Is nuclear power a technology designed by geniuses and run by idiots?

[kristopher]

The Real Nuclear Disaster

I have a unique perspective on Japan's continuing nuclear fallout, having covered the Chernobyl accident as a reporter for the New York Times and Three Mile Island as a reporter for Newsday. I also covered thousands of hearings, sources, issues, promises and solutions in the 1970s and 1980s, and my 1981 series on abuses at the $5 billion Shoreham nuclear plant on Long Island led to the only cancellation of a new commercial reactor after it started operating.

It's not the technology that will do nuclear in. This was clear 40 years ago, and it's still clear today. On paper, it's a safer and cheaper technology than fossil fuels. Rather, it's the inability of people to operate it safely or cheaply, at least the way reactors are operated today. As cynics used to say, "Nuclear power is a technology designed by geniuses and run by idiots." Watching the keystone cop performance of Japanese utility and public officials, the maxim is alive and well. We don't have the institutions and the operators capable of handing the technology.

The solution, still ignored, is for an international cadre of specialists without allegiance to the profit-motives of utility companies or the political motives of governments. The model, often cited 30 years ago, is that of the late Admiral Hyman Rickover's U.S. nuclear navy operators, for which safety was inbred as the one and only goal. Without it, we'll keep having accidents until the technology falls under the weight of stupid mistakes. Already Switzerland and Germany are phasing out reactors, and other countries are considering the same.

A case in point. One of the reasons that Three Mile Island (TMI) did not turn into big disaster, as Japan did, is that experts outside of the utility company owner took control of the accident almost immediately. TMI, in Harrisburg, PA, was so close to New York and Washington that expert regulatory staff showed up almost spontaneously, as did some of the country's leading nuclear scientists from Brookhaven Laboratory on Long Island.

So the day after the accident...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stuart-diamond/the-real-nuclear-disaster_b_871807.html

[phantom power]

1. In my experience, that describes just about every technology

[nonperson]

2. A true genius would never consider nuclear power in the first place

True genius would recognize the enormous, unacceptable, inherent and unavoidable risks of nuclear power and never go down that road.

[Demeter]

4. +1M

[AtheistCrusader]

8. One might say the same about coal and oil.

[nonperson]

11. One might but that would be another one who doesn't want to discuss nuclear

Coal, oil, wood, anything we burn negatively impacts our environment.

Nuclear is not only in a league all its own, nuclear is an entirely different ballgame.

Let's get off fossil and carbon and onto renewable energy. No problem. But please don't tell me nuclear power plants are the answer when the only nuclear reactor power that's safe for use on Earth isn't on Earth it's approximately 93,000,000 miles away and it's know as THE SUN.

[AtheistCrusader]

12. I don't know I would describe it as 'safe' given what it's going to do to our planet in about 2bn ye

ars.

;)

[FBaggins]

3. Hmmm.... so "expert regulatory staff" is the key?

You'll have to clear that with one the posters here who insists that the regulators are really just a subsidiary of the nuclear industry itself.

Of course... it could be simpler to say that the real reason that TMI didn't turn into the big disaster that Fukushima did (and you'll have to clear that with the same poster... as he has previously insisted that TMI was, in fact, a big disaster)... is that TMI didn't deal with anything close to the same challenges.

Expert regulators and leading nuclear scientists wouldn't have been able to get the power on... or rebuild cooling options... or changed physical constants.

They might have been able to reverse some of the poor decisions that appear to have been made very early in the timeline... but there's recould they have even gotten into position in time for that?

[kristopher]

13. Davis Besse is a perfect, recent example confirming the regulatory problem

Snip from wiki describing incident



Reactor head hole

In March 2002, plant staff discovered that the boric acid that serves as the reactor coolant had leaked from cracked control rod drive mechanisms directly above the reactor and eaten through more than six inches<10> of the carbon steel reactor pressure vessel head over an area roughly the size of a football (see photo). This significant reactor head wastage left only 3/8 inch of stainless steel cladding holding back the high-pressure (~2500 psi) reactor coolant. A breach would have resulted in a loss-of-coolant accident, in which superheated, superpressurized reactor coolant could have jetted into the reactor's containment building and resulted in emergency safety procedures to protect from core damage or meltdown. Because of the location of the reactor head damage, such a jet of reactor coolant may have damaged adjacent control rod drive mechanisms, hampering or preventing reactor shut-down. As part of the system reviews following the accident, significant safety issues were identified with other critical plant components, including the following: (1) the containment sump that allows the reactor coolant to be reclaimed and reinjected into the reactor; (2) the high pressure injection pumps that would reinject such reclaimed reactor coolant; (3) the emergency diesel generator system; (4) the containment air coolers that would remove heat from the containment building; (5) reactor coolant isolation valves; and (6) the plant's electrical distribution system.<11> Under certain scenarios, a reactor rupture would have resulted in core meltdown and/or breach of containment and release of radioactive material. The resulting corrective operational and system reviews and engineering changes took two years. Repairs and upgrades cost $600 million, and the Davis-Besse reactor was restarted in March 2004.<12> The U.S. Justice Department investigated and penalized the owner of the plant over safety and reporting violations related to the incident. The NRC determined that this incident was the fifth most dangerous nuclear incident in the United States since 1979.<3>

Criminal prosecutions
On January 20, 2006, the owner of Davis-Besse, FirstEnergy Corporation of Akron, Ohio, acknowledged a series of safety violations by former workers, and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. The deferred prosecution agreement relates to the March 2002 incident (see above). The deferment granted by the NRC were based on letters from Davis-Besse engineers stating that previous inspections were adequate. However, those inspections were not as thorough as the company suggested, and as proved by the material deficiency discovered later. In any case, because FirstEnergy cooperated with investigators on the matter, they were able to avoid more serious penalties. Therefore, the company agreed to pay fines of $23.7 million, with an additional $4.3 million to be contributed to various groups, including the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Habitat for Humanity, and the University of Toledo as well as to pay some costs related to the federal investigation.
Two former employees and one former contractor were indicted for statements made in multiple documents and one videotape, over several years, for hiding evidence that the reactor pressure vessel was being corroded by boric acid. The maximum penalty for the three is 25 years in prison. The indictment mentions that other employees also provided false information to inspectors, but does not name them.<13><14>
Wiki Davi Besse

See also
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/vessel-head-degradation/images.html

The Union of Concerned Scientists examined the event and concluded regulators were not performing their function when they cooperated with the company and allowed a significant delay in performing the inspection.

Davis-Besse: One Year Later
Nearly one year ago, on March 6, 2002, workers repairing a cracked control rod drive mechanism (CRDM) nozzle at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Ohio discovered a football-sized cavity in the reactor vessel head.1 Their finding is linked to two other discoveries 15 years earlier. On March 13, 1987, workers at Turkey Point Unit 4 in Florida discovered that a small leak of borated water had corroded the reactor vessel head. Their revelation prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to require all owners of pressurized water reactors,2including Davis-Besse, to take specific measures to protect plant equipment from boric acid corrosion. On March 24, 1987, the NRC learned that control room operators at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania had been discovered sleeping while on duty. That revelation prompted the NRC to issue an order on March 31st requiring Peach Bottom Unit 3 to be immediately shut down.3

The three findings spanning 15 years are intertwined. Turkey Point demonstrated that a small amount of boric acid leaking onto the reactor vessel head corrodes carbon steel at a high rate. Had the FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company, the owner of Davis-Besse, remembered Turkey Point’s lesson, the serious damage at Davis-Besse would have been averted. Peach Bottom demonstrated that a pervasive safety culture problem creates unacceptable conditions for operating a nuclear power plant. Had NRC remembered either Turkey Point’s or Peach Bottom’s lesson, they would have issued the order they drafted to shut down Davis-Besse. It would have been the first shut down order issued by the agency since the Peach Bottom order. But both FirstEnergy and the NRC forgot the past and relived the wrong event from March 1987 by having yet another reactor vessel head damaged by boric acid corrosion.

Many individuals, from both within and outside the NRC, have accused the agency’s move towards risk- informed decision-making as the reason for its failure to issue the order to shut down Davis-Besse. On the contrary, the NRC’s handling of circumferential cracking of control rod drive mechanism (CRDM) nozzles as reported by the Oconee nuclear plant in February 2001 was a successful demonstration of proper application of risk-informed decision-making with the sole and significant exception of its mistake in not issuing the shut down order for Davis-Besse. But even that mistake, as bad as it was, does not impugn the risk-informed decision-making process for the simple reason that the NRC deviated from that process. Had the NRC adhered to its risk-informed decision-making process, it would have issued the shut down order for Davis-Besse and capped off a stellar example of how this process can and should be used.

In February 2001, the NRC learned of a new aging mechanism, the circumferential cracking of stainless steel CRDM nozzles based on inspection results from Oconee. The NRC properly reacted to this finding by revisiting the nuclear industry’s inspection regime for CRDM nozzles. It determined that the existing inspection regime did not provide adequate assurance that circumferential cracks would be identified and repaired. The NRC did not require all plant owners to immediately address this inspection shortfall, which would have imposed an unnecessary regulatory burden on those plants with low susceptibility for the problem. Nor did the NRC allow all plant owners to address the shortfall at their next regularly scheduled refueling outage, which would have imposed an unnecessary challenge to safety margins at those plants with high susceptibility. Instead, the NRC applied risk-informed decision-making by issuing Bulletin 2001-01 in August 2001 to all owners of pressurized water reactors. This Bulletin required the high susceptible reactors to resolve the inspection shortfall by December 2001, the medium susceptible reactors to resolve the inspection shortfall at their next regularly scheduled outage, and merely collected information from the low susceptible reactors.

Only two reactors with high susceptibility for circumferential cracking of CRDM nozzles did not conform to the inspection requirements...

At this point, the NRC abandoned its risk-informed decision-making process.....

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/davis-besse_retrospective_030303db.pdf

http://s259.photobucket.com/albums/hh285/taos-eddy/Energy/Davis%20Besse%20Photos/

[Name removed]

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[kristopher]

21. I don't think the regulaotry problem can be solved.

The necessary standards throughout the entire supply-chain, construction and operation are too complex, too critical and too sensitive to failure for any type of regulatory approach to be successful over the lifetime of thousands of reactors.

And just because you don't like something doesn't make it spam. Continually pushing a particular industry's position and trying to protect said endustry from degraded public opinion, however, comes much closer to the mark.

[FBaggins]

23. Some people like spam.

It's "spaminess" doesn't rely on whether one or more people like it.

Continually pushing a particular industry's position and trying to protect said endustry from degraded public opinion, however, comes much closer to the mark.

Strange... that doesn't seem to be the DU standard.

Regularly advocating a position is what you're supposed to do on a political advocacy board. It's the repeated posting of the exact same content over and over and over that is forbidden.

The willingness to violate such rules despite regular reminders does not speak well for any other position you might hold.

You're lucky that they're a little loose on the "incoherent" standard or you might be on your fifth frozen pizza. :)

[liberal N proud]

5. The same thing happened to Nuclear power that has happened to every corporation

Cut everything to the bone to drive profit.

Precautions and technology to the wind, just generate power.

[FBaggins]

7. Has the rate of incidents gone up or down over the last 30 years or so?

Remember that reactors have to report just about anything more significant than a hangnail.

If they've really cut everything to the bone and thrown caution to the wind... that should show up in the statistics. Shouldn't it?

[Tikki]

9. They do not have to report..

hangnails...

I guess the rate has gone way up...Think Fukushima
What you need to ask and what the author is saying is..
Is this, today's, NUKE industry capable of Fukusimaing.

He sees a steady change from SAFETY first to PROFIT first and
this is not an industry where you can ever cut even one corner.

If you want it, you need to babysit it like it's your only child.

Tikki

[FBaggins]

10. That's what I said.

It's just about anything WORSE than a hangnail.

I guess the rate has gone way up...Think Fukushima

We're talking about industrial accidents caused by cost cutting and a focus on profits to the exclusion of safety. We're not talking about natural disasters of historic proportions. When a tornado strike a Home Depot and rips the building's roof off... it really isn't something we need to address in the forklift safety statistics. If their workplace accidents were cut in half over five years... this doesn't change that.

What you need to ask and what the author is saying is... Is this, today's, NUKE industry capable of Fukusimaing.

Interesting gerund. If they're hit with a 9.0 earthquake and record tsunami? Sure... SOME plants are "capable" of that (though others would have fared better). What the shills will try to make you believe is that it could "just happen" to any reactor... absent natural disasters.

[SpoonFed]

15. Oh yes...

We're not talking about natural disasters of historic proportions.

The epic, it-wasn't-the-operators-or-the-designers-or-regulators-fault explanation, it was a natural disaster that caused the reactors to be built in an area of unprecidented sesmic activity and on the ocean.

Right. :sarcasm:

Why not just skip to the "we just can't stop these things from blowing up once in a while" factual statement.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[FBaggins]

18. So you think bridges and homes are unsafe?

After all... they fell down. The Japanes have been warned for decades that major earthquakes were just a matter of time... and thhey all fell down.

Not the fault of the earthquake you see... bridges and homes are just dangerous. That's the "ultimate cause"

So says SpoonFed. :rofl:

[SpoonFed]

19. Poor analogy, as usual.

So you think bridges and homes are unsafe

Safety is a process, not a final destination.

Given the amount of corruption and corner cutting that has been fairly well-documented and regularly posted on the forum by kristopher among others, you would think that one might expect something other than the continuous weak argument that "everything fails, so there."

You used the same argument with regards to the amount of Plutonium being detected in Japan and elsewhere.

Similar faulty arguments:

1. There is already plutonium from the Pacific nuke bomb tests! -> This increase in Plutonium doesn't matter.
2. Bridges and homes fall down! -> So nuke plant failures are acceptable.
3. Everyone dies eventually! -> So preventable deaths from nuke plants are acceptable.

So, back to my original point, safety is a process that depends on sound risk analysis. In that analysis, the severe negative outcomes of nuke plant failures is orders of magnitudes greater than the severe negative outcomes of a bridge falling down or a home collapsing.

If a home catches fire after it's built in the mouth of a volcano, where does the blame lie?
If a bridge collapses due to decades of a lack of maintenance and inspections, where does the blame line?
If a nuke power plant blows up 4 of it's reactors, where does the blame lie?

[txlibdem]

22. Good idea! All of the nuclear plants have been poorly managed/safety -- Replace them with new

If one follows your logic that is the only sound course of action. Unless you love coal, oil and natural gas that is.

We must immediately triple the budget for nuclear power subsidies and begin replacing these old nuclear power plants with the latest, safest, designs and double the number of inspectors immediately. The workers at these new plants will have safety drilled into their heads for weeks before they set foot inside the gates and the inspectors will show up randomly with the best detection equipment and skills to find problems before they even get started.

The airline industry has succeeded in neutering the safety inspectors and look what we have now: roofs of planes fall off during flight, cracks in places that should never develop cracks, no more free peanuts during a flight (maybe that last one is just a pet peeve)...

[SpoonFed]

20. INES Level 7 rate has doubled? Has it not? n/t

[Tikki]

6. This industry who ignores the Science over their profits...

...it is doomed to fail. There are such intricate components to nuke that
cannot be ignored.
Nuke should have been guarded like gold. Instead it was farmed out to
the lowest bidder...time after time.




Tikki ..child of the radiant glow...