Octopus Overlords

NYDN wrote:The radiation nightmare is happening thousands of miles away in Japan – but Americans already are hoarding drugs in hopes of staving off cancer.

RunningMn9 wrote:

Kraken wrote:Wiki to the rescue: "From 1992 to 2005 some 270,000 MWe (Megawatt electric) of new gas-fired plant were built, but only 14,000 MWe of new nuclear and coal-fired capacity came on line, mostly coal, with 2,315 MWe of that being nuclear." Coal is still #1 by a big margin but gas is where the growth is.

Yes, natural gas as well - but like coal, don't we have more than enough of both domestically? In other words, we aren't dependent on foreign oil for electricity generation, so using that argument to build more nuclear power plants doesn't make as much sense (at least not until we are all driving around in electric vehicles).

Kraken wrote:NRC to your senators: "Why, no. In fact, they aren't. It's a good thing you asked!"

gameoverman wrote:I think we should just designate a certain isolated landmass as the Nuke Power Center Of The World™, all the nuclear plants would be located there. From there electricity is sent out all over the world, except to those countries who don't pitch in. Countries cash poor could qualify by contributing the workers who will be needed to live on Nuke Island™ while they tend to the maintenance and operation of the power grid.

Radioactive wastes could also be stored there since, well, who would complain? The workers? So then they won't mind if their countries go dark?

Needless to say, any disasters would then become a minor annoyance. Reactor density could be so high even the loss of a sizable percentage would not interrupt power.

Isgrimnur wrote:There are issues with Natural Gas drilling that have been of import in recent elections in the DFW area. The local impacts have extended beyond visual and noise pollution to high levels of airborne benzene, contamination of groundwater if the chemicals are stored topside, that water being processed through wastewater plants despite being radioactive, possible earthquakes if the chemicals are pumped back down for disposal, etc.

Isgrimnur wrote:I'm not trying to tar and feather the whole industry by any stretch but there are no petroleum-based extraction methods that aren't at risk for some untoward environmental impacts. And given the recent increases in natural gas production, there are going to be companies that take advantage of a lax or nonexistent regulatory environment. I'm all for exploration and exploitation of homegrown energy sources as we attempt to move toward greener communities, but the impacts need to be studied and potential negative consequences analyzed and mitigated.

And given that the area of the Barnett Shale is directly below Fort Worth and outlying communities, even localized impacts have the potential to affect tens of thousand of people with one incident from a less-than-conscientious driller.

noxiousdog wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:I'm not trying to tar and feather the whole industry by any stretch but there are no petroleum-based extraction methods that aren't at risk for some untoward environmental impacts. And given the recent increases in natural gas production, there are going to be companies that take advantage of a lax or nonexistent regulatory environment. I'm all for exploration and exploitation of homegrown energy sources as we attempt to move toward greener communities, but the impacts need to be studied and potential negative consequences analyzed and mitigated.

You're neglecting 100 years of exploration and exploitation of gas. This isn't new. Fracking was first used commercially 1949. It was done allegedly as early as 1903. It's being used at 9 of every 10 producing wells in the US. It's helped produce 7 billion barrels of oil (1,000 times the total current daily production rate) and 600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (about 2/3rd the total natural gas produced).

And I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying be careful what you read. Don't fall for correlation and don't find causation because you expect it. I love this increased access to documentaries (and it's rare to find a Natural Gas scare story without a reference to Gasland), but there's alot more sketchiness to them than I'd like. And just like evolution v. creationism, it's hard to tell the difference if you're not an expert.

And given that the area of the Barnett Shale is directly below Fort Worth and outlying communities, even localized impacts have the potential to affect tens of thousand of people with one incident from a less-than-conscientious driller.

Perspective

Still, there's the lingering question: Why risk catastrophe when less potentially lethal sources of power are available?

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, weighed in Wednesday with a news release that accused the media of "apocalyptic" reporting on what's transpiring in Japan. Nunes is co-author of legislation that would mandate approval of 200 nuclear reactors in the United States by 2040.

"Americans are rightly concerned and deserve a factual reporting of the crisis," Nunes said. "Unfortunately, we are instead being bombarded by sensational headlines and commentary that stretches the bounds of scientific reality to the point of utter fiction."

Enough wrote: Today's fracturing is not your grandaddy's frac. I'm not on the all fracing is bad bandwagon, but some caution is a good idea.

gameoverman wrote:I don't understand the reluctance to plan for worst case.

Let's say in coal, what's the worst case disaster(that HAS happened somewhere, anywhere in the world). A huge coal mine collapse/explosion? Yeah that's pretty bad, but it's limited isn't it? I mean, it may sound callous but if some people die in a coal mine in W Virginia, the people in neighboring states don't exactly have to lose sleep over it.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

The question boils down to the accumulating impacts of daily incremental pollution from burning coal or the small risk but catastrophic consequences of even one nuclear meltdown. "I suspect we'll hear more about this rivalry," Finkelman says. "More coal will be mined in the future. And those ignorant of the issues, or those who have a vested interest in other forms of energy, may be tempted to raise these issues again."

Health problems linked to aging coal-fired power plants shorten nearly 24,000 lives a year, including 2,800 from lung cancer, and nearly all those early deaths could be prevented if the U.S. government adopted stricter rules, according to a study released Wednesday.

stessier wrote: And from the rest of your post, there is no way anyone could build a plant to satisfy you. Worst case is something that happens less than 1 in a billion times, but takes 99 percent of the money to engineer against - if it is even possible.

stessier wrote:

gameoverman wrote:I don't understand the reluctance to plan for worst case.

Let's say in coal, what's the worst case disaster(that HAS happened somewhere, anywhere in the world). A huge coal mine collapse/explosion? Yeah that's pretty bad, but it's limited isn't it? I mean, it may sound callous but if some people die in a coal mine in W Virginia, the people in neighboring states don't exactly have to lose sleep over it.

I don't know - this is probably worst case - Centralia, PA. I think others worry about it, but probably not states away.


And from the rest of your post, there is no way anyone could build a plant to satisfy you. Worst case is something that happens less than 1 in a billion times, but takes 99 percent of the money to engineer against - if it is even possible.

Kraken wrote:

stessier wrote: And from the rest of your post, there is no way anyone could build a plant to satisfy you. Worst case is something that happens less than 1 in a billion times, but takes 99 percent of the money to engineer against - if it is even possible.

We could stop building Type 1 GE boiling water reactors, for starters. I can't find the story that I read a few days ago, but they were chosen over the safer but bulkier and more expensive pressurized water reactors because the US Navy needed a compact design for its submarines -- the first use of fission reactors. This column compared the eventual dominance of the boiling water design to VHS beating out Betamax -- once a standard gets entrenched, regardless of its relative merits, it can't be dislodged.

Before the US embarks on building a new generation of nuke plants, that basic assumption should be rethought. We have a unique opportunity to break with a precedent set in the 1950s.

gameoverman wrote:I don't understand the reluctance to plan for worst case.

Let's say in coal, what's the worst case disaster(that HAS happened somewhere, anywhere in the world). A huge coal mine collapse/explosion? Yeah that's pretty bad, but it's limited isn't it? I mean, it may sound callous but if some people die in a coal mine in W Virginia, the people in neighboring states don't exactly have to lose sleep over it.

On the other hand, nuclear thingys are so touchy that if there's an accident then people across an entire continent can look forward to having to deal with it in some way or another.

And maybe I'm too cynical, but there is no one, not one person in this entire world, who could tell me "..but THIS power plant is safe from those kinds of problems" with the amount of credibility needed to get me to believe him/her. There is too much money, domestic politics, foreign policy concerns, and outright thievery going on behind the scenes for me to have that much faith in leadership on this issue.

What'll happen is a 'safe'(domestic politics) but expensive(thievery) series of plants will get approved to free us from foreign oil(foreign policy). Everyone involved will get paid, from the politicians who make it happen to the workers building the plant(much money). The plants built will, in reality, be no safer than the low bid cheapo plants that were rejected, the only difference is the builders pocket the difference.

Then someday years, decades later, when the shiat hits the fan and there is another catastrophe what? The people who shoved this through will be long gone, and not giving a crap what happens to the public. There will be no one held accountable but the public will suffer and pick up the costs...AGAIN.

Rip wrote:

Kraken wrote:

stessier wrote: And from the rest of your post, there is no way anyone could build a plant to satisfy you. Worst case is something that happens less than 1 in a billion times, but takes 99 percent of the money to engineer against - if it is even possible.

We could stop building Type 1 GE boiling water reactors, for starters. I can't find the story that I read a few days ago, but they were chosen over the safer but bulkier and more expensive pressurized water reactors because the US Navy needed a compact design for its submarines -- the first use of fission reactors. This column compared the eventual dominance of the boiling water design to VHS beating out Betamax -- once a standard gets entrenched, regardless of its relative merits, it can't be dislodged.

Before the US embarks on building a new generation of nuke plants, that basic assumption should be rethought. We have a unique opportunity to break with a precedent set in the 1950s.

Ummm US Subs use PWR reactors not BWR.

Also I'm pretty sure everyone is building Gen III reactors now. Out of 104 US reactors only 23 are Type 1.

Kraken wrote:

Rip wrote:

Kraken wrote:

stessier wrote: And from the rest of your post, there is no way anyone could build a plant to satisfy you. Worst case is something that happens less than 1 in a billion times, but takes 99 percent of the money to engineer against - if it is even possible.

We could stop building Type 1 GE boiling water reactors, for starters. I can't find the story that I read a few days ago, but they were chosen over the safer but bulkier and more expensive pressurized water reactors because the US Navy needed a compact design for its submarines -- the first use of fission reactors. This column compared the eventual dominance of the boiling water design to VHS beating out Betamax -- once a standard gets entrenched, regardless of its relative merits, it can't be dislodged.

Before the US embarks on building a new generation of nuke plants, that basic assumption should be rethought. We have a unique opportunity to break with a precedent set in the 1950s.

Ummm US Subs use PWR reactors not BWR.

Also I'm pretty sure everyone is building Gen III reactors now. Out of 104 US reactors only 23 are Type 1.

Well, I'm talking through my hat because I couldn't find the story that I read. It would help if I remembered where I read it. I thought it was the Sunday Globe but their search function says otherwise.

Point was that there are some competing basic designs that are inherently safer than the one that underlies all of our commercial reactor designs because they're less dependent on constant, elaborate cooling systems. This is a good time to question basic assumptions.

Japanese regulators discussed in recent months the use of new cooling technologies at nuclear plants that could have lessened or prevented the disaster that struck this month when a tsunami wiped out the electricity at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi power facility.
However, they chose to ignore the vulnerability at existing reactors and instead focused on fixing the issue in future ones, government and corporate documents show. There was no serious discussion of retrofitting older plants with the alternative technology, known as "isolation condensers," government advisers said.

Rip wrote:

Kraken wrote:

Rip wrote:

Kraken wrote:

stessier wrote: And from the rest of your post, there is no way anyone could build a plant to satisfy you. Worst case is something that happens less than 1 in a billion times, but takes 99 percent of the money to engineer against - if it is even possible.

We could stop building Type 1 GE boiling water reactors, for starters. I can't find the story that I read a few days ago, but they were chosen over the safer but bulkier and more expensive pressurized water reactors because the US Navy needed a compact design for its submarines -- the first use of fission reactors. This column compared the eventual dominance of the boiling water design to VHS beating out Betamax -- once a standard gets entrenched, regardless of its relative merits, it can't be dislodged.

Before the US embarks on building a new generation of nuke plants, that basic assumption should be rethought. We have a unique opportunity to break with a precedent set in the 1950s.

Ummm US Subs use PWR reactors not BWR.

Also I'm pretty sure everyone is building Gen III reactors now. Out of 104 US reactors only 23 are Type 1.

Well, I'm talking through my hat because I couldn't find the story that I read. It would help if I remembered where I read it. I thought it was the Sunday Globe but their search function says otherwise.

Point was that there are some competing basic designs that are inherently safer than the one that underlies all of our commercial reactor designs because they're less dependent on constant, elaborate cooling systems. This is a good time to question basic assumptions.

I certainly agree that now is the time to do a lot of research and risk analysis before starting to build a bunch of new reactors. But I don't see much if any increased risk in most existing installations. The reactors in that area of Japan all survived a 9.0 quake without any problem. I really see only two areas where risk was probably not fully appreciated.

1. Loss of cooling events in a tsunami (probably flood and hurricane as well).
2. Inadequate containment/storage of spent fuel rods

I am sure we will see technology and protocol changes that will hopefully mitigate most if not all of the increase in recognized risk.

One thing that would be very interesting is to hear an analysis at some point as to what if any effect change there would be if the reactors had been of the various other possible designs.

Rip

Rip wrote:
What bothers me more than this specific instance is that I think there needs to be a way to ensure decisions about upgrading systems to reduce risk are not allowed to just be a cost issue for owners.

That is one big advantage I think naval and military reactors have over commercial is that safety and reliability is far more important to them than cost. With commercial reactors not so much and there needs to be people without capital at stake determining whether the risk reduction justifies an upgrade.

Why was Japan, a nation at high risk for earthquakes and natural disasters, using a type of reactor that needed such active cooling to stay safe? And the answer to that doesn’t lie with Japan, or the way the plant was built. The problem lies deeper, and concerns the entire nuclear industry.

Japan’s reactors are “light water” reactors, whose safety depends on an uninterrupted power supply to circulate water quickly around the hot core. A light water system is not the only way to design a nuclear reactor. But because of the way the commercial nuclear power industry developed in its early years, it’s virtually the only type of reactor used in nuclear power plants today. Even though there might be better technologies out there, light water is the one that utility companies know how to build, and that governments have historically been willing to fund.

...

Some reactor designs are safer than others in an accident; some are more efficient than others in their use of fuel and produce less nuclear waste. The fact that the industry settled on light water over any number of alternatives was determined in the years after World War II, when the US Atomic Energy Commission and Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover made a series of hasty decisions that irreversibly set the course for how nuclear power plants around the world are built today.

“There were lots and lots of ideas floating around, and they essentially lost when light water came to dominate,” said Robin Cowan, a professor at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Maastricht who wrote a 1990 paper in The Journal of Economic History about the nuclear industry’s technological stagnation. “The market tends to choose a dominant design before it’s optimal, and it tends to under-explore.”

The fact that light water was used in the first American nuclear power plant in 1957 made it that much more likely that subsequent nuclear plants in the United States and around the world would use it, too, as utility companies decided, one after another, that it was in their best interest to use a well-established reactor technology instead of trying something more experimental. The result was that many potentially viable proposals — including plants that, in an emergency, wouldn’t have depended on the diesel generators that failed at Fukushima — were stifled before anyone could properly evaluate them.

...

When nuclear fission was initially harnessed for energy, its first successful use was not in power plants, but in submarines. After the conclusion of World War II, the Navy wanted a submarine fleet that could stay underwater for long periods of time without having to come up for fuel. The key would be nuclear energy. In 1946, Rickover was put in charge of figuring out what kind of reactor should be used in these submarines.

Rickover had several kinds of reactor designs to choose from besides light water, which at the time was the exclusive domain of the American manufacturing giants Westinghouse and General Electric. The most significant differences among them had to do with the materials used to cool their cores and to moderate the fission process. The so-called heavy water reactor, developed in Canada, used a coolant based on a different isotope of hydrogen from that in normal water. (Light water is just normal H2O.) Gas-cooled reactors, meanwhile, which had their origins in Great Britain, did not use liquid coolant at all. The breeder reactor, developed by General Electric, relied on liquid sodium as a coolant.

Each one had its advantages. The sodium-cooled breeder reactors were more economically efficient; the gas-cooled reactors took longer to get hot, and would probably not melt down as quickly if their power failed. But Rickover’s choice ultimately came down to size. “He needed a reactor that would fit inside his submarine,” said Charles Forsberg, executive director of the MIT Nuclear Fuel Cycle Project. Because reactors built with light water technology could be much smaller than any other kind, Rickover decided they were the Navy’s best bet.

...

By 1970, according to Cowan’s research, light water had been adopted by every major consumer of nuclear power in the world except for Canada and Great Britain, who were at that point still trying to make a go of heavy water and gas-cooled, respectively. According to Finan, the federal regulations in the United States essentially assumed that plants would use light water technology, making it extremely difficult for any other type of plant to get clearance at all.

...

Light water may have been — and may still be — the best option available. Certainly the technology has been refined since its early days, and newer reactor designs have advanced safety features that partly address the cooling problems suffered in Japan. But the trouble with technological lock-in is that you never really know: With only one choice, it’s impossible to tell whether you might have been better off with one of the early alternatives.

NEW YORK — The nuclear crisis in Japan has laid bare an ever-growing problem for the United States — the enormous amounts of still-hot radioactive waste accumulating at commercial nuclear reactors in more than 30 states.

The United States has 71,862 tons of the waste, according to state-by-state numbers obtained by The Associated Press. But the nation has no place to permanently store the material, which stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years.

Plans to store nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain have been abandoned, but even if a facility had been built there, America already has more waste than it could have handled.

Three-quarters of the waste sits in water-filled cooling pools like those at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Japan, outside the thick concrete-and-steel barriers meant to guard against a radioactive release from a nuclear reactor.

...

The rest of the spent fuel from commercial US reactors has been put into dry cask storage, but regulators envision those as a solution for only about a century.

The US nuclear industry says the waste is being stored safely at power-plant sites, though it has long pushed for a long-term storage facility. Meanwhile, the industry’s collective pile of waste is growing by about 2,200 tons a year; analysts say some of the pools in the United States contain four times the amount of spent fuel that they were designed to handle.

...

Arcanis wrote:For the waste the most dramatic change could be allowing for the re-enriching of fuel. France has been doing this for decades and all of their waste is stored in a single room under one of their reactors. The next step is going to be making a long term storage facility as was mentioned in the article. Deep in a the mountains somewhere is probably the best choice, as the rock will provide a natural barrier that is simpler than trying to make a lead warehouse.

Arcanis wrote:By de-enriched I assume you are talking about the conversation from when you passed through Lafayette, about grinding up a rod and spreading it in a truck load of dirt. I'm actually fine with that concept as well. It shouldn't be hard to do the math to calculate how much radioactive stuff to mix with inert stuff to make it a low enough radioactivity level to be safe.

stessier wrote:

Arcanis wrote:By de-enriched I assume you are talking about the conversation from when you passed through Lafayette, about grinding up a rod and spreading it in a truck load of dirt. I'm actually fine with that concept as well. It shouldn't be hard to do the math to calculate how much radioactive stuff to mix with inert stuff to make it a low enough radioactivity level to be safe.

If you're going to do that, couldn't we just dump it in the ocean? Ground into a fine powder, I'm sure the currents would do a nice job of mixing and distributing it.

Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the nation.

Tritium, which is a radioactive form of hydrogen, has leaked from at least 48 of 65 sites, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records reviewed as part of the AP's yearlong examination of safety issues at aging nuclear power plants. Leaks from at least 37 of those facilities contained concentrations exceeding the federal drinking water standard — sometimes at hundreds of times the limit.

While most leaks have been found within plant boundaries, some have migrated offsite. But none is known to have reached public water supplies.