Power Generation and Distribution Blog

I do not agree.

These reactors need years to get built from planning through to final building testing and putting them into service......

Training and experience comes to people as they work there way up the career tree, there is therefore a NEED to have new installations, otherwise the only way these people would get promotion, would be "Dead Men's Shoes"......

I feel that the need for fresh people to enter the industry, will be fired by the new installs. Giving people the opportunity to rise with their abilities.....especially in this time of people getting laid off in many industries....

I know I haven't said it in good English, sorry, too many years in Germany leaves its mark!!

Two thoughts...Chernobyl and TVA....every time I here the phrase, "theres no room for failure", I start running for the hills. Man is Man and will always be Man.

Because of Chernobyl the United States and the USSR started a joint project to make Nuclear reactors safe world wide.

All nuclear reactors are inspected by an international inspection team. There are over 35 different countries that have entered into this organization.

Chernobyl was caused by tests being done by poorly trained technicians. You can rest assured that nuclear power plants are and will be manned by trained proffessionals.

You can rest assured that nuclear power plants are and will be manned by trained professionals.

Thats what they said about Chernobyl...TMI...and all the other excursions you have not heard about or have become public.

Who is going to assure that the trained professionals are at the level needed to operate such a facility.

The discussion thats needs to be first is, what constitutes a trained professional.

My involvement in the industry tells me that first you need a standard design, so that everyone is on the same page.

Then and only then could one poses the required training for operating a Nuke facility.

What we need is a global standard on design first. If your offering this approach, then I would be interested.

One screw up in human terms last forever, not a lifetime.

If the "international community" wants to all get together for the sake of Nukes, then why wouldn't we all put the money and talent toward solar.

Here is a little food for thought!!!

99.99 % (an Ivory soap commerical) of ALL accidents are preventable. Most are caused by human error!

I've been in the US nuclear industry since 1968. The level of training and awareness for Operations staff, and even engineering has never been higher than it is now.

The new plant designs are far superior to the older ones.

As newer operators and engineers join the workforce, each brings with they a remarkable level of knowledge that is going a long way to improve the industry.

But........many young engineers aren't aware of the financial and personnal satisfaction that is available in the nuclear industry. Too many of them expect to be promoted far to early in their careers, so they end up leaving the industry. Many expect instant gradification and they are too impatient.

Other than that, we're doing great.

GA from me simply because I feel you gave a good and accurate answer.

I had been involved in inspection of power plants for five years from the mid seventies to the early eighties. From what I have seen, nuclear power plants are far safer than fossil plants. This comes from closer monitoring of systems, and a more systematic and critical analysis of maintenance data. The Health Physics people were dedicated to the point of paranoia.

This having been said, it should be noted that despite virtually everything going wrong at TMI, the incident was still contained. The Russian disaster can be laid at the feet of a reactor design not used in this country for commercial power generation. As a matter of fact, we only have one reactor of this type here, small, and used for experiment only. I'm not even sure that it is still in commission.

My experience with the anti-nuke crowd tells me these people simply have not thought the problem through. These same people also hate coal, oil, and natural gas due to pollution hazards. They further don't like hydro because they want the rivers to run "free". They instead want solar and wind, but not in their backyard.

The problem with this is that at the current state of the art, we could blanket the country with windmills and solar panels and still not have enough power. As long as the proponents of solar and wind power are willing to give up their coffee, computers, electric lights, i-pods, and heat to live in caves to take the strain off the grid for the rest of us realists while we develop the technology, I view them as exacerbating the problem in the most hypocritical fashion.

There is no doubt in my mind that the aforementioned crowd would try to derail any effort to go forward. They have already tried to have Millstone in Connecticut shut down because of unscheduled shutdowns (due primarily to malfunctioning unproven safety devices that they have demanded to be installed) which they claim to be proof of its unreliability. Any further incident would be sensationalized by the press, interviewing a plethora of anti-nuke experts without much regard for, or investigation of facts, whipping these folks into a frenzy.

Jerry New Hampshire

Dear Mr Jerry New Hampshire,

please join CR4 fully, we need people like you.....

Jerry,

I'm giving you a DGA (that's Damn Good Answer) and I second Andy's comment - we need more sensible people on this site.

Mike

Thanks to Mr. New Hampshire, Andy Germany and all the others which have spent a part of their time to look closer behind the curtain of a NPP. I aggree with all of you. Here's some remarks to the subject of trained people and humans being the only ones to screw things up as well as some other thoughts:

1. Companies following ISO17025 - which each NPP should be - have to track the steady process of learning of their employees. Unlike in non-certified companies do they (we as supplier for NPP too) have to keep book about continuing education of all employees with safety-relevant positions.

2. Modern Control Systems are constructed and set-up in such a way that human failure is basically prevented by the system. If someone is about to disable safety-relevant functionality in a system of a NPP then there is always a mechanism built-in which includes an approval process by a second person and of course, does the system log who did what and when.

3. Safety-relevant systems are locked and in a certified company the locking and effort to keep those systems up and running is audited: After the audit means before the audit...

4. By speaking about radioactive dose rates to which the NPP personnel is exposed we speak about levels of less than a hundredth of the dose of a flight attendant or pilot. Applying the limits of a NPP to the flying personnel they would be allowed to fly not much more than 10 days per year! Putting it into a short phrase: Inside a NPP the people are verfiably (by dose rate metering) exposed to less radiation than outside!

5. The only very bad thing about NPP technology is really the nuclear waste. To put into perspective I would like to accent that we speak about disposal of a coffee cup full of hghly radioactive material per reactor per year! The brown coal power station of Boxberg in Eastern Germany took 660 tons of coal per HOUR and produced thus about 200 tons of ash and I don't know how many tons of CO2.