Shame On Slashdot – Story “NRC Relicensing Old “Zombie” Nuclear Plants”
November 27th, 2009
|
| Share |
It is not as if Slashdot doesn’t, from time to time, put up a horribly biased or just plain stupid story, but this one really takes the cake, as does the item it lists to.
NRC Relicensing Old “Zombie” Nuclear Plants
“In the Dec. 7 edition of The Nation, Christian Parenti details what he considers to be the real problem with nuclear power as a solution to carbon emissions in the US: Not the high cost of new nuclear power, but rather the irresponsible relicensing of existing nuclear power plants by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The claim is that the relicensed plants — amounting to more than half ot the 104 original 1970s-era nukes in the US — operate like zombies beyond their design lifetimes only because of lax regulation spurred by concern over carbon dioxide emissions. But these plants are actually failing, as demonstrated by a rash of accidents. And some of the ancient plants are now being allowed to operate at 120% of their designed capacity. There is a video interview with Parenti up at Democracy Now.”
The article itself is bad enough, but there’s also no doubt that Slashdot does get a LOT of traffic. This is not a news item at all, it’s an editorial and a bad one at that. Why is this reported as fact there or anywhere? I don’t know, probably because some idiot who knows nothing about nuclear energy saw it and didn’t even have the sense to notice the obviously inflammatory language.
In any case, I am going to write a rebuttal to this. However, today turns out to be a very busy day for me and I’m not entirely sure I can get it done right away, as I want to be sure I can verify the facts.
In any case, I don’t want Slashdot to take down the story, because that smacks of censorship. I would, however, like the opportunity to rebut the story. If you agree, I encourage you to contact Slashdot and ask them to give this site an opportunity to have a rebuttal posted as well. Of course, it does not need to be this site, and if anyone else wants to write a full rebuttal on their site, then they are just as welcome to take the load off of me.
Surprised the user is named mdsolar? No, me neither. It seems this user is a newbie, and prefers coal to nuclear energy. (yeah coal)
Sorry, but I’m not sure what the best way is to contact slashdot. You can use the “submit story” link, but otherwise, it’s a bit difficult to find a “contact” link on the site. I realize this post is uncharacteristically short and generally sub-quality. However, as I said, I’m a bit too busy at the moment to write a full post on this and I thought it was important enough to put this out.
At the very least, anyone who sees this crap for what it is is encouraged to refute it in the Slashdot story comments.
God, I hate it when something this ignorant and driven by special-interest ends up in the mainstream and reported as if it were fact.
This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Announcements, Bad Science, Enviornment, Nuclear, Obfuscation, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View blog reactions
November 27th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Well it appears to be a very unpopular day or topic or… something
Quote Comment
November 27th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Everyone is buying out buying Zhu Zhu’s.
Christian Parenti is an idiot. The “120% over capacity” is a plant in Vermont. The plants can continue to operate over there design limits because they are aggressively replacing aging components. The 20% EPU probably didn’t happen without major plant modifications. They also get 3-5% back in power from uncertainties that because of technology are no longer uncertain.
The only thing that limits the life of a nuclear power plant is core embrittlement from radiation. Eventually the core becomes brittle from all the radiation it’s exposed to and unfortunately there is no easy way to replace a core. There are metal samples in the core that have been there since the core first went critical that are tested each and every outage to monitor the embrittlement. The NRC would never in a million years let someone operate with a compromised embrittled core.
Quote Comment
November 27th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Well here’s some coal stuff if you need it:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/11/air-pollution-maps-of-united-states.html
and
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/11/climategate-coal-mine-deaths-air.html
The PSR report, while I would normally take anything they say with a grain of salt because of their violently anti nuke stance, seems to be pretty sound. As for the Nation Magazine that this POS came from, if this guy uses it at a resource he’s either fooling himself or a Communist. In either case he’s clueless.
Quote Comment
November 27th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
osrk – By “core” you mean “reactor pressure vessel.” For most people, this is an insignificant difference, but for those that know, the distinction is important.
By the way, I agree: Christian Parenti is an idiot, and he is proof that a “PhD in sociology” means that you don’t know jack squat about nuclear power.
Quote Comment
November 27th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
osrk said:
It doesn’t limit the age of the plant, just the age of the reactor. It always pains me to see a nuclear plant shut down, even if it’s very old, the area is already zoned and approved for a nuclear plant, the HV lines are already out to the plant, the switch gear is there, the turbines are there.
Anyway, regarding embrittlement: It’s not necessarily that much of an issue in terms of lifespan. There are reactors active today that have been in use for decades and are still nowhere near the point where embrittlement would reach unacceptable levels. Even some place like Oyster Creek, a 20 year extension still shouldn’t bring them anywhere near danger levels.
One thing about these older reactors is that things like neutron embrittlement time spans and other factors relating to long term operation were not as well known. These were the days before computer simulations and when designs did not have as tight tolerances. For this reason, they had to stay on the cautious side, and when there is uncertainty, it is necessary to make the most liberal estimates and apply a high factor of safety.
Hence, the lifetime that was given for the major components, and the level of anticipated degradation were often underestimates. It’s not that uncommon. For the same reason, the Air Force has discovered, through experience and testing, that the maximum flight hours for early jet aircraft were sometimes as much as one quarter what they can safely do. They were overbuilt and solid as a rock. Also, the Empire State Building is roughly three times as strong as a building of that type would be built today, and a 1927 Deusenberg will just about go through a brick wall in one piece.
Quote Comment
November 28th, 2009 at 12:26 am
Anyway there are ways of dealing with neutron embrittlement by heating up the components (sans) fuel and renormalizing them. This can often be done in situ, or as in the case of a CANDU reactor just the fuel channels are replaced.
As an aside Doc, this article didn’t come up on my Google Reader until about five minutes ago, maybe that’s why people are late to the party. Usually Reader sees a new post here within the hour. Obviously it’s their fault – just thought you should know.
Quote Comment
November 28th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Neutron Embrittlement (something I know a thing or two about): yes there are things that can be done about it. Of course, the simplest measure is to account for it in the design and make the vessel that much thicker and stronger to account for the anticipated lifetime, and you’re right to one degree or another some vessels used generous estimates due to the lack of cumulative data from experience. Heat treatment is one option. It’s a little bit more difficult in a PWR than a CANDU, but there are methods that have been developed.
There were also some other techniques looked at in the past. One was a liner for the interior of vessels that would contain boron steel. It would have been a kind of sacrificial liner that would decrease the neutron flux to the vessel and in doing so increase lifespan. One issue with this was whether it could be fit into existing vessels, but as a life extension method, it was planned to shoe-horn a liner around the core against the vessel, which usually could work, but on occasion might have meant re-arranging the core geometry or other components to make everything fit and still have good flow.
That idea was dropped, and it may have been too cumbersome anyway. As it turns out, our estimates for embitterment of reactor vessels in the civil power reactor market have a pretty generous margin of safety and as it stands, it’s likely that we’ll just keep an eye on things and won’t really have to worry about it getting to the point where things have to be retired any time soon.
Lets not forget that all the pwr reactors that have been retired in the US were nowhere near the limits of their lifespan. It has universally been either political or occasionally economics relating to other aspects of the plant.
Can you replace a reactor vessel? Yes, you can, but given the size of the undertaking, it begs the question of why you would bother replacing a 40 year old reactor vessel with an identical copy and just running it as it were. If you’re going to do that, you may as well go all the way and get a new reactor. Of course, it pains me to see any plant shut down, even if the reactor is due for retirement. Not only the infrastructure and the other non-nuclear aspects of the plant, but the fact that you have a facility that has acquired a large group of experienced employees. Why dismiss them? They have direct experience in the sector, they know their equipment and they have years of working relationships. Any time you establish a new facility, the first couple of years involve a lot of getting a feel for things before everyone works like a well oiled machine. Of course, there’s the issue that the site is pre-approved too. Why not, rather than turn it into a green field, put a nice new AP-1000 or US-APR or EPR there?
Going back to the original topic: There are a lot of errors in the original article and some that are so glaring I wonder if they really are “errors” or just outright lies. The article states that radiation embrittles pipes in reactors. Patently false. The neutron flux only effects the vessel, but not the external plumbing which is never exposed to the neutron irradiation from the core. The pipe leak at Oyster Creek is no mystery, the NRC investigated it and filed a report that explained exactly what happened. Some time in the 1990’s a pipe was replaced and there was a simple error made. Basically the pipe was not stainless steel, and as such it should have been painted with multiple coats of a a corrosion-inhibiting coating. It was accidentally treated as if it were stainless steel and only given a single coat of a less protective coating.
The leak was not disastrous. Had it been, it would have been detected earlier. The tritium release that is quoted was a worst case estimate and still is not really that bad. Given the dilution rates and the fact that most stayed contained, it’s almost a non-issue. It has been estimated that if a large PWR spilled it’s entire core coolant into the local enviornment, the tiritium contamination would only be minor to the overall local water table and would probably not be any reason for concern. It gets diluted fast. Also the federal standards for in drinking are very tight. They equate to 4 millirem per year, which means if for one year you drank exclusively water that is at the maximum federal standard for tritium concentration in picocuries per liter, you would have a maximum exposure of under 4 mrem. That’s very low, especially considering nobody would ever really drink exclusively from the one contaminated source.
The upping of the power output of reactors occasionally involves permission to increase the core power level, but only after some very careful inspection and consideration. Usually it’s incremental upgrades and effeciency increases. There has been some great progress in the past ten years in the design of steam dryers, and this is important because very dry steam allows for very high effeciency steam turbines. There has also been improvements in steam generators and turbines in general, even the bearings they ride on are markedly better than twenty years ago.
All these components involve loss and of course this loss compounds, so when you can increase the effeciency a little bit on each part, it really adds up. A few percent less loss from better insulation; a few percent less from better bearings; a few percent less from a better steam dryer; a few percent from a higher flow rate in the steam generator. All these little changes compound and you can end up with a big increase in output by tweaking all the parts to work better. When you’re talking about gigawatts of power, a 5% increase is nothing to sneeze at, and a 20% increase is a big deal. Yes, there is money motivating this, but in this kind of industry, the cost of a brand new high effeciency turbine to replace a 30 year old one that is less effecient is paid back very quickly.
Another thing about the money factor to consider is the cost of a reactor shutting down or being forced to shut down because of a problem. Every day that a reactor is not powered up is a day it is not making money and is costing money instead. If it’s an unscheduled outage, this can be even worse. Scheduled outages are one thing, but if it’s a sudden and unplanned thing, the contracts with grid operators can slap huge penalties. They need to buy that power from someone else, often at a higher cost and they can put that cost back on the facility that failed to meet contractual obligations. What this means is that there’s a very big financial motivation to make sure everything is working in top condition. When there are outages planned, those few days are used to inspect everything top to bottom and replace anything that could possibly fail. While the reactor is operating, it continues to be inspected and small problems are fixed before they become big ones. It’s good buisiness sense, really, because if you leave something to fester and you end up scramming the reactor, you lose big bucks.
This whole idea of corporate greed is just an appeal to an old standby for getting people riled up. The realities of the situation are that it does the owner no good at all to have their reactor spring a leak or need to be shut down. If Three Mile Island was an issue of corporate greed, explain to me how it makes good buisiness sense to blow out a brand new reactor vessel? It doesn’t. It was a big financial loss and anyone who actually cares about money is going to realize that a few dollars spent to stop that kind of thing from happening again are well worth it.
Quote Comment
November 28th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Whew. Sorry that was a longer comment than I had expected making. I got started typing and just went off on it. I didn’t mean to take up half the page with text.
Quote Comment
November 28th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
An Actual Scientist said:
I thought it was a very thorough and excellent description of the issues involved. I will note that 4 mRem is 4% of the allowable radiation exposure for radiation workers(100 MRem) which is already a very conservative number. Your points about that old “greedy corporations” canard are telling. One thing progressives like the nation writers avoid learning is how things actually work.
Quote Comment
November 28th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Kicking in the heads of atheists one at a time…
http://nostradamus-america.atspace.com/
PZ, I thought the Morris Police Department was going to save you from the wrath of God…
Quote Comment
November 28th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Hi,
I found this while looking for someone else who found that news item as insulting as I did, I did not see it on the Slashdot site, but it seems actually like they did a good job as most of the comments there refuted it and did not support it. It got rained on as it should.
The Scientist above made some good points and I want to add to that. Yes, a nuclear plant can turn a tidey profit, because although they are a big operation to run, they run at near full capacity when they run and the fuel cost is actually very low.
Cutting corners in that kind of industry will gain you money in the short term but will lose money very fast. The reactor is like a goose that lays golden eggs, so it is foolish not to keep it happy and laying more eggs. The NRC is a very strict agency, and in my opinion stricter than it needs to be, but that is another topic. The current standards that apply will force a shutdown of a reactor that exceeds release limits or does not have full compliance with cooling, safety systems and other things.
For this reason, it is important to make sure that nothing goes wrong that would force an extended shutdown. If a problem is detected early you can deal with it, occasionally without a shutdown. If not, you try to find any sign of a problem BEFORE it happens and that will allow it to be fixed as soon as possible. If something is nearly worn out, a replacement is set aside and prepped for installation on the next scheduled shutdown. When the reactor shuts down, that is when you fix everything that you have observed as being possibly ready to prevented ahead of time. That will always result in better buisiness, as shotty work or monitoring will last so long before coming back to bite you.
Older reactors are sometimes more difficult to keep up, because they don’t have the same kind of features to allow for easier repairs and on occasion you run into situations where there is a need to upgrade something to keep it standard. It is not beyond the capabilities of anyone running a plant, though, because you have to realize that the average plant worker has been there for a good ten years. Turnover is fairly low, and that means you usually end up working with people who know what they are doing very well and have done it dozens or hundreds of times. It becomes very well organized.
I think many have an inaccurate view of the inside of a nuclear plant. It is a non-dramatic but very safety conscious place to work. It is a very good industry to work for.
Notice something, when it comes to safety, the ones complaining are always politicians and reporters and activists. It is rarely the people who work with the hardware on a daily basis. Of course, there were the so-called “whistle blowers” in the 1980’s or 1990’s who made good money with their stories of how someone didn’t do something right, but in general, you won’t find too many in a nuclear plant who feel apprehensive about their own safety or would not want their family to live near the plant.
No amount of money or loyalty to an employer would be enough to put my children in danger and yet I would never think twice about them living next to the nuclear power plant and I do not think anyone else would. There is simply nothing to fear.
Quote Comment
November 29th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Ya i meant pressure vessel, core and pressure vessel are sometimes interchanged in my line of work.
Also usually the accepted dose per year is 2000mrem for a rad worker.
Quote Comment
November 29th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Well the story may be cap, but so are the comments above talking about the improved efficiency, steam dryers, reduced friction bearings etc etc… The fact is, VY license was amended by NRC to increase RATED THERMAL POWER from 1593 to 1912 MWth. For those who don’t know, rated thermal power is the licensed maximum core power (ie, the reactor thermal output). It’s all CAPS above cause that’s how defined terms are identified as such in the license. The license is not concerned with the maximum electrical output of the unit. The owners of nuclear plants are pretty much free to improve their turbines, feedwater heaters, moisture-separater-reheaters, and so on to improve the heat rate (that is, to get more electrical energy delivered from the same core power) – because from the NRC point of view, the important thing is the magnitude of the core power and the decay heat power once the reactor is subcritical.
The point is, the NRC has reviewed the submitted amendment request and has determined that it is safe to operate the reactor at this new power level. If you don’t think they do a thorough job considering these power uprate amendments, you probably have never really looked at the process. If you have looked into it and feel there is a specific issue not adequately addressed by the NRC review, you should have told them so. You could also tell the ACRS during their deliberations. These things are matters of public interest and the public is invited to participate. You can send them letters or just show up at the meetings.
Quote Comment
November 30th, 2009 at 12:19 am
gman said:
That may be the case, but the big reason for the increase in nuclear energy production comes from improved effeciency, such as in Sweden, where they lost one nuclear plant in the past few years, but had a net increase in total nuclear output primarily due to turbine and steam dryer upgrades.
Also, the NRC is concerned with everything to do with a plant and all modifications must be submitted and could theoretically be denied. You can look at the NRC plant reports and you’ll find incident reports for transformer fires and citations of upgrades of steam generators or replacement of other non-nuclear systems.
From what I have been told, if two nuclear plant employees get into an automobile accident in the plant parking lot, and one is injured enough to need stitches at a local hospital, this would be reported to the NRC as a “non nuclear event” but still reported.
Quote Comment
December 1st, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Yes, the NRC looks at everything. My point was simply that the 120% power uprate at vermont yankee came from raising the core power by… 120%. It did NOT come from improving steam dryers, or other efficiency improvements. They may have done mods like that at the same time, but what those mods do is increase the electrical output (for a given core power). The point to keep in mind is that there are several ‘power’ ratings. The two most important are the core power (what the reactor itself produces) and the electrical output (what the generator delivers). The license from the NRC specifies the maximum value for the core power that the plant is allowed to operate.
Quote Comment
December 14th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
What a surprise, Slashdot writes an article critical of nuclear power, and it must be condemned and ridiculed.
drbuzz0 said:
I’m sure it does, since that requires lots of costs for the nuclear industry – actually cleaning up their mess and returning the area to greenfield status. Much nicer to keep everything as is instead of demolishing it. Just in case one day you might want to start running the plant again, right? You never know! On the other hand, at least it provides a means to avoid transporting nuclear waste around, which by itself is not 100% safe: http://reid.senate.gov/issues/yucca.cfm
Quote Comment
December 14th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Bruce, who will pay to return the acres and acres of useless solar panels you advocate to greenfield status? How about the mountains of coal ash that builds up as a result of the arbitrary opposition to nuclear power? Who will pay to clean that up?
As for your disingenuous concerns about spent nuclear fuel, name one single member of the public that has been injured by it in 50 years of commercial operation.
Quote Comment
December 14th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Bruce said:
I don’t really understand your point. Why should we turn a perfectly good power plant into a green field and for that matter, even an obsolete power plant into a green field?
I’m sure you understand that power needs to come from somewhere. If a power plant shuts down, one of there things needs to happen: either a new power plant is built, a different power plant is upgraded or an existing power plant that was mostly standby or peaking moves to more baseload generation to make up for the loss.
You can’t take away a power plant and not replace the power it generates somewhere else. In fact, even if you don’t decommission power plants, we still need to build more to make up for the loss. There’s a need to construct more, so my question is why do you think they should be somewhere else?
You’re arguing to turn power plants into green fields while somewhere else they’re turning green fields into power plants. Doesn’t make much sense now does it? Somewhere someone is jackhammering the parking lot at an old power plant and somewhere else someone is pouring a parking lot at a new power plant. How is this a good idea?
If you build a new plant on the same site, not only do you avoid having to turn it back to complete greenfield status (which is more than any other industry is required to do), but you can reuse a piece of property that is already in your possession, already zoned for the purpose and already surveyed. Why not? The alternative is acquire a new piece of property to put the new plants on?
Infrastructure is another issue. It can cost many millions per mile to set up new high tension feeders. They try to build new power plants near major grid junctions or lines to begin with, but it’s still expensive. Even if the old lines need upgrading, it still avoids the nasty issue of acquiring right of way and dealing with buying property at market cost.
How much of an old plant can be reused depends on any number of factors, like the age and whether you’re going to have much higher output reactors for a new one. Usually turbines can be reused, even if they need to have more added. Switch gear can almost always be reused.
Bruce said:
Well, it was a sensational article with a lot of factual errors.
Bruce said:
This is an invented issue. The fuel is perfectly safe on site or at Yucca Mountain. The reason this issue was invented is to create a self-perpetuating kind of claim against nuclear energy.
“They have no place to put it. It’s stored on site. They have no plans for it. There’s no solution.” Well of course there’s no final site to store it at, because any site chosen will not be good enough. If Yucca Mountain and the effort that went into safe containment is not good enough, nothing but nothing is going to be acceptable. The political interests love that. It’s their catch-22. They can use any site as an example of an unsafe location, even if it’s not and then cry that a safe location was not found.
Quote Comment