Peter van der does said:

Had there been a meltdown at the same time as the flood they would have been in deep doo-doo. How stupid can you get ?

A meltdown of a PWR is not a danger off sight. In the unlikely event that one had happened, there would have been some prtty expensive damage internal to the plant.

That was what is known as a “criticality accident” We had one in the US back in the 1960’s under similar circumstances. A worker died. Of course it’s tragic for the family and everything, but industrial accidents happen. Every once in a while someone in a factory operates a piece of equipment wrong or something malfunctions and someone pays for it with their life.

Of course this will happen in the nuclear industry from time to time. Nuclear plant workers have died on rare occasions after falling off a catwalk or having a hoist break and cause a part to land on their head. It’s sad and tragic, but it’s what occasionally happens in industry.

The point being, it’s no greater danger to the community than any other accident and while the area may need to be evacuated for a short time, in this case, it’s not like this is somehow unique to nuclear. Dozens have died this year in catastrophic fossil fuel accidents. Gas explosions – mine collapses – oil fires etc etc.

If you work in a nuclear plant, you’re not 100% safe from industrial misshaps, because they can always happen, but in terms of danger, you’re a lot safer than almost any other industry. The community is safer too! A criticality accident at a reprocessing center can’t kill those in the surrounding area. However, a release from a chemical factory of chlorine gas or “sour gas” or hydrofluoric acid easily can!

By the way, yes, these kind of chemical release events have happened and lives have been lost!

        Peter van der does said:

Government officials and nuclear regulatory officials tend to downplay accidents andradioactive releases no matter what country it’s in.

And antinuclear scaremongers always spin the least release or incident in Armageddon narrowly avoided.

I was barbecuing some hamburgers yesterday on my wooden deck, i was a bit careless and had a little grease fire, that had I left would most likely have spread to the wooden railing, then to the deck, and then to the house. It might even have spread to the next house, and give most of the town is wood-frame buildings, if we had a hard wind, as we do sometimes, we could have lost the whole town.

But it was a blob of grease the size of a dime that was burning, so I gave it a slap with my spatula, and it was extinguished. By antinuclear standards, we almost lost the whole village, therefore absolutely no one should ever be permitted to BBQ ever again, not only in my town, but everywhere in the world.

When you mealy mouthed Cassandras start giving numbers along with your breathless stories of near misses in nuclear power events, and really show the scale, we’ll talk. Otherwise this is nothing but meaningless propaganda, without any meaningful content.

Second instance this time in Japan at a nuclear reprocessing plant. Signs were put in plain view detailing the protocol for some process with the admonition : Never do such & such !!!
Well some fool did exactly what he wasn’t supposed to and they had a huge release and a
temporary evacuation. One again…how stupid can you get ?

The main problem is that you can’t make a perfect machine and you certainly can’t make a perfect human. It is generally recognized that most nuclear accidents are a result of
human error. What gets me is that we’ll have to live through another Chernobyl before
we wake up to the fact that we shouldn’t be playing around with nuclear energy.

Sorry, not their problem.

I want you to remember that government does not have to be responsible. The way to avoid all responsibility is for the NRC to stop all activity. You can’t prove that THEY are responsible for your job dying or at least leaving the US, not in our sound-bite media. Please remember that the next time you worry about having a good job in the US.

I’m a very high tech geek and I no longer expect innovation from US companies. I think we are a failed state. California’s bankrupcy is an example.

I wonder what country will build its future and were my children will choose to live. I wonder if Argentina or Korea needs nuclear engineers?
Rob

        Safe T Rad said:

… but it’s a mess by design …

I like that one! The entire US federal system defined in the Constitution is a “mess” in the sense that the designed checks & balances make it very hard for the gov’t to *do* anything. It’s set up such that most votes will end up in a tie or deadlock. Ironically, the main thing they *have* been able to agree on over the last 200+ years is that they can stick their noses into what should be none of their business. I don’t think the founding father’s ever envisioned the system evolving to the current situation, where the federal gov’t is actually concerned with business activities. I think they’d be shocked to see Representatives & Senators debating whether you or I could run a power plant.

The system is a mess.

However, we can’t blame the NRC alone and just say that they are incompetent. They operate under a political system that can make it difficult for them to change things even if they want to. Any kind of reduction in regulation (even if it’s reducing an unnecessary or redundant step) or streamlining of the process will be grabbed by interest groups and held up as proof of laxing safety standards. Do we really need two years to study the safety concerns of evacuating a whole area within dozens of miles of the plant? No, not really. What if they did away with this requirement? The politicians would not be very happy and would start their talk of the safety of the children and so on.

If you want an example, not long ago, the NRC classified depleted uranium at the lowest level of nuclear waste. Aside from questioning whether it needs to be classified as nuclear waste at all, this would make sense. If it has to be classified as nuclear material, it should be at the lowest level, since it’s pretty innocuous material that is barely radioactive at all. The politicians called for a hearing to determine why they would do that and started with a lot of unsubstantiated allegations that they were bought off or not doing their jobs.

How can you expect an agency to do its job under those conditions? The NRC is a mess, but it’s a mess by design and if those who work at the NRC made a real effort to fix it, they’d be hauled before Congress.

        Gordon said:

One of the big issues with a nuclear power plant or any big project is delays. This applies in both the US and Canada and just about everywhere else. Any time construction is delayed it dramatically increases costs. It’s not just the added time paying construction expenses, but the interest.

You are so right, about 40% of the total cost of the last few CANDU builds in Ontario was due to interest charges alone. What really screws things up is that in many jurisdictions the utility cannot start paying down the debt with existing revenue until the plant is producing power. This was supposed to prevent utilities from cranking up rates to pay for new generation before the fact, but it’s crippling to projects like these.

Once the plant is opened, then there is a cash inflow, but before it is a burden and the interest can cause the cost to spiral like crazy. This is why it is so important to keep the build relatively speedy. It is also why there is apprehension about going into any project where the possibility of delays is a concern. You really want to get the plant operational so you can start paying down the cost and generating a net income off of it.

This goes for other things and big projects, of course, but the fact that nuclear power plants so often are hit by regulatory delays can be a big deal to the final cost.

New coal: Depends. Coal gasification is actually pretty easy to build but if it’s traditional burning raw coal then it is a bit harder. In that case pretty good scrubbers are usually required, but it’s not a very difficult thing to get federal approval for.

Gas fired plants are very easy to build. You don’t need much approval from any agency. A combined cycle gas plant does not have much regulatory hurdles.

We all know that dirt-burners have gotten a free pass on radioisotope releases, and waste management compared to nuclear, what I don’t want to see is the same thing happen with ‘Clean Coal’ where the builder can make all sorts of promises and then get wavers when things don’t pan out.

I don’t worry so much about wind and solar because in the end they will fail to deliver the power they promised and that reality will spell their end. Even now we can see that the shine is off the sector in Europe and while many are putting up a brave face, it’s clear that the writing is on the wall there. If we have to go through the same stupid process here in North America, then so be it.

‘Clean Coal’ on the other hand CAN produce power, no question, the issue is is it going to be all that clean and because they will be generating useful amounts of electricity, there is going to be a lot of pressure to keep them going, meeting their design promises or not.

The thing is coal isn’t out of play yet and we have to watch our backs, because they will make a move before this is over.