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South Korea To Restart Its Oldest Nuclear Reactor
ananyo writes "South Korea's oldest nuclear reactor is set to restart after a four-month closure, despite strong opposition from local residents and activists. The Kori-1 reactor in Busan was shut down on 13 March, after it was revealed that the reactor and its emergency generator had temporarily lost power during routine maintenance the month before, causing the coolant temperature to rise. The power failure did not cause an accident, but a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna discovered that senior engineers from Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power, which runs the reactor, had neglected the safety problems for more than a month after the loss of power. In June, after a safety check, the IAEA gave the green light for Kori-1 to resume operation. Korea's Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) approved the restart on 4 July, but activists and local residents remain strongly opposed to restarting the reactor. At first, the Korean Ministry of Knowledge Economy, which oversees energy policy, had said that the restart would be delayed to alleviate anxiety. But the government changed its mind as a result of a nationwide heatwave that has put a strain on the country's electricity supply in recent days."
Would Koreans agree to pay more for, and use less, electricity as a whole so this reactor can remain offline?
These things are always well-spun, from either side. For "strong opposition from local residents and activists" read "strong opposition from activists and the local residents they've frightened out of their wits."
Activists *exist* to provide strong opposition to things. You never see something happening "despite luke-warm opposition from activists." The volume of their opposition does not make them right.
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They had to restart because there is a need for more electricity. I wish people started to realize this when they block new generators.
They are safer, and you aren't exactly going to consume a lot less, are you? Thus either you are forcing us to hold older plants open for a lot longer than intended, or you allow us to make a new and better plant.
By stopping new ones from being made, you are only making it more dangerous for everybody.
Just don't let any Iguanas near the reactor. We all know what happened with Japan! Worst of all there might be a bad US remake of the movie staring Matthew Broderick. Just safer all round to keep lizards away from any radiation.
... thought that all modern reactors were protected by passive safety mechanisms ...
Kori-1 is a PWR from 1978 and like most reactors currently in service, it is a generation II design. These have many passive safety features, but they are generally not fully passively safe.
Some Gen-III reactors (1990s tech) and most Gen-III+ reactors (2000s tech) have full passive safety, in addition to many other safety improvements like simplified designs, better containment, better redundancy, etc. Gen-IV designs (future) step it up to inherent safety - for example pebble beds (meltdown is impossible because thermal expansion stops the reaction even if all cooling strategies fail) or my favorite, the LFTR (liquid fuel - you can't melt down when you're already melted, and thermal runaway just drains it into a basin in a noncritical configuration; and it's an unpressurized design, which eliminates tons of problems).
So does this actually pose a safety risk?
Yes - like everything worth doing in life, there is always risk. In this case the risk is that the reactor requires water to be actively pumped for a while after shutdown. The risk is generally acceptable: a failure like the one that happened a few months back doesn't cause a sudden catastrophic failure. There is considerable thermal mass in the water inside the reactor so the temperature rise is gradual. In event of a failure you have days to get some power back online. In the case of the failure a few months back, the power was back within minutes and there was little chance that they wouldn't be able to manage it in time. The incident wasn't an acute safety risk; but it was a failure that shouldn't have happened in the first place, so it's somewhat worrying.
The problem is if you have a disaster like the Japan earthquake: if the power is knocked out and all your infrastructure is too crippled to fix the grid or truck in some generators; then things go sideways. These are low frequency events, but they happen, which is why in my opinion we need to start building modern reactors so we can decommission these old Gen-II relics.
So what, if it melted down it would be a great way to get rid of the n. koreans. I happily advocate nuclear power for my enemies.
And you would happily destroy your friends ( south Korea ) to also destroy your perceived enemies ( north Korea. ) ?
Sure, this is pie-in-the-sky thinking. But imagine what would happen if activists would not protest *against* the restart because of safety problems, but *for* better safety systems before the reactor is to be restarted.
They might actually end up doing something good for a change. Of course, this would require a much more cerebral process than a pavlovian reflex. You would actually have to understand what happened and understand what needs to be done about it. Finally, you'd need to protest for some specific activity - not just against a very general one - which is certainly not going to be a nice catchy phrase.
This case calls for a thorough investigation of the generator failure and review of all generators. Perhaps (actually quite likely) the addition of more emergency generators to provide for redundancy and finally the investigation of all similar reactors. (Although Kori-1 seems to be unique in Korea, while the other reactors in Kori are more advanced Westinghouse designs. So this may or may not limit the applicability.)
Obviously, not a nice catchy phrase, but much more useful.
Actually, the Gen III+ is Soviet 1980ies tech, but don't let Westinghouse hear that. The Soviet Union published its AES-88 design in 1988 and handed it over for review in Germany - after Chernobyl, this was called for. The AES-88 is a passive design and predates the AP-600 by 10 years. There were several other designs as well all designed until about the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union. (After this some 2-3 million people starved/froze to death or otherwise perished in the worst economic crisis the world has never heard of. Life expectancy in Russia dropped to levels not seen since a certain Josef Stalin. In short: They had other problems.)
More designs followed much later. The latest being the AES-2006. Which adds a core catcher and is more economical than the AES-88, without sacrifying the passive safety, as it was in the AES-92. The AES-92 had a large pool of cooling water to provide emergency cooling without electricity for 12 hours or so, but no heat removal systems to recondense and recycle the cooling water. AFAIK those that have been build were refitted since, but I might be wrong. The AES-2006 also has hydrogen catalyzers by design, I'm not sure if this was the case in the older ones.
(Please note: Russian designes distinguish between the reactor/power system and the power plant design as a whole. The AES-2006 design is implemented in all of the VVER-1200 power stations, for example.)
Better still are the breeder reactors, which are fully passive by design. The BN-600 is still operating, three BN-800 are under construction, two in China, one in Russia. The main problem is, of course, the flamable coolant (sodium). A lead cooled commercial reactor is supposed to be finished in 2017.
To make a long story short: If you're looking for the latest in nuclear power, look at Russia. (And yes, this came as a surprise to me as well.)
But imagine what would happen if activists would not protest *against* the restart because of safety problems, but *for* better safety systems before the reactor is to be restarted.
That is one of the things that people in Japan have been asking for. The problem is that to be really safe the bar has to be set so high that no reactor would pass it. For example the 11/3 quake was a magnitude 9, and most Japanese reactors are only certified to magnitude 7.3. If the epicentre were close to one of them it would not be certified to survive it without the reactor cracking, the control rod mechanism failing or the cooling system being damaged and so forth.
Japan is mostly earthquake proof, but even so when there are big ones there is still damage and people are still killed. The belief was that Japan could overcome this with its reactors and make them safe, but it appears that predictions of the maximum amount of lateral force experienced and the height of any resulting tsunami were wrong, and it is hard to escape the conclusion that our understanding of earthquakes is not as good as we thought it was. Remember that we are not just talking about Fukushima here.
Earthquakes happen all the time in Japan. When there is damage the Japanese learn from it and take steps to prevent the same thing happening. The worry here is that no steps have been taken because, well, there are not really any to take short of demolishing and re-building the reactor based on a more resilient design.
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