So lets see which one gets more attention from the "Greens"
August 18th, 2008
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Just recently there was a fire reported at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Station. No, it had nothing to do with the nuclear reactor, but rather it was a transformer fire that was apparently not far from one of the turbine buildings in an area where electrical switching equipment and transformers are located. The fire was contained and extinguished by the on-site fire and emergency response personal and there was no need to issue any off-site warnings or call in any other responders.
Transformer fires are fairly common. Electrical transformers of this type are filled with oil which both helps to both insulate and cool the wire coils. Since there’s high voltage flowing through them, if there is a failure of the insulation or other electrical problem leading to arcing, this can ignite the oil. The oil may expand and be expelled through vents causing the fire to spread to the outside of the transformer. Of course, modern power plants are equipped to handle this and transformers are generally located away from buildings and build to withstand a fire. The electricity is automatically shut off. It’s not a huge deal. It’s inherent to any power plant.
(Note that the image to the left is not of the transformer fire in question but shows a relatively common transformer fire)
Meanwhile, a dam upriver from the Grand Canyon failed after just a few days of heavy rain. At least 400 people have been displaced and many had to be evacuated by helicopter from the area. There are no reports of any deaths, at least not this time, although rescuers are still trying to find some who were believed in the area. It’s not clear what the extent of the damage has been although some roads and trails are known to have washed out. A small community of Native Americans may have lost there homes, but luckily they were able to escape before the dam completely failed.
One official stated that “That’s all it took… just a few days of very heavy thunderstorms.” Despite this there was enough warning this time to prevent lives from being lost, although a couple of boaters had a very close call. This is not the first dam failure this year nor is it the most destructive. There were a couple major dam failures during the Iowa flooding and other smaller ones around the US and around the world.
I’ve had difficulty finding much information on the Redlands dam, but from what I can tell from images it looks like it is a diversion dam possibly with a modest hydroelectric capacity. It appears to be relatively small as far as dams go. Good thing too, because if it had been a really big dam, the damage and death toll could have been enormous. Still, with so many evacuated by helicopter and an entire community displaced, this event will certainly carry a significant economic toll.
Now I’d like to ask a question, given the amount of crap that the Greens threw around about the little transformer fire at Indian Point and the fact that they generally have absolutely nothing to say about the frequent disasters that occur in other energy sectors, which one should we expect will get some attention in the eco-stupid movement? The small fire or the hundreds narrowly escaping a ruptured dam?
Lets wait and see!
This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 12:39 am and is filed under Bad Science, Enviornment, 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.
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August 18th, 2008 at 2:13 am
The whole thing are Diablo Canyon may or may not get any attention. They got all crazy at Indian Point because that plant has an especially vicious group of opposers. There have been other such events that didn’t get much attention but if a few green groups pick it up it will become a big deal and the rest will follow like sheep. It has to reach a sort of critical mass (no pun intended).
You are right though, the transformer fire was a non-event and a dam failure is a huge event. When a dam fails unless it’s local you usually barely notice it as a small report on page five of the paper or at the end of a news broadcast and barely mentioned. They don’t get much attention, but they have concerns over a dam failure a few times a year somewhere. Luckilly the really big dams don’t fail very often. They fail far more often than a nuclear plant, but still not that often.
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August 18th, 2008 at 2:47 am
I don’t think that a well built dam poses a significant or unacceptable risk if it accomplishes other things that are useful like flood control, water regulation, irrigation, hydroelectric power. It just seems to be that the problem is that they are not held to the very high standards of something like nuclear energy which is held to arguably unnecessary standards. Some dams are sturdy and safe and some are an accident waiting to happen and many are somewhere in between.
Of course they also come in all sizes but the big ones have the potential to cause way more damage than a stupid transformer fire or a minor incident like that at a nuke plant.
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August 19th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Be glad that the transformer fire didnt get as much attention as the fire at the Krummel plant in germany.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,492305,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,494707,00.html
Its absolutely pathetic that such a non incident can divert the entire debate. I wonder if any propaganda campaign has ever been as successful as the greens anti nuclear campaign. If there ever was a more serious hickup, like a repeat of TMI, nuclear would be dead again in the west. Luckily the asians seems a bit more sane.
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August 19th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Johan said:
They keep saying the reactor was affected and cite that it was shut down, valves opened etc. I don’t really see how a transformer fire could possibly have any affect on the reactor in any way shape or form, at least not directly.
The only things I can think of is that the transformer fire may have triggered a general-purpose automated shutdown when the system detected a major event such as a fire or the general alarm being triggered.
The other possibility would be that the reactor was just reacting to the change in the energy balance. When the transformer caught fire it would have cut the power to that transformer and likely it also triggered the other transformers to turn off or they may have manually been shut down to fight the fire. If the electricity is shut down the generators will have to shut down or at least go down to idle because they could be damaged by running full without load. So the generators would shut down and presumably this would mean there is not as much steam consumed. This might trigger the relief valves to vent any excess steam and probably turn off the pumping system to the steam generators. If the reactor is not circulating coolant through the steam generators then the auxiliary colling system would handle the heat and the reactor would shut down since it is not being used for steam generation.
That’s what it sounds like to me. Not that the reactor was affected really but the nuclear system switched to auxiliary cooling when the electricity demand was suddenly cut to the plant. That’s what it should do anyway.
They go pretty hard calling it “Proved to Be a Lie” and “Blatant Efforts to Downplay Major Problems”
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