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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNRC: We're Keeping Fukushima-Style Nuclear Reactors Going
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/01/23/nrc-were-keeping-fukushima-style-nuclear-reactors-going
Published on
Friday, January 23, 2015
byCommon Dreams
Federal agency rejects appeal by watchdog group to suspend operations at reactors identical to those at disaster-stricken reactors in Japan.
by Andrea Germanos, staff writer
An anti-nuclear demonstration in 2012. (Photo: Energ Justice Actions/flickr/cc)
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected an appeal to halt operations at the nearly two dozen reactors in the nation that have the same containment system as those at the ill-fated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors.
The decision was posted (pdf) in the Federal Register on Friday.
Watchdog group Beyond Nuclear filed the appeal in April, 2011 in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, charging that the then-21 Mark 1 design General Electric Boiling Water Reactors were "accidents waiting to happen."
The filing (pdf) sought emergency enforcement action to protect the public from the "unreliability of [the design's] containment system to mitigate a severe accident and the lack of emergency power systems to cool high density storage pools each containing hundreds of tons thermally hot and extremely radioactive used reactor fuel assemblies located atop the reactor building s and outside a rated containment."
FULL story at link.
FLPanhandle
(7,107 posts)The plant even survived the quake well.
It wasn't designed to be hit with a wall of water.
hunter
(38,264 posts)How often does a nuclear power plant get hit by a freaking tsunami???
Other things contributed to the severity of the accident too -- the fact that the standby generators were knocked out by the tsunami, and maybe even the complexities of Japanese management styles.
Even so, the damage done by the tsunami itself, and the non-radioactive, less detectable, toxins spread across the landscape make the accident at Fukushima seem much smaller in magnitude.
Emphasizing Fukushima seems somehow disrespectful to the tens of thousand people killed, maimed, and displaced by the tsunami itself.
In comparison, the Fukushima nuclear plants are simply a very expensive mess to clean up, and not especially deadly compared to normal industrial accidents and hazards that we commonly accept without much notice. A guy gets killed in a grain elevator accident, maybe grain that was destined to make ethanol fuel, it's not international news. Fossil fuel or synthetic fertilizer accidents must have multiple casualties or huge explosions and other fireworks before the national news pays any attention to them, and then it's only for a twenty-four hour news cycle or two.
That said, I'd rather live near a well managed and well designed nuclear plant than a fossil fueled plant, and more radically, I don't even think residential areas need to be served by electrical grids, in much the same way people no longer require "land line" telephone service. If you want to live in a house with air conditioning, then you buy the solar panels you need to support that.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)FBaggins
(26,697 posts)The primary containment design was hardly a key factor in the Fukushima event... and the "lessons" the NRC is acting on from Fukushima (things like better venting) close all of the relevant gaps.
Though it's interesting to note their continued attachment to irrational fears of spent fuel pool issues and imaginary safety issues related to them.