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NRC Analyst Calls To Close Diablo Canyon, CA's Last Remaining Nuclear Plant
An anonymous reader writes Michael Peck, who for five years was Diablo Canyon's lead on-site inspector, says in a 42-page, confidential report that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not applying the safety rules it set out for the plant's operation. The document, which was obtained and verified by The Associated Press, does not say the plant itself is unsafe. Instead, according to Peck's analysis, no one knows whether the facility's key equipment can withstand strong shaking from those faults — the potential for which was realized decades after the facility was built. Continuing to run the reactors, Peck writes, "challenges the presumption of nuclear safety."
US starts buying more nuclear power from Canada, quickly pulling a Germany. In 5 years, subsidies much like those in Germany will then be gutted, and there will be a mass rush to build new coal and NG power plants until reactors can be refurbished or built anew.
Om, nomnomnom...
Getting a whiff of mdsolar. He should show up soon (assuming he didn't submit this). Come on, here mdsolar mdsolar mdsolar... Get your trolling snackie...
Said closure would cast a great Homer Simpson quote into obscurity:
"Oh, Diablo Canyon 2, why can't you be more like Diablo Canyon 1?"
How does an atricle make it to the front page of /. with a typo in the title....
*shakes head*
Does anyone know what happened to notable Slashdot user TripMaster Monkey? For years he was known for submitting the stupidest shit around, and he was also pretty well known for posting idiotic comments, too. But then one day he disappeared, never to be seen on Slashdot again.
Does anyone know what happened to him?
Is he apk? Is he mdsolar? Are there any connections between them?
This is not a new story, basically a reprint. With that said, if there is any indication the the plant cannot withstand postulated earthquake levels it should be shut down. This was not ignored, and the article does mention that an evaluation was performed based on the new information.
"In 2012, the agency endorsed preliminary findings that found shaking from the Shoreline fault would not pose any additional risk for the reactors. Those greater ground motions were “at or below those for which the plant was evaluated previously,” referring to the Hosgri fault, it concluded."
Given our experience with plants holding up extremely well to seismic events and the large margins that are included in seismic design of these plants, the finding is not surprising. Work continues, as it should, to look for anything that could possibly have been missed or not enveloped by the new data.
The basis for the inspectors complaint is, in large part, not that the plant is not capable of withstanding the quake, nor that the analsyis is faulty or incorrect, but rather that the licensing basis document has not been revised to require a higher peak acceleration design level. It is debateable whether such a would make any difference, since they are already required to analyze for the higher levels. Meanwhile, the concern is being handled through the appropriate processes.
So, how much money would be needed for healing and mana potions for this little operation?
Daily read for tech news: Freezenet.ca
"Diablo canyon 1 why can't you be more like Diablo canyon 2"
There's that newfangled p-wave detector, only costs $80m to build and $12m / year to operate - if the reactor can be rendered safe within 10 seconds after notice of an oncoming quake, I think they've got a customer....
Stantz: Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by d***less here.
Peck: They caused an explosion!
Mayor: Is this true?
Venkman: Yes it's true.
[pause]
Venkman: This man has no dick.
Are they really expecting a more than 7.5 magnitude quake there? unlikely in the extreme, USGS says the Shoreline fault that is near the plant might produce a 6.5 quake....so what?
The nuclear advocates tell us that nuclear power is safe when it is handled "properly"
Alas the human species has been proven over and over again to not possess the competence to handle these materials!
So where are the space aliens or genetic super men who will safely handle our nuclear materials?
The press is reporting that the Napa quake wrecked about a billion dollars worth of wine. Beats having a quake in Diablo canyon spilling plutonium.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Per the usual, the simple fact that Natural Gas and Coal accidents/air pollution kills people every day is ignored compared to the remote risk of something happening to a nuclear powerplant.
If the 3 nuclear reactors in Fukushima Daichi were instead 3 coal thermal boilers, it would have killed hundreds of people in the decades it operated.
6.5 quake is peanuts for a nuclear reactor.
Nuclear require an extreme accident to become a hazard to human life, while coal/NG kills every day.
Even solar and wind kill more per TWh produced than nuclear, perhaps they can cleanup their act and have less work accidents before they can claim solar/wind is safer than nuclear.
Diablo Canyon 2 why can't you be more like Diablo Canyon 1
And each person is poorer needing to work more or have a reduced quality of life to pay for this bs. I love the outdoors and the environment but this type of Policy is just stupid . It makes little environmental sense and is just ideology .
Turns out storage is not much needed at 80% renewable energy supply. http://www.engineering.com/Ele...
Yeah, Germany needs to import nuke power......power exports up by >60% in 2013
http://www.renewablesinternational.net/german-power-exports-up-by-62-percent/150/537/68613/
If you know how to use Google Translate you can get more recent figures:
http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.de/index.php?article_id=29&fileName=quartalsbericht_q2_2014_04082014.pdf
Look on page 4 for a comparison to last years production.
Exports were up 25% compared to 2013.
You know how to use Google Translate by now? Good. Now look at the "mass rush to build new coal and NG power plants":
Power companies want to shut down 47 power plants (coal and natural gas)
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/energie-konzerne-wollen-47-kraftwerke-abschalten-12898217.html
Oh look, this has been going on for quite some time. An article from 2013 (proposals to shut down 15 plants):
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/unrentable-stromproduktion-kraftwerke-abschalten-gar-nicht-so-einfach-12284075.html
Yes, power companies have been adding some new coal plants in Germany in recent years. Because those were already mostly finished and the power companies where still hoping to stop the transition to renewable energy sources.
Yes, Germany does import nuke power from France. Guess which power grid will be used for transport when the Poles or Austrians buy nuke power from the French? Look at a map if you don't know european geography. You can also see that on page 23 of the AGEB report I linked above.
You should stop talking like a nuke shill. Makes you look stupid.
p.s.
concerning the "wind is unpredictable" stupidity uttered by some:
Why the fuck does my weather forecast give me pretty acurate information on wind speed and direction 24 hours in advance if it is as unpredictable as some believe?
Some people really need to start accepting that this is not the 19th century they seem to believe it is...
Apparently the Germans still have good engineers and good meteorologists because their power grid has way better availability than the US grid:
http://www.renewablesinternational.net/german-grid-reaches-record-reliability-in-2011/150/537/56183/
Page 5 in this PDF: http://www.galvinpower.org/sites/default/files/Electricity_Reliability_031611.pdf
SAIDI index (2007)
USA 240
Germany 23
lower is better (higher availability)
Must be all that "unpredictable" wind power and the "reliable" nuke plants. Reliable as in Belgium: http://online.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-shutdowns-leave-belgium-looking-for-power-1408632643
Nuke plants provided about 40% of electricity for Belgium. Due to the high reliability of nuclear power, this figure dropped to about 20% within roughly 4 months. Must be pretty good fun to go shopping for 10% of your countries electricity elsewhere.
Once winter comes and the French fire up their electric heaters in their non-insulated homes, everyone in Europe will turn to the Germans to provide enough electricity. German exports saved the French grid from blackout at least twice in the last 10 years. Why? Because in winter they don't have enough generating capacity to power their own country and in summer their rivers don't have enough water to cool their nuke plants.
And concerning the "nuclear power is cheap" myth:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/10525538/Subsidies-for-UK-nuclear-plant-could-reach-17bn-and-may-be-unnecessary.html
" The main planned subsidy scheme for Hinkley Point involves guaranteeing the operator, French energy giant EDF, a price for the power the plant will generate for 35 years.
That price, which is twice the current market price of power, will be subsidised through billions of pounds of "top-up" payments, funded by levies on all UK energy bill-payers when the market price is lower than the guaranteed level. "
In actual numbers, this subsidy will be 0.11 EUR / kWh.
Paid for 35 years, with additional adjustments for inflation later on!
Subsidies for renew
Please turn out the lights. Oh, wait...
like Fukushima but getting bigger instead of being cleaned up. . .
You must suffer from mental retardation. . .
It must be close to the end of design life for a lot of reactor components anyway. A combination of high stress and neutron bombardment is a lot like a combination of high temperature and high stress in the way the effected metal behaves so some parts don't last forever, and replacement can be expensive. I'm not predicting disaster just pointing out a well known problem - when microcracking is detected it can be a few years before it's going to grow into something serious but it's time to set things in motion to replace bits.
Uranium doesn't come as uranium, it comes as an oxide that's so hard to reduce that flouride is used. It's not that coal and gas is more plentiful it's that it's easier to start using the stuff.
However in some places Uranium is mined as a side product to Copper and Gold mining since it's in the same ore.
Is back from the grave. http://www.disclose.tv/action/...
Which basically means pro-fossil. Don't let the siren song of wind and solar fool you. They both need 100% fossil fuel backup. Shutting down nuclear power plants simply hands energy generation back to coal and natural gas.
Karen Silkwood. Perhaps the long nightmare is coming to an end.
The Humboldt Bay reactor closed for the same reason.
The real problem with Diablo Canyon, and the rest of the nuclear industry is managing the waste. There is no place to put nuclear waste in this country, so it's just stored on-site. That's crazy. You can't do that forever.
That being said, my expectation is that we'll continue to see tech advancements in solar and wind generation, and energy storage to the point where large central generation will be a thing of the past.
In the 1980's I had a discussion with a brother of a friend (no names). He had had a job as a draftsman drawing as-built drawings for the site. He informed me that any large construction project has the potential that some things that are built differently than specified. Reasons for this may be the builder knows an easier way to do something, or the planners missed that wall in the way.
Anyway, he told me about pipe hangers. In the plant there were a couple thousand pipe hangers. These consisted of a steal plate, say one foot square. Each corner had a hole, and a bolt put into each corner and drilled into concrete walls to mount it. A metal hook was welded on the plate; pipes were strung across the hook and then strapped down. According to my informant, during the construction for some reason they had to remove one of the plates. At that point they discovered that the contractor who was mounting the plates was not drilling four holes into concrete. At least on some of the plates they thought they could get away with drilling three holes and welding a bolt head onto the forth corner. Oops! They almost did get away with it. All the mounting plates were checked and fixed if needed.
Points to consider:
1. how insane is it that someone would think to make a buck they would do this? One poster above says the plant was way over-engineering for earthquake safety. But was it actually built that way?
2. how did they get far enough along to install a few thousand of these without any inspector, or installer, asking any questions or observing anything funny during the installation process? This means the building inspectors were hoodwinked, or worse (I'm not saying they taking bribes...). This calls into question the efficacy of the building inspection(s).
3. if one contractor was willing to fudge something for a buck, how many others were? Or rather, the possibility of building a substandard nuclear plant is itself not enough to prevent some homo sapiens from cheating for personal gain.
Wouldn't it be keen if Diablo Canyon and the other operating nucleaar plants could rise up on giant clawed feet and saunter over to a state that actually wants a clean source of emissions-free energy.
It would also be cool if nuclear electricity was shaped a bit differently, perhaps a little series of dips in the sinusoid like tumblers in a lock... that way the grid could reconfigure itself to gather carbon free energy and pool it for use in states that are not driven by anti-nuclear hysterics.
Then the minions of Enron could come out of retirement, and just as the kind gentleman did for the Yellow Bellied Sneetches, they could install an Apparatus that smooths the sinusoid making the energy appear to have come from Solar or Wind -- for a good price, so the Californians could have Stars Upon Thars.
I recognize that this assessment of Diablo Canyon comes from the NRC, not California. But cue the hysteria as the San Onorfe haters gather their torches and march on to battle evil. Leaving in its wake peace and natural gas for all.
California is becoming more BLUE as time goes on. Hint: Take a peek -- that is not a political map.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
"Following the AP report, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee announced it would hold hearings into how the NRC has handled Peck’s recommendation. Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who chairs the panel, said in a statement she’s alarmed his report has lingered at the agency for a year. “The NRC’s failure to act constitutes an abdication of its responsibility to protect public health and safety,” she said." http://www.theepochtimes.com/n... Here is one way to close the barn door.
... fission frisson or just another energy sector meltdown?
What challenge? San Onofre demonstrated that putting major assemblies in BACKWARD is just FINE with this 'safety first' industry.
There is, therefore, no 'nuclear safety' to discuss. Profits first, last and always and "safety" be damned