US Nuclear Industry Plans "Rescue Wagon" To Avert Meltdowns

Hugh Pickens writes writes "AP reports that if disaster strikes a US nuclear power plant, the utility industry wants the ability to fly in heavy-duty equipment from regional hubs to stricken reactors to avert a meltdown providing another layer of defense in case a Fukushima-style disaster destroys a nuclear plant's multiple backup systems. 'It became very clear in Japan that utilities became quickly overwhelmed,' says Joe Pollock, vice president for nuclear operations at the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobbying group that is spearheading the effort. US nuclear plants already have backup safety systems and are supposed to withstand the worst possible disasters in their regions, including hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and earthquakes. But planners can be wrong. The industry plan, called FLEX, is the nuclear industry's method for meeting new US Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules that will force 65 plants in the US to get extra emergency equipment on site and store it protectively. The FLEX program is supposed to help nuclear plants handle the biggest disasters. Under the plan, plant operators can summon help from the regional centers in Memphis and Phoenix. In addition to having several duplicate sets of plant emergency gear, industry officials say the centers will likely have heavier equipment that could include an emergency generator large enough to power a plant's emergency cooling systems, equipment to treat cooling water and extra radiation protection gear for workers. Federal regulators must still decide whether to approve the plans submitted by individual plants. 'They need to show us not just that they have the pump, but that they've done all the appropriate designing and engineering so that they have a hookup for that pump,' says NRC spokesman Scott Burnell said. 'They're not going to be trying to figure out, "Where are we going to plug this thing in?"'"

Comments

Tell that to Fukushima

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Yeah, overbuilt. Odd how just down the coast they built their sea wall 3 meters higher and stopped the tsunami cold in its tracks. Oops! The TRUTH is nuclear power plants are built to the lowest standard that the NRC will allow them to get away with, period. And that "allow" is tempered with the fact that they constantly beg for more and much of the NRC is made of of ex nuclear power people (understandably so, but still). Now, they don't perhaps do a TERRIBLE job, but they cut it as close as they possibly can. I mean really, look at this proposal they're talking about here, creating one or more caches of emergency equipment and crews that can be dispatched on short emergency notice to any nuclear power plant. Is this concept sort of STUPIDLY FUCKING OBVIOUS???!!!! Is it not like the first or second thing you think of? Isn't something you just always assumed already existed because it was so FUCKING OBVIOUS!! And now 50 years into nuclear power it is only now being contemplated and only because of a massive backlash against nuclear power because the impossible happened and FOUR REACTORS went China Syndrome. This is why I don't care for nuclear power. Truthfully, IN THEORY it can be quite safe, but human beings are not trustworthy enough to handle it.