Posted on 02/20/2007 6:43:48 AM PST by presidio9
So who's afraid of Indian Point, the nuclear plant 24 miles north of New York City? Certainly not Rudy Giuliani, whose consulting firm works for the plant's owners. He touts the facility asa vital source of clean, reliable power. Sen. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, keeps raising alarms about mishaps and demanding a top-to-bottom inspection by outside experts. Strange as it may seem, both pols are right. New York needs nuke plants - badly - but only if the public can be convinced they're safe.
A city as thirsty for juice as New York cannot afford to lose Indian Point. It generates 2,000 megawatts - one-third of the city's power. And it does so without belching greenhouse gases or paying a thin dime to Middle East oil potentates. None of the viable alternatives can make that claim.
But we cannot afford to take security for granted, either. Not after 9/11, and not astone's throw from the biggest city in America. So the nuclear industry must convince average Americans that plants like Indian Point aresafe.
Giuliani helps win over the doubters by putting his national reputation - and his viability as a presidential contender - on the line in support of nukes. When Indian Point officials recently announced they were seeking a 20-year license renewal, Giuliani stood at their side, living proof that not everybody associated with nuke plants is a dopey Homer Simpson or a sinister Montgomery Burns.
Clinton helps, too, by speaking up on behalf of those who are understandably anxious. Her latest step is submitting legislation that would require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to order a so-called "independent safety assessment" of Indian Point, conducted by a team of government and outside experts, on top of the usual federal inspections.
Personally, I think such a review is redundant and unnecessary - but that's not the point. Whether or not public fears about nuclear power are completely rational, they're real - and need to be addressed. Indian Point should take the senator at her word and agree to what she wants. Assuming the facility gets a clean bill of health, the company will have put all sincere doubt about its operation to rest.
The nuclear industry is on something of a roll these days - winning over plenty of high-profile converts. One of the earliest was Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace. He now works for the industry he once picketed and says it's a key to saving the planet.
Moore points out that no American has ever died from a radioactivity-related accident at acivilian reactor. And replacing the nation's 103 nuclear facilities with coal-fired power plants would be thesame as putting 100 million more vehicles on the road, he says.
"It strikes me as logically inconsistent that people who appear to be most concerned about climate change also appear to be the most concerned about nuclear power - even though it is safe and clean," Moore told me.
If Indian Point opens itself to an extra layer of scrutiny to reassure its skeptics - and other plants follow suit - doubters like Clinton will increasingly have no choice but to join nuclear loyalists like Giuliani. And people across New York and America will be able to rest easy while enjoying all the benefits of clean, reliable - and safe - nuclear power.
Obviously NOT a graduate of the Berkeley School of Self-Flagellation, where the motto is: No matter what happens, it's our own fault.
I work with Indian Point personnel every now and then.
They are under a level of scrutiny that other plants don't see.
"no American has ever died from a radioactivity-related accident at a civilian reactor"
That seems to be a very carefully worded statement.
So, may I assume that folks have dies in reactor accidents, but just that the reactor was Government owned or the workers non-American? (yes to both, BTW)
In America, or are you talking about Chernobyl?
Auxiliary Reactor Area-II was the site of the 1961 Stationary Low-Power Reactor No. 1 accident, which resulted in the destruction of the reactor and deaths of three technicians on duty. Soil contamination near the site still exists.
More at this link
NOw I see your point. There were a handful accidents when the technology was brand new. How many deaths since the early 60's?
Note to leftist morons: We have not designed a nuclear power plant in over twenty years. Do you think that we may be able to come up with a better one if you nit wits would stop your insipid whining and just let the next generation nuke plants be built?
Nothing classified. A handful of fatalities. A couple of criticality accidents at Los Alamos, the SL-1 in Idaho. Maybe a half-dozen fatalities in going on 60 years of reactor operations, civilian and government. Compared to how many millions related to the automotive industry, or tens of thousands from aviation accidents, or coal mining? Hell, the abortion industry in this country alone results in over a million deaths annually. Compared with those meat grinders, the nuclear industry record of maybe one employee death every 10 years, zero fatalities among the public, is a tough one to beat.
And I doubt you would see a lot of volunteer civilian help in the local Nplant area.
We have industrial accidents every day, across the world, but very few Nuke plant accidents.
But when those happen, well, they really make the news!
Technically Chornobil (Ukrainian spelling) was not a containment breach because there was no containment, in the sense of the containment structure used in Western-style LWR plants. Worst-case accidents for LWR systems do not involve the rapid power transient experienced by the RBMK systems in certain operating regimes because the feedback mechanisms are just too strong. BORAX and SPERT showed that light-water moderated reactor transients have neither the energy release or dynamics of the RMBK accident potential.
The report makes an important contribution by analyzing some reactor accidents that are worse than the DBAs. Specifically, the report treats:
(1) the LOCA-without-ECCS type of core meltdown;
(2) a class of accidents called "transients," which basically come under this author's category of power-cooling mismatch accidents (PCMAs) and heat exchange accidents; and
(3) the spontaneous reactor vessel rupture. The power excursion accidents (PEAs)and the worst forms of PCMAs are essentially excluded. More- over, on the basis of certain assumptions, the report treats the "transients" and the reactor vessel rupture as no worse than a LOCA without ECCS (slow core meltdown), which is not the worst course these accidents could take.
(The report's treatment of the LOCA-without-SCRAM-type accident was examined earlier; see pp. 34 -39.) In short, the report is grossly inadequate in scope.
Looking at the Three Mile Island incident - The NRC report points to a LOCA caused by a faulty valve - compounded by
Bad training
faulty human-machine interface
bad sensors
bad/untested emergency procedures
Subsequent visual examination of the rector core showed far more damage than was initially thought, but reactor breach did not ocurr.
A lot of lessons were learned, and changes were made. All good stuff.
That nobody was injured seems to smack of the "no danger from fallout" pronouncements back in the day of open air testing.
Most metallurgical studies I have seen on pressure vessel rupture indicate large-scale failure at a vanishingly small probability. For smaller-scale ruptures, the LOCA without EECS accident evolution is a reasonable model. Sure, you can postulate a large-scale rupture, but your accident analysis credibility would be challenged.
If anything, the TMI accident sequence indicated that accident analysis is probably overly conservative. That much core damage and energy release would have led many to believe that a slow-evolution vessel breach should have occurred. That it did not is probably evidence that our assumptions and accident models have a fair amount of conservatism built into them.
In essence, TMI was a LOCA without ECCS (the operators turned it off) that resulted in a core melt --- but the China Syndrome did not happen. The core puddled in the bottom of the reactor vessel but did not breach it.
When I first saw the photos inside that vessel years later, I was totally amazed and it turned out the vessel was far more robust than anyone at the time thought.
Did they ever post a bottom line cost for the clean up?
About $1 Billion
I "worked" on the TMI incident, albeit at a distance, for about 6 months from the day of the accident. I was doing graphics and making PR materials for Westinghouse in response to media requests for expert comments. It was an honest effort at providing information, not PR spin.
My job was to attempt to translate highly technical information we were getting from the engineers that we sent to the site to assist GPU (and B&W) into graphic images to help the media understand what was happening.
To put it kindly, it was a fool's errand.
Your "hysterical talking-head" comment is if anything an understatement. What struck me most was the near total technical illiteracy of the media, especially the electronic media. I'd be willing to bet that not one in ten of the talking heads could tell you what the boiling point of water was, let alone what was happening inside the TMI reactor.
The biggest mistake the nuclear industry in general made through that experience was assuming that the media was staffed with rational, educated people who were interested in facts. Nothing could be further from the truth. They wanted headlines, the bloodier the better, and did not give a damn about reality.
I was still a relatively young pup then, but my lesson from TMI had nothing to do with nuclear engineering. It was was to never believe the media without independent confirmation.
Perhaps that's why I'm a Freeper today.
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