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Under Revised Quake Estimates, Dozens of Nuclear Reactors Face Problems
mdsolar (1045926) writes "Owners of at least two dozen nuclear reactors across the United States, including the operator of Indian Point 2, in Buchanan, N.Y., have told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that they cannot show that their reactors would withstand the most severe earthquake that revised estimates say they might face, according to industry experts. As a result, the reactors' owners will be required to undertake extensive analyses of their structures and components. Those are generally sturdier than assumed in licensing documents, but owners of some plants may be forced to make physical changes, and are likely to spend about $5 million each just for the analysis."
Arguably no estimate is adequate. Unexpected things happen, and our understanding and knowledge of the tectonic plate system is incomplete anyway. Given the risk we should be designing for safety in the most extreme event possible. Look at it this way: the fact that the estimates were revised up tells us that the original estimates were too optimistic, there is at least some chance that the new ones are too.
The cost is always going to be proportional to the risk. That's why no commercial insurance company will offer any nuclear facility insurance.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
At the end of the lifespan, somebody who is not that architect says we can't afford to replace a (still perfectly good) piece of infrastructure. Let's agree that if we (inspect more often/inspect in greater detail/upgrade this piece here), we can get (10/20/30) more years of life out of it. Y'know, I can already hear the original architect screaming "That isn't what I said!".
So now it's forty years later, and something the original architect may not even have seen coming turns Fukushima into a radioactive hotspot - or the bridge in Skagit County collapses - or an 8.5 magnitude earthquake levels the building, killing hundreds. The problem is that it's one thing to spend millions of dollars to have the object in question. Once people are used to it "just being there", nobody wants to spend even more just to keep it. They'd rather spend just a few dollars more and convince themselves that it's better than ever. Good on us for being so clever!
Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant closed because of this situation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
That's not how engineering works, or why Fukushima went into meltdown.
Engineers specify the lifetime for the various parts of their design. They specify under what conditions they are considered worn out and cannot be used any more. Clearly if any worn out part can be replaced then there is no limit to the lifetime of the design. In practice this has proven to be true with things like aircraft and ships, and indeed nuclear plants. What kills them is when the cost of maintenance gets too high and building a new one is cheaper.
In the case of Fukushima age had nothing to do with it. The problem was damage from the earthquake, damage from the tsunami (and the lack of upgrades that TEPCO were told they needed to do to the sea defence wall), and confusion in the following days. The plant itself was actually better than new, in that it had been upgraded over the years and all parts were properly maintained and functioning as designed. It was just an old design, although it is debatable how much better newer designs would have fared in the same situation.
Age isn't the problem, bad design is. Fukushima was broken from day one, in fact it was even more vulnerable to major earthquakes than it was the day one hit it all those years later.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Wouldn't help. The surveys cover things like the deterioration of materials (which depends on age, weather conditions, seismic activity etc.) and the local geology. Of course maintenance has to be checked as well, to make sure it is being done properly.
Even if they were all identical they would still need all these checks.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If, going forward all the plants were of an identical design...wouldn't that make things a bit simpler?
No. Some plants sit near fault lines, others are far away. Some sit next to deep ocean with plenty of cooling capacity. Others sit in arid regions with water shortages. Also, technology advances. It doesn't make much sense to keep using a decades old design when we have learned how to do better.
Fukushima is not a hot spot. There is a lot of media surrounding it and sure, there may be some "bad things" there but there isn't life threatening Chernobyl-level activity (and even Chernobyl wasn't all that bad). I also wouldn't be concerned about Buchanan, NY getting hit by a tsunami, Long Island and NYC are among a few of the things that have to be passed by (and those would dissipate most/all of the energy). And if a tsunami hit there, well, then, we'd have more serious things to be concerned about like your survival among the remaining 10% of the species on earth.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
> But fire does not make areas permanently uninhabitable
Fire kills far more people every year than nuclear power.
Given that these "revised" estimates are generated by the same people who want to extinguish all dependable, tried and true sources of energy, one must reasonably suspect that the estimates were "revised" in a way that would help ensure the dismantling of the nuclear industry.
Did you read the friggin article? Of course you didn't.
The "revised" estimates were generated by the NRC in conjunction with the DOE and (wait...wait for it...) the Electric Power Research Institute. Yep, they're all a bunch of goddamed hippifreak tree-huggin energy extinguishers.
But fire does not make areas permanently uninhabitable
Tell that to the people of Centralia, PA
Maybe on a scale of "eternity", fire doesn't render places "permanently" uninhabitable.
But, then, neither does radiation.
Even in the Pripyat area (around Chernobyl), unless you're right up near the reactor, the ambient radiation is on par with many places around the world.
And even just outside the reactor, PLACES THAT HAVE NEVER SEEN A NUCLEAR REACTION where the radiation is 10-15 times as high (see Brazil, Guarapari beaches).
Most of the reactors that have had safety issues are reactors that were built decades ago, based on even older designs.
We have the knowledge, NOW, to build completely contained devices that safely generate power over the lifetime of the device.
We have the knowledge, NOW, to build reactors that quite simply are INCAPABLE of replicating the accidents that led to contamination at TMI and Chernobyl.
As for Fukushima. Fukushima is the story of a freak Tsunami that was mutated by the anti-nuke community into a "nuclear failure".
Basically, if you consider yourself environmentally conscious, you cannot be anti-nuke.
Because the only other viable options for baseline power are natural gas, coal and oil.
Natural gas, coal and oil are the things we need to be moving AWAY from.
And anyone telling you that we can rely, solely, on wind, wave, solar and geothermal is LYING TO YOU. The people telling you these lies? Shills for the NG, coal and oil industry!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You can say that if you want, that doesn't make it true. There's clearly stuff inside these plants that nobody can look at and things that are so expensive to replace that building a new plant is cheaper. That's all that's required. You can't replace the pressure vessel on a PWR, not possible.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Wow. I really wish people would stop conflating "counts per minute" measurements of radiation exposure, with alpha and beta nucleide contamination. There's a lot of Cs137 and Sr90 contamination in the soil all over the place near Pripyat (and Fukushima), and just because you can walk through the area and get a few sieverts of decays on your skin, and no net harm, doesn't mean anyone can safely live there. Those contaminants get into dust, and you inhale it, or ingest it in your food, and they remain active inside your body for decades. It's not the same as either an x-ray, or eating a banana.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The US nuke designs are very weak when compared to the French. The French containment buildings are incredibly strong concrete and steel domes, built on top of huge shock absorbers.
Penny wise, pound foolish...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Yeah, right, yet, show me cancer cases from Cs137 and Sr90 outside of Chernobyl.
Nuclear power is the goose that lays golden eggs, and you are strangling all of them.
Until you start giving coal power the treatment it DESERVES by killing about 200,000 people/year worldwide and 13,000 people/year in the USA alone, you have ZERO moral authority to try to destroy nuclear power for its most remote risks.
Either you are a fossil fuel shill that is being paid to do your best to destroy nuclear power, or you have been brainwashed into believing that nuclear is two orders of magnitude riskier than it is.
The realities is nuclear power is worst case the 3 safest power sources in use, if the the safest.
We need more nuclear lots of more nuclear.
As for Fukushima. Fukushima is the story of a freak Tsunami that was mutated by the anti-nuke community into a "nuclear failure".
Assuming that the "anti-nuke community" didn't contribute to the problem by making it more difficult to replace the old reactors an/or move spent fuel off site.
Chernobyl dumped 5% of the reactor core materials, one million cancer deaths were predicted, it's been 25 years, why can't the anti nuclear pundits produce a scientific peer review study showing at least one hundred thousand actual deaths ?????
The process of "peer review" dosn't in itself make a study correct. Especially where this issue is mixed in with politics. When tends to be the case with "X causes Y premature deaths". All too easy for any study to be an attempt at "proof"... Best to be able to see the bodies or at least the death certificates.
As we know now, even without the tsunami Fukushima would be a large nuclear disaster, since at least one reactor is cracked and leaking contaminated radioactive water into the ground water table. Also, that "freak tsunami" actually is statistically happening every thousand years or so, so the chance that it would happen in the life time of a facility, say 50 years, is about 5% or to put that in perspective: "so likely that you'd have to be an idiot not to design for it". So much for a perfect design, but that's not what I wanted to comment about.
Fukushima is an example of how big humans tend to mess up "perfect" designs, plans and safety regulations. The amount of failures, attempts at cover ups, corruption and other human behaviour that has lead to the giant mess Fukushima is currently is evidence that humans are incapable of safely operating even the most safe design of nuclear reactor. Almost all nuclear accidents we've had in the past 100 years were caused by human action, not by design flaws. Until we've designed a better human that doesn't have these flaws, we will have risks operating nuclear facilities.
Whether that is a reason not to go nuclear is a matter of debate, but don't assume that designing safer facilities will help a lot in preventing accidents from happening. Sooner or later some idiot will do something stupid, most likely a group of idiots will do multiple stupid things and we'll have another incident to deal with. Right now we have a fire in a storage facility that couldn't have happened if multiple safety regulations weren't violated, but it happened anyway. The more safe you build something, the more careless people are going to be. Who would have thought that they would simply shut off fire alarms and automatic extinguishing equipment? Who would have thought they would run old unmaintained trucks that could spontaneously burst into flames inside a confined space like a salt mine filled with highly dangerous plutonium? People do that sort of incredibly stupid things because they are humans. Even fully automating the place isn't going to work, since the automated stuff still needs maintenance and sooner or later, humans will be involved and mess it up.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
jafac already debunked your "Pripyat is safe" claim, so I'll just pick up the rest.
Most of the reactors that have had safety issues are reactors that were built decades ago, based on even older designs.
Most of the new ones being built now are basically the same, with a few modifications to deal with known issues.
We have the knowledge, NOW, to build completely contained devices that safely generate power over the lifetime of the device.
Fukushima was "completely contained", it just wasn't indestructible or even meltdown/hydrogen explosion proof. Even if we could build such a thing it wouldn't be affordable.
As for Fukushima. Fukushima is the story of a freak Tsunami that was mutated by the anti-nuke community into a "nuclear failure".
Japan experiences regular large earthquakes and occasional tsunami. The one that hit is estimated to be a 1-in-100 year event, so with a 40-50 year life span we have to expect nuclear plants built near the coast to safely survive another one. Even if you don't think the actual damage was that bad the cost of cleaning it up is well documented and undeniable, so has to be factored in to the insurance cost than thus the build/operating cost (for additional safety features to mitigate risk) of any other plants.
Because the only other viable options for baseline power are natural gas, coal and oil.
Japan actually has enough renewable energy for its entire needs, including baseline power. Your statement is clearly false anyway, because you neglected to mention hydro and geothermal power that is widely used for baseline supply.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There have been a number of studies that show hundreds to thousands of additional deaths, hower none of them can be 100% watertight in either direction (things could just as easily be worse as better) because you can't control for all other factors that might be involved.
Exactly. It's easy to simply label every cancer death since the event as "caused by Chernobyl". Unfortunately, nobody takes you seriously, because the claim isn't sane or provable.
As to why choosing coal to discuss?
Because it's a baseline power source, like nuclear, like oil. YOU CANNOT USE WIND POWER AS A BASELINE POWER SOURCE. Even if you blanket the entire planet in windmills, you simply don't have enough constant capacity to qualify. So, all the people talking about solar and wind and wave power? The people telling you that they can be used, unsupplemented, and as baseline power? THEY ARE LYING TO YOU!
And nuclear being "the most expensive" is based on the prediction that, as climate change becomes a primary issue, that oil, gas and coal will not incur heavy tariffs. Nuclear has the largest UP FRONT cost. But is the most economical in the long run. And run properly and safely, produces cheap, clean power stably over the lifespan of a reactor with no CO2 emissions.
The big problem is, China's requirements for power are going to keep going up, as are all the various nations not currently benefiting from large power surpluses. You can talk about eking out efficiency and using less wastefully. But that only gets you so far. Keeping up with coal, gas or oil will devastate the planet far worse than all the nuclear accidents that have happened ever will.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Problems are storage, handling of existing radioactive stockpile, Spent Fuel Pools. Many hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive waste already piled up, in SFPs in the Nukes.
And we have reactor designs that can safely burn this waste down. Right now, in many places, you have sequestration vessels standing in open air in what is essentially a parking lot out back of their reactors.
But the people who simply equate nuclear and "bomb" have prevented, via political chicanery, the implementation of known-safe designs that could render all this long-lived spent fuel down into short-lived spent fuel. Through similar chicanery, they've also basically poisoned the government regulatory system in such a way as to artificially skyrocket the costs of implementing and compliance for nuclear. They've also basically nixed intelligent reprocessing of the fuel to extend the useful lifetime without the need to actually obtain more.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Yes, this would make things simpler. The French have done this (PDF link), using one standard reactor design wherever possible. IIRC the American method was to use some standard components, but allow the architect responsible for the plant to make lots of changes (e.g. the piping between the standard components is different at each plant).
I'm no FAN of water cooled, solid fuel reactors, for they are wasting 99,3% of Uranium mined.
But still, they are way, way safer than even the cleanest coal power plant, because for each ton of spent nuclear fuel, coal produces tens of thousands of coal ash, filled with mercury, cadmium, arsenic, all neurologic agents, that will remain poisonous FOREVER, because they don't decay.
At least Sr90 and Cs137 decay into stable forms after releasing their radioactivity, loosing any harmful radioactive effects after that.
I don't agree with the opinion that Fukushima is worse than Chernobyl. I don't believe it will be even 5% of Chernobyl effects.
The reasons Chernobyl were so bad were all due to USSR incompetence:
1 - The reactor was astonishingly unsafe. It has no secondary containment building. It had fundamental safety flaws that caused the explosion during a shutdown. It didn't have advanced computer monitoring systems that can predict problems, analyze all reactor safety parameters hundreds of times per second and show anything of concern.
2 - The explosion blew a 2000 ton reactor top off meters away, the reactor graphite moderator caught fire, exacerbating the radioactive release. This is impossible with a modern reactor
3 - Iodine tablets were no distributed to the affected population. Most cancers from nuclear accidents come from radioactive iodine, but it decays fairly quickly, 7 day half life, so in 70 days it's essentially all gone (rule of thumb = 10 half lives it's 99% gone)
This won't ever happen again. The main reason isn't the lessons learned, all 3 lessons were already ingrained in nuclear safety people outside the USSR. Only the USSR would be crazy to do that even back then.
Fukushima might even slowly release the same levels of raw radioactivity, but since it's going into the Pacific, and being released in small doses, it gets diluted very quickly, so people aren't breathing radioactive iodine, Sr, Cs.
No, the pacific isn't lost. Even 50Km away, the Pacific is perfectly safe and fine.
If any of those concerns were a real issue, USA and France would be having serious nuclear incidents all the time.
Why is it that France produces 75% of its electricity from nuclear and we don't hear of clusters of cancer cases around nuclear plants ?
Why is it that the USA produces more total electricity from nuclear than France, without incident ?
Where are the radiation sickness deaths from Fukushima ? Where are the real cancer cases from Fukushima ?
The reality still is that the anti nuclear community is still doing it's usual overreaction act around Fukushima.
The German greens forced nuclear reactors to be shutdown in a hurry, causing German's CO2 emissions to go up from burning more coal. The net effect of all solar and wind installed completely washed by shutting down just 5 nuclear reactors.
I'm sorry, but I can't agree with any of the actions you propose, because your side get attention to your issues by fearmongering the population. I'm not a nuclear industry representative, I'm not even a nuclear physicist or a nuclear engineer. My pro nuclear feelings are a result of the anti nuclear people selling lies to the general public. My interest on studying nuclear power and fully understanding it comes 99% from correcting your side's fearmongering. I'm against lies and in favor of credible information. Until the anti nuclear shills stop fearmongering, I'm against them.
Spreading lies is never a good thing. It makes your movement a fundamentalist one.
Nuclear power IS safe. You concerns are not significant, because as it is, nuclear technology is already extremely safe.
Everything has risks. Chernobyl killed far less people than one weeks worth of car accidents in the USA. Chernobyl killed less people than coal kills every month worldwide.
We need to fund new nuclear alternatives that are efficient in using thorium and uranium, if we do that, we can reduce nuclear fission products by 99%. With just the currently available spent nuclear fu
The relatively short half life of Strontium 90 is 600 years, some radioisotopes are more than that some are less. To the perspective of anyone alive today, it's the same as eternity.
Many of the so called "improved" designs are only improved for economic reasons. Choices, such as less concrete for the containment, actually *reduce* the safety of the reactors because they are too expensive to build otherwise.
What we don't have is a properly prepared geological spent fuel containment facility. Accidents like Fukushima show how important this step is if you want to reduce the inherrant risk of the entire industry.
The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission reveals that this issue was "Wholey man made" and "avoidable". The installation could have survived had they not had a beleif system that Nuclear power was safe, therefore reducing effort to improve safety in basic ways, like raising the seawall or locating backup generators appropriately.
If you understood the actual environmental impact of Nuclear power you don't have to be "environmentally conscious" to have excellent motivation to oppose Nuiclear power.
I think you mean "Baseload" and Solar thermal does "Baseload". What you're missing though is that "Baseload" is a function of the grid, not just any single source.
I think we are going to need all of these sources in the coming years. Wind is a great replacement for nuclear because it scales much better. The era of coal is over and we cannot place a radioisotope legacy on future generations the way a carbon legacy was put on our generation.
Disclaimer: I have no connection with the coal or oil industry.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Sorry, I've worked around industrial facilities, including nuclear power plants. Hell, I've stood on top of the core of a research reactor and watched the Cerenkov glow, installed instruments at VY Yankee, etc. Lets just take VY as a good example. They COULD NOT, and DID NOT inspect plumbing underneath the plant (in fact they denied said plumbing even existed). The result was a tritium leak. There are simply pieces of these plants that can't be inspected. Trust me, I know all about ultrasound, x-rays, conductivity, etc etc etc. You can't be sure without putting eyeballs on it. Time and time again that has been proven, and some things we know we can't really inspect.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
I'd like to see the supporting documentation you have for making this claim.
Sure, take a look at the documentation for them. It was filed as part of the certification process. Wikipedia has summaries. It's all there for you to read yourself.
You and I have vastly different ideas about what "contained" means.
I tend to do by the dictionary definition, which is basically not letting stuff out.
As for hydro you are only thinking in terms of large dams. Hydro can be done in a much smaller scale with minimal environmental impact, certainly less than building a new coal or nuclear plant. If you want to go that route try looking up information on the amount of ecological damage that French nuclear plants do when the weather gets too hot.
As for geothermal, you may not have noticed but sometimes it happens naturally. In fact Japan is famous for it, and bathing in natural hot springs is a national pass time.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Hawai, Arizona, Germany is showing there are LIMITS to how much solar and wind can be added to the grid before destabilizing it.
The current grid, yes. That is why German is rebuilding theirs into a better one more suited to renewable energy. In fact some cities are buying their own infrastructure because the commercial operators are not acting quickly enough or in their interests.
It does not appear to be unaffordable, only moderately expensive in the short term and German is the first country doing it so will get the benefit of having the technology and experience to sell to everyone else. In any case it is cheaper than new nuclear power. The UK government is finding that it can't even pay people to build and run it for them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I was full of doubt, but your use of ALL CAPS convinced me. Shouting works every time, and in no way implies your argument is that of a ranting fool. Well done, sir.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC