Alabama Nuclear Reactor Gets 'F' Grade 436
GatorSnake writes "The US federal government issued a rare red finding against an Alabama nuclear power plant after an emergency cooling system failure. 'In an emergency, the failure of the valve could have meant that one of the plant's emergency cooling systems would not have worked as designed (PDF).' Does this further erode the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age?"
You can never rule out risks completely (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem with nuclear reactors is that when things go wrong, it goes wrong in a way that's very hard to control and can have an enormous impact on the health of entire generations. Strong security measures are vital, but what Fukushima has shown us, is that greed and corruption can and will undermine those security measures.
I'm not fundamentally opposed to nuclear power, as long as it is safe and cost effective. But I really doubt whether it can be both at the same time.
Re:Isolated? (Score:5, Interesting)
That is exactly the problem. This is no different from the tragedies frequently encountered in coal mines. They cut corners and costs in the name of greater profits. And then when bad things happen, they say "whoops! This is an isolated incident. And we will fire someone for doing what we encouraged and even told them to do!"
The nuclear industry in the US has amazingly fearsome oversight. It happens that I word for a nuclear technology company and I can tell you first hand that "NRC" is mentioned in seemingly every business conversation with numerous and frequent meetings that involve NRC. So if the NRC didn't find this sooner, I have to wonder why. Has the government been cutting back on the NRC? I hope not and if they have, they need to reverse it and fast.
Nuclear energy is the best we have right now. But it also needs to be regulated and monitored closely. No one questions that fact.
Re:You can never rule out risks completely (Score:5, Interesting)
I tend to agree in many ways. It's not entirely an engineering problem.
The real risks come as a result of our system, which is squarely rooted in human greed and fallibility. We're risk-takers by nature, and the risk/reward equation is skewed toward danger.
For example:
If I'm a CEO and build a reactor, cutting costs by attenuating the safety systems specified by the engineers (e.g. using cheap materials for failsafes, or not installing them at all), my profit goes up. I saved a lot of money during construction, didn't I!
However, if something goes wrong and my poorly implemented safety mechanisms fail, my personal risk is actually quite low. I probably won't notice an impact on my earnings, I certainly won't go to jail, and once the media is done feeding on the corpse of my disaster, it's back to "business as usual."
This is a far cry from the careful designs of the engineer, and the scenario gets played out all the time, in various disciplines (see also: BP oil spill, mortgage-backed securities, etc).
Maybe the solution is to let the engineers control the nuclear industry, soup-to-nuts, and send the MBA's packing?
Re:Isolated? (Score:4, Interesting)
Lowest bidder and profit: Capitalists win, Everyone else lose. Dangerous things should not let in the hands of capitalists.
There should be a law saying that if someone put some money in an industry with the objective of making a profit, he should live with his family next to the most dangerous installation he put money in.
Re:That's a trivial thing! (Score:5, Interesting)
Solar doesn't require batteries. It can feed directly into the grid via an inverter. Solar panels are near 100% recyclable and most manufactures have free recycling schemes. The carbon payback from manufacturing is as low as 1 year.
You also need to stop thinking of solar as a domestic production source - that's just perverse. Solar on industrial scales is already approaching parity with coal power stations and was cheaper than nuclear last year.
And yes, yes, it doesn't produce power at night. Maybe you've heard of power storage, which is already used in many places to help balance grid loads.
There are plenty of challenges, but so many geeks have blinkers on when it comes to solar.
There are a couple of issues here... (Score:4, Interesting)
Secondly, the NRC has a long and storied history of letting nuclear plants run with known issues based on the promises that they'd be fixed. Now that they're in the spotlight because of Fukishima they're doing this shocking thing and actually calling plants on issues that have been long standing.
Thirdly, as a country we need to take a honest look at our existing nuclear plants. They're old. We've made HUGE advancements in nuclear power (just look at any reactor on a navy vessel) What we need to do is use that knowledge to either reengineer our existing reactors or look to replace them in place with better reactors.
Fourthly, we need to take an honest look at our nuclear fuel cycle, which is retarded. We need to start reprocessing fuel, not just storing it in dry casks. There is a huge amount of wasted energy not being extracted from those rods.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:You can never rule out risks completely (Score:4, Interesting)
To put it another way, at any instant the fusion reaction vessel contains about 1 second's fuel, whereas a fission reactor contains more than two years fuel. Extrapolating to the limit (which is not reasonable, but informative), in the worst accident possible by the laws of physics, the fusion reactor will blast of one second's output from the plant and then be inert, which the fission reactor will blast off an unknown fraction of that two years output and keep the rest in a dangerously grumbling state.
Re:zero (Score:2, Interesting)
This is nonsense. a) Most of those deads in the fossil fuel industry die in insecure mines in China. b) People with deformations, broken imune system and reduced life expectancy suffer from the Chernobyl incident (20 years ago). Also a lot of babies where born dead in that period and we will see a cancer increase in Japan in the next years. Radiation is killing slowly. BTW some people already died in Fukushima by conamination. And when you look at the liquidators in Chernobyl they paid a high price. c) Why are only fossile fuels a equivalent for you for nuclear power? Looks like a very US-logic thing.
Another isolated incident? (Score:4, Interesting)
Following the Fukushima accident I've asked several times about the Davis-Besse [wikipedia.org] near miss. What happened there was that boric acid had beed leaking undetected from a crack onto the reactor chamber for more than ten year. When it was finally discovered, it had eaten through the 20 cm of the pressure vessel's steel (the so-called "first containment chamber"); the remaining barrier containing the reactor's material was the 1 cm (or 5 mm, not clear) internal stainless cladding of the vessel, bearing alone the 170 bars of internal pressure. The cladding had bulged but did not break - by mere luck one would say.
Had it eventually given, then the high-pressure reactor coolant would have escaped in a jet; due to the location of the leak, it could have jammed the adjacent control rod mechanism, preventing insertion of the rods. So the Davis-Besse plant was literally at that time half-an-inch away from a total loss of coolant accident with a core on full power and no way to stop it. Right in Ohio, in the middle of the US. What would have happened then? I've asked several times but the only response I got was basically Nothing to see here, move along [slashdot.org].
Not that I like to dwelve in shaden-freude but really this kind of answer, coming from people who pride themselves so much of being smart and rational, looks disturbing. Shouldn't we try to assess the reality of the situation rather than build a fantasy world that suits our desires, conveniently ignoring uncomfortable facts?
Re:Isolated? (Score:4, Interesting)
That is exactly the problem. This is no different from the tragedies frequently encountered in coal mines. They cut corners and costs in the name of greater profits. And then when bad things happen, they say "whoops! This is an isolated incident. And we will fire someone for doing what we encouraged and even told them to do!"
The problem is in most cases nobody is explicitly told to cut safety. What they are told is "Here is your budget, do everything". Most mid level managers don't have the balls to reply "Sorry can't do everything with that budget", and instead bounce it downstairs to where it finally gets to the team responsible for execution. They're given tasks which take 36 hours per day, and when they don't get done in the timeframe alotted everybody shrugs and says "we will get to it next week".
When bad things happen everybody starts pointing fingers.....guys upstairs saying "I told them to do it", guys downstairs saying "didn't have enough time/people/resources", and the lawyers saying "isolated incident".
Something this dangerous should not be in the hands of profit making corporations...the budgets are always set so the profit margin is there. As the plants age the budgets for maintenance need to increase eroding overall profit. Today nobody worries about profit in 30 years.
Re:"Modern" nuclear age (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll bite. Where is there a 20 year old design in use?
I can't think of any less than 40 years old myself.
Re:Modern? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just did a quick wiki of your list.
Looks like there are currently FOUR reactors online that are Generation III. All of the same type, all in Japan.
No, Generation IV online, or even under construction.
Note that even the four Gen III reactors online are using 20+ year old designs.
Re:Yes (Score:0, Interesting)
Yes, the modern reactor of Japan worked very well. Until it didn't.
That train of thought works well for China, too. "It works great until it doesn't!" Use that everywhere! My cat food needs more poison in it. I don't want working air bags. We demand even more lead in our drinking glasses! Our financial market demands no more regulation! Oh wait, that's an American invention.
Frequency, Severity, Detectibility (Score:5, Interesting)
Does this further erode the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age?"
The principles of reliable and robust engineering and risk management do not change no matter how "modern" the device. Fukushima was fundamentally not a failure of technology but one of risk assessment and mitigation. They knew that an earthquake and tsunami combination was a virtual inevitability but they failed to build the seawall protections and backup generator system to withstand the most severe events that could reasonably occur. 9.0 earthquakes occur fairly regularly along the Pacific rim. It was absolutely possible for engineers to build adequate protections but for various reasons (cost undoubtedly among them) they chose not to. Despite the design being an older design the problems at Fukushima still could have been prevented with adequate backup systems and/or improved seawalls.
When auditing risks you evaluate three things: Frequency, Severity, and Detectability. When talking about nuclear plants severe events are fairly rare but the potential severity is extremely high. That's potentially ok if the risk is detectible but as Fukushima illustrates, sometimes flaws are only obvious to the people looking after the fact. Complexity typically increases frequency of problems and decreases their detectability. Nuclear plants are unquestionably complex and some parts of them are difficult to evaluate for problems.
The problem with the analysis is that it's still possible to underestimate or even completely miss a failure mode. The engineers at Fukushima clearly understood the severity part of the equation but they seem to have underestimated the frequency or likelihood of a 15 meter high tsunami and then failed to develop adequate mitigation plans. Sadly this sort of mistake is all too common in every human endeavor.
These are old reactors and due to "environmentalist" blocking of building new (safe) ones they are kept functioning. Is it strange they start to rot?
There is no such thing as a 100% safe nuclear (fission) plant. These plants are designed by people and even the best intentioned people make mistakes. We might decide the risks are acceptable but there will be risks. Newer designs have the potential to be safer (safer not safe) but without adequate risk analysis and maintenance, they can be every bit as dangerous as older designs.
Re:You can never rule out risks completely (Score:4, Interesting)
Newer nuclear power stations are protected from flooding, and in fact Fukushima Daini just down the coast from Daiichi survived a similar size wave. They key protection is that the emergency generators were in a waterproof building and thus worked as intended. The ones at Daiichi that failed were flooded.
Actually they are going to re-build the villages destroyed by the tsunami in the same place, so they must think they can prevent another one doing the same again. I got back from Japan at the end of March so things may have changed since then, but at the time there was talk of putting underwater barriers in that remove a lot of the wave's energy.