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26 Nuclear Power Plants In Hurricane Sandy's Path
pigrabbitbear writes "Hurricane Sandy is about to ruin a bunch of people's Mondays. In New York City alone, the storm has already shut down public transportation, forced tens of thousands to relocate to higher ground and compelled even more office jockeys to work from home. (Okay, that last part might not be so bad, especially for the folks that don't actually have to work at all.) But if it knocks out power to any of the 26 nuclear power plants that lie directly in its path, the frankenstorm of the century will ruin Tuesday, too. Heck, a nuclear meltdown would be a much bigger problem."
I could call myself The Hurricane!
We never get any excitement here in Maine. Storms always seem to dodge us.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
To publish an insanely sensationalistic FUD piece from the Anti-Nuclear crowd scaremongering the most densely populated area of the world over something that is a complete and utter non-issue.
If you want to be as safe from the hurricane as possible, you should then find shelter in one of those nuclear plants. They\re the best built structures by a very large margin.
Only thing is, I don\t believe you'll be lucky enough to be let in.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
These plants have NEVER been hit by a storm before! Whatever will we do??
Around here, the nuclear power plants are designed to survive a 747 flying into them. I'm sure a little bit of a breeze isn't going to be any trouble
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Human Error has caused more nuclear incidents than Weather. That said, I want one of those backyard mini nuclear plants. - HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
There's a chance the eastern seaboard could get hit by a mile-wide asteroid.
If you're gonna fearmonger, go big or go home.
I'm sure that the folks at the fukishima plant never thought they'd have to survive what they went through.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
Then again, Canadian reactors are CANDU - and in True Canadian Style, they're a bit less efficient, but vastly more safe when it comes to the possibility of meltdown.
So when the storm has passed, if nothing happens, will the fear mongering anti-nuke folks admit that nuclear power is safe?
*crickets*
I'm sure that the folks at the fukishima plant never thought they'd have to survive what they went through.
A lot of them didn't.
In Germany the Federal government massively moved away from nuclear technology because they feel it is unsafe and you don't know what to do with the waste. Vorsprung durch Technik - be first in the next wave of technology innovation. We now have 5MW wind generators serial production and it looks like only the network is an issue. Progress in solar technology is also amazing, Chinese companies took over the lead. When US nuclear power plants would be affected by the storm (just remember Fukushima) that would be very dangerous to the densely populated area. I really wonder how many levees they build. Remember the WTC towers were "designed" to survive a 747 flying into them.
It is a cat 1 storm. Yawn.
http://saveie6.com/
>> Heck, a nuclear meltdown would be a much bigger problem.
Heck, a Godzilla attack would be a much bigger problem.
A) Sandy has average winds less that 80 mph so the major danger is heavy rainfall (or perhaps snow) only.
B) "Nuclear meltdown" is largely a media myth. Real nuclear plants do not melt down in the way the popular mythology claims.
C) Real nuclear plant are designed to push in the control rods if anything like a power drop happens.
So stop with the 70s anti-nuclear FUD.
The title is an interesting fact (previously unknown to me), but the article has no real point. It has a lot of fearful speech and reads like religious propaganda. If it were calling for increased preparedness, then that would be one thing. It doesn't do that, though -- it's just appears to sound scary by using scary bullet points.
TL;DR: Crap article.
what would happen were CRNKI to invade the US during this strange weather?
I am sure they will melt down just like the Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant has done every time a tropical storm or hurricane has it it.... Oh wait... That has never happened.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
And they're all rated for much more severe storms than Sandy. Not sure why the fearmongering article, which goes out of its way to imply that meltdown is imminent...
if it knocks out power to any of the 26 nuclear power plants
I'm pretty sure the power plans have reliable sources of power, should they not be able to get any from the grid.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Nuclear Wind! Atomic Tide! Nukestorm! Windpocalypse! Radioactivecane! Frozen Meltdown! Atomic Hailstorm! Nukenami! Any other ideas for the inevitable SyFy movie?
cut power off the a nuclear plant? What sort of idiots you have on slashdot these days?
Listen, you country idiot, assume that a nuclear generator will have enough generating power inside, like, you know, back up generators for emergency power?
Morons of the first order. Please, do not breed.
I'm sorry... This is a bunch of FUD. These plants have all seen impact of large storms before. Other nuclear plants along the Atlantic coast have been impacted by larger storms than Sandy. Despite this, the U.S. Mid Atlantic coast is not a radioactive wasteland.
You're obviously not Japanese. If you were, you'd know that Godzilla is a myth and meltdowns are not.
That if one of the plants melts down, NYC is pretty much fucked, anyway.
How many of those are in the direct path? And how many of them store their coal supplies outdoors?
How much coal can be expected to be scattered across massive areas in the path?
No place in the track of Hurricane Sandy is "the most densely populated area of the world." New York is the most spread out urban area in the world, but the only two places in the Western Hemisphere that make even the top 10 of most densely populated areas are both in Colombia, all the rest are in Asia (and, except for Hong Kong, all on the Indian subcontinent.)
Is it just me or has anyone forgotten about all those hurricanes that hit the south every year? In 2005, some nuclear power plants in Florida, Texas, and Louisiana had to survive multiple blows from storms that leveled the cities they powered.
I mean... it's not like those of us from New Orleans are still working off of gas lamps and hamster wheels.
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
You need the diesels to keep the reactors cool.
So they plants can power entire cities, but they can't run a pump to cool themselves? You need yet another fuel source to keep them cool?
You're obviously from Portland.
True, but none of them are even in the top 10 most densely populated urban areas; the #1 there is, from most reports I've seen, Dhaka, Bangladesh, (by Wikipedia, which is what parent is using, 59,640/sq.mi. as of 2008 -- about twice what is cited in parent for NYC -- though other sources I've seen have current estimates at about twice that.)
1: Nuclear plants are not wooden shacks waiting to be toppled over at the slightest breeze.
2: They are not sitting right along the coast line waiting to be flooded by rising seas.
3: Hurricane Sandy is category 1, the ONLY significance to this storm is that it is large, not powerful.
4: There have been ZERO deaths to the Fukushima meltdown incident in Japan.
5: I you had any brain, you'd realize would understand that these plants have been through MANY more hurricanes than possibly YOU ever have been through.
Anybody else want to promote fear at the expense of your neighbors, your neighbors neighbor and even your very own ability to have power running the very computer you are reading this with?
Is it possible you are about to post something only self defeating in response to others hating on your fear mongering, environmentalist agendas.
Think about it first.
Thanks, the rest of us.
I wouldn’t worry about this too much, but it is a concern. There is a nuclear reactor that Katrina swept over during it’s devastation. It’s not certain that it will cause that type of damage to any of these plants, like the article plainly says. I would be concerned though. It’s not paranoia when it’s possible or even probable, but I hope the operators know what a hurricane can do.
enough about the solid containment structures and the huge stacks of regulations and applications they can bar the doors with. Fukushima showed all you need to lose are the diesel generator building and the high-tension wires into the plant site, and it's all over melty like s'mores and Seascape and Chernobyl.
and the billionnaires in Noo Yawk City (git a rope) who probably make the final decisions on this are holed in in their One57 condos, with a crane broken off its mast and swinging in the wind around the top floors.
those of us very sincerely upwind are already starting to chuckle under our breath.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
And yet they've killed roughly the same number of people in Japan.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
n/t
My wife decided I could whatever she could thing of since I happened to be home. And try concentrating when your kids are running around you. I ended up taking my work to a local coffee shop with wifi because there I could tune out everything around me, and get a coffee whenever I asked for one. Later I rented office space and it was okay, but I sure missed that coffee shop.
Shut up. Panic. Run Amok. We need footage.
Sincerely,
The Media
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
And now for the reality check. The power grid for the northeastern US is run by PJM, from a control center in Valley Forge, PA (and a backup center elsewhere). Their public PJM Dashboard shows what's going on in the generation system and high-voltage transmission grids. (Retail power distribution is handled by local power companies.)
So what's going on? Just normal stuff. Load right now is 89 gigawatts, just 1% above forecast. No storm-related emergencies. A few routine problems - the 138KV line between Jay and DeSoto is out, and system voltage is running slightly high, so some switching actions were taken. No alerts from FERC or DHS. Spinning and standby reserves are above normal, in case of trouble. Some substations that normally run unattended have been staffed and sandbagged. About 3 gigawatts of extra power plant capacity are idling on standby, just in case, with another 6GW standing by to start. Wind power is looking good today. Right now, there's far more generation capacity available than load to use it, which is typical for mid-day in fall. (The peak is during the summer air-conditioning season.)
PJM's public statement notes that some nuclear plants might shut down due to high winds, but they expect to have enough reserves to deal with that.
Most trouble is on the distribution side, from trees falling on power lines in residential areas. Tornadoes can take out high tension towers, but the wind speeds for this hurricane aren't high enough to do much of that. This is mostly a coastal flooding problem.
Well, that is what happened in Fukushima Daichi 1.
All reactors switched off in reaction to the Earthquake.
Then the tsunami took the diesels out.
If they had a reactor that was up, and that was rigged to supply energy to the others, no meltdowns would have happened.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Nuke zealots actually think that their Magic Power Source has never killed anybody.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-17/fukushima-radiation-may-cause-1-300-cancer-deaths-study-finds
There's also the people who weren't hurt, but can never return to their homes or land:
http://www.japantoday.com/smartphone/view/opinions/pure-land-lost-for-fukushima-evacuees
And then there's the contamination issue:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/10/2012102510561941251.html
Why is this `the frankenstorm of the century? What does that even mean? And why is it relevant that there are power plant's in its path? And how would a storm cause a meltdown (not to mention that US nuclear power plants are designed to safely melt down)? And most importantly: why is crap like this getting posted on /.?
According to the Department of Energy, the people living in the area will get 1 more cancer case per 500 people. The level of radiation in the area is still lower than the natural background radiation in parts of the world.
Stop crying wolf. When you actually have a point, people simply won't listen.
Michel Bay is doing the movie of this Frankenstorm https://xkcd.com/748/
in fact, we have one about 80 miles west of me. the GEBWR-1 design has a very wide installed footprint.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
from Fukushima?
but now that we know where the hurricane is really going to hit, geez, we just can't chopper in any diesel and generators and mounting pedestals, and pour solid concrete footings to keep this in place, and then wire them up with backhoes to excavate and electricians to run hard conduits.
the time to think about the unthinkable, like a systems manager in IT, is long before the shit hits the fan.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The Turkey Point power plant in Homestead, Florida took the brunt of Hurricane Andrew (a Category 5 storm) and came through unscathed. Hurricanes are not a grave threat to nuclear power plants. The U.S. is also better equipped to provide backup power should the reactor(s) need to be shut down.
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Even a light aircraft has a relatively heavy dense engine right at the front, and a typical one can go 180mph.
Crash that into your house and I bet you'd see some damage.
Long live Slashdot!
If you're going to use a rhetorical question to make your point, you should make sure it factually supports your claim first.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
This Guy clearly has no idea, how a nuclear plant operates! Apparently anyone can write articles now. We should all be scared because "hot water is easier to splash out of tanks" WTF are you talking about?
Yes, really. This dumbfuckery is appropriate for the New York Daily News, not a tech site.
Any Slashdotters ignorant enough to think the hurricane is a serious threat to Eastern nuke plants need to be spayed/neutered lest their stupidity spread.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Anyone else notice the link states 26 plants are at risk yet when you read the article it links to, there are 16 plants? Was this a typo or is there another list that has the other 10?
It's already been abandoned just about everywhere due to the huge capital cost of building the things with so many years before you get any return. The only places that have not abandoned it have governments willing to put in huge amounts of money without expecting anything for it for a decade or so - China and India. Germany getting green press for shutting their plants early is a cheap bit of publicity because the real decision was made years ago when they stopped building reactors. The USA hasn't completely lost the expertise, since Westinghouse is doing some reactors in China and there's some military stuff, but it would still be very difficult to do much in the way of reactor construction since there are not many people that can do the job.
The technical terms you want to Google is "station blackout". A nuclear plant requires non-reactor power for safe operation.
This would be a bad time to discover that someone had forgotten to exercise the diesels.
putting aside my disdain for the foolish arrogance and pride of the technophiles for the moment, the real problem is systematic above and beyond the domain of the engineers
perhaps you can say that enough intelligent engineers will properly manage a nuclear facility forever, including tsunamis and hurricanes and other natural disasters. but in reality, in one or two generations, the people in charge of hiring and paying the engineers will simply move to save money to the point where danger is introduced, in the form of substandard personnel or substandard infrastructure
the betrayal is by the leadership, the betrayal is not by mankind's mastery of technology
but those with an arrogant certainty in the "foolproof" safety of nuclear power see the "common ignorant man" seemingly attacking science and engineering fortitude and get angry at that
but perhaps those posting here shouldn't be so snide and sneering at the common man
perhaps that "common ignorant man" isn't even attacking science or good engineering, but is thinking about the politicians and corporate knuckleheads who simply look at costs on a spreadsheet and cut costs without thought or reason as to long term safety
so those who are so offended posting here, as the nations of the world and common opinion turn against nuclear power, maybe they shouldn't feel attacked or betrayed, in terms of the quality of the job the engineers do
those posting here so offended at those turning from nuclear power, you should not be angry at the common man. you should be angry at the politicians and corporate dicks who betrayed you and nuclear power by cutting the safety nets (long term savings) for a little short term savings
and perhaps you should take note of the WISDOM of the common man who sees that source of failure in nuclear technology, not in the science or engineering, but in the leadership. and you should have some humility and notice where your own "wisdom" on the issue has failed you, because you angry at the wrong target, the attitude of the common man. he is not your enemy, and never was, and never will be
the corporate shitstains and the politicians are your enemy, by undercutting your staffing and infrastructure to save a few bucks, the REAL reason people don't trust nuclear power
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That's TMI which is on the approach path of an airport (and a good thing too because the extra containment made the problems there a wakeup call instead of a disaster). I don't think any others were designed to withstand that, but there may be one or two of the most recent ones which were designed after the TMI incident and constructed before the USA stopped building nuclear power plants (which is a pretty narrow window considering it takes over a decade to build these plants).
The level of radiation in the area is still lower than the natural background radiation in parts of the world.
I assume by that you mean Chernobyl's radiation has been there long enough that it's considered natural background radiation and Fukushima's is lower. Comforting.
I'd be more worried about the millions of gallons of toxic chemicals that are going to be mixed in the water. We had Hurricane Floyd a few years ago and that was the problem not the hurricane.
just placing this here. I am making no statement in favor or against. simply posting something I just heard on the radio.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/nuclear-power-plants-prepare-to-shut-down-if-storm-sends-water-wind-levels-too-high/2012/10/29/e8e5dc6e-2226-11e2-92f8-7f9c4daf276a_story.html
Nuke zealots actually think that their Magic Power Source has never killed anybody.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-17/fukushima-radiation-may-cause-1-300-cancer-deaths-study-finds
There's also the people who weren't hurt, but can never return to their homes or land:
http://www.japantoday.com/smartphone/view/opinions/pure-land-lost-for-fukushima-evacuees
And then there's the contamination issue:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/10/2012102510561941251.html
So how does this compared to the health problems created by the mining and burning coal? You realize that coal pollution is very slightly radioactive itself? Fun trivai fact - if you extracted the uranium from 1 ton of coal and used it in a reactor, it would produce more energy than burning the coal itself.
Dude, please argue with what I'm actually saying. I'm not arguing the nuclear power is worse than all the alternatives. I'm simply trying to debunk the attitude that it's utterly harmless and that anybody who opposes it is a illiterate luddite hippie.
Not even close
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/World_population_density_1994.png
No, when I said "natural background radiation" I meant "natural background radiation". As in the radiation that is naturally occurring through no action of man what-so-ever.
For reference, Fukushima backup power failed because the plant was inundated by a >10m tsunami.
10m is the height of a normal three story building. The two events (Fukushima reactor accident and this hurricane) are different and should not be compared in this case.
What kind of CPUs are we talking about here?
Lionbridge?, Cloverloaf? SteelAlley?
With the mess in Japan fresh in mind, we've learned our lesson, right?
We have shut down those nuclear power plants well in advance so even in the worst case (total flooding) the nuclear fuel is safe, completely inactive with full passive moderation in place, right? No need to keep up production while the storm passes as powerlines will be among the first thing to go.
If not then a major lawsuit is both justified and necessary. I would not bet on winning such a thing if my plant suffered a meltdown due to ignorance or mindless greed.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
No longer. I had always wondered about this argument involving coal. It turns out it is based on a failure of the US government to get its act together and regulate what has to be regulated until recently. You know, in civilized countries nobody has died from radioactive coal fumes for decades.
Irrelevant.
[...]"Reactor buildings not meant to handle the high humidity"
Is he REALLY implying that any human being, not previously subject to brain surgery, would build anything involving High pressure water and superheated steam confined in a building in a manner not suited to exposure to moisture? because if that's the case, I have just the right entirely-made-of-sugar bathtub for his expensive condo.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
The real question is "How many readers would have known that even 10 reactors were in the path of the hurricane had it not been for the sensationalist article"?
Exactly...
Got to get people to tune in to your channel, sell the newspapers. I was reading a BBC article where they noted "Filipino relatives were watching from home as they were concerned about the well being of their relatives and they understood the seriousness as the Philippines experience 20 typhoons a year". It's just exciting in the US as Cat1 storms hitting cities have novelty value. I guess some places in the world that probably only makes the local newspapers.
Probably more people die in traffic accidents each week in NYC than due to this storm, but I guess those don't make international news.
I always wondered where the name of the provider Hurricane Electric came from, might as well ask it on this thread ;-)
New things are always on the horizon
Do you think "theintelhub" will post a new article saying that all 26 plants safely weathered Sandy with no problem? I didn't think so.
Sooo.. you all realize that there are multiple reactors in Florida, right? Plus, being in Florida, they get hit by damn near every single hurricane that hits the USA and yet we don't hear about, "Oh god, what if there's a meltdown?!" after every hurricane. In addition, while hurricanes are rare on the northern Atlantic seaboard, they are not unheard of by any stretch of the imagination. One comes around once every.. what.. two decades or so? These plants are designed for situations far worse than this.
There are real reasons to critique nuclear power, but this is just scaremongering crap.
Now can we get back to the science-y stuff?
compelled even more office jockeys to work from home. (Okay, that last part might not be so bad, especially for the folks that don't actually have to work at all.)
Now you did it! You explained what "work from home" actually means... Thanks for letting management on...
Three plants have had some effect from the storm. Oyster Creek in NJ which was shut down already for refueling may have had the closet call. http://status.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/30/sandy-shuts-down-nuclear-plants/
I absolutely love the "If" in the articles. If, if, if. if if if if if... You know, if is to if, then if will if off the iffing of iffery.
Is this an article so someone can say "Ha, I predicted it!" if something happens? Nah, no one ever does that. :)
Where are all the "I told you so's" on the 26 meltdowns Sandy caused?
Oh, right.
4 reactors have now been forced off line and 3 are slowed by hurricane Sandy. It is wise to remember that Sandy is short for the Greek name Cassandra, the cursed prophetess from myth whose warnings of coming disaster were ignored.
http://funologist.org/2012/10/30/what-hurricane-sandy-really-tells-us/