Leaking Nuclear Power Plants

[Modelworks]

MB may be alluding to the likely confidence engineers had of the original plants that they would also be totally safe, but here we are. Very safe, maybe, but not totally.

Nothing can be 100% safe, but the NRC is very very strict on the rules, they are not like in the former USSR where stuff is allowed to slide by.
I was just looking over the NRC site for planned new reactors and saw the event reports page that list daily reports from plants. Found this:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2010/20100105en.html

POSSESION OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE IN PROTECTED AREA

"At approximately 0930 on January 4, 2010 a gift package was brought into the protected area that contained a bottle of an alcoholic beverage. The individual that brought the package into the protected area was unaware that a bottle of an alcoholic beverage was in the gift package. The gift package was delivered to the intended individual. As the individual was reviewing the contents of the package, the bottle of alcoholic beverage was identified as part of the package. Security was immediately contacted and took possession of the bottle. The bottle was still sealed with the original seal. The gift package was always attended while inside the protected area. A fitness for duty evaluation of the personnel involved was conducted with no concerns identified."

The individual was a non-licensed licensee supervisor.

The licensee notified the NRC Resident Inspector.

Now THAT is strict !

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

MB may be alluding to the likely confidence engineers had of the original plants that they would also be totally safe, but here we are. Very safe, maybe, but not totally.

Driving in your car isn't totally safe either. Many more people have died from cars in the past 50 years then due to nuclear power plants leaking radiation, exploding, etc in the US.

What's your point?

 

[StageLeft]

Driving in your car isn't totally safe either. Many more people have died from cars in the past 50 years then due to nuclear power plants leaking radiation, exploding, etc in the US.

What's your point?

My point I said above "Very safe, maybe, but not totally.".

Now THAT is strict !

Yeah they are anal. I met a guy who worked at the local nuclear plant. I'm not sure in what capacity but I believe I wasn't even allowed to ask what he does because he'd be compelled to report me or something like that.

 

[Fear No Evil]

My point I said above "Very safe, maybe, but not totally.".

Yeah they are anal. I met a guy who worked at the local nuclear plant. I'm not sure in what capacity but I believe I wasn't even allowed to ask what he does because he'd be compelled to report me or something like that.

 

[disappoint]

It may not be the worst hazard in the world now, but the leak isn't going to stop or slow down on it's own, it will only get worse. It needs to be addressed. You don't need to panic, but you need to at least replace the leaking pipes if possible. They should probably have an expiration date too.

But then what does anyone care? It's not like anyone can prove they got cancer from that power plant. They'll just blame the microwave background radiation of the big bang. Despite microwaves not being ionizing radiation, people don't know that. If you can't prove you got cancer from the power plant, then you can't sue, so there is no cause for concern.

 

[Moonbeam]

Nuclear power is an example of the same psychosis that is destroying America financially, a desire to have everything but not pay for it today.

As we want government services and lower taxes we want nuclear energy without paying to clean up the waste. Oh, we are going to clean it up, we will always be going to clean it up, it's just that we never will, because while everybody wants it cleaned up, nobody wants it disposed of within a thousand miles of them.

Insane people pursue insane dreams and pretend they are sane. This is because people lie to themselves. They have no shame.

Nuclear power is a way to poison your progeny and they will hate you for it. Pretend I just came back to tell you you're a fucking asshole, Dad.

 

[BoberFett]

You were more entertaining when you were off your meds Moonbeam. Now you're just an idiot.

 

[Munky]

The lefties must be in panic mode by now, their climate scam is falling apart, and Obama is doing the right thing for once, advocating we build new, efficient nuclear plants.

 

[Darwin333]

The beauty of nuclear power is that given enough time and enough accumulated waste, it won't really matter if they leak. There won't be anything alive around them anyway.

I love the idea of building more reactors because the old ones leak like the new ones aren't going to get old. Fucking unbelievable idiots........

Plus coal is so much cheaper.

 

[rcpratt]

Plus coal is so much cheaper.

lolwat

 

[Moonbeam]

You were more entertaining when you were off your meds Moonbeam. Now you're just an idiot.

It's not my fault the points I made were beyond your ability to comprehend.

Do the American people what the benefits of government but don't want taxes? Check!

Has not the nuclear industry promised but in its decades long history never created long term storage for nuclear waste? Check!

Hey, I guess you are the idiot.

 

[rcpratt]

Has not the nuclear industry promised but in its decades long history never created long term storage for nuclear waste? Check!

Hey, I guess you are the idiot.

The nuclear industry has nothing to do with our current lack of long-term, high-level radioactive waste storage. They would love to not have to store it on site...not because it's dangerous, but because it's expensive and causes them to have to take extra security measures.

The government is who you should be blaming for that, my friend.

 

[hal2kilo]

The nuclear industry has nothing to do with our current lack of long-term, high-level radioactive waste storage. They would love to not have to store it on site...not because it's dangerous, but because it's expensive and causes them to have to take extra security measures.

The government is who you should be blaming for that, my friend.

And once again you don't understand, it's the government directed by its people who don't want nuclear waste in their backyard. This is a NIMBY issue that's not going to go away. Just volunteer to have the waste stored in your backyard after all what's a little radiation.

 

[Moonbeam]

The nuclear industry has nothing to do with our current lack of long-term, high-level radioactive waste storage. They would love to not have to store it on site...not because it's dangerous, but because it's expensive and causes them to have to take extra security measures.

The government is who you should be blaming for that, my friend.

I am fully aware of that. The promise is that the gov will do it, but it won't because of money and politics. See above. Nobody wants nuclear waste dumps anywhere near where they live.

Look at the issue. We have nuclear but we have waste stored on site all over the place. We have leaking tanks, abandoned reactors, etc. What we do not have is a clean up of what we have already contaminated before we create more and more.

The point is to promise and promise while you make money and stab your kids. Sell your unborn for cheap power. There's a deal assholes will go for.

 

[rcpratt]

And once again you don't understand, it's the government directed by its people who don't want nuclear waste in their backyard. This is a NIMBY issue that's not going to go away. Just volunteer to have the waste stored in your backyard after all what's a little radiation.

We've already gone through this, and I already volunteered. And I already told you that I already live about 30 miles from a site where high-level waste is currently stored (the plant).

The real issue is that people are uneducated. The government should realize this and, knowing that there is no risk to the people near a high-level waste repository, tell people that there is no danger and designate a repository already. But oh noes, if one uneducated, outspoken senator doesn't like it, we had better scrap the whole plan.

 

[Moonbeam]

We've already gone through this, and I already volunteered. And I already told you that I already live about 30 miles from a site where high-level waste is currently stored (the plant).

The real issue is that people are uneducated. The government should realize this and, knowing that there is no risk to the people near a high-level waste repository, tell people that there is no danger and designate a repository already. But oh noes, if one uneducated, outspoken senator doesn't like it, we had better scrap the whole plan.

Which is why it's dangerous to even start. We will never ever get a permanent safe site to store waste for hundreds of thousands of years so stop fucking around and put the money in solar. The long term supply of uranium isn't that great anyway and the economics of breeder reactors isn't so good either.

There was a great article on it in MIT review, but they seem to want money to download now so fuck um.

 

[BrownTown]

in the list of radioactive materials tritium is one of the least dangerous. You can buy it on the dang internet for Christs sakes. A quick search shows a gun sight with .1 curries which is a heck of alot more than the 70x10^-9 mentioned in the article. Also, the concentration at the plant itself may be a little higher than allowed, but I don't think I've ever heard of it being higher in anyone's drinking water. When you consider how often coal plants break EPA regulations for emissions then it really doesn't look that bad for a nuclear plant to have some issues too. Tritium is far less deadly then teh heavy metals (arsenic, mercury, selenium etc..) released by coal plants.

 

[LumbergTech]

Fear and "The China Syndrome" effect still gets attention to this day. When I read this article earlier today I immediately thought - "this is a total non issue and only says 'build newer safer plants then'".

Of course it is way too much for the public to understand radioactive decay, beta emission, etc. Then again I did take nuclear physics for engineers as an elective, not kidding. But it's been forever.

well that leads to the question...are the new plants actually safe enough?

of course both sides already have their minds made up though.

 

[BrownTown]

well that leads to the question...are the new plants actually safe enough?

of course both sides already have their minds made up though.

Safety is never an absolute, nuclear plant safety is defined using a "probabilistic risk assessment". Each different component has a possibility of failure, if you have 4 redundant components then if all 4 fail at the same time you would have a meltdown so you multiply their individuals probabilities of failure. Of course there are hundreds of different possible failure paths, so you have to add all of them together to get the final result. The new plants are not perfect nor do they claim to be. They only claim to be 2 orders of magnitude less likely to have a serious accident. Based on the probabilistic risk assessment if you ran 1000 of these plants for 10,0000 years you would expect one of them to have a serious accident.

Just FWIW, most people consider a "meltdown" to be a disastrous nuclear accident. What you need to understand is that there is still a double containment such that even if the entire core melts down it is still contained and no serious radiation is released. The next generation reactors all ANTICIPATE a meltdown and have a "core catcher" that the molten core will flow into. The core catcher spreads the core into a very thin wide layer which cannot become critical (as you may remember with nuclear bombs, the geometry of the fissile material is what determines the reaction rate. In a bomb you compress it into a very tight sphere which reacts very quick, the exact opposite of that is a very thin pancake which is a very slow reaction).

Also, its important to note that all major nuclear accidents were the result of OPERATOR ERROR. The new plants require much less operator actions and in fact if there is a disaster the best thing to do is usually just to do nothing (if the TMI operators had just sat on their hands we would probably have 100 more reactors operating in this country)

 

[werepossum]

Safety is never an absolute, nuclear plant safety is defined using a "probabilistic risk assessment". Each different component has a possibility of failure, if you have 4 redundant components then if all 4 fail at the same time you would have a meltdown so you multiply their individuals probabilities of failure. Of course there are hundreds of different possible failure paths, so you have to add all of them together to get the final result. The new plants are not perfect nor do they claim to be. They only claim to be 2 orders of magnitude less likely to have a serious accident. Based on the probabilistic risk assessment if you ran 1000 of these plants for 10,0000 years you would expect one of them to have a serious accident.

Just FWIW, most people consider a "meltdown" to be a disastrous nuclear accident. What you need to understand is that there is still a double containment such that even if the entire core melts down it is still contained and no serious radiation is released. The next generation reactors all ANTICIPATE a meltdown and have a "core catcher" that the molten core will flow into. The core catcher spreads the core into a very thin wide layer which cannot become critical (as you may remember with nuclear bombs, the geometry of the fissile material is what determines the reaction rate. In a bomb you compress it into a very tight sphere which reacts very quick, the exact opposite of that is a very thin pancake which is a very slow reaction).

Also, its important to note that all major nuclear accidents were the result of OPERATOR ERROR. The new plants require much less operator actions and in fact if there is a disaster the best thing to do is usually just to do nothing (if the TMI operators had just sat on their hands we would probably have 100 more reactors operating in this country)

Sort of like the factory of the future Chuck Harder used to quote that will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The dog's job is to keep the man from touching anything. And the man's job is to feed the dog.

In southeast Tennessee I'm pretty much surrounded by nuclear plants and I don't lose any sleep over them.

 

[Hacp]

Safety is never an absolute, nuclear plant safety is defined using a "probabilistic risk assessment". Each different component has a possibility of failure, if you have 4 redundant components then if all 4 fail at the same time you would have a meltdown so you multiply their individuals probabilities of failure. Of course there are hundreds of different possible failure paths, so you have to add all of them together to get the final result. The new plants are not perfect nor do they claim to be. They only claim to be 2 orders of magnitude less likely to have a serious accident. Based on the probabilistic risk assessment if you ran 1000 of these plants for 10,0000 years you would expect one of them to have a serious accident.

Just FWIW, most people consider a "meltdown" to be a disastrous nuclear accident. What you need to understand is that there is still a double containment such that even if the entire core melts down it is still contained and no serious radiation is released. The next generation reactors all ANTICIPATE a meltdown and have a "core catcher" that the molten core will flow into. The core catcher spreads the core into a very thin wide layer which cannot become critical (as you may remember with nuclear bombs, the geometry of the fissile material is what determines the reaction rate. In a bomb you compress it into a very tight sphere which reacts very quick, the exact opposite of that is a very thin pancake which is a very slow reaction).

Also, its important to note that all major nuclear accidents were the result of OPERATOR ERROR. The new plants require much less operator actions and in fact if there is a disaster the best thing to do is usually just to do nothing (if the TMI operators had just sat on their hands we would probably have 100 more reactors operating in this country)

So if we has 10,000 of these running, we would have around 1 "serious" accident every 1000 years that would cause no harm to the general population? Sounds like we should start building p;ants!

 

[SunSamurai]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100201/ap_on_bi_ge/us_leaking_nuclear_plants

I found this article interesting. I wonder how come you dont hear about this very much? Is this something that has be swept under the rug by pro nuclear agenda driven groups?
.

Shit like this happens because anti-nuclear has all but stopped Nuclear advancement for decades. This shit is happening because of THEM.

Stuff like this doesn't happen in modern designs, but those designs cannot become reality until the anti-nuclear fucktards fuck off.

 

[SunSamurai]

well that leads to the question...are the new plants actually safe enough?

of course both sides already have their minds made up though.

Except one side is made up of fear mongering dipshits or high-school dropouts and the other with scientists and logic minded people. I wonder who I should go with and who will matter in 20 years.

Safe enough? I don't know, is coal mining safe enough? Is reliance of oil safe enough? Those people are fretting over grains of sand when a meteor is about to obliterate them.

 

[Moonbeam]

Except one side is made up of fear mongering dipshits or high-school dropouts and the other with scientists and logic minded people. I wonder who I should go with and who will matter in 20 years.

Safe enough? I don't know, is coal mining safe enough? Is reliance of oil safe enough? Those people are fretting over grains of sand when a meteor is about to obliterate them.

Yup, all those fucktards are well aware of how they are view by the 'pro nuke your progeny crowd' idiots like you and boy, do they have a message for you too.

 

[rcpratt]

Yup, all those fucktards are well aware of how they are view by the 'pro nuke your progeny crowd' idiots like you and boy, do they have a message for you too.

Wow, you're hilarious. Please keep posting.