Leak at Davis-Besse

I heard a really good conspiracy theory which may or may not be related to that. :P

reddit?

lol I think I heard the same conspiracy theory yesterday WW. Thought that was on the MI/IN line though

"As massive as a plant can be to detect and find a single little leak is remarkable. Goes to show they know every inch of the place."

did you forget about this?

2002 reactor head hole

The U.S. Justice Department investigated and penalized the owner of the plant over safety and reporting violations related to the incident. The company paid $28 million in fines under a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice.¹ The NRC determined that this incident was the fifth most dangerous nuclear incident in the United States since 1979.³ The NRC imposed its largest fine ever -- more than $5 million -- against FirstEnergy for the actions that led to the corrosion.¹

Yikes wasn't aware of that hank. Thanks for sharing.

I don't have a problem with nuclear power.

I have a problem with trusting the greedy fucksticks who own and operate the plants and the government people who are supposed to monitor and inspect them.

And, in light of the number of "oops, we fucked up years ago when building the plant" mistakes coming to light now (like the lack of putting water seal on the containment building causing it to crack), I have a problem trusting someone to build a new plant without someone somewhere cutting corners in materials and inspections.

I would very much not object to a couple new-design reactors, or preferably something even safer like pebble-bed or a thorium design. But I don't want WorstEnergy anywhere near them with their track record of fuck-ups and waving off inspections at Davis-Besse, and I'm not sure that any amount of inspection and monitoring won't keep contractors from cutting corners on building the thing, let alone not fucking up on the blueprints and tying the cooling water system to a drinking fountain.

Now that my brother is dead and his company no longer in existance, I can relate a story he told me years ago. His company -Industrial Boilers - was one of dozens (hundreds?) of subcontractors that worked on building Enrico Fermi. He came to my house one day unexpectedly, in the middel of the day, upset. Ordinarily my brother was a rock who rarely showed emotion. He said he had just concluded negotiations with his attorney and the contractor to whom he was subbbed. The negotiations were to buy out my brother's company contract. He bought out his contract. He said he saw so much graft and inspectors passing workmanship and materials that didn't meet specifications that he did not want his company associated with the project. He said "Someday that thing will blow and we're all gonna be glowing in the dark."

I was obviously dumbfounded. It has nagged at me from time to time over the years. I kept his secret, until now. Hopefully, he was wrong.

I kept his secret, until now. Hopefully, he was wrong.

No, he wasn't wrong. I used to work at DB and saw a few mysterious things happen. One contractor was working on the main cooling water system and mysteriously vanished without a word to anyone. The speculation was that he'd found something and been hustled off site with a bonus to keep quiet.

Another guy failed his drug test about three or four times. The 'idiots down at the lab' kept misplacing the results, so he had to take it over and over again... until he finally passed.

The real trouble with DB is that the place is too big. Successful nuclear plants should be small enough to allow one man to walk the entire place, which cannot be done at DB.

DB should have been shut down years ago, and now it's overdue.

Chernobyl, Fukushima, Ohio. Perhaps in fifty years our descendents will be visiting the ruins of Cedar Point?

You're taking the stories of third party contractors, with rumor and conjecture, and using them as proof of some sort of nuclear Armageddon coming our way?

I personally know three of the actual employees there, two chemists and on of the very high ups, and all of them are 100% fine with Davis-Besse's operation. Now, they think it will rightfully be denied another ten-year operating license in 2014, and have to shut down by 2023, but they tell be every single time that it is 100% safe. I trust them more than a contractor, they're educated on how it functions, the safety precautions, and their families all live within Genoa/Oak Harbor/Curtice/Oregon....so they'd be dead if a fallout occurred.

If the folks operating your power plant don't notice a pineapple-sized hole developing in the reactor head for years on end, you can't claim to be 100% safe.

They didn't say that that wasn't bad, they said even if the hole went all of the way through that the other safety precautions designed for that would have kicked it. They said that it is impossible to have a meltdown (not including a massive tsunami or asteroid).

I have heard from them that even if the hole went through, only radon would have been emitted and even that would have been less than the 25mrem or whatever. There are a hundred safety checks in that place, it's no wonder they screw a bunch of them up--but that's why there are a hundred in it. It's essentially human-proof. Chernobyl and Fukushima weren't designed nearly as well.

The critique we should have is that the building was only designed for X years (to be 100% safe), and that year is approaching quickly. I think it's 2014.

As for nuclear power on a national scale, it needs to be in the energy portfolio. It has zero emissions of carbon, etc., and provides a ton of well paying jobs. But it is expensive.

Obama is hating hardcore on coal, but it is by far the cheapest energy source to produce. It's still 4x cheaper than natural gas. So it's tough to make a nuclear argument when we are absolutely loaded with so much coal.

All the nuclear accidents that had major effects on the world were a combination of things. First, poor design. Second, lack of training and/or emergency training and procedures. The Navy's nuclear plants are set up to be very fool proof, but still could cause problems under severe circumstances.
There isn't a window inside the reactor compartment to sit and watch if there are any leaks. Many may have bilge detectors to detect leakage or log water levels and if there is a big enough loss, you'd notice it. As a last resort, you want it to be contained if trouble arose and that's what they feel they have the ability to do.

As with the rising cost of gas, if people don't like the power generated by nuclear power, what has anyone done to reduce the amount they use? If everyone cut back enough, there wouldn't be a need for nuclear power plants. But, the alternative is coal plants which probably are more harmful to the environment overall than nuclear plants, but not enough people want to change their lifestyle to change things.

It sounds like BusterBluth works for the plant...I hope you don't live any where need this nuclear plant...

How about starting with the president on down, we all start cutting back. Meaning no more "surprise" trips to visit troops for political photo ops, no more flying all over to campaign, no more movie stars asking everyone to save the planet and then jetting off across the country to promote a new film.
Don't ask the citizens of the U.S. or any other country to save, conserve, recycle, etc. until they start to lead by example.

Do as I say, not as I do.

I'm having a hard time connecting this to the nuclear power safety discussion, but, shouldn't every president regardless of political party visit the troops in the field for the sake of moral and to be better informed for the decisions they have to make?

And if a president can't travel to campaign, what about their opponent?

Yes hockeyfan, the always present conservative straw man...

John Edwards couldn’t talk about the poor because he was rich.

Al Gore couldn’t talk about climate change because he owns a plane.

Michael Moore couldn’t talk about healthcare because he was fat.

Yet conservatives can go on and on and on about smaller government when all they do is expand it, vote for bank bail outs, love war, the patriot act etc and they are supposed to be taken seriously?

How about no conservative is allow to talk about smaller government if they voted for the bank bail outs, voted for ear marks, voted for the patriot act, the war in Iraq or farm subsidy and no liberal will every talk about recycling unless they recycle their paper and soda cans.

Yeah, and if you read the report, as I did, if the safety precautions kicked in, debris would be swept into the sump, clogging it, and then there's no water recirculation which means MELTDOWN.

According to the NRC, Davis-Besse has been the source of two of the top five most dangerous nuclear incidents in the United States since 1979.

What part of that is not understood and scary as fuck?

Hey Sensor, if hockey wants to zing the current administration for photo-ops, then I got some pictures of Bush on the aircraft carrier with the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner, and him with McCain having birthday cake while Katrina hit. And don't forget all the S&R ops that were shut down because he went to NOLA and nothing can fly in his airspace.

Do as I say, not as I do.

They said that it is impossible to have a meltdown (not including a massive tsunami or asteroid).

They lied. It is possible to have a melt down and those in the know are reluctant to admit it.

There are a hundred safety checks in that place, it's no wonder they screw a bunch of them up--but that's why there are a hundred in it.

Aw, hell... Look genius, read what you just wrote. The operators who staff the control room train constantly on a simulator. They truly are bright people and they don't "screw a bunch of them up", as you so eloquently put it. The place breaks down. It's old, it's poorly designed and it should never have been built in the first place.

It's essentially human-proof. Chernobyl and Fukushima weren't designed nearly as well.

Davis-Besse is not essentially 'human-proof'. It isn't even close. If it were, the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station would be a model used for every other Nuclear plant in the world, and it isn't. Instead, it's the source of two of the top five most dangerous nuclear incidents in the U.S. since 1979 (credit to AnonymousCoward).

The Navy's nuclear plants are set up to be very fool proof,...

And the universe keeps making fools. Guess who wins? Not to put too fine a point on this, but the Navy oversees the Navy's nuclear power plants. If anything goes wrong, it's likely classified.

...and then there's no water recirculation which means MELTDOWN.

Actually it means 'danger of meltdown'. There are three cooling water systems, the main and two backups. Should all three fail (which is possible) the operator shuts the reactor down. Now, if the operator fails to shut the reactor down in time, the fuel will get overheated and begin to melt. Then melt. And then, because things are very, very hot, the contents of the reactor may escape.

And so it goes.

All this is possible, but the probabilities of an accident are low. These probabilities could be lower with a better design and better construction, as someone pointed out earlier.

I'm largely in agreement with AnonymousCoward. We need nuclear power, but we have a greater need for safe nuclear power.

Design something foolproof and the world will design better fools.

There is also the problem with the cooling tower at Davis-Besse. Nuclear power plants depend on the cooling tower. If you want more power, you have to provide better cooling. When the cooling tower was built out at Davis-Besse it was supposed to be constructed on bedrock. Well, years later a casual inspection revealed that the guts of the tower had shifted about three feet or so. Tracing this problem back to its source, the powers that be discovered an underground spring one hundred or so feet underneath the tower. Normally, no big deal, but place a 500 foot cooling tower on it and you now have a problem.

The cooling tower still works, but the efficiency has been cut to something like 85% of what it should be.

These probabilities could be lower with a better design and better construction

The designs are already out there, Gen III and Gen IV reactors. There are no operational Gen III plants in the U.S., and Gen IVs are still relegated to the realm of doctoral theses. They will be built eventually, when we run low on energy options and the necessary R & D becomes justified to the industry.

Way to mess up the page guys.

THE BACKUP SYSTEMS WOULD NOT HAVE WORKED BECAUSE THE SUMPS THAT COLLECT THE WATER WOULD BE CLOGGED!

http://unplugsalem.org/PDF/20031118-db-what-might-have-been.pdf

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/acfnx8tzc.pdf

Shut them all down, hope you like eating dried rations in the dark.

I love eating cold, dried rations in the dark. Nothing better!

What we (the great unwashed) should be doing is demanding replacement nuclear plants be constructed. Built right next door to the old nuclear plants, as the infrastructure is already in place. But because of the Moonbats the government wastes money subsidizing wind farms.

Don't forget all the money that was turned into magic dust at Solyndra.

If, after reading how both the NRC couldn't be bothered to properly monitor D-B ("oh hey, they were #1 in their last 3 inspections, nothing to worry about there, we can just breeze through and relax"), and how WorstEnergy failed to do their proper maintenance and upkeep, you want more nuclear plants, that's fine, just so long as you live directly next door and sign a waiver specifying that any of your "special" genetically defective kids are subject to abortion or termination, cause we don't need more "special" people like you.

Now, seriously, I have looked at nuclear reactor designs. I have looked at pebble bed reactors and the newly approved reactor design. I have read the pros and cons of uranium vs. thorium. I would really like to stop burning coal and go to nuclear, but I have several major problems with nuclear:

1) Why the bloody fuck are we still using uranium fuel? (Answer: so we can turn the leftovers into nukes if needed. Thorium is better/safer, but hey, we need those leftovers from the used rods.)

2) Where the major bloody fuck are we going to put the waste? Yucca Mountain is still not happening, nobody wants the waste in their back yard, nobody in the USA reprocesses the leftovers, etc. The used shit is being stored ON SITE and that's part of the problem with Fukushima - no cooling water in the spent fuel pool is BAD. Not enough storage in the spent fuel pool is BAD. D-B has gone to dry casks cause they're OUT OF SPACE.

3) We can't trust the contractors to not fuck up and cut corners. Take a look at how many damned HIGHWAY projects have had to be redone or shored up because someone delivered a substandard batch of concrete. Hell, if I recall correctly, that happened with the VGCS. Add your substandard foreign steel and a whole pile of fully computerized systems with code written by Malaysian or Indian code monkeys overseas instead of Americans, running on Microsoft Windows, and you're talking about a Blue Screen of Death becoming a BLUE GLOW OF DEATH for thousands of people.

4) The GOP is big on no government regulation, so yeah, they'll cut funding for the NRC, assuming the RON PAULtards don't shut down the NRC "because nuclear power isn't in the Constitution!". And they'll leave the inspection and regulation up to the utilities. Think about the existing track record over at WorstEnergy, who have had 2 of the top 5 worst nuclear incidents in the USA and also caused a HUGE BLACKOUT because they couldn't be bothered to maintain their infrastructure.

So don't give me this "moonbat" (world's stupidest name!) bullshit. Let's see you whip out the answers to where we're going to put the waste and how we're going to make sure the new plants aren't built of substandard materials on earthquake faults or whatever and how we're going to ensure that the owners don't put maximum profits before safety. Come on, maddie, I'm calling you out, where's your magic answers?

Moonbat, coward it seems to describe you to a tea, hehe get it? Look Coward stop trying to convince yourself you can only be the right one in the argument, its easy to be wrong, don't you keep telling us that? I originally believed Bush was alright till i look some stuff up and yeah, he was pretty idle in office for the most part, the republicans haven't done anything much other than try to not be democrats. But your rants don't convince me of anything, links to liberal biased news services won't convince me of it either. Problem is there isn't much that's truly neutral anymore.

I don't really have the time to write, however...

1) Why the bloody fuck are we still using uranium fuel?
I would suspect fuel cost, however I don't know enough to really provide an honest answer.

2) Where the major bloody fuck are we going to put the waste? Your own personal back yard. Failing that, every plant should include a storage area for nuclear waste. The idea of transporting it somewhere does not appeal to me.

3) We can't trust the contractors to not fuck up and cut corners. Not to cut corners and thus fuck everything up. The work must pass inspection by a third party who gets paid to find fault.

4) The GOP is big on no government regulation, so yeah, they'll cut funding for the NRC... No they won't. Anyone who actually believes that song and dance about smaller government is deranged. It isn't true now and hasn't been true for years. I'm not sure it ever was true. The real solution is to attach the NRC to the (un)Patriot Act so that they have Federal Authority to arrest and incarcerate without the burden of real proof. Bust a few people, ship them off to Gitmo and the rest will fall into line.

Oh wait a minute. Didn't Obama close Gitmo? So I guess that won't work. Well, you have to admit it was a good idea! Right AC?

http://energyfromthorium.com/essay3rs/