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Inspectors Warn Faulty Valves In New-Generation EPR Nuclear Reactor Pose Meltdown Risk
Bruce66423 writes: Valves for the new generation of French reactors being built now have raised substantial safety concerns on top of the existing issues about the quality of the steel used for the containment vessel. Similar to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, France’s nuclear safety watchdog found “multiple” malfunctioning valves in the Flamanville EPR that could cause its meltdown. The Telegraph reports: "The watchdog reportedly cited 'multiple failure modes' that could have 'grave consequences' on the safety relief valves, which play a key role in regulating pressure in the reactor. Owned by state-controlled French utilities giant EDF, Flamanville lies close to the British Channel Islands and about 150 miles from the southern English coast. Designed to be the safest reactors in the world and among the most energy-efficient, the €9 billion (£6.5 billion) EPR has suffered huge delays in models under construction in France, Finland and China. It is now due to enter service in 2017, five years later than originally planned."
Half-Life 3 confirmed!
Valves don't cause meltdowns. Multiple faulty valves could inhibit the mitigation of an even that could lead to a meltdown.
In this case, valves did not pass the required tests so they can't be used in the plant when it is built. The testing process is there for a purpose.
They're verifying everything works as it should. If the valves have a problem it's good that the problem is identified and fixed.
Flamanville lies close to the British Channel Islands and about 150 miles from the southern English coast
I'm curious why the article says this at all. They could just as accurately have said: Flamanville lies ZERO miles from the French coast (ha ha) and is equidistant from Paris and London. That seems the more relevant information in terms of potential catastrophic impact on population centers.
Seems like the author is maybe British and fear-mongering for the local audience?
The article is from the British newspaper The Telegraph so it is directed at a British audience.
A reactor that costs $10.1 billion, and the fucking critical coolant valves don't fucking work when brand fucking new? WTF????? How is it possible for the design process of a doom machine to be that lackadaisical? Consider; this is after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Flames are licking out of my head; smoke is curling up. If you gotta mark me flamebait, I almost understand it. But you gotta ask yourself: if anybody is less than filled with rage at this shit, are they really paying attention to Stuff That Matters?
What is the importance of being 5 years late?
Costs Of Nuclear Power Plants - What Went Wrong?
See that "Preview" button?
While this is certainly a serious design issue, there is no immediate threat: the reactor where the issue was detected is being built, and is not yet loaded with fissile material.
The article is from the British newspaper The Telegraph so it is directed at a British audience.
The slashdot summary ISN'T from a British newspaper so that particular bit of information is irrelevant here. The entire quote is not required. Bad valves are a potential problem is news. The fact that it is some arbitrary distance from Britain isn't of particular consequence to all but perhaps a handful of slashdot readers and I'm pretty sure the ones that would care are pretty well aware that France is pretty close to England.
Mr. Burns payed off the people so things will not get or the guy in 7G get canned as he can't even remember his name.
I'm pretty sure Gordon Freeman wasn't aware of that....
Penises. Nuclear reactors. Spaceships. Mars condos. Wow.
So large! Very powerful! Much wow!
five years later than originally planned
Better late than unsafe.
The prevailing winds would take the fallout to the UK not into France
Well, the Dungeness power plant is just about as close to France as the British could get. And France and England are not the only ones. The one in Belgium (Doel) is pretty close to the Netherlands. If you look at a map of nuclear power plants, there seem to be a lot more near borders than would be statistically "expected". I wonder why...
You've got to be foolish to believe this. Because we're going to need batteries the size of mountains to stabilise the supply / demand of power from solar and wind alone. We require a more stable solution we can fire up or shut down at any given moment. You can't ask the national grid to hang on for the next breath of wind, or the sun to poke out from behind the cloud, especially at night!
As much as I agree that Nukes are not a good solution, and the risks far out-weigh the benefits, I also accept that we have to look for much better solutions that work with tidal power perhaps, or a safer reaction (if it's ever developed) such as Thorium. I suspect the energy companies already have much better solutions available, but have no interest in bringing them online until they're forced to. That, or the military are forced to shake their tree, and see what falls out. I'm sure their black budget billions have turned up some awesome alternatives and advancements.
Powerstations are usually placed near sources of cooling water, either large rivers or the sea. Such geographical features are also often borders. So, are they clustered closer than one would expect to borders given the cooling requirements?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This is disgusting and everything possible should be done to - short of marginally increasing my electric bill or tax bill of course!
London is quite far from the UK's southern coast. There are many other places that could be affected even if London isn't.
Unfortunately this has happened before with French nuclear plants leaking material that was eventually found on the south coast of the UK. The amounts were borderline dangerous, enough to cause a few extra cancers maybe but it would be impossible to tell either way.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
he can't even remember his name.
Tibor?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Joke F Lübbecke of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and 3 scientists from the GEOMAR Research Center for Marine Geosciences poured tracer dye into coastal waters off of Fukushima, and monitored its progress as it traveled to the West Coast of North America, to find out what might really happen.
They have revealed their results in a new paper published by journal Environmental Research Letters.
The paper shows that the West Coast of North American could end up with 10 times more radioactive cesium 137 than the coastal waters off of Japan itself.
That could decimate sea life in the area, in fact one group suggest the sea life die offs seen on the West Coast could be because of Fukushima, if true how much rain water could be contaminated?
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...
http://enenews.com/scientists-...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The companies sell the power for a profit, but for some spooky reason the nuclear waste becomes the governments problem.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Lets be real here. The Chinese, German, Indian, Canadian, US, Russian, English, and Japanese have many, many reactors on their subs and ships. There are no disasters happening on a daily basis like the press says with power reactors, and the reactors in ships also have to be engineered to move and handle G shock due to conditions of war.
Problem is that Big Oil/Big Coal waged a highly successful campaign against it. Carter's knee-jerk permanent moratorium on power reactor construction after 3MI has cost the US dearly, and ensured the country will be married to fossil fuel for a long time to come. The fact that people run scared when they hear the word "nuclear" is proof that the anti-nuke propaganda campaign worked.
I remember in college a few year ago, there was work being done on a reactor in south Texas. The person there was using a TIG welder in an enclosed space in an admin building, and expired. The press called it a "nuclear accident, putting most of Texas at risk" and other scaremongering.
Of course, when you look at the deaths per terawatt-hour, it shows how dangerous nuclear energy really is.
The takeaway? We have some damn good propaganda machines that can pull the wool over the world's eyes for generations, making people eschew a carbon-neutral, high density method of energy generation for ones that cause massive climate change, cause wars, and keep the quality of life low globally.
This is just payback for the mad cow disease incident. After the beef had been declared safe again, the first shipment of British beef was sent to France.
Have gnu, will travel.
Sounds like an engineering problem, not directly regulatory. Engineering specs components to meet some system requirements. In this cas, shutting off some flow with a maximum of X liters passed through. Downstream systems are designed to allow for the X amount. If a regulator steps in to micro-manage valve specifications at this level of detail, they had better take responsibility for the overall system design and possible subsequent failures.
Now, if the regulators came in and asked to see the enginering calculations that determined the system to be safe with amount X passed through and those were in error, the spec gets changed. And engineering heads will roll if the blame cannot be assigned to some other party. So, point the finger at the regulators. They are insulated from reprisals by engineering/construction management.
The problem with tis project is that; at the top, the owner, engineering and construction firm and inspectors all report to the same 'management'. The French government.
Have gnu, will travel.
"What has all this bought in the way of safety? One point of view often expressed privately by those involved in design and construction is that it has bought nothing."
Factual data. Haha.
So long and thanks for all the fish?
We'll ignore the NIMBY huge issue of what the hell we do with the long-lived wastes; this is in France. In the US, with the GOP and the libertarians wanting ever-less regulation, I say, with a 99.44% confidence, that the private sector will cut corners as far as they can go, and with a nuclear plant, the results are far more widespread and longer lasting than other power plants.
So, who here actually lives near a nuclear plant?
mark
Nom de Dieu! I thought that the French had their nuclear reactors down to a fine art. Zut alors!
Well, back to ze old drawing board, ne?
I don't know what you imagine this valve does,
Different discussion. Read the parent post.
EDF didn't design, and isn't building this power plant.
Areva is the engineering/construction firm. Areva is, like EDF and the regulators, owned by the French government.
Have gnu, will travel.
Don't worry. The Chinese built nuclear reactors for that French electric power company to be constructed in the UK proper are going to be a LOT after? Right? Doh.
The accident rate still seems to be like one meltdown a decade (worldwide) regardless of what they do. So yes it seems to have brought nothing.
Areva also measured the carbon content of a central core sample taken from this vessel head, which revealed a higher than expected carbon content (0.30% as opposed to a target value of 0.22%)."
From the report on the French regulator's own website: http://www.french-nuclear-safe...
Seriously, France knows how to produce reactors correctly. The only way for them to be screwing this up, is if they outsourced this. And if they sent this to China, well, China has reasons for wanting weak reactors in the west.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Gads, between the far right's rejection of science about AGW, and now the far lefts rejection of good nuclear reactors, the world has become a crazy place.
Look, EPR is probably not the best reactor, however, the most likely issue is that France has outsourced parts of this. I am guessing that they have outsourced these parts.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The accident rate still seems to be like one meltdown a decade (worldwide) regardless of what they do. So yes it seems to have brought nothing.
One meltdown a decade is surely an improvement over one a year, or whatever it might have been?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
...and how it can solve all our problems...