Time to Revive Nuclear Power?

I still think the whole Party is still waiting for the invention of Dilithium Crystals.

From what I understand the Yucca Mountain storage site has been nixed and they are comfortable with tying up the process for new plants in red tape.

The best advice seems to be is to buy a new micro car from GM when they become available and keep your tires inflated. The government approach seems to be more to do with controlling energy and how much and to whom it goes.

I'm just interested where you got the "Ready Kilowatt" insignia for your avatar.

the Reddy Kilowatt avatar? I don't remember. Somewhere online:

[ link url="http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/201-225/00225_reddy_kilowatt_makeover.html"[] /link]

There have been far more than one power plant accident in US history. Some have cost lives. There are thousands of reported accidents in commercial reactors each year during the 1980s. Most were not important, but shockingly, quite a few have been fatal.

While I am a proponent of nuclear power, it is wrong to simply point to Three Mile Island as the sole mishap we have had. Three Mile Island was simply the most popularized in the media because the movie China Syndrome had recently been released. I lived not far from that reactor when the incident happened. Harrisburg was a ghost town.

You might want to check this link for a complete list

Your case is way overstated, and much is taken out of context. That so many workers were "exposed to radiation" is just part of the job. Dosimetry limits the amount of mrems any worker may be exposed too during a 'Jump'. Whole body counts are used to determine accumulated mrems, and if near the limit, the worker is banned from Rad Work for a predetermined period.

Accidents are reported immediately to one's supervisor, who decides if it is a 'reportable accident'. It is a 'CYOA' in case you need medical attention down the line. Cut your finger? report it! 'Recordable Incidents' average 2-3 per cycle, when the plant is shut down for upgrades. Deaths average one per year nationwide. Most come from construction related accidents, falling, entrapment, etc.. BTW the regular construction industry averages one death per day.

Notice that serious accidents come mainly from experimental facilities. Do you think of how many test pilots died so that you could fly to Aspen for some skiing?

Your link is to a fear mongerer, who has taken his information out of context. Check more throughly next time

Hello Anonymous Hero,

I've read the link and sorry but I didn't find any TMI-2 similar accident.

Workers injured by steam or high energy lines I think are not specific matter of nukes. Why nobody publish a comparison between figures of this type of accidents in nukes and in other industries (fossil fired plants, petrochemical...).

Talking about explosions (previous to plant start up), some other comments without plant name nor details, the one-foot-long defect on the reactor vessel: "Workers discovered a foot-long cavity eaten into the reactor vessel head at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio. Borated water had corroded the metal to a 3/16 inch stainless steel liner which held back over 80,000 gallons of highly pressurized radioactive water". Bold and underlining is mine

The reactor vessel had a liner? the reactor vessel has 3/16 inch thickness? or maybe it was the remaining thickness holding highly pressurized (about 2550 psig) water. Those nuclear people always discovering such a smart materials!

Jokes apart, I could add several "Spanish made": Some years ago I could read a newspaper headline "Nuclear accident at Puentes de Garcia Rodriguez NPP" while really that plant uses coal as fuel and the problem was an incident in which a RX Level II forgot the γ-source outside its shielded container.

We have had even an accident which result in NPP decommissioning. A fire in the turbine building damaged turbine-generator set. But no direct deaths. Just this weekend we've had 20 direct deaths on the roads.

This type of information against nukes (while there are more serious technical/economical issues) gives a poor image of people who use it.

Kind regards

People can spin it any way they want.

I never implied that there was another "Three Mile Island event" per se, however, there are clearly other events that are pretty close, which include a number of partial core melt downs in a number of different reactors.

A number of the deaths cited in the link are the direct result of radiation poisoning.

My points were:

1. that it is incorrect to suggest that the US has never had any other mishap besides Three Mile Island.

2. nuclear power is very dangerous and the result of a fault or error can lead to a sizeable catastrophe. It's the magnitude of a catastrophe that is the real concern and eclipses the magnitude of the worst accident of a coal or hydroelectric plant by orders of magnitude.

As I stated before and will restate here, I am a proponent of nuclear power. However, I do not live under the illusion that it is a risk-free source of power.

I am also a pilot. Flying an aircraft involves a number of risks. All of the risks need to be considered, not just a single failure mode, and alternate plans of action reviewed with each flight.

It's the only way to do it. Aircraft bite fools and to ignore risks that one simply refuses to acknowledge is foolish.

I agree with the "events" or "incidents", but no big accident similar to TMI.

I've read again carefully the power plants part of the link and I've found no mention to core melt. And taking into account the "point of view" of the link I can't imagine the authors knew one case and not including it in the list.

Obviously, nuclear power as all human activities have some risk. (Just living is risky: we all will die soon or later).

But with the increasing prices of fossil fuels, the economical weakness and some other socio economical issues (We really want all world population have not the "developed countries" way of life, just a decent one?) the nuclear option is simply necessary. With all the safety measures and controls, but we need as one more option.

Kind regards

" a 3/16 inch stainless steel liner "

The vessel head (damn I hate vista, I can't get out of italics) is made of layers of steel, much like a military tank. The control room dummies dumped Boron into the reactor to dampen the reaction instead of fine tuning the fuel rods, as they were supposed to do. I saw pictures of the pressure head and several pipe connections that looked like a well corroded battery terminal. All that remained of the outer jacket was about 3/16" over a foot square area. Usually about 1-1/2" thick.

It all seems to depend on who's running the show. This same company was cited for serious violations at two other NPP's. A NRC audit revealed numerous "pencil whipped" inspections/procedures. At each citing by the NRC, profits are temporarily reduced, safety goes up, and eventually insurance and operating costs go down due to diligence among the cadre'.

RPV head is usually one piece steel forged, not "layers". Common steel is a low alloy MnMoNi one, which have no specific corrosion resistance. That's the reason why primary system is usually overlayed with an austenitic SS either by explosion, rolling or weld overlay. According to common Pressure Vessel Codes (ASME...) corrosion resistance claddings doesn't account as load bearing, all loads have to be supported by low alloy part.

At least in light water reactors, Primary systems coolant always contains boron compounds to tune the reaction, and most systems connected to reactor coolant (residual heat removal, chemical and volume control, safety injection...) contain as well that boron. Why had corroded the boron just this part of the vessel head and not the remaining thousands of square foot?

If remaining thickness was just 3/16", what was the system pressure and temperature? I can think just in one equipment part with even lesser thickness: PWR Steam generator tubes. It can support those loads because the very small diameter, but AFAIK, reactor heads use to have quite larger diameters (otherwise it couldn't contain a 1 sq ft "flaw")

If some of this data were included in those "reports" maybe could be discussed under an engineering point of view. Unfortunately it usually include some distorted (and not well understood by authors) data just to alarm people.

I'm open to discuss any well supported info, but I still see this as a fake one.

Kind regards

You might be right about the method used to make the RPV head. My guess goes to explosion forming. It was not part of the informal discussion I was attending. However, the cladding did hold against what could have been a catastrophic failure. There were other, smaller areas of deep corrosion, but the total area/depth was not included. As I recall, 600° F was the operating temperature.

"If some of this data were included in those "reports"....The 'data', if it surfaces at all is often reported in separate venues, difficult for John Q. to assess, but equally easy to take out of context. T.H. Moss and D.L. Sills did a good job editing those reports in "The Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident' in 341 pages. I suspect that John Q. would get a headache trying to decipher similar information.

And yes, Boron is part of normal operating conditions. I think the failure here was a lack of anticipatory or lackadaisical operation in the control room. Human error is usually the main factor in these incidents, and comes right back to who is running the show.

Several things sane people learn that one cannot discuss with John Q. Public: Nuclear energy; abortions; are there other civilizations "out there"; religion; an-eye-for-an-eye death penalty for murderers; corruption in government; etc. Some of my best friends truly believe that the Earth and the Universe date back 4,000 years.

I couldn't agree with Kwitz more. Everyone is looking for alternate sources of electrical energy yet the one that has had the most research and the most refinement is nuclear. The problem is perception and politics.

By the way Three Mile Island was not a failure, it was a success. There was an accident and it was contained and repaired without loss of life. Exactly the way the facility was designed to contain accidents.

The accident could have been avoided had the operators been able to disseminate the barrage of information that was being presented to them. At the onset of the problem, the flip of a switch for the manual shutoff valve at the top of the pressurizer would had brought the problem to a close but it was overlooked. I believe that a computer system would had been able to quickly sift through the information and derive at a correct remedy.

France and Canada have nuke plants and have operated them safely for years. The CANDU design and the PWR are the way to go. BWR's and any graphite moderated designs should be seen as relics of the past. The CANDU can operate on unenriched fuel so it would be a logical choice. Edmund

No doubt about it. Of the 4 planned reactors at Shearon-Harris, 3 of them are just the foundations (construction halted). Of the one operational PWR, it underwent a steam generator replacement 3 years ago. A similar project at Brunswick (BWR) replaced the steam dryer/reheat system. Both these plants and many others are functioning well beyond their design and licensing specifications because of continual upgrades. They are safe, clean workplaces, manned (and womaned) by a dedicated crew of people that are great to work with. I cannot say this about dirty, dangerous coal plants. Tradition becomes superstition, so let's complete the NP's that are started, perhaps with an eye to conversion to fusion, and just get on with it.

I, too, am a survivor of Three Mile Island (at least, I think I am), having lived 50 miles downwind at the time. Immediately afterward, I toured the Limerick plant, then under construction, with the local IEEE section. I was appalled that the plant was being controlled by 1964-vintage PID controllers which, at the time, were 20 years old. Because of NRC rules, the plant has to use whatever was approved at the time the plant earned its permit. The NRC don't allow no new-fangled equipment into a plant, so Limerick was (and probably still is) as safe as 1964 technology can make it. This insane policy still plagues nukes, because they cannot replace aging, obsolete, no-longer-supplied equipment with new devices, such as controllers, strip chart recorders and digital communications.

It's time to get rid of the aging fossils that run the NRC, adopt French and Canadian nuclear technology, and build 50 or more new nukes. As I understand it, the cost of a new nuke is about the same as the cost of a new coal-fired plant (a billion dollars or so), so there's no reason to waste money on coal. Put the nukes on old military bases, to eliminate the NIMBY problem.

This may be true, but Ct Yankee is an older, simplier plant that just seems to sit there and hum along with no problems. Millstone on the other hand, is a regular topic in the news for unscheduled shutdowns. These shutdowns seem to frequently be caused by the faulty emanations of untested, unproven safety devices that the utility was forced to install. Either way, by the time I escaped from Ct, they were getting more than a third of their power via atomic fission.

On that very note I ran across this by accident...

I'm not too thrilled with the prospect of reviving nuclear power and here's a few of reasons why:

Mining: the usual environmental problematics, (some folks would call it devastation)-- add uranium tailings,

Radioactive waste: I've read that this waste discharge averages 22 metric tons per gigawatt of reactor power produced per year...

Cost to store this waste adds to the cost of nuclear power. As a human race--if we want to sustain ourselves-- it would behoove us to honestly factor in all the costs.

Security issues....Need I say more?

Of course there's the problems with accidents discussed thoroughly in previous posts...still a problem in my mind. but more than accidents I'm concerned about the normal leakage.

Nuclear reactor requirements for our water resources: I've read these reactors require billions of gallons of water per day. Not only that but then the water is returned to the sea, river or lake slightly warmed and slightly radioactive. Not cool.

COST: These reactors are EXPENSIVE! This money is better spent elsewhere on less problematic power.

Water usage in any power plant is primarily for use in the condensors so the water in the steam loop can be more effectively processed. This is in effect, borrowed water, returned within minutes of use, and not mixed with the process water used in the steam loop. Cooling towers return water to the atmosphere and the source from which they came, regular condensors return water directly to the source.