can see they are dynamiting that to replace it with an office building"? Regards

Re:Overdesign

[neokushan]

Where I live, they demolished a bunch of houses that were built in the late 1800's to make way for new builds. Going by your story, this is a tragedy, however the real truth is that these old houses, while still structurally sound, were falling apart on the inside, incapable of being correctly maintained when it came to things like electricity and plumbing and essentially, massively inefficient in terms of how much space they took up. Things like heating costs were a lot higher and fewer people could live in them compared to the "new" builds going up due to things like stupidly high ceilings and windows.

Now, I do agree with you for the most part that today's ideology of building to last just long enough is the wrong way to go about things - but at the same time it is impossible to reliably predict what our needs will be in 50 years time, let alone longer.

Germany

[Tom]

Pfft, Russia. Before Fukushima, Germany was dead-set doing the exact same thing. In fact, even with that extension law abandoned now due to pressure from the people, some of our oldest reactors will reach 30 next year and go on running a few more years.

I am, in fact, pro-nuclear-power. But I am strongly against doing it commercially with the focus on profit. You play with forces like that, you focus in safety or you are an irresponsible, antisocial psychopath.

Rule of Law

[filmotheklown]

Since when did the rule of law apply in Russia?

The sky isn't falling

[Anonymous Coward]

Life extension is not a problem, as long as the nuclear reactor is of the PWR type and the steel reactor vessel undergoes an "annealing" heat-treatment process as part of the life-extension work. (Neutron bombardment destroys crystal links in materials, annealing heals that to restore the metal material strenght to at least 80% of the original.) The finns did this with their russian+czech made VVR-440 reactor and happy with it.

The earthquake resistance should also be upgraded for the powerplant halls and radioactive waste storage bunkers. Furthermore, water-saving cooling towers should be built, even if the reactor stands on a riverbank, because low waterflow periods will increase in frequency due to the global warming, making live waterflow based cooling unreliable for the future for several weeks of the late summer - autumn period.

My sides hurt

[ThatsNotPudding]

Aggressive maintenance can stretch life span even further.

Fun-ny stuff! When's your Comedy Central special air?

Re:These Reactors Were Dangerous When They Were Ne

[AmiMoJo]

How are you going to convince Russia to spend the money to do so though? You can't even give them the cash yourself because it would be seen as an insult to their ability to run their nuclear industry. You also have to worry about North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, India and all the former Soviet bloc states that still run their plants.

The only solution is to push new technologies hard. Demand for them is already growing and in a few years when we have several very large scale generator projects up and running we can push them as a viable alternative to nuclear and coal. Iran and North Korea might still want nuclear for weapons but at least the others will be more inclined to replace their existing reactors and break into a new and profitable industry.