CDN Forces Reactor Online Against Safety Regulations 338
Socguy writes "The Canadian government has passed legislation that will reopen an Ontario nuclear reactor that produces most of the world's supply of critical medical isotopes, even though the site has been shut down for safety maintenance. Witnesses and experts were called in to the House to face questions about safety concerns and all parties eventually voiced support for the bill, which would effectively suspend CNSC's oversight role for 120 days. The Chalk River reactor ceased operating on Nov. 18. Pressure on the government to restart operations began to build after delays in the shutdown of the government-run site, which generates two-thirds of the world's radioisotopes, began to cause a critical shortage of radioisotopes."
I was going to ask... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, a show of hands... (Score:3, Insightful)
Got to love it... (Score:1, Insightful)
What a sound idea.. (Score:4, Insightful)
A spectacular idea. Why aren't we, maybe, wondering how we ended up with only ONE reactor that can produce this stuff in the first place?
Re:What a sound idea.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, an isotope production reactor doesn't produce electricity, so it doesn't compete with natural gas-fired electricity producers. With natural gas at $4 million per uranium-tonne-equivalent and the real thing at only $0.24 million, and hidden taxes on the $4 million, an electricity production reactor has enemies in government that an isotope production one does not.
Re:Got to love it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Got to love it... (Score:5, Insightful)
your wife's water just broke (Score:5, Insightful)
do you:
1. stop the car, and call for an ambulance
2. drive on, ignoring the light
i think we all know what the obvious answer is
folks: people could die without these radioisotopes. additionally, the safety issue is probably something extremely circumspect
please, no more scolding lectures about safety first, the canadian government did the right thing
It's not as terrifying as it sounds (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a large-scale power generating reactor. It's a relatively small "research" reactor and it is more or less middle of nowhere [google.ca].
From what I recall from the news stories, the current hold up is the backup power to the second pump is offline. The backup power to the first pump is online, and only one pump needs to be operating at any one time. The truly disgraceful thing is that the plant has been improperly operating without any proper backup power lines for months and months. The current unexpectedly long shut-down occurred because the improper backup systems were discovered by the regulators during a shorter planned down time.
On the flip side, critical medical scans are being canceled by the thousands across North and South America. You can't point at any specific case, but given the large number of procedures being delayed, I'd bet that someone out there is going to die on a daily basis because a scan is postponed.
Re:How did we get to this? (Score:1, Insightful)
These things happen.
Through Googling earlier today I saw there was a facility in the Netherlands [nrg-nl.com] (link has information about the moly and technetium cows they ship to hospitals.) I also saw mention elsewhere that Australia wasn't affected by the isotope shortage as they get theirs from South Africa. I expect there may be other facilities around the world producing these isotopes in limited quantities but none on the scale of the Canadian reactor.
I expect that these facilities and any others are doing what they can to help mitigate the shortage but I expect that they're limited in what they can do. I doubt one can just suddenly double or triple one's production of radioisotopes if one isn't set up to do so. You'd require more molybdenum, more packaging, more work to package, more paperwork, more personnel. You'd have to coordinate shipping outside your normal channels of distribution, etc.
Likely true. I saw that there is another reactor being built (presumably for this purpose) in Canada that is behind schedule. I didn't look into this much as I was only looking for information about the isotopes themselves. The political reasons why this particular reactor isn't completed were not what I was interested in.
Re:your wife's water just broke (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:your wife's water just broke (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, if a problem occurs at the plant best case is that the plant is shut down for much longer. Worse case is obvious and... unpleasant.
I've heard at least one person here report that at least some of the 'safety problems' amount to missing signage, and stuff like that.
People need these isotopes to save their lives, should we really keep the facility shutdown because the first aid kit doesn't have its full stock of bandages, a few water pipes aren't labelled as hot or cold, an inspection of the fire extinguisher in the cafeteria is overdue? I think not.
What if one of the generators is slightly overdue for maintenance, but the maintenance schedule is known to be extremely aggressive. (e.g. like doing on an "oil change" every 1500mi, even though the engine and the oil are spec'd for 3000mi. its a nucear reactor and all, and you want to be safe.) Is it really worth shutting the facility down if we're at 1600mi, given that people certainly lose their lives if you shut it down while its extremely unlikely to fail if you continue running it? And if it does FAIL, you've got a backup, and a contingency if that fails?
Point is, we need more information about the actual safety concerns and real risks before we applaud or condemn this move.
This is why I'm not a politician (Score:3, Insightful)
Leave the reactor closed, definitely kill people.
Behind door number 2: Violate safety regs on a reactor, possibly kill people.
Politics is definitely a game more fun to play from the bleachers. For what it's worth, I live in the country and I agree this is the best of a bad situation.
Min
Re:I was going to ask... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Radio 1 report. (Score:3, Insightful)
4 months @ approx. 30 days / month * 4 half-lifes per day = 480 half-lifes.
So, just to supply the one 6-hour period 6 months later, you would need 2^480 times as much material as you would need producing it right then. That's 3.1 × 10^144. The number of atoms in the Universe is often estimated at between 4 × 10^78 and 6 × 10^79. Conservatively, that's 5.2 × 10^64 times more atoms than are contained in the entire Universe.
Of course, you also need enough for the time period before, and the time period before that. Each time you need half as much. This amounts to a summation of 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8
Now, that said, others mentioned that it's probably "stored" and "shipped" as Mo-99, which has 66 hours' of half-life. This, of course, changes everything. In that case you only have to deal with about 44 half-lifes, or 1.4 × 10^13. Which is a hell of a lot less. To get one gram of material to ship at the end of this process (there will be less than a gram on arrival at the destination!) you only need 445000 Kg, or 445 tonnes, or a million pounds. Seriously, a million lbs. For one gram at the end. If you want one gram every 66 hours, you need two million lbs of the stuff. The compared to the fact that at constant rate production, you really only need 44 grams.
All of this math was brought to you so that I could point out that the gp was hilarious and you totally got whooshed. That, or I totally got whooshed by your dry irony trap. But I'm pretty sure it is you who are the whooshed.
bad analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
And people could die in a nuclear accident.
i think we all know what the obvious answer is
That's because you're no worse off calling the ambulance from your broken down car on the highway as you would be from home.
please, no more scolding lectures about safety first, the canadian government did the right thing
No, they did not, because this action will make it even harder to convince communities to permit nuclear facilities to be located near them.
Re:What a sound idea.. (Score:3, Insightful)
That which is unknown is definitely scary though. It's a choice between how many definitely die due to lack of medical radioisotopes, versus how many might be affected by a reactor failure.
I'm just glad i'm not the one making the decision, because you know the perception of the choice only depends on the results, not the validity of the reasoning behind the choice prior to results.
Bah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupid Russians aside (and trust me, Chernobyl wasn't an accident--it was the direct, foreseeable result of extreme stupidity. Quick analogy: Its crappy design made it the Pinto of nuclear reactors, and then the operators in charge basically went around slamming on their brakes randomly until they got rear-ended and the fucking thing blew up), pollution from fossil fuels (including--*gasp!*--radioactive pollution) outweighs pollution from nuclear power by many orders of magnitudes. People die every day due to the direct effects of using fossil fuels (and this isn't a snide criticism of Iraq, though that argument could certainly be made as well.) They explode. And cause cancer and respiratory illness. And then there's the whole greenhouse gas thing. Three mile island, on the other hand, dumped enough radiation into the area that they calculated there is a 50% chance that one extra person died from cancer. Eventually. Years later.
You see, what people fail to grasp is how utterly surrounded they are by radiation. Have you ever watched television on anything other than a flat screen? If so, you've been staring directly into a cathode ray tube. Wanna know what a CRT really is? A particle accelerator. It's beaming beta radiation (and some side-effect X-Rays as well) directly into your eyes. They actually have to add lead to the glass in TV sets to prevent the radiation from reaching harmful levels. I am not making this shit up; every day, millions (if not billions) of knee-jerk anti-nuclear hippies sit around for hours and stare directly into a particle accelerator. (Yes, you can argue that the power levels and leaded glass makes it a pretty safe activity, but that's PRECISELY my point. Just because radiation is involved doesn't mean something is inherently dangerous. Radiation is a danger like high current electricity or poisonous chemicals are a danger. We're surrounded by all three, all of the time, yet sane design renders these things fairly safe.)
And, of course, almost everyone will (at least a couple times in their lives) suffer a radiation burn--more commonly known as a "sunburn". Many people suffer these radiation burns repeatedly, even though they (like all radiation exposures) cause cancer, and even though they're fairly trivial to avoid.
I'm not arguing that we should have a cavalier attitude towards nuclear power--just a little sanity and appropriateness. I don't know the specifics in this case, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the safety requirements were minor and/or highly redundant. Personally, I'd rather we get decent air filters put on our coal-burning plants first. They're far more of a threat to our well-being.
Re:Bah! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have however, lived two hours away from a Canadian reactor which was mis-managed and unmaintained to the point where the thing was leaking radioactive water into the landscape. This was discovered in a big-scandal-stink, and the power company shortly after held a big public press-conference apologizing for their mistakes and promised transparency and honest ties to the community. Then a week later they were caught hiding another giant fault. The offending reactor went off-line shortly after.
I can't speak for the (imaginary?) anti-nuclear hippies, but can certainly say that while I don't mis-trust the technology, I certainly mistrust the government and corporations responsible for handling it.
-FL
Re:I was going to ask... (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the reactor that produces these radio isotopes is extremely critical to nuclear medicine around the globe, the government felt that delay was unacceptable and the extremely minor risk (as the reactor has operated many years just as it is without any incidents) was acceptable -- thus they said "Damn the backup pumps! Run the reactors! (just for 180 days)" -- in my opinion - the right choice. In the ensuing 180 days the engineering work can be completed, the pump systems can be obtained, and the reactors can be prepared for another week-long shutdown during which "short-time stockpiled isotopes" can be used (remember, even if it reaches its half-life, it's still working - and even after another half life it's still working - just need 4 times as much material to get the same amount of decay).
Re:Bah! (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, this [wikipedia.org] particular case of (spectacular) mismanagement has nothing to do with radiation release, although this [wikipedia.org] one does.
My beef with nuclear isn't so much the environmental issues, it is the financial issues. Nuclear is becoming relatively safe, but for the complete life-cycle of the plant (dirt lot to dirt lot), it is extremely expensive.
If you believe in open market solutions, nuclear just doesn't cut it. If you believe in -incredibly- huge subsidies, well...
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What a sound idea.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I was *shocked* by some things I observed there. Yes, to get in for a tour, I had to get all sorts of permissions, go past armed guards who checked my passport, etc. BUT, on the way out, I asked my guide why I didn't have to go through the radiation monitors. He explained that it was because I was a guest, and they didn't want to be disrespectful. I tried to tell him that it had nothing to do with respect or disrespect, and that in Canada, if the Queen herself had visited in the potentially radioactive area of a nuclear power plant, she would have walked through the radiation monitors on the way out. He didn't seem to get it.
I heard a number of stories about Chernobyl as well, from an academic working in the nuclear field there. People were not told ANYTHING about what had happened. The day after the accident was some sort of holiday, and people were gathering in the streets, not knowing anything about the fallout that was even then coming down. This person ordered his own family to stay indoors for their own safety, even over their protests that not joining the crowd would be considered unpatriotic.
He also told of the story he heard about the guard at Chernobyl who was standing right in the direct line of radiation from the plant. This guard was told "Comrade, at least stand behind this wall, you can still guard the doorway from there", and the guard answered "I was ordered to stand right here, so I will stand right here."
But to get back to the question of RBMK design.
One of the principles of CANDU design is redundancy. The control computer should always be able to control the plant safely. The control computers are duplicated, and if one fails, the other one takes over. If both computers fail, the plant automatically shuts down, as long as things like gravity keep working. Now, in the design of the safety systems, the emergency shutdown systems, you start with the ASSUMPTION that not only are the control computers working, but they are hostile and doing the exact opposite of what they are supposed to do, trying to increase power, keeping valves open when they should be shut, trying to shut valves that should be open, etc. The shutdown system has to be able to guarantee that the reactor is shut down safely even in those conditions. Then, there is an additional shutdown system, SDS2. SDS2 is designed by different people than SDS1 (if you've worked on one, you're not allowed to work on the other), uses equipment from different manufacturers, works on different physical principles, is located in a physically different area of the reactor, has its control equipment in a physically different area of the plant. Both systems are designed (as is the regular control system) to shut down the reactor immediately if they should lose power (e.g. power is used to hold UP control rods that shut down the reactor when they drop, power is used to hold CLOSED a valve that injects a neutron poison into the core when it opens). But even so, the equipment is powered by separate power systems. Anybody who does any maintenance on SDS1 is prohibited from doing any maintenance on SDS2, and vice versa. Everything is done to try to eliminate any common mode of failure. And then, of course, if the regular control system fails and both shutdown systems also fail, the reactor is designed with a negative power coefficient and is in a containment structure, which is ALSO designed to keep everything relatively safe even then. Really expensive, but safe. (Actually, even SDS2 is expensive: if it fires, the reactor can't be restarted for about two days, and the utility has lost two days of revenue.)
As far as I remember, the RBMK had only one emergency shutdown system, and it depended on signals it gets from the regular co