^you can make stuff up all you want, but there are no such thing as safety related electrical pillars. Offsite power supply is not credited in a safety analysis of the plant, and failure of those systems is just fine, as the safety related systems could more than handle the earthquake. The plant was doomed when it was inundated by water and the safety related systems became inoperable.
You should learn more about how a plant safety design basis is developed, and in particular the difference between safety related and non-safety related systems and components.
Shouldn't we be designing reactors to handle any quake that is reasonably likely to occur? Japan is highly prone to earthquakes - I'd expect any reactor design to account for a very strong one.
They do, but you have to prescribe a specific requirement in the license and that is on the regulator. The actual designs handle quite a bit more than the licensed design specification, because a reactor designer will typically consider the worst site where a reactor is expected to be built, and the site specific design can be augmented if necessary. US plants have conservative earthquake requirements to start with as prescribed by the NRC, and they do consider the location. Designing a facility to withstand an earthquake is really not that big of a technical challenge.
Withstanding a tsunami is a whole different ball game... there is no margin for something like that, you either place the plant where it won't get hit, or you design it to operate underwater with destroyed surroundings... that latter is not practical.
Plants do address what they call "beyond design basis" events with various coping scenarios over and above the prescribed design basis accidents and events. Post Fuku response is really an extension of that severe accident management element. But that is not in response to a specified event, rather the approach is to simply imagine the plant is left crippled badly in various ways and put mitigations in place to cope. Now, they simply imagine a more crippled starting point. That's all well and good and conservative, but it doesn't address an event, which was the failing at Fukushima.
Can you please describe the event that suddenly places Turkey Point underwater without sufficient warning to take appropriate actions? Many hurricanes have come through, even those with the highest scale, and TP has been quite fine. If you can show there can be a surge will inundate the plant that is not accounted for, please specify the height and relative limits for the plant.
It will, in fact the reactors near Fukushima experienced major quakes beyond their design basis, remained intact and actually saw little or no structural damage. Only those plants that got flooded by the tsunami had problems, because they were not designed to be underwater.
If a major natural disaster hits, a nuclear plant is probably one of the safest places to be.
Add that 'near miss' is not an official event defined event by the NRC , but rather that of the anti nuke group, so they decide what to call a near miss.
Well, If we are talking about shuttered plants that are not operating, with no fuel, then they have plenty of margin, believe me. Anyone reading this thread to this point will clearly see how ridiculous your contention is, so I don't need to continue, but for your own edification, if HB were operating and were hit with a large quake, it would still likely withstand it due to the margin.
khallow, he just doesn't understand about application of statistical data, and repeats what he reads from nuclear FUD websites. You won't get a logical response to this obvious point.
Well, there you go, plants that are not designed to withstand an earthquake that is considered to be possible in an area are not allowed to operate. HB could not prove its safety case based on this EXTERNAL EVENT, and was shut down, many years ago.
Well, that isn't what the author said, is it? Thanks for helping prove my point.
And, the NRC and industry are already "doing more" so the report is a bit of a redundancy, and a little late on that conclusion.
More uninformed claims. External event risk varies widely by area, so the global average, however you want to characterize it, is useless. You probably picked that up from some 'league of anti-nuke scientisticians" website, as we know you will repeat anything you hear as long as it is anti-nuke.
Care to elaborate on how a small, long shuttered plant from the early 60s relates here, or are you just randomly copying stuff from your goggle search results trying to look like you have a point?
Earthquake probability and characterization is a 'continuously improving' science. Knowledge improvement is factored in by the regulator. Fortunately, plants are designed to withstand very large quakes with a large design margin added on top. In reality they will withstand quakes much larger than their stated design capacity.
Let me clarify; "more total stupidity" was aimed at the article author's interpretation of the study, not at the study itself. Poorly worded in my post. The study is what it is, the article author is clearly not qualified to interpret it.
External events are considered in US plant design already, this author seems to be a bit ignorant on how the safety case for plants is built. Who cares if we refine the probability of an event is if the plant is already designed to withstand it? More total stupidity disguised as a serious study. Even highly unlikely events are designed against in our plants.
Now, Post-Fukushima, plants are adding response capabilities for apocalyptic type scenarios even though three is nobody that can provide an example of how such an event may happen for the particular site short of some major war type event. Fukushima was simple...don't put reactors that were not design to operate underwater where they can find themselves underwater. Given the situation, the outcome was quite easily predictable.
Exactly. Greenpeace activism, though well intended, isn't based on solutions. They rely on manufacturing 'bad guys' and the FUD accepting naivety of youth.
One problem many towns would face is that there is already a restriction on anyone else using the poles, that was put in place when thy agreed to let cable companies have exclusive access for this purpose. If it were open to competitors, you wouldn't even need a co-op, somebody would come in with a better product.
As the Quebec outage was one of the only effects of that particular event, while most other power systems were unfazed, and as much was learned from that even and changes made both in the Quebec system and pretty much all transmission systems to limit vulnerability, I would point to that event as a reason not to worry.
I'd guess that a given a clear choice, a majority here would choose a free ad supported, information sharing app over a paid, no-info sharing app. If you have a crap load of free apps on your phone, you are taking advantage of the value of that information you are providing.
Not knowing exactly what information about me sits in the Google repository, and what portion of it can be traced directly back to me is the troubling part. I don't care if all that info is turned into 'generic' or 'anonymous' info and used for market development.
Heat transfer in any system has an efficiency loss associated with it. If you have a primary heat system and transfer that energy to a secondary steam system, you will lose energy in the process. Part of that lost energy is not only direct heat loss from the slowed heat transfer rates, but also in the additional energy required circulate through the heat exchanger, which depends on a lot of fluid passing over a larger surface area.
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^you can make stuff up all you want, but there are no such thing as safety related electrical pillars. Offsite power supply is not credited in a safety analysis of the plant, and failure of those systems is just fine, as the safety related systems could more than handle the earthquake. The plant was doomed when it was inundated by water and the safety related systems became inoperable.
You should learn more about how a plant safety design basis is developed, and in particular the difference between safety related and non-safety related systems and components.
Shouldn't we be designing reactors to handle any quake that is reasonably likely to occur? Japan is highly prone to earthquakes - I'd expect any reactor design to account for a very strong one.
They do, but you have to prescribe a specific requirement in the license and that is on the regulator. The actual designs handle quite a bit more than the licensed design specification, because a reactor designer will typically consider the worst site where a reactor is expected to be built, and the site specific design can be augmented if necessary. US plants have conservative earthquake requirements to start with as prescribed by the NRC, and they do consider the location. Designing a facility to withstand an earthquake is really not that big of a technical challenge.
Withstanding a tsunami is a whole different ball game... there is no margin for something like that, you either place the plant where it won't get hit, or you design it to operate underwater with destroyed surroundings... that latter is not practical.
Plants do address what they call "beyond design basis" events with various coping scenarios over and above the prescribed design basis accidents and events. Post Fuku response is really an extension of that severe accident management element. But that is not in response to a specified event, rather the approach is to simply imagine the plant is left crippled badly in various ways and put mitigations in place to cope. Now, they simply imagine a more crippled starting point. That's all well and good and conservative, but it doesn't address an event, which was the failing at Fukushima.
Can you please describe the event that suddenly places Turkey Point underwater without sufficient warning to take appropriate actions? Many hurricanes have come through, even those with the highest scale, and TP has been quite fine. If you can show there can be a surge will inundate the plant that is not accounted for, please specify the height and relative limits for the plant.
It will, in fact the reactors near Fukushima experienced major quakes beyond their design basis, remained intact and actually saw little or no structural damage. Only those plants that got flooded by the tsunami had problems, because they were not designed to be underwater.
If a major natural disaster hits, a nuclear plant is probably one of the safest places to be.
Add that 'near miss' is not an official event defined event by the NRC , but rather that of the anti nuke group, so they decide what to call a near miss.
Well, If we are talking about shuttered plants that are not operating, with no fuel, then they have plenty of margin, believe me. Anyone reading this thread to this point will clearly see how ridiculous your contention is, so I don't need to continue, but for your own edification, if HB were operating and were hit with a large quake, it would still likely withstand it due to the margin.
"must do more" and "do not reflect" are two completely different things with different meanings. Its pretty simple, really.
khallow, he just doesn't understand about application of statistical data, and repeats what he reads from nuclear FUD websites. You won't get a logical response to this obvious point.
Very good points tp1024. It again reflects our societies complete skewing of risk when it comes to nuclear energy, and radiation in general.
Well, there you go, plants that are not designed to withstand an earthquake that is considered to be possible in an area are not allowed to operate. HB could not prove its safety case based on this EXTERNAL EVENT, and was shut down, many years ago.
Well, that isn't what the author said, is it? Thanks for helping prove my point.
And, the NRC and industry are already "doing more" so the report is a bit of a redundancy, and a little late on that conclusion.
More uninformed claims. External event risk varies widely by area, so the global average, however you want to characterize it, is useless. You probably picked that up from some 'league of anti-nuke scientisticians" website, as we know you will repeat anything you hear as long as it is anti-nuke.
Care to elaborate on how a small, long shuttered plant from the early 60s relates here, or are you just randomly copying stuff from your goggle search results trying to look like you have a point?
I think I already did. He characterized that our plant designs "do not reflect the bigger source of risk, which is external", but they clearly do.
Earthquake probability and characterization is a 'continuously improving' science. Knowledge improvement is factored in by the regulator. Fortunately, plants are designed to withstand very large quakes with a large design margin added on top. In reality they will withstand quakes much larger than their stated design capacity.
Let me clarify; "more total stupidity" was aimed at the article author's interpretation of the study, not at the study itself. Poorly worded in my post. The study is what it is, the article author is clearly not qualified to interpret it.
External events are considered in US plant design already, this author seems to be a bit ignorant on how the safety case for plants is built. Who cares if we refine the probability of an event is if the plant is already designed to withstand it? More total stupidity disguised as a serious study. Even highly unlikely events are designed against in our plants.
Now, Post-Fukushima, plants are adding response capabilities for apocalyptic type scenarios even though three is nobody that can provide an example of how such an event may happen for the particular site short of some major war type event. Fukushima was simple...don't put reactors that were not design to operate underwater where they can find themselves underwater. Given the situation, the outcome was quite easily predictable.
Exactly. Greenpeace activism, though well intended, isn't based on solutions. They rely on manufacturing 'bad guys' and the FUD accepting naivety of youth.
Exactly, if it made a difference we'd already see it somewhere in racing.
One problem many towns would face is that there is already a restriction on anyone else using the poles, that was put in place when thy agreed to let cable companies have exclusive access for this purpose. If it were open to competitors, you wouldn't even need a co-op, somebody would come in with a better product.
As the Quebec outage was one of the only effects of that particular event, while most other power systems were unfazed, and as much was learned from that even and changes made both in the Quebec system and pretty much all transmission systems to limit vulnerability, I would point to that event as a reason not to worry.
To reduce your exposure, you should run away at a speed of 1609344000000 angstroms/hour.
I'd guess that a given a clear choice, a majority here would choose a free ad supported, information sharing app over a paid, no-info sharing app. If you have a crap load of free apps on your phone, you are taking advantage of the value of that information you are providing.
Not knowing exactly what information about me sits in the Google repository, and what portion of it can be traced directly back to me is the troubling part. I don't care if all that info is turned into 'generic' or 'anonymous' info and used for market development.
Heat transfer in any system has an efficiency loss associated with it. If you have a primary heat system and transfer that energy to a secondary steam system, you will lose energy in the process. Part of that lost energy is not only direct heat loss from the slowed heat transfer rates, but also in the additional energy required circulate through the heat exchanger, which depends on a lot of fluid passing over a larger surface area.