Today’s Bullshit Via Slashdot (Nuclear Scaremongering)
July 29th, 2009
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Some more scaremongering and out of context information, this time via Slashdot:
Funds Dwindle To Dismantle Old Nuclear Plants
The Associated Press reports that the companies that own almost half the nation’s nuclear reactors are not setting aside enough money to dismantle the reactors so many plants may sit idle for decades posing safety and security risks as a result. The shortfalls in funding have been caused by huge losses in the stock market that have devastated the companies’ savings and by the soaring costs of decommissioning. Owners of 19 nuclear plants have won approval to idle their reactors for as long as 60 years, presumably enough time to allow investments to recover and eventually pay for dismantling the plants and removing radioactive material. But mothballing nuclear reactors or shutting them down inadequately presents the risk that radioactive waste could leak from abandoned plants into ground water or be released into the air, and spent nuclear fuel rods could be stolen by terrorists. The NRC has contacted 18 nuclear power plants to clarify how the companies will address the recent economic downturn’s effects on funds to decommission reactors in the future but some analysts worry the utility companies that own nuclear plants might not even exist in six decades.”
Well first of all, lets consider what “shutting down a reaction inadequately” really means. Apparently not dismantling it completely tends to get people scared that there will be some kind of leak. A leak of what? Well, the coolant to the reactor is not radioactive itself and is generally just some super-clean water, so presumably they are in fear that the spent fuel rods will leak? Problem there is that they’re a high density ceramic/oxide that is not liquid and therefore can’t “leak.” Certainly there is nothing that could leak into the air. There are some gaseous fission byproducts, but those tend to disperse quickly.
Then we have the terrorist angle. Ah, terrorists. It wouldn’t be a nuclear story without them, would it? First lets consider that a “dirty bomb” is generally about the worst kind of weapon anyone has ever come up with in terms of effectiveness at killing and destroying property. The residue can be fairly easily detected and measured, but dispersing the material is, at best, difficult and for most people, just walking away from the area would prevent any real dangerous radiation dose. Of course, if you did insist on making a dirty bomb, there are a number of materials you could potentially use. A few of the better ones would be things like medical radiation sources or perhaps a sterilization source. Those are at least fairly concentrated and very “hot.” Spent fuel on the other hand? Bad choice. The stuff is almost impossible to turn into dust. Instead, it breaks into large fragments, the way tempered glass does. If you do manage to pulverize it, most of it turns out to be harmless U-238. Spent fuel right out of the reactor may present something of a hazard, although it is stable chemically it does produce a fairly high level of radiation. But after 20-30 years? not so much. Thus, a terrorist would have a hard time finding anything more useless as a dirty bomb material than old clunky ceramic spent fuel.
Additionally, since the federal spent fuel repository is currently in limbo, any plant decommissioned in the US is going to store its spent fuel in above concrete above ground casks. Not to worry, though. It can sit there basically indefinitely and doesn’t really bother anyone. Unless you were planning on opening them up and eating the contents, you should be just fine. There’s really no limit to how long spent fuel can be warehoused in above ground casks. There’s never been an incident involving any fuel storage and the strength of the casks along with monitoring of the sites assures that stealing some of the (useless) spent fuel would be very difficult.
I really have to question this whole thing about the “funds” not being there for decommissioning anyway. Nuclear plants tend to be held to the highest standards for decommissioning and funding of the decommissioning. The current standard for decommissioning often involves transformation of the site into a “green field” – complete removal of all the structures, even jack hammering the foundations away and complete rehabilitation of the site. On the other hand, the site of a decommissioned coal plant usually looks more like… a giant filthy abandoned coal power plant surrounded by barbed wire.
Needless to say, the cost of decommissioning is indeed going up. Not that it needs to go up or anything, thank you NRC, can we have some more needless bureaucracy please?
In many cases though, the point is moot, because plant operators have been working hard to extend the lives of their reactors A reactor from 40 years ago may not have the efficiency and modern systems of newer reactors, but these days it’s damn near impossible to build a new reactor, so those that we have, the ones inherited from more sane days, need to be kept working as long as possible. Even if a reactor is deemed ready for decommissioning, this certainly does not mean the site needs to be removed from the job of producing electricity. The turbines and switching equipment are still in place, and they certainly don’t care if the steam is coming from a new reactor. It turns out that it can be a lot cheaper to reuse the same site, where the infrastructure is already in place. Given this, it seems a little silly that anyone would really want to completely raze a nuclear power plant. Yet they do!
Myself, I’d much rather see a nuclear power plant mothballed than decommissioned. After all, if it’s still in tact, then it could be useful in the near future, as soon as we come to our senses and restart it. Otherwise, we’re going to be kicking ourselves when we have to build a new one from scratch at twice the price.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 9:03 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Enviornment, Nuclear, 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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July 29th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
I am bewildered by why anyone would WANT to turn a power plant into a green field. Clearly we don’t have a surplus of power plants, because we are constantly in need of more, right?
A bit factor in the cost of a power plant can be infrastructure. Bringing in the high voltage lines to transmit to the grid is a big thing and can be expensive. The grid has to have enough local capacity and have all the right switching and everything to take a big power plant feeding it. If there was already a plant there, even if it is obsolete, building a new one and you save on all the infrastructure!
Even if it’s not high enough capcity for the new plant, just having some of it and the right of ways helps. You can upgrade the lines and it’s cheaper when you don’t have to acquire the land and put up all new towers.
Anything you can reuse from the plant is a savings. Switching gear or turbines or generators or whatever. Even if the turbines are old and ineffecinet and get replaced and even if most of the other machinery is replaced, there are still savings by the fact that you don’t have to tear everything down to nothing. You don’t need to spend to grind the foundations to dust if you’ll just reuse the site for industrial purposes. Anything that turns out to be fine in place, even if it’s just things like the parking lot, the perimeter fences and gaurd house and so on. That is all stuff you otherwise would have to spend money to completely tear down and cart away. It’s also something you would spend money to rebuild elsewhere.
If nothing else, it’s cheaper to turn it into a new power plant just because you don’t have to demolish all the concrete structures to turn it into a green field.
If the reactor is past it’s prime, replace it! use the same turbines. If you decide to go with a bigger reactor and thus the turbines need to be bigger too, fine, but you can still reuse the transmission lines and the switch yard and the water intakes and stuff. You save money there.
In addition to the transmission lines and infrastructure, just the fact that the area has been approved for a power plant or nuclear reactor and the fact that it’s zoned properly can be beneficial.
It just seems like such a waste to me. You end up with transmission lines to nowhere and then you have to turn around and build all new ones!
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July 29th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
I’m a bit put off by the language of the articles linked. Yes, the NRC has been in contact with companies to assure that they have enough money set aside and in some cases they may end up requiring amendments of this, possibly additional funds or bond acts.
Still, the fact of the matter is that this is regulated and the requirement is there and enforced. Most industrial facilities and power plants have zero oversight in this area. If you are a nuclear plant, someone is looking over your shoulder and trying to assure you have enough money for decommissioning. If you own a coal power plant, then you could set aside zero money for decommissioning and when the plant is done being used, you could transfer it to an LLC and then declare them bankrupt or use some other tactic to dump it without paying a dime. There are some laws in this area, like EPA Superfund liability laws, if the place is contaminated. If it is just a big blighted industrial structure though, there’s nothing that can be done to stop you from just ditching it and walking away. That is the long and short of it.
Like all things nuclear, there is very tight regulation of decommissioning. I think some here would argue it’s tighter than it really needs to be, and that might have some validity. The fact of the matter though is that when a nuclear power plant is decommissioned, there are safety professionals involved from end to end and every bit of waste and spent fuel is accounted for and addressed. Everything is done by the book and there are records kept.
You just do not see the same level of professionalism and tight management in any other kind of facility shutdown. Industrial buildings, factories and so on, might get an EPA review and may need an inspection for something like asbestos, but compared to a nuclear plant, there’s not the same kind of completeness and regulation. That is, of course, assuming they are taken down at all and not just left there to rust for the next 50 years.
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July 29th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
It seems to me that the rich yuppies won’t make as much of a big deal about having a coal plant decomissioned because those are always on the ‘bad side’ of town and nobody lives near them who has the time or money to go do the **** they do like lobbying. So they don’t have to deal with it.
A nuclear plant is more likely to be noticed, and also it’s not necessarily in the bad part of town. As shown here and elsewhere, there are some with expensive beach houses not far from them. Something you’d never see near a coal burner, as those residents are probably too busy hacking up a lung.
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July 29th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
This is yet another example of “Nuclear Exceptionalism.” You know, where only nuclear is required to be perfect. Oh no the nuclear decommissioning fund might run low. Horror of horrors! How is the value of the natural gas decommissioning fund these days? How’s the coal waste disposal fund holding up? Oh wait, those funds don’t exist. Yet again one of nuclear’s myraid advantages is being twisted into seeming like a dissadvantage.
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July 29th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Engineering Edgar said:
Every effort is made to handicap the development of nuclear energy and the current regulatory process seems admirably designed for that purpose. This seems to be because there are forces that have a real motive for trying to cripple the growth of nuclear power. They have leveraged the regulatory process to heap as many chains on nuclear as they can in an attempt to make it less attractive to investment.
Capital costs for nuclear plants generally account for 45-75% of the total nuclear electricity generation costs, compared to 25-60% for coal plants and 15-20% for gas plants. Nuclear power’s advantage is in its low fuel costs, relative to fossil, and especially to gas, fired generating stations. Design organizations quote generation cost (capital, operation and maintenance, and fuel) targets in the range of 3-5 US cents/kWh, which are highly competitive with fossil alternatives. It is only by keeping the non-fuel costs of nuclear power as high as possible that fossil has a chance.
The same with renewables, laws and subsidies favoring this approach are designed not just to help this sector, but to further distort the market away from nuclear. Without contributing any reliable capacity, wind will nonetheless serve to make nuclear, less profitable. Existing plants will be caught in a trap and new construction will be discouraged entirely. Already in the U.K. the British Nuclear Group is complaining that it can’t build any new reactors if they have to compete against subsidized wind farms. Anti-nuclear activists are turning handsprings, claiming joyously that wind is finally replacing nuclear. But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, nothing will be replacing existing capacity–namely, the coal burning plants that are one of the largest sources of carbon emissions–as demand increases in years ahead. That means carbon emissions won’t be meaningfully reduced, since coal plants will have to stay on line and more gas plants built to provide backup.
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July 29th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
DV82XL said:
Edgar has a point about the capital cost: If I want to build a new nuclear plant and there is a nuclear plant that is going to be decommissioned, the cheapest place for me to build the new plant would be on the site of the old one, reusing whatever I can, even if it’s just switching equipment and the savings of not having to turn the old plant into a green field.
Even if just power lines, the cost savings could be appreciable.
The cost of building high voltage transmission lines is estimated at about two to four million dollars per mile. It can be considerably higher if it turns out to be an area where there is valuable realestate and where right-of-ways have to be acquired from property owners at market value.
If you’re building a power plant and you have to run, lets say, 10-25 new miles of new transmission feeds to get the power to the nearest major regional transmission pathway, plus you have to tie it in with possible upgrades to switching capacity, you’re looking at anywhere up to $100 million. That cost could be erased by using a site where the transmission lines are already in place and good to go.
Given this, it seems almost insane that you would simultaneously be decommissioning a nuclear plant and applying to build one in the same region but different locations. Why? use the same location and save the money on infrastructure, at the very least!
If regulations for end of license decommissioning tend to favor green-fielding, then effectively they’re denying a huge potential savings to new plants by refitting old sites. This is a huge missed opportunity for big savings on capital cost/
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July 29th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
drbuzz0 said:
One major disincentive for companies looking to build new nuclear plants is the threat of unmitigated regulatory risk. In the past, plants were often delayed after approval had been given and even once construction had begun, causing costs to skyrocket and projects to be abandoned. An uncertain regulatory environment dissuades companies looking to build new plants and hampers investment in new plant development.
This is more or less what happened in Ontario that caused the abandonment of the plans to build new reactors; everybody including AECL wanted the government to assume financial liability for cost overruns due to delays caused by regulatory oversight and legal challenges.
There is no other rational interpretation of what is happening in this sector that does not point to rule-making designed to inhibit the growth of nuclear energy by raising the regulatory bar as high as possible. There is no other explanation.
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July 30th, 2009 at 12:16 am
One of the big reasons I believe that CSNC is in need of a complete overhaul and shakeup, and honestly I believe the agency is at the point where it is not effective as a healthy government body, has to do with this and especially relating to what I’ve been seeing at Bruce Power, where the regulatory process seems to have become a continuing boondoggle that has made it very difficult for everyone and has also put Bruce Power in a financial pinch that has them in the precarious position of not being sure what to do, less their project get canned and their money go down the drain.
I have some family members who have worked for the company and so you can say that my info is second hand in some ways, but it seems like they really are over a barrel with CSNC. There has been a lot of trouble since they tried to straighten up the regulatory mess by spinning off things from Ontario Power and establishing the new LLC, which was supposed to get it all back on track.
The current situation with the Bruce Power Station is that they are refurbing units 1 and 2 and that the price has gone up substantially, in part due to regulatory concerns, but get this: the initial assessment was that it would be better to build new units that would have a higher capaicty than 1 and 2, but this was rejected because they did not believe it was possible to get new permits for new reactors, so they decided that it would be easier to refurb the old units even at a higher cost.
As of what I’ve heard latest, the word from the CSNC is throwing a bucket of cold water on any plans for upgrades on Darlington Station. The frank word is that there is an understanding that CSNC simply is not willing to issue the permits and besides that, the current power output is under ‘enviornmental reivew’ (whatever the hell that means).
Meanwhile, there’s Nanticoke, where everyone who is involved agrees on one thing: they would prefer to shut it down as soon as they have the option to! The Ontario Energy Board voted nearly unanimously to recommend the construction of two to four CANDU reactors, basically to replace the old dirt burner.
The Energy Board went so far as to approve a tentative proposal for the first two ACR-1000’s to be built for the project. They have since indefinitely suspended it because of regulatory hurdles, which come down to the fact that AECL can’t get any kind of firm answer from the government and the permit process has been stalemated by a constant demand for reviews that are open ended.
It is a mess. It is an unnecessary mess that has made every company involved lose money they don’t need to. I’m personally getting hot under the collar over the very fact that Nanticoke is still operating, and is the single largest contributor to every kind of emission you can think of in Canada and in some cases in North America.
The only plan to replace Nanticoke that actually has any credibility is one for two to three gas fired plants. This makes me SICK. We have gas supplies to the area running razor thin to meet demand as is and the price has been all over the place. Plus, there are contractual obligations on the pipeline operators that may be impossible to meet with that kind of new demand.
Excuse me. That’s my bit.
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July 30th, 2009 at 1:03 am
CNSC isn’t in need of a complete overhaul and shakeup, it needs to be dissolved outright.
If you need any proof see Webcasts of public hearings and meetings of The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
I would suggest however that you avoid watching any of these if you are a Canadian nuclear supporter/tax payer and have high blood-pressure – aneurysms have been caused by less.
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July 30th, 2009 at 2:32 am
DV82XL said:
It seems like the Canadian system is based on a lot of restrictions and a very extended licensing process in which a lot of opportunities exist for various political entities to inject their trumped up concerns to stop it. It also seems to be very much on the side of caution, even to a fault, like in preventing things from moving forward to the point of requiring repeated ’studies’ with no satisfaction for the safety of something.
Whether they are better or worse, the NRC in the US has been accused of many of the same things and seems to have some similar problems with extremely long processes that don’t even guarantee a license. (by some estimates, the time from application to moving a shovel of earth on a new nuclear plant is a minimum of 8 years, if all goes well)
I have heard similar issues being talked over in the UK, where they have finally lifted a de facto moratorium on new plants, but also consider applications to be only so-so in terms of ever being a reality.
Buzz0 has echoed DV82XL’s feelings on the CNSC, except for the NRC, which he seems to have a low opinion of the effeciency of, and I can’t totally disagree.
What is the situation here? Are all the major first world countries running their nuclear agencies from the same playbook?
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July 30th, 2009 at 4:43 am
Chuck P. said:
Brilliant comment and agreed 100%
The decommissioning standards for nuclear plants are about as complete as one could expect, and the fact of the matter is, a shuttered plant and sealed waste containers don’t pose a threat at all. Even if a plant is shut down, there are a lot of regulations that govern it being monitored and inspected.
Worrying about safety is really unnecessary.
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July 30th, 2009 at 6:25 am
Russ said:
The Canadian Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) was established in 1946 under the Atomic Energy Control Act, with the declaration that nuclear Energy was essential to the national interest (and therefore under the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government). The Act gave the broad powers of regulation and through its 5-members controlled and supervised the development, application and use of nuclear energy in Canada through regulation and research programs. The board had jurisdiction over all aspects of nuclear energy in Canada from the mine through to final disposal of radioactive materials. It participated on behalf of Canada in international measures of control at organizations like the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
During the period it existed Canada developed an indigenous reactor design, built several nuclear power stations, and established itself as an exporter and player in the international arena.
On 20 March 1997, royal assent was given to the Nuclear Safety and Control Act. At that time the regulatory functions of the Atomic Energy Control Board was replaced by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) an independent quasi-judicial agency that reports directly to Parliament. The new entity is not responsible for encouraging the development of nuclear technology.
In fact it has been filled with a mix of political hacks and, as a sop to the greens, several members openly hostile to nuclear. Almost all of its members were appointed by the Liberals (now out of power) and few if any have any background in the subject of nuclear energy. They are transparently a political tool created and mandated to inhibit nuclear energy in Canada in favor of renewable energy and natural gas. Since its inception ten years ago the sector has all but ground to a halt in this country.
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July 30th, 2009 at 8:50 am
So if medical waste is the major source of a dirty bomb threat, and the prez will incidentally reduce said waste by remaking our healthcare system in the image of his glorious third-world idols, then perhaps he could make the idea more popular by couching it in terms of a national security issue.
Eat your f*cking heart out, Axelrod.
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July 30th, 2009 at 11:21 am
apotheosis said:
Well to be clear on something – I don’t see a dirty bomb as being a viable threat at all, really. That said, if one were going to attempt to build one, what kind of source might at least have some kind of potential to cause harm? I’d say spent fuel would not have much potential and the more logical choice would be some kind of medical irradiation source – something like the Goiânia accident source perhaps. That was a capsule containing a fairly large amount of Cs-137. Alternatively, maybe a sterilization source with a large amount of Co-60.
Would there be anything in medical waste that could really be a viable threat?
Probably not. Maybe if a very large amount were collected. I’d be more concerned about the biohazard threat of it actually.
But just to stress: even if a terror group were able to gain access to a fairly suitable radioactive source (something better than spent fuel. Something like a medical irradiator) they still would, at best, have a weapon of pretty limited effectiveness.
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July 30th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
The long-term ‘delayed’ approach to decommissioning is presented and deemed acceptable by the NRC in their generic environmental impact statement (NUREG-0586, if I recall correctly). The rationale for the delay is to reduce the occupational dose associated with the physical dismantling of the plant structures.
Second, the decommissioning of the units includes most everything *except the spent fuel* – the spent fuel remains ‘controlled’ by NRC regulations under 10CFR, part 70. The decommissioning, rapid or delayed, has nothing to do with the remaining fuel.
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July 30th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Don’t underestimate psychological effects of a dirty bomb. But other that I agree with you the spent rods aren’t a danger except for their psychological use. I don’t think you can convince the average person that there are other things that they should worry about then decommissioned reactors. We need to try anyway.
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July 30th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Let me clarify my previous post – even at a ‘greenfielded’ site such as Connecticut Yankee, the spent fuel is still there – in dry storage casks on a concrete pad.
Rapid decommissioning or delayed decommissioning, the US DoE has refused to honor their legal mandate/obligation to take the spent fuel, so it remains at the site of the former reactors. Until that changes, citing spent fuel storage in the context of decommissioning plans is a complete red herring.
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July 30th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Buck said:
It all depends on what the terror group is going for. From what I’ve come to understand of the of the motives and goals of the real hardcore Al Queda and Islamic terrorists really are not interested in just scaring people. They want to kill and kill as many as possible. They may have some interest in damaging infrastructure, but really that is what they want.
That’s not to say I could not see it done as a bluff or used by some less violent group to try to gain a political point. I could see how one of the disruptive groups on the political extreme might think it was a good way to completely destroy a political convention or something. Setting off one nearby would certainly get the news all over it and blow the schedual and press events to hell.
Part of this is really our own doing. (by our, I mean the media, the government etc). There is a climate of irrational fear here. The fact of the matter is that in order to hurt anyone, you’d really need some very radioactive stuff and quite a lot of it and you’d need to get it all over people. It would have to be extremely radioactive in order to cause problems from just brief exposure. If people dusted themselves off and walked away, that would be enough to prevent most problems in most cases. Also, dispersing a dust or powder effectively by explosive is more difficult than it might seem.
There’s a paradox at work when it comes to the materials used: The more radioactive something is the better it would be for causing harm. More radioactive means shorter half-life. However, this presents a practical problem as well. The shorter the half-life of something, the harder it is to accumulate in quantity and to produce a weapon from. If the halflife is shorter than a few weeks, you’re in a damn hurry to get the thing together and planted and set off, because you are constantly losing your material.
Also, short lived isotopes are not generally used in any quantity. They’re produced in small quantities as needed, because they’re too quick to decay to really stockpile. Short-lived isotopes don’t stick around long enough to get misplaced or orphaned. You won’t find any orphaned sources of technetium-99m left over from the Soviet Union and forgotten in old warehouse somewhere in Belarus or Kazakhstan. It’s too short lived.
The paradox of the difficulty in acquiring and stockpiling the most effective materials really can shoot the whole concept of a truely effective radiological dispersal device in the foot.
Our government and the media have not been as dismissive of the danger as they should. Lets consider something: You could order, entirely legally and without the need for a license, radioactive items like uranyl acetate, thorium nitrate, thorium welding rods and so on. These are not radioactive enough to cause anyone harm, but they will light up a geiger counter without a problem. Now imagine you spread this stuff around a subway station or something. You’ve spread a powder, that is essentially harmless, but it makes a rudimentary radac meter register a strong return.
This shouldn’t cause any panic, but it likely will. We live in a society where high schools are evacuated because someone in a science class broke a mercury filled thermometer. No, the teacher does not just scoop it up with an index card and sprinkle some sulfur around to get the rest – they have guys in hazmat suits going in and the whole area is closed to the public. Places are evacuated over a “suspicious white powder” that turns out to be gypsum dust or laundry detergent.
This is our own doing. How effective something like that can be is entirely dependent on whether or not we, as a society, are conditioned to panic.
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July 30th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
gman said:
Yes that is a problem. At Conn Yankee the site is a green field, but there’s a small facility tucked in the corner where there are the casks on a small concrete pad surrounded by barbed wire. I believe there is a gard shed there as well and someone keeping an eye on it. Also a security system.
This is generally how it goes. The fuel is packed into casks and stored locally. On some occasions it may be off the original site, but at a nearby site. This would sometimes be done if there is another local area suitable for it. For example, I a plant located near the Savanah River Site was supposed to transport the fuel casks there, since it was only a few miles. In the event that there is another local site that might happen.
The fact that it is stored local to the plant and in above ground casks is not related to the decommissioning or the time scale. This is because there’s nothing else to do with it. The DOE has, as Gman says, not fulfilled their obligations. The fuel is in interm storage becasue there does not exist an approved national plan for anything else to do with it.
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July 30th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
gman said:
Okay, so the DOE won’t take the fuel or can’t even though they committed to it. Fine, but does that mean there is even any big deal about it being stored there?
For the companies I can see how it is a pain because they have to continue to account for it, but from the bigger picture, what danger is it just sitting there in big cans or concrete cylinders? Is there any urgency or even any reason that there should be concern for it sitting there?
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July 30th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Biff Henderson said:
Nope, none at all.
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July 31st, 2009 at 7:28 am
Biff Henderson said:
No, I didn’t say it was a problem.
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July 31st, 2009 at 11:07 am
drbuzz0 said:
Suppose you’re right, and the thing about no-linear-threshold is also incorrect. I still would say a dirty bomb poses a threat simply because of the phsychological damage, panic and fear it would cause. Also, you would need to do a cleanup to mitigate these fears, which would cause a lot of economic damage. So regardless of the reasons, it is a threat we need to take seriously.
Also, it’s funny, that many of you claim to be atheists and dismiss faith, but yourselves have faith that the safety systems at a nuclear power plant are going to work 100% of the time year after year after year. Or that there isn’t some way a radiological accident couldn’t happen during the transport of radioactive waste.
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July 31st, 2009 at 11:20 am
Bruce said:
It has nothing to do with faith Bruce. These systems have been proven over and over to be adequate. There are videos of transportation casks being hit at high speed by freight trains without harm. There is more chance of a disaster from LNG storage and transport than from anything nuclear.
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July 31st, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Bruce said:
If LNT is correct, then being exposed to a dirty bomb does indeed cause some damage, but it still turns out not to be a huge deal. If we apply LNT to a few millirems, it turns out that the expected reduction in life span is about equal to inhaling a few puffs of second hand smoke or eating a few orders of french fries.
Increasing the lifetime cancer risk to a few dozen people by .001% is not, in my opinion, a national disaster.
Bruce said:
Yes, it would cause a lot of fear and panic. That is our own doing though. The only reason it would do so is because the media and government have told people they need to fear it.
It is a paper tiger. It only causes panic if you let it. The fear is artificial.
Bruce said:
It’s not faith. Also, they don’t need to work 100% of the time year after year. For one thing, they are redundant. The failure of a safety system doesn’t compromise safety. You would need a failure of multiple systems for any danger of damage to occur. Even then, it does not mean it would compromise human health or safety.
You can look at Three Mile Island as an example of this. What happened there was not a single failure. You had at least two mechanical systems failure combined with numerous human errors which resulted from a lack of situational awareness and a misunderstanding of what was going on. Throw in some design flaws, or at least some flaws in the operators having knowledge of the finer details of the design.
A whole bunch of things went wrong, and in the end just about every active safety feature either failed or was not properly used due to missinformation or missunderstandings on the part of the operators.
The result was damage to the reactor core. Certainly this was not a trivial accident. It basically destroyed the fuel elements and rendered the reactor vessel a complete write-off (although still, I kinda wish they had replaced it instead of decommissioning the of the reactor unit)
The point is nobody was hurt and looking back, nobody was ever even in remote danger of being hurt.
At Three mile island, the integrity of the fuel was partially compromised, the integrity of the cladding was partially compromised. The integrity of the reactor vessel was never compromised. In fact, it never even came close to being compromised. The integrity of the reactor vessel’s protective concrete sump was never compromised, and it never came even remotely close to being compromised. The integrity of the containmant dome was never compromised. it never even came close to being compromised.
Even if all these had been compromised (which they never have even come close to), what would you have? A pile of concrete and nuclear fuel on the bottom of it. The fuel would never be dispersed into the air. That’s not possible in a PWR design. You need a system like Chernobyl for that to be even remotely possible (where the fuel is combined with water pipes, as opposed to being surrounded by water). Finally, if all else fails, the fuel is designed to be chemically inert, immobile in the enviornment and it does not easily pulverize. It fragments into pieces like tempered glass does.
Still, in the event that all the passive and active systems fail, in the event that the multiple layers of protection are breached, in the event that somehow, despite the laws of physics, something goes wrong – well, I’d still prefer the worst a nuclear incident could dish out compared to a disaster involving a large freight train containing multiple tanks of hydrazine or hydrofluoric acid or chlorine. (and there are trains criss crossing the nation with stuff like that on board. And occasionally there is an accident. Mercifully, the worst ones in this country have only cost dozens of lives, not thousands.)
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August 6th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
If I lived near a coal power plant then that would be bad and I’d sure want to move or have it closed. It would be bad, but it could be worse.
If I lived near a nuclear plant I’d want it closed as soon as possible and if it was not I would move as soon as possible. A nuclear plant could go boom at any time and kill everyone in a whole part of the country. At leas with smoke from coal you can see it and smell and know it is there. Radiation can’t and you would only know when your hair starts falling out, by then it is too late!
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August 6th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
DBS JACK said:
Would you care to explain the physical mechanism by which the nuclear plant would supposedly “go boom”? Because according to the laws of physics, it can’t.
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August 6th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Chuck P. said:
I could think of a couple ways a nuclear plant could “go boom.”
For example: one of the plant employees is kinda obnoxious and when pulling into the plant parking lot one day, he decides he’s going to show off to everyone the new subwoofer he had installed in his car.
I guess one could say that’s not actually the plant though..
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August 8th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
DBS JACK #26:
Pal, you are way out of your league here. Did you read any of the other posts before you spewed your ignorance? I don’t mean to be rude, but you really need to do some homework on nuclear power plant design, fuels, and safety measures before entering into the fray. That is, unless you enjoy receiving a verbal lashing by people who don’t much take a liking to nonsense posts.
The stakes are too high to waste time nattering about things that are long-since settled: Nuclear power plants are among the most safe, most regulated, most environmentally-friendly, most reliable and long-lived and least polluting source of power generation known to man. The fact is, radical environmentalists (who used to be in favor of nuclear power) have done more harm to the environment by opposing nuclear plants (because coal-fired plants are built in their place) than by the utilities who have built them.
Whether you believe that AGW is actually happening or not, nuclear power plants are the best way to secure affordable, reliable, controllable (unlike wind and solar) electric power for any and every nation. Used for water desalination and irrigation, nuclear power plants could help many 3rd World nations provide for themselves, thereby being less dependent upon someone else. Independence, what a concept!
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