Under Revised Quake Estimates, Dozens of Nuclear Reactors Face Problems 152
mdsolar (1045926) writes "Owners of at least two dozen nuclear reactors across the United States, including the operator of Indian Point 2, in Buchanan, N.Y., have told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that they cannot show that their reactors would withstand the most severe earthquake that revised estimates say they might face, according to industry experts. As a result, the reactors' owners will be required to undertake extensive analyses of their structures and components. Those are generally sturdier than assumed in licensing documents, but owners of some plants may be forced to make physical changes, and are likely to spend about $5 million each just for the analysis."
This is the problem with all aging infrastructure. (Score:4, Insightful)
At the end of the lifespan, somebody who is not that architect says we can't afford to replace a (still perfectly good) piece of infrastructure. Let's agree that if we (inspect more often/inspect in greater detail/upgrade this piece here), we can get (10/20/30) more years of life out of it. Y'know, I can already hear the original architect screaming "That isn't what I said!".
So now it's forty years later, and something the original architect may not even have seen coming turns Fukushima into a radioactive hotspot - or the bridge in Skagit County collapses - or an 8.5 magnitude earthquake levels the building, killing hundreds. The problem is that it's one thing to spend millions of dollars to have the object in question. Once people are used to it "just being there", nobody wants to spend even more just to keep it. They'd rather spend just a few dollars more and convince themselves that it's better than ever. Good on us for being so clever!
Re:This is the problem with all aging infrastructu (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not how engineering works, or why Fukushima went into meltdown.
Engineers specify the lifetime for the various parts of their design. They specify under what conditions they are considered worn out and cannot be used any more. Clearly if any worn out part can be replaced then there is no limit to the lifetime of the design. In practice this has proven to be true with things like aircraft and ships, and indeed nuclear plants. What kills them is when the cost of maintenance gets too high and building a new one is cheaper.
In the case of Fukushima age had nothing to do with it. The problem was damage from the earthquake, damage from the tsunami (and the lack of upgrades that TEPCO were told they needed to do to the sea defence wall), and confusion in the following days. The plant itself was actually better than new, in that it had been upgraded over the years and all parts were properly maintained and functioning as designed. It was just an old design, although it is debatable how much better newer designs would have fared in the same situation.
Age isn't the problem, bad design is. Fukushima was broken from day one, in fact it was even more vulnerable to major earthquakes than it was the day one hit it all those years later.
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No sorry. The architect says this xxxxxx will stand for xxxxxx years with xxxxx specific maintenance.
Company runs xxxxx for the xxxxx years and then calls 3rd party inspectors to endorse xxxxxx for yyyyyy number of years based on yyyyy maintenance.
Providing you perform yyyyy maintenance and seek re-endorsement periodically you can continue ad-infinitum.
Most industrial plants have a design life of around 10 years. Most will happily run for 60 years providing you replace bits that have corroded, monitor corro
Partially true (Score:2)
There are ALWAYS fundamental parts of the structure and inaccessible elements (pipes routing through masses of concrete or running under foundations for instance which are simply impractical to ever replace. In the case of nuclear power plants these things include highly critical parts like steel pressure vessels (which are degraded by neutron capture reactions amongst other things). You may be able to INSPECT these things, but once you deem that they've worn out its just game over, you decommission.
Another
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You can say that if you want, that doesn't make it true. There's clearly stuff inside these plants that nobody can look at and things that are so expensive to replace that building a new plant is cheaper. That's all that's required. You can't replace the pressure vessel on a PWR, not possible.
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You don't need to. You shut it down in place and build another next to it. That's what happens when you can't demolish, you build a new one next to it.
Also you're partially right that no one can look at things inside some plants, as in you can't crawl in and shine a torch on it. But that's not how inspection works. Very little inspection is visual. Inspection is a lot like looking for oil. There's a myriad of different ways including inducing ultrasonic vibrations in cement and measuring the results which g
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Sorry, I've worked around industrial facilities, including nuclear power plants. Hell, I've stood on top of the core of a research reactor and watched the Cerenkov glow, installed instruments at VY Yankee, etc. Lets just take VY as a good example. They COULD NOT, and DID NOT inspect plumbing underneath the plant (in fact they denied said plumbing even existed). The result was a tritium leak. There are simply pieces of these plants that can't be inspected. Trust me, I know all about ultrasound, x-rays, condu
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Lot of past tense there. Unfortunately for you I have similar credentials including the Cerenkov glow. Freaked me out the first time I saw it.. The plants I worked at were fully inspected so looks like we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'll have to assume that your plant was kind of special in it's construction that prevented it or that you didn't have the required technology or expense.
Oh I'm going to have to disagree with your eyeballs comment too. Our eyes and judgement are horrendous compared to
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What makes things impossible to inspect is profit motive, nothing more.
Obviously, this is pretty much tautological. Enough money will solve ANY problem. The truth is no plant is 100% inspected. You can think otherwise and you are wrong. Look at VT Yankee's Tritium Leak problem. They weren't not doing an inspection procedure. The inspections they were doing were NOT FINDING A PROBLEM, and that means that (unbeknownst to the operator) some things aren't being properly inspected. Its not usually a deliberate thing, its simply that you WILL fail to find problems. It happens all th
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Fukushima is not a hot spot. There is a lot of media surrounding it and sure, there may be some "bad things" there but there isn't life threatening Chernobyl-level activity (and even Chernobyl wasn't all that bad). I also wouldn't be concerned about Buchanan, NY getting hit by a tsunami, Long Island and NYC are among a few of the things that have to be passed by (and those would dissipate most/all of the energy). And if a tsunami hit there, well, then, we'd have more serious things to be concerned about lik
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Yep, Indian Point is less than a mile from a faultline.
One that's barely been active over the last 200 million years.
Risk assessment figured that there's a 100% chance of critical damage to the reactor vessels...over a timeline of 100-150 THOUSAND YEARS.
Seeing as the plant's lifespan is supposed to be between 40 and 80 years and the plant is rated to withstand a 6.1 scale quake, you have a better chance of dying in a traffic accident IN YOUR LIVING ROOM.
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Risk assessment figured that there's a 100% chance of critical damage to the reactor vessels...over a timeline of 100-150 THOUSAND YEARS.
No. Over a timeline of 0-150,000 years. We don't know how to predict quakes on long-quiescent faults yet. We're barely able to do it on active ones.
Seeing as the plant's lifespan is supposed to be between 40 and 80 years and the plant is rated to withstand a 6.1 scale quake, you have a better chance of dying in a traffic accident IN YOUR LIVING ROOM.
You know, this isn't just about my life. This is about all living things for hundreds of years after an incident. Maybe you could expand your world view to include things past your nose.
It's not that simple - we can't see the future (Score:2)
Then reality asserts itself.
Years later people can come along and know the operational conditions instead of estimating them, look at expected modes of failure, examine parts prone to those failures, do a bit of statistics and then have some confidence that it will last another X years.
It
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and they still have the replaced parts of that bridge in Skagit County at pre interstate standards they should of build a new one with room for 3 lanes each way + full shoulders. Or at least build a new 3 lane one way with full shoulders and keep the old one in place as 3 lanes one way + shoulder.
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The architect says this (bridge/power plant/building) will stand for (20/30/40) years with proper maintenance. Then, we should outright replace it. We know it'll cost x dollars now, plus y dollars of the life of the item. Sounds good, so we buy in.
At the end of the lifespan, somebody who is not that architect says we can't afford to replace a (still perfectly good) piece of infrastructure. Let's agree that if we (inspect more often/inspect in greater detail/upgrade this piece here), we can get (10/20/30) more years of life out of it. Y'know, I can already hear the original architect screaming "That isn't what I said!".
The original architect necessarily has to be very conservative in his estimates because he has, in your example, 20-40 years of future uncertainty messing up his predictions. He cannot actually know how high the humidity will be, how much the ambient temperature will fluctuate, how much the soil will shift, what sorts of loads the facility will come under, etc., except as some form of probability distribution. And this distribution becomes more uncertain the further into the future he tries to plan it.
After
Some may close (Score:3)
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Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant closed because of this situation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
Perhaps partly but that plant was a piddly 63MW. In the 1960s they were building 500MW coal powered plants and rapidly scaling up nuclear power output. By the early 1970s, 800-1000MW nuclear power plants were the standard. The manpower requirements of a big nuclear power plant aren't substantially different from a small nuclear power plant. Humboldt Bay was economically obsolete. Other factors may have provided good excuses but IMO the underlying problem was the output was no longer competitive.
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Japan may only ever reopen one thrid of plants (Score:2)
far better to move to new ones (Score:2)
Not at the cutting edge (Score:2)
Of course nuclear lobby groups killed off civilian nuclear R&D because i
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Why plan to build 100 of design X over thirty years when design Y developed only five years later shows far more promise before the first of design X is even operating?
The same way that everything else gets built, it takes more than five years to get approval to make the thing you'll design five years later. You build now what you can build now and build later what you can build later.
Of course nuclear lobby groups killed off civilian nuclear R&D because it was a treat to their investment in existing designs and the threat of a different fuel shortening the commercial life of their current plants (a shift to thorium and new plants running it had the potential to prevent the old plants competing and the entrenched nuclear lobby didn't like that).
This is why we can't have nice things.
Maybe in a few years we can buy reactors from India where they still carry out civilian nuclear R&D and do not have that paticular political roadblock.
A few years is plenty of time to pass a law against that.
It will be alright on the night? (Score:2)
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BUT, the thorium reactors will take time. I just wish that B&W or GA would take this on, if the feds fund it.
Sadly, between the GOP pushing fossil fuel and the dems fighting nukes, I suspect that we will get nowhere fast.
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What I would really like to see happen is for us to provide some grant money to build thorium at GA or mPower. Then simply require that they have similar control rooms, generators, etc. That will make it easier for training, etc.
As to issues such as having a design flaw, by getting 2 very different reactor types, we solve that. In fact, ideally, we would put BOTH reactors on the s
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You may be right. The synroc I saw in 1988 was effectively identical to the finished product used in real nuclear waste management at an industrial scale for the first time a couple of years ago. The problem in the time between was getting funding for testing - which was taken as implying that existing methods of waste management (eg. keep stuff in pools of water indefinitely) were not perfect. Similarly you are writing about s
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grant money to build thorium at GA or mPower
That would be a bad idea and just a way to burn money unless they bring in some existing expertise due to the differences. A university or similar with the people who have already been working on such technology associated with GA, mPower or whoever is a different story. There's no point giving money to develop a new technology to the same people that squashed it last time - they have no real incentive to succeed and they do have an incentive for it to fail since it would compete with their existing products.
Hmmm. I think I should have worded this differently. The idea is that the company like filbe does the R&D, engineering, etc work, BUT, the final construction of it goes to either GA or B&W. With this approach, it is one line of computers, one line of generators, one line of cooling, etc. that are fully debugged. The only real difference would be the reactors.
But, yeah, I agree with you on having them do the work. I will say that GA already has done throium and does NOT want to kill. Look up ft. s
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That's why the hope lies in India (ironically less of a corruption problem than the US nuclear industry) or in startups c
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Yes a lot of cool stuff was designed in the 1960s. The GA of today would not take a risk like that even if the government paid them for it because it would challenge some of their revenue sources.
Modify the operating constraints (Score:2)
The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission [nirs.org] reveals the collusion that took place with the regulator so improvements would not be put in place. This happened because the beleif system in the safety of Nuclear Power affected all of the safety proposals put forward within and by TEPCO. In other words a 'systemic' issue where the belief that a reactor is safe to be run to capacity, as opposed to a safety culture that certifies it to do so, is the main issue.
A g
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The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission reveals the collusion that took place with the regulator so improvements would not be put in place.
I'm not going to read it, because I'm lazy; did they discuss the fact that was an absolute shit place to put the plant in the first place, and that they knew this fact when GE chose the site, and the US government forced them to put it where GE said, or that the Mark I was unsafe by design due to the spent fuel rod storage?
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The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission reveals the collusion that took place with the regulator so improvements would not be put in place.
I'm not going to read it, because I'm lazy; did they discuss the fact that was an absolute shit place to put the plant in the first place, and that they knew this fact when GE chose the site, and the US government forced them to put it where GE said, or that the Mark I was unsafe by design due to the spent fuel rod storage?
No. A riverbed was a seriously braindead place to put Fukushima.
The Mk I had several basis design issues, however these issues were made fatal by Tepco's criminal negligence. The two dasis design issues were: Gate pair seals in the spent fuel containment pool and reactor vessel exceed 70psi internal pressure. Both had a consequence of producing hydrogen and both were exposed because TEPCO did not maintain power to S class facilities (that contain radio isotopes) in accordance with the siesmic design guidli
US containment designs are uselessly weak (Score:3)
The US nuke designs are very weak when compared to the French. The French containment buildings are incredibly strong concrete and steel domes, built on top of huge shock absorbers.
Penny wise, pound foolish...
Spent fuel (Score:2)
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I've always been curious about this. Why can't we put all the waste on a rocket and send it to the Moon?. It shouldn't be that hard and would be cheaper than leaving it on Earth to cause future issues.
The main reason is that burial is fairly safe whereas rockets are not.
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I've always been curious about this. Why can't we put all the waste on a rocket and send it to the Moon?. It shouldn't be that hard and would be cheaper than leaving it on Earth to cause future issues.
1. That would be stupid because the "waste" is actually "fuel".
2. That would stupid because polluting the moon is a shortsighted way of avoiding pollution on Earth.
3. That would be stupid because rockets sometimes don't get to where you send them.
4. That would be stupid because it would cost a fuck-ton of money.
Ok? Any other questions?
Re:Must question the "revised" estimates (Score:5, Insightful)
Arguably no estimate is adequate. Unexpected things happen, and our understanding and knowledge of the tectonic plate system is incomplete anyway. Given the risk we should be designing for safety in the most extreme event possible. Look at it this way: the fact that the estimates were revised up tells us that the original estimates were too optimistic, there is at least some chance that the new ones are too.
The cost is always going to be proportional to the risk. That's why no commercial insurance company will offer any nuclear facility insurance.
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Given the risk we should be designing for safety in the most extreme event possible. Look at it this way: the fact that the estimates were revised up tells us that the original estimates were too optimistic, there is at least some chance that the new ones are too.
Or the new ones are too pessimistic and rely on theoretical possibilities that never can or will come true in reality, but we choose to err on the side of caution. It's not proven necessary until we've had an actual quake exceed the old tolerances, which hopefully won't happen any time soon.
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Assuming they don't also overlook more common/mundane risks. Or, even worst, attempt "risk assessment" by some kind of "box ticking".
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It's newer than people think. My boss graduated with a degree in geophysics before the theory was published.
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Given the risk we should be designing for safety in the most extreme event possible.
As long as that extreme is reasonable to design for. You're not going to be able to do much design for a direct asteroid strike or a deliberate pinpoint nuclear attack, for example.
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> But fire does not make areas permanently uninhabitable
Fire kills far more people every year than nuclear power.
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Any business that involves human labor is at risk. Many working people spend just as much if not more of their waking hours at work than at home.
Not at all. They would be for the most part working indoors and there would be no kids.
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People are for the most part indoors when they sleep at home too.
But not when they do other home-related activities such as play outside.
If it's not safe for people to sleep indoors for ~8 hours a day, it's not safe for people to work indoors for ~8 hours a day (plus commute time on top)
Who said it wasn't safe to sleep for eight hours in such a place? The point is that society, Japanese or otherwise, cares more about environmental exposure to radiation and pollutants when it involves residential areas rather than industrial areas.
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Playing outside is not a home-related activity.
It is a residential area activity.
On the other hand, if you living in a concrete jungle of high rise apartments and condos, there is no outside to play in.
Playgrounds. Most urban areas have them.
Well, if it's safe to sleep inside, then we can build residences after all.
Public opprobrium.
And my point was that they still care about it enough that many businesses and industries won't be economical.
Then land will be cheaper for those that are still economical.
Sorry, but it's pretty clear you haven't thought about this. It shouldn't be this easy to come up with rebuttals to your assertions.
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No it is not, and I already explained why, in the parts you didn't quote.
Your explanation is wrong because a residential area is more than the home or apartment. It's also the green space around those structures.
Public opprobrium.
Has nothing to do with my point.
Safety is in large part a matter of perception. An activity can be safer even if it objectively more risky merely because the risk is understood and accepted. Hiking up Mount Everest is only done by people who accept the risk. And it can be made safe within the expectations and capabilities of those participants.
Hopping into a car drunk is not safe because it's done
Re:Must question the "revised" estimates (Score:5, Insightful)
But fire does not make areas permanently uninhabitable
Tell that to the people of Centralia, PA
Maybe on a scale of "eternity", fire doesn't render places "permanently" uninhabitable.
But, then, neither does radiation.
Even in the Pripyat area (around Chernobyl), unless you're right up near the reactor, the ambient radiation is on par with many places around the world.
And even just outside the reactor, PLACES THAT HAVE NEVER SEEN A NUCLEAR REACTION where the radiation is 10-15 times as high (see Brazil, Guarapari beaches).
Most of the reactors that have had safety issues are reactors that were built decades ago, based on even older designs.
We have the knowledge, NOW, to build completely contained devices that safely generate power over the lifetime of the device.
We have the knowledge, NOW, to build reactors that quite simply are INCAPABLE of replicating the accidents that led to contamination at TMI and Chernobyl.
As for Fukushima. Fukushima is the story of a freak Tsunami that was mutated by the anti-nuke community into a "nuclear failure".
Basically, if you consider yourself environmentally conscious, you cannot be anti-nuke.
Because the only other viable options for baseline power are natural gas, coal and oil.
Natural gas, coal and oil are the things we need to be moving AWAY from.
And anyone telling you that we can rely, solely, on wind, wave, solar and geothermal is LYING TO YOU. The people telling you these lies? Shills for the NG, coal and oil industry!
Re:Must question the "revised" estimates (Score:5, Informative)
Wow. I really wish people would stop conflating "counts per minute" measurements of radiation exposure, with alpha and beta nucleide contamination. There's a lot of Cs137 and Sr90 contamination in the soil all over the place near Pripyat (and Fukushima), and just because you can walk through the area and get a few sieverts of decays on your skin, and no net harm, doesn't mean anyone can safely live there. Those contaminants get into dust, and you inhale it, or ingest it in your food, and they remain active inside your body for decades. It's not the same as either an x-ray, or eating a banana.
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Yeah, right, yet, show me cancer cases from Cs137 and Sr90 outside of Chernobyl.
Nuclear power is the goose that lays golden eggs, and you are strangling all of them.
Until you start giving coal power the treatment it DESERVES by killing about 200,000 people/year worldwide and 13,000 people/year in the USA alone, you have ZERO moral authority to try to destroy nuclear power for its most remote risks.
Either you are a fossil fuel shill that is being paid to do your best to destroy nuclear power, or you have bee
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Two wrongs don't make a right.
Your argument is that we should castigate Dave for killing people because John kills more people!!!!
7 Billion people on earth, 30+% of them will die of cancer, the simple fact is we don't know how many of those 2 billion people died because of ra
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> How many Fukishimas, windscales, three-mile-islands and chernobyls do we have to have before we say enough is enough. We CAN power this planet on renewables.
Sweet dreaming my friend. Not possible on current technology.
Hawai, Arizona, Germany is showing there are LIMITS to how much solar and wind can be added to the grid before destabilizing it.
You say solar and wind is cheap, but you only account for the cost of the wind turbine and solar panels, and ignore the cost of redesigning the grid and implemen
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Hawai, Arizona, Germany is showing there are LIMITS to how much solar and wind can be added to the grid before destabilizing it.
The current grid, yes. That is why German is rebuilding theirs into a better one more suited to renewable energy. In fact some cities are buying their own infrastructure because the commercial operators are not acting quickly enough or in their interests.
It does not appear to be unaffordable, only moderately expensive in the short term and German is the first country doing it so will get the benefit of having the technology and experience to sell to everyone else. In any case it is cheaper than new nuclear
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Please show me the cancers or deaths from Fukushima. Until then, all of your "it's a catastrophe", is all HYPE !
Yes, TEPCO was terribly irresponsible, that's their incompetence, not the rest of the world's. Japan has a terrible lack of whistleblower culture that leads to a culture very permissible to those absurds, this isn't a nuclear problem, it's a Japanese problem.
You really need to watch Pandora's Promise, see how the anti nuclear environmentalist movement never takes the time to validate it's assumpti
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"The electrical grid has ZERO energy storage"
Why do you think I said we should be investing in storage technologies?
"your side's fabricated dire predictions"
I didn't fabricate anything.
You say nuclear waste can be recycled, but right now, that is a fantasy, this is the reality:
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Nuclear waste getting recycled is much more practical than energy storage in the scale of a day's electricity production of the the world.
I need to look no further than the fact that you don't really understand nuclear technology, just enough to attack it, while I do understand solar, wind, thermal gas/coal plants and nuclear.
Yes, you are fabricating dire predictions.
My analysis is in a few years people will be allowed back into Fukushima.
Your dire prediction is that Fukushima will be no man's land for deca
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30% of them will die of cancer
Again, you have exactly zero way to prove that any given death, cancer or otherwise, is a result of reactor accidents. But you're going to try and just pin ALL cancer deaths on reactor accidents?
Please. Stick to what you can actually prove.
Fukushima, old, badly managed, hit by a Tsunami several times more powerful than anything the plant was spec'ed for...
Windscale, you're talking about a 57 year old nuclear accident in an ancient reactor.
TMI, basically an old design with a textbook case of doing everythi
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I didn't say all cancers are radiation caused, I said we don't how many of them are. Stop putting words in to my mouth.
Stick to what I actually said.
You seem to have reading difficulty, I said twice that we should be investing in storage technologies, you seem to want to ignore that.
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There have been a number of studies that show hundreds to thousands of additional deaths, hower none of them can be 100% watertight in either direction (things could just as easily be worse as better) because you can't control for all other factors that might be involved.
Exactly. It's easy to simply label every cancer death since the event as "caused by Chernobyl". Unfortunately, nobody takes you seriously, because the claim isn't sane or provable.
As to why choosing coal to discuss?
Because it's a baseline power source, like nuclear, like oil. YOU CANNOT USE WIND POWER AS A BASELINE POWER SOURCE. Even if you blanket the entire planet in windmills, you simply don't have enough constant capacity to qualify. So, all the people talking about solar and wind and wave power?
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I was full of doubt, but your use of ALL CAPS convinced me. Shouting works every time, and in no way implies your argument is that of a ranting fool. Well done, sir.
Re:Must question the "revised" estimates (Score:4, Informative)
Problems are storage, handling of existing radioactive stockpile, Spent Fuel Pools. Many hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive waste already piled up, in SFPs in the Nukes.
And we have reactor designs that can safely burn this waste down. Right now, in many places, you have sequestration vessels standing in open air in what is essentially a parking lot out back of their reactors.
But the people who simply equate nuclear and "bomb" have prevented, via political chicanery, the implementation of known-safe designs that could render all this long-lived spent fuel down into short-lived spent fuel. Through similar chicanery, they've also basically poisoned the government regulatory system in such a way as to artificially skyrocket the costs of implementing and compliance for nuclear. They've also basically nixed intelligent reprocessing of the fuel to extend the useful lifetime without the need to actually obtain more.
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And we have reactor designs that can safely burn this waste down.
Well, no. If you look at the history of breeder reactors they have all had major problems. Decommissioning is a particularly big one, and one of the primary reasons why no-one has thought it economically viable to build a commercial scale plant.
But the people who simply equate nuclear and "bomb" have prevented
Yes, people like you. If you stopped ranting against your straw man, listen to the arguments and responded calmly to them you might get somewhere.
To be clear the people in Japan who talk about nuclear power and nuclear weapons at the same time do so because Japan mai
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Okay, what's worse? The crap we're spewing INTO OPEN AIR today with coal and oil?
Or barely enough nuclear fuel to fill the gridiron in a football stadium, that could be, repeatednly, reprocessed and broken down to short-lived isotopes given the proper reactor?
Take a look at France. Some of the lowest in Europe. And their total nuclear storage amounts to ONE ROOM. Because they reprocess.
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Mainstream distrust of the Nukes is entirely due to the actions of the people in the industry, and unfortunate results.
Nonsense. "Mainstream" distrust of nuclear power is an engineered phenomenon.
As for "building trust". How do you build trust with someone who, no matter what you do, say, etc is going to scream "no nukes, no nukes", like you were going to be putting a bomb testing range under their kids' bed?
On the other topic, yes, I agree that Tepco's (mis)handling of the situation has worsened it. We'd have been better off handing over the reins of the operation to a blind quadriplegic in a permanent vegetative state.
Re:Must question the "revised" estimates (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm no FAN of water cooled, solid fuel reactors, for they are wasting 99,3% of Uranium mined.
But still, they are way, way safer than even the cleanest coal power plant, because for each ton of spent nuclear fuel, coal produces tens of thousands of coal ash, filled with mercury, cadmium, arsenic, all neurologic agents, that will remain poisonous FOREVER, because they don't decay.
At least Sr90 and Cs137 decay into stable forms after releasing their radioactivity, loosing any harmful radioactive effects after that.
I don't agree with the opinion that Fukushima is worse than Chernobyl. I don't believe it will be even 5% of Chernobyl effects.
The reasons Chernobyl were so bad were all due to USSR incompetence:
1 - The reactor was astonishingly unsafe. It has no secondary containment building. It had fundamental safety flaws that caused the explosion during a shutdown. It didn't have advanced computer monitoring systems that can predict problems, analyze all reactor safety parameters hundreds of times per second and show anything of concern.
2 - The explosion blew a 2000 ton reactor top off meters away, the reactor graphite moderator caught fire, exacerbating the radioactive release. This is impossible with a modern reactor
3 - Iodine tablets were no distributed to the affected population. Most cancers from nuclear accidents come from radioactive iodine, but it decays fairly quickly, 7 day half life, so in 70 days it's essentially all gone (rule of thumb = 10 half lives it's 99% gone)
This won't ever happen again. The main reason isn't the lessons learned, all 3 lessons were already ingrained in nuclear safety people outside the USSR. Only the USSR would be crazy to do that even back then.
Fukushima might even slowly release the same levels of raw radioactivity, but since it's going into the Pacific, and being released in small doses, it gets diluted very quickly, so people aren't breathing radioactive iodine, Sr, Cs.
No, the pacific isn't lost. Even 50Km away, the Pacific is perfectly safe and fine.
If any of those concerns were a real issue, USA and France would be having serious nuclear incidents all the time.
Why is it that France produces 75% of its electricity from nuclear and we don't hear of clusters of cancer cases around nuclear plants ?
Why is it that the USA produces more total electricity from nuclear than France, without incident ?
Where are the radiation sickness deaths from Fukushima ? Where are the real cancer cases from Fukushima ?
The reality still is that the anti nuclear community is still doing it's usual overreaction act around Fukushima.
The German greens forced nuclear reactors to be shutdown in a hurry, causing German's CO2 emissions to go up from burning more coal. The net effect of all solar and wind installed completely washed by shutting down just 5 nuclear reactors.
I'm sorry, but I can't agree with any of the actions you propose, because your side get attention to your issues by fearmongering the population. I'm not a nuclear industry representative, I'm not even a nuclear physicist or a nuclear engineer. My pro nuclear feelings are a result of the anti nuclear people selling lies to the general public. My interest on studying nuclear power and fully understanding it comes 99% from correcting your side's fearmongering. I'm against lies and in favor of credible information. Until the anti nuclear shills stop fearmongering, I'm against them.
Spreading lies is never a good thing. It makes your movement a fundamentalist one.
Nuclear power IS safe. You concerns are not significant, because as it is, nuclear technology is already extremely safe.
Everything has risks. Chernobyl killed far less people than one weeks worth of car accidents in the USA. Chernobyl killed less people than coal kills every month worldwide.
We need to fund new nuclear alternatives that are efficient in using thorium and uranium, if we do that, we can reduce nuclear fission products by 99%. With just the currently available spent nuclear fu
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Okay, it's been approximately 25 years since the disaster. People have been living there since only a short time after the disaster.
Thus far, there have been 50-60 deaths directly due to the accident and the initial puff of radiation. And no directly provable deaths since.
So, please, keep spinning tales.
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Assuming that the "anti-nuke community" didn't contribute to the problem by making it more difficult to replace the old reactors an/or move spent fuel off site.
Fukushima is an example of human failure (Score:3)
As we know now, even without the tsunami Fukushima would be a large nuclear disaster, since at least one reactor is cracked and leaking contaminated radioactive water into the ground water table. Also, that "freak tsunami" actually is statistically happening every thousand years or so, so the chance that it would happen in the life time of a facility, say 50 years, is about 5% or to put that in perspective: "so likely that you'd have to be an idiot not to design for it". So much for a perfect design, but t
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jafac already debunked your "Pripyat is safe" claim, so I'll just pick up the rest.
Most of the reactors that have had safety issues are reactors that were built decades ago, based on even older designs.
Most of the new ones being built now are basically the same, with a few modifications to deal with known issues.
We have the knowledge, NOW, to build completely contained devices that safely generate power over the lifetime of the device.
Fukushima was "completely contained", it just wasn't indestructible or even meltdown/hydrogen explosion proof. Even if we could build such a thing it wouldn't be affordable.
As for Fukushima. Fukushima is the story of a freak Tsunami that was mutated by the anti-nuke community into a "nuclear failure".
Japan experiences regular large earthquakes and occasional tsunami. The one that hit is estimated to be a 1-in-100 year event, so with a 40-50 y
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jafac already debunked your "Pripyat is safe" claim
No he hasn't. Because I never made that claim. But please, keep misrepresenting what I said.
Most of the new ones being built now are basically the same, with a few modifications to deal with known issues.
I'd like to see the supporting documentation you have for making this claim.
Fukushima was "completely contained", it just wasn't indestructible or even meltdown/hydrogen explosion proof. Even if we could build such a thing it wouldn't be affordable.
You and I have vastly different ideas about what "contained" means.
Japan actually has enough renewable energy for its entire needs, including baseline power.
Again, documentation on this unsubstantiated claim please?
As for Hydro? Basically that's where the environmentalists start running into one another. Because of Hydro's adverse effects on the local ecology. Additionally, the US is more or less tapped out in terms of new Hy
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I'd like to see the supporting documentation you have for making this claim.
Sure, take a look at the documentation for them. It was filed as part of the certification process. Wikipedia has summaries. It's all there for you to read yourself.
You and I have vastly different ideas about what "contained" means.
I tend to do by the dictionary definition, which is basically not letting stuff out.
As for hydro you are only thinking in terms of large dams. Hydro can be done in a much smaller scale with minimal environmental impact, certainly less than building a new coal or nuclear plant. If you want to go that route try looking up information on the amount
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Oh good for you.
"Cites numbers and "facts" to support argument"
Where do you see that?
"Look it up yourself."
Bzzt. It's not on me to do the research to support your position.
Try again.
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We have the knowledge, NOW, to build completely contained devices that safely generate power over the lifetime of the device.
No, no we don't. We are still emitting hazardous waste and not dealing with it. Get back to me when we're reprocessing fuel.
We have the knowledge, NOW, to build reactors that quite simply are INCAPABLE of replicating the accidents that led to contamination at TMI and Chernobyl.
Pity we don't.
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No, no we don't. We are still emitting hazardous waste and not dealing with it. Get back to me when we're reprocessing fuel.
What do you mean "we", American?
Some of us do reprocess fuel.
Welcome to France.
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Welcome to France.
Wait, just let me pack.
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The relatively short half life of Strontium 90 is 600 years, some radioisotopes are more than that some are less. To the perspective of anyone alive today, it's the same as eternity.
Many of the so called "improved" designs are only improved for economic reasons. Choic
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Neither does nuclear !
People are living in the Chernobyl exclusion zones !
By using the word permanently, you already lost the argument because it's not hard data, it's your wild exaggeration of hard scientific data.
Chernobyl dumped 5% of the reactor core materials, one million cancer deaths were predicted, it's been 25 years, why can't the anti nuclear pundits produce a scientific peer review study showing at least one hundred thousand actual deaths ?????
You anti nuclear shills, have zero credibility among
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The process of "peer review" dosn't in itself make a study correct. Especially where this issue is mixed in with politics. When tends to be the case with "X causes Y premature deaths". All too easy for any study to be an attempt at "proof"... Best to be able to see
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Peer review means you don't have the freedom to say whatever you want without scrutiny.
Peer review means other must be able to duplicate your conclusions.
Even without peer review, there's no documentary that shows an actual one hundred thousand deaths from Chernobyl. There's just predictions. It's been 25 years, show me the deaths, show me hospitals filled with Chernobyl cancer cases !
The reality is the predictions of one million deaths were caused by taking 3% additional chance of cancer on a one million p
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Re:Must question the "revised" estimates (Score:5)
Given that these "revised" estimates are generated by the same people who want to extinguish all dependable, tried and true sources of energy, one must reasonably suspect that the estimates were "revised" in a way that would help ensure the dismantling of the nuclear industry.
Did you read the friggin article? Of course you didn't.
The "revised" estimates were generated by the NRC in conjunction with the DOE and (wait...wait for it...) the Electric Power Research Institute. [wikipedia.org] Yep, they're all a bunch of goddamed hippifreak tree-huggin energy extinguishers.
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The "revised" estimates were generated by the NRC in conjunction with the DOE and (wait...wait for it...) the Electric Power Research Institute. [wikipedia.org]
Yep, they're all a bunch of goddamed hippifreak tree-huggin energy extinguishers.
Not only that, they also have bad breath and gingivitis.
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Did you read the friggin article? Of course you didn't.
The "revised" estimates were generated by the NRC in conjunction with the DOE and (wait...wait for it...) the Electric Power Research Institute. [wikipedia.org] ...
I don't think you understand what you were reading (99.9% of the US population). They told the NRC that they can't withstand the most severe earthquake. So out of the blue you think they decided to just volunteer this information? Of course not, it was the regulation hungry, get rid of all forms of US energy that don't benefit the Titan Hedge Fund - bureaucrats that demanded the analysis. Same people that bring us the "dirty oil, we don't need no" Keystone XL bullshit. They will lose big time if that happen
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I don't think you understand what you were reading (99.9% of the US population). They told the NRC that they can't withstand the most severe earthquake.
Sigh. I know what I read, do you? Here, let me help you. From the first sentence of the forwarded article:
"Owners of at least two dozen nuclear reactors across the United States... have told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that they cannot show that their reactors would withstand the most severe earthquake that revised estimates say they might face..."
Later in the article:
"Richard S. Drake, a structural engineer with Entergy...said the plants had far thicker concrete and steel than the minimum requi
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I don't think you understand what you were reading (99.9% of the US population). They told the NRC that they can't withstand the most severe earthquake.
Sigh. I know what I read, do you? Here, let me help you. From the first sentence of the forwarded article:
"Owners of at least two dozen nuclear reactors across the United States... have told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that they cannot show that their reactors would withstand the most severe earthquake that revised estimates say they might face..."
Later in the article:
"Richard S. Drake, a structural engineer with Entergy...said the plants had far thicker concrete and steel than the minimum required. Thus, he said, they could probably withstand far bigger challenges than their licenses specified. But on the basis of engineering analyses already in hand, Mr. Drake said, 'I just can’t say, It looks good from here. We’ll have to crunch the numbers."
So according to TFA, the plant owners are not saying they can't withstand the most severe earthquake under the revised estimates, as you claim. They are saying they don't know whether the plants can withstand the most severe earthquake without further (expensive) studies.
So it looks to me like you not as good a reader as you think you are - unless you think reading shit that isn't there qualifies as literacy.
We need more nukes, not fewer.
Nice job. At least you got that right.
You get that far and totally miss the rest. I'll try it to help you again - The whole reason why they are answering the question is so they can twist what they say and they aren't safe and close them. It won't be about the most severe earthquakes, they'll say that they are unsure if their reactor can withstand any earthquake. You don't want radioactive drinking water/air/children, do you? Think of the children!
I know you think I'm either nuts or have no clue. I'm trying to give you a clue. I've been wat
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You get that far and totally miss the rest.
I didn't have to go very far from your first insulting sentence to understand that you either didn't read TFA, or you didn't comprehend what you read. Fact is, your *second* sentence indicated as much.
I'll try it to help you again - The whole reason why they are answering the question is so they can twist what they say and they aren't safe and close them.
I'm not 100% sure what that sentence means. Too many theys. Looks like your writing skills are on par with your reading skills.
It won't be about the most severe earthquakes, they'll say that they are unsure if their reactor can withstand any earthquake.
The plants are *already in compliance* with the old earthquake estimates. Jesus. Maybe you should try reading the article one more time.
You don't want radioactive drinking water/air/children, do you? Think of the children!
I know you think I'm either nuts or have no clue. I'm trying to give you a clue. I've been watching this for decades. Matter of fact, watch Senate hearings tomorrow. They're confirming another environmental wacko. Right here - http://www.epw.senate.gov/publ... [senate.gov] . They will ask her about economic impacts, something they clearly want to cause the most impact with. Look forward to brownouts next summer as coal & nuclear plants go offline.
None of the above ranting has fuck-all to do
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When you're insulting, expect something in return. Yes, the they sentence was screwed up. Too many conversations going on and my mind filled in stuff that wasn't actually there yet. Still makes sense to me. They the nuclear PP, they the government, they the PP, they Nuclear PP in general, them the power plants. However I have a feeling you know exactly what I meant.
The plants are *already in compliance* with the old earthquake estimates. Jesus. Maybe you should try reading the article one more time.
Understood they are in compliance. Read it again, it isn't about that. Never mind, don't read it again. You still won't get my point. Take t
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When you're insulting, expect something in return.
And when you insult someone by saying they didn't understand what they read, then in the very next sentence demonstrate that it was your own damn self that didn't understand...what do you expect then?
Sonny, eh? How funny. There's a very good chance I have hemorrhoids older than you are. There is nothing imagined about the no nuke administration. Just check out the hearing tomorrow. I have a feeling it will enlighten you. If not, you'll get another chance soon as you realize the folly of your (they don't want to shut down domestic energy, at least that is what I think you are saying) position. Less than two years.
If you're anywhere close to my age then you should've realized long ago that nomination hearings are nothing more than political theater. There won't be any new or relevant information coming out of the Senate tomorrow.
Look, I'm *very* pro-nuclear. As such, I recognize that there are many who have irrational
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Re:A unified design? (Score:4, Informative)
Wouldn't help. The surveys cover things like the deterioration of materials (which depends on age, weather conditions, seismic activity etc.) and the local geology. Of course maintenance has to be checked as well, to make sure it is being done properly.
Even if they were all identical they would still need all these checks.
Re:A unified design? (Score:4, Insightful)
If, going forward all the plants were of an identical design...wouldn't that make things a bit simpler?
No. Some plants sit near fault lines, others are far away. Some sit next to deep ocean with plenty of cooling capacity. Others sit in arid regions with water shortages. Also, technology advances. It doesn't make much sense to keep using a decades old design when we have learned how to do better.
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Or it might make things less safe if a flaw was discovered in the design in the future.
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Yes, this would make things simpler. The French have done this [researchgate.net] (PDF link), using one standard reactor design wherever possible. IIRC the American method was to use some standard components, but allow the architect responsible for the plant to make lots of changes (e.g. the piping between the standard components is different at each plant).
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Yes, this would make things simpler. The French have done this [researchgate.net] (PDF link), using one standard reactor design wherever possible. IIRC the American method was to use some standard components, but allow the architect responsible for the plant to make lots of changes (e.g. the piping between the standard components is different at each plant).
Part of this is a problem of capability. Companies like Siemens, Alstom, Areva, etc build turnkey plants based on a "reference" design in Europe. They have thousands of engineers to plan every detail of a power station, all under the umbrella of 1 company. But in the USA, no single company has this capability. GE and Westinghouse (Toshiba) have decided they don't want to be in that business, and want to sell equipment only. Customers are accustomed to buying the condenser from one company, the turbine
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So were the dinosaurs. God said so. Would you argue with Him?