NRC Relicensing Old "Zombie" Nuclear Plants 260
mdsolar writes "In the Dec. 7 edition of The Nation, Christian Parenti details what he considers to be the real problem with nuclear power as a solution to carbon emissions in the US: Not the high cost of new nuclear power, but rather the irresponsible relicensing of existing nuclear power plants by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The claim is that the relicensed plants — amounting to more than half ot the 104 original 1970s-era nukes in the US — operate like zombies beyond their design lifetimes only because of lax regulation spurred by concern over carbon dioxide emissions. But these plants are actually failing, as demonstrated by a rash of accidents. And some of the ancient plants are now being allowed to operate at 120% of their designed capacity. There is a video interview with Parenti up at Democracy Now."
Re:Chernobyl again? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Chernobyl again? (Score:1, Informative)
That was the cause of the Chernobyl accident. The cause of the Chernobyl disaster, however, was the poor design of Russian nuclear power plants. Every reactor in the west is designed not only with several more layers of fail-safes but also encased inside of a steel reinforced concrete containment vessel. These vessels are built stronger than many bunkers and are designed to prevent the release of radioactive materials in case of an accident.
If the Chernobyl accident had occurred in every detail identical to history except with a reactor inside a western style containment vessel the only people injured would have been some of the reactor staff.
Also worth noting is that Chernobyl was quite exceptional in that the accident occurred during a test where staff had intentionally overridden several safety protocols.
Re:Sorry to say that, but you are wrong. (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong, it was an existing reactor (it was built in 1983 and the disaster took place in 1986) and they were testing the shutdown procedures. Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
Re:Blame the EPA (Score:3, Informative)
"If the plants get decommissioned it will literally cut our energy production by 1/2"
According to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, in August 2009 Nuclear power produced approximately 0.758 quadrillion BTUs of energy, out of a total of 6.266 quadrillion BTUs produced across all sources. That's approximately 12% of total output. Thus, decomissioning nuclear power plants would not cut our energy production by half, either literally or figuratively.
Extensive stats from EIA available here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/overview.html
Re:The real problem isn't really a problem. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually there is a solution for nuclear waste.
It is called fuel reprocessing.
With proper reprocessing the waste is much easier to handle. We are not doing it right now because it is cheaper to just let it sit and or to bury it.
The problem is most people have been fed a line of manure from the anti nuclear folks. Do you have any idea how much money some of them are making off of book deals, speaking fees, and "donations" that people make to keep the world and the coal companies safe from the evils of nuclear power.
If you want a test to see if they are using fear and ignorance as a tool there is a simple one.
If they mention Chernobyl when speaking about the safety of western nuclear reactors they are using fear and ignorance.
Chernobyl has as many simulates with a western nuclear power plant as the Hindenburg has with a 777.
It is impossible for a western reactor to fail like Chernobyl because no Western country would ever allow a commercial graphite moderated reactor with out a containment building to be put into service!
Re:Blame the EPA (Score:4, Informative)
IAAEA (I am an energy analyst with one of the larger energy companies in the US), and I'd argue your math there. Nuclear is base-load power, meaning it's always there. Coal plants, natural gas plants, and the like have to be taken on and off line for maintenance and such pretty frequently. If you live in the PJM footprint of the Northeast, it's very likely that the only plant(s) providing off-peak, nighttime power to your house is a nuclear reactor. Half sounds about right for PJM, and the same probably holds true for most of the South and California.
Not to mention that replacing the nukes with oil or gas burning plants would cost squillions more in land, fueling pipelines, railheads, etc.
Re:New stations NOW (Score:3, Informative)
I see and understand what you're generally saying, but how does that follow from Space Shuttle and helmets?
Space Shuttle is simply obsolete...or rather, was a marriage of advanced concept with inappropriate technology; way too early before its time. And helmets...is there anything negative about them?
Re:Chernobyl again? (Score:4, Informative)
The article mentions the mishap-plagued Vermont Yankee, currently near relicensing and with a 120% uprate a couple of years ago. Entergy, the current owner, plans to spin off ownership of half its plants, including Yankee, to a new firm financed by massive debt. This way Entergy will no longer itself be financially responsible for any aspect of these plants, while pocketing most of the projected profits from their next two decades of licensed operation in advance.
So Entergy's got little reason to concern itself with whether Yankee will work as advertised after relicensing. Relicensing is merely a requirement to spin it off, and relinquish Entergy of any responsibility at all, beyond immediate, massive profit.
Re:Not so (Score:2, Informative)
There is a big difference between 99.4% of fuel wasted full of long-life waste and 0.4% short-living waste.
On a bigger scale - try to store 9940 lbs of waste or 40 lbs of waste. 250 times less and less dangerous waste.
40lbs can be even discarded into deep space.
Re:Yawn.... (Score:3, Informative)
Nuclear power - PLEASE put one of these in my back yard! http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html [nextenergynews.com]
Mercury - Here are some mercury FACTS from the department of energy... http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/pollutioncontrols/overview_mercurycontrols.html [energy.gov].
Drilling for oil - So while the rest of the world goes out and drills for oil, going so far as to cross drill under US soil, the United States should take a back seat and watch these resources be taken and used against us. Gee, I certainly hope the countries that are actually drilling for oil don't stop sending it to us. I'd hate to see what that would do to our economy.
Re:Chernobyl again? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, no. The disaster happened because a test was carried out less experienced night operators who did every don't in the manual trying to follow a test procedure they did not understand. The last straw was removing more control rods completely from the core than was permitted for any reason in an attempt to brute force their way past xenon poisoning rather than scrubbing the test and allowing the iodine and xenon to decay before attempting to increase output as the manual required. At that point the reactor was in an extremely unstable condition.
They then made matters worse by reducing the coolant flow to the point that voids formed in the core (the reduced flow was part of the test procedure). In that particular reactor design, voids increase the reaction rate. That taken together DID "burn off" the xenon and suddenly the reacter was way over it's design limits. Compounding the problem, the tips of the control rods were inert but displace water (effectively a void), so when they tried to scram the reactor it exploded instead.
During all of this, several safety systems that would have scramed the reactor in time were manually disabled.
Put another way, they started with an intrinsically dangerous reactor design (not permitted in the U.S.), overrode a number of safety systems, mis-handled the power level, then attempted to recover by performing an absolutely prohibited operation. Finally now that the reactor was in an incredibly precarious state they further provoked disaster by performing an experimental test procedure (whose carefully planned pre-conditions were not in any way met).
Notably, the reactor went prompt critical rather than supercritical as a nuclear weapon would. The explosive yield was about a ton of TNT (compared to 10 kilotons for a small weapon).
So, unsurprisingly it shows that it's a bad idea to have insufficiently trained operators overide safety mechanisms and then ignore every rule in the book in order to carry out an experiment on a dangerously designed nuclear reactor. Particularly in a bureaucratic culture where supervisors would be more upset by a scheduled test being scrubbed than they would be at safety procedures being ignored. A deliberate plan to cause a disaster couldn't have come up with a better procedure.
Re:Yawn.... (Score:4, Informative)
Iran trying to get the bomb was pretty much unavoidable after they let Israel have it.
Considerable lack of knowledge (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Zombie nukes?" Puh-leaze (Score:1, Informative)
I'm sure there are spreadsheets that can tell us when maintenance is to be expected and performed under a given load level, so it's not like OMG it'll only be inspected when it's DUE to wear out under the lesser load. Something like an aircraft's airworthyness directives, yes?,
Just so. The FAA's regulatory standards look downright permissive compared to what parts suppliers have to go through to get an "N-stamp" on their product. The NRC takes its job very seriously. In the last forty years we've learned a great deal about what parts of a light water reactor fail -- when, how, how to detect it early, and what to do about it. Moreover, NRC requires plant operators to fix things in a way that minimizes radioactive exposure to workers. The limit on occupational dose is 5,000 mrem / year. Most workers get an order of magnitude less that that -- barely more radiation exposure than a member of the general public (~300-400 mrem / year, depending on where you live).
When people talk about the nuclear "safety culture," they aren't just repeating an industry slogan. How many people have died working in US nuclear power plants? None. Uranium mining/milling? Zero. Fuel enrichment/fabrication? Nada. I'll leave as an exercise for the reader looking up how many annual worker fatalities there are associated with coal-fired power generation... The answer may surprise you.