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NRC Engineers Urge Shutdown of Nuclear Plants If Design Flaw Not Fixed (utilitydive.com)

Posted by timothy on from the get-back-to-us-on-this dept.

mdsolar writes: A group of engineers in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission say they have identified a design flaw in nearly all nuclear reactors in the country that should result in their mandatory shutdown unless operators fix the problem, Reuters reports. In late February, the engineers petitioned the NRC to order immediate enforcement actions to correct the design flaw, which they say could result in damage to cooling systems and ultimately lead to an emergency situation. The filing asks the agency to respond by March 21 and is a part of a standard NRC process, according to the news outlet. The filing stems from an incident in January 2012, when Exelon's Byron 2 unit in Illinois experienced an automatic reactor trip from full power after an undervoltage condition was detected. The unit was shut down for a week, in what is known as an open phase condition created by an unbalanced voltage. The NRC engineers say such an event could cause an electrical short, reducing the abilituy of cooling systems to operate.

4 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why are all these non-stories submitted by mdsolar being approved? They identified a possible flaw and recommended a fix. Nothing to see here, move on.

    1. Re:So what? by HiThere · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah. Simply amazing all the anonymous cowards posting that his is not a story.

      Nuclear power has four big problems:
      1) It's expensive
      2) It's complicated
      3) It's dangerous
      4) It's managed to create short-term profit.

      The other problems are derivative of those. They exist, and they are severe, but they can be handled. And the main problem of the 4 big ones is number 4...though that would be less of a problem without the other three. And profit shouldn't only be calculated in dollars, but should also include such things as political power and centralized control.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  2. mdsolar by Prune · · Score: 4, Informative

    As soon as I saw the word "nuclear" in the subject, I knew who the submitter was.

    For those new around here, mdsolar is Slashdot's long-time anti-unclear troll, so I'm posting this as a forewarning to you. His posting history shows he regularly contributes anti-nuclear articles, and when he gets told, he typically resorts to personal attacks on those he disagrees with. If you're not interested in going down this path, the best option is just to ignore him. As they say: don't feed the trolls. Now if we could only get the powers-that-be here to ignore his submissions...

    --
    "Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
  3. Re:Oooo this is bad by kellymcdonald78 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Chernobyl had nothing to do with a coolant problem (unless you mean in generic terms that it's coolant system wasn't designed to handle a power excursion in excess of 10 times its rated capacity). While steam voids caused reactor #4 to become extremely unstable, it was the additional graphite moderator located on the bottom of the control rods when they finally decided to shut things down, that caused the reactor to go prompt critical. It went from a few MW of power to 30GW in a fraction of a second. This is what blew the reactor apart, and no coolant system would have made a difference