Would You Trust an 80-Year-Old Nuclear Reactor? 429
the_newsbeagle writes "The worst nuclear near-disaster that you've never heard of came to light in 2002, when inspectors at Ohio's Davis-Besse nuclear power station discovered that a slow leak had been corroding a spot on the reactor vessel's lid for years (PDF). When they found the cavity, only 1 cm of metal was left to protect the nuclear core. That kind of slow and steady degradation is a major concern as the US's 104 reactors get older and grayer, says nuclear researcher Leonard Bond. U.S. reactors were originally licensed for 40 years of operation, but the majority have already received extensions to keep them going until the age of 60. Industry researchers like Bond are now determining whether it would be safe and economically feasible to keep them active until the age of 80. Bond describes the monitoring techniques that could be used to watch over aging reactors, and argues that despite the risks, the U.S. needs these aging atomic behemoths."
Meanwhile, some very, very rich individuals have taken an interest in the future of nuclear power.
I wouldn't. (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn't trust an 80-year-old anything.
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:4, Informative)
Politics not science decides questions like this. You get what you vote for, serves you right.
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:5, Funny)
Not me, I voted for the honest hard working guy.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Whether we like it or not folks our need for power is going nowhere but up, rolling blackouts in this heat will frankly leave some folks dead, including elderly and the sickly,
That happened in France, a country that is mostly nuclear. When ambient temperatures got too high they had to idle their reactors or dump hot water into rivers, killing off all the wildlife.
What we need is reliable 24/7/365 power and so far the renewables simply can't give us
Simply not true. We have solar that works 24/7, and wind is perfectly reliable 24/7 if you just build enough of the things in different places. Plus there is geothermal, hydro and so forth. Rather than waste time and money building more nuclear and then cleaning up after it let's try something else.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Solar, even in the desert: people complain about the local flora and fauna.
Geothermal: people complain that you're creating earthquakes.
Hydro: Dams are Satan's tools.
Wind: It's killing the BIRDS!
I have friends I argue with incessantly about these things, who seem to have the odd idea that a solar panel on your roof will power your entire house and everything in it, all day long
Re: (Score:3)
I can't speak for others, but I suspect he's talking about concentrated solar thermal [wikipedia.org]. Some configurations use a molten salt (usually a fluoride) as the operating fluid. This also acts as a thermal mass which can be stored underground, then pumped out after sundown to run the generators at night. Personally I prefer other approaches, but there have been a few of these plants built, and they seem to work as advertised.
Another cool application of molten salts is a liquid metal battery [xconomy.com] technology recently deve
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:4, Informative)
we have ancient electrical grid which needs to be upgraded
The electrical grid is upgraded constantly -- my dad was a lineman for 40 years, you think he just sat around playing cards waiting for a branch to break a power line? He spent ten years of his career building new high tension 30kv power lines!
Right now, Amerin is building a "smart grid" in Illinois. Sorry, but you're uninformed about the situation. The grid is constantly upgraded, and has been for a hundred years.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The problem we have 2 sides of Stupid.
1. I hate everything nuclear. It is dangerous and scary, and it is a nuclear bomb going to kill us all!!!!!
2. Nuclear Energy Safe, Clean, Too safe to meter.
Nuclear Energy is a viable energy source. It is cleaner then a lot of our other major energy sources, and it can be placed in different locations. However it does have a lot of Toxic/Radioactive problems that needs long term (Aka 10,000 years) solutions to deal with. We need to stop being so partisan in Nuclear Ene
Re: (Score:3)
Runs on plentiful thorium (nearly too-cheap-to-meter)
Capable of powering Fischer-Tropche (sp?) carbon fuel generation
Fails safe in a non-critical mode.
Look it up. Solves 99% of our problems with nuclear power.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Can he still contain a nuclear reaction?
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn't trust your grandfather for two seconds.
Two things:
1) Old people run dangerously low on fucks, and therefore have much less to give. Not good. Especially, if they can be amused by whatever their addled, senile brains have come up with.
2) The old adage that youth and skill will always fail when faced with old age and treachery. After years of collecting data on this phenomenon I confidently state this is as true as gravity.
My grandfather is gone, and I do miss him terribly, but I do also sleep better without worrying what prank he is going to play next. That, and my mother screaming, "get your balls off my couch old man". He refused to wear anything other than a kimono that did not fit him.
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, just wow. I'm having trouble processing this.
That's exactly what I thought having to see his balls hanging off the edge of the couch every morning....
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
Either science and engineering is right or it isn't. If you think engineers can safely build a nuclear reactor and operate it for 40 years, why is 80 years different if they can demonstrate strong engineering judgement? And if 80 years isn't safe, then what arbitrary number is it that it becomes unsafe?
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
If we were depending on anything as rational as science, engineering or judgement we wouldn't run them past their designed lifespans.
There's these things called "safety margins" that engineers like, and these things called "new designs" that scientists like, but none of that will be as important as what the rich political donors want. Because the people making the decisions, at the end, will be the politicians.
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, pretend you are a nuclear engineer. The reactor you built in the late 60s was designed with large safety margins because much of the material science and thermal hydraulics was not as advanced as it is today. Additionally, the instrumentation was of a poorer design and the accident analyses were performed with computers designed in the 60s. In 2012, the safety margin can be expanded based on what is known, as well as improvements to the plants over the years (like the post TMI changes). 40 years of operating reactors has given enormous amounts of data on material corrosion and neutron exposure.
These reactors were designed to operate for 40 years in the same way that the Martian rovers were designed to operate 90 days. The designed lifetime is engineering speak for a very conservative rough guess based on current conditions.
There's the second side of the coin (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm assuming you are writing about TMI. The instrumentation wouldn't have been considered up to legal standards of even a fertilizer plant at the time, the "clean and safe" myth had won out and allowed some dangerous corner cutting to save cash. Nothing that generates large amounts of heat is safe unless you take care to make it so.
It's not like designing a lift with a known safety factor. These things are all prototypes to an extent. You don't go to the moon on Apollo 1, and you can't expect the first reactor of any design to be perfect.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes.. yes.. yes... all good points.
The question was would you trust it. Considering the rampant corruption in the world, it's a pretty fair assumption that there are going to be financial and political interests steering the "engineering" decisions.
It's not the reactor that I don't trust. It's not the engineers I don't trust.
The managers, politicians, and those with financial interests I don't trust for two fucking seconds.
Put it another way... I would trust being transported from place to place with a transporter beam just fine.... in theory. However, not when operated by a capitalist corporation that is trying to save money on costly maintenance and inspections and has figured out that my accidental death is cheaper in the long run than hiring those expensive "Star Fleet" trained technicians and decides to go with somebody with an online degree.
Re: (Score:3)
If you got transported you'd die when you were deconstructed on the departure side anyways :-P
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:5, Informative)
Once upon a time, back when nuclear power plants were first being built, it wasn't especially clear what effect neutron embrittlement would have over the lifetime of a nuke plant.
As a result, the plants tended to be over-engineered to astonishing degree.
Newer plants weren't over-engineered to such an extreme degree, but were still over-engineered.
In other words, the 40 year design lifetime was a VERY conservative estimate. Whether they can survive 80 years is debatable, but that's a question for the engineers/scientists.
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:5, Funny)
No, it's a question for the CEO/Board of Directors. When they want the opinion of engineers/scientists, they'll give it to them.
Re: (Score:3)
Yet another reason why corporations should have nothing to do with elections, most definitely including financing them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And then there's these things, called "profits" that corporations like, so fuck you very much, that reactor is going to stay online.
And they've got a $500,000.00 campaign contribution made out to your opponent's name that says so.
Re: (Score:3)
This is a common misconception. Nuclear plants are not "designed to last 40 years". They have no designed lifespan. They are designed to last as long as possible given other safety requirements. The reason why they were licensed for 40 years is because the NRC (AEC at the time) figured that was the least amount of time the plant should be able to run without requiring a major overhaul. At the time, no one knew how long they would really last without requiring such expensive overhauls as to make it not finan
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So you think a 20-year-old car drive 400,000 miles runs the same as 10-year-old car driven 200,000 miles?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If that car was maintained with as much oversight & regulation as a nuclear reactor, then yes, it would run just as well. In fact, it would probably run *better* at 20 years than at 10 just due to upgrades that weren't available as original equipment.
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
So you think a 20-year-old car drive 400,000 miles runs the same as 10-year-old car driven 200,000 miles?
Do you think a 1 year old car runs as well as a 5 year old car?
Pick your poison. If you are going to pick an arbitrary number to label 'unsafe', there ought to be some sort of justification.
My argument is that if the engineering supports continued operation (with longevity modifications as necessary) then that is enough if we believe that engineering is a valid discipline that can design this type of technology. This logic isn't specific to nuclear reactors. It applies to airplanes, bridges, dams, ships, etc. I'm not saying that risk doesn't need to be factored in. It does. But not in a haphazard FUD dominated way without looking at the data.
Why do we operate dams for over 100 years? The engineering supports it.
Why do we operate airplanes for over 30 years? The engineering supports it.
Why do we sail ships that are over 50 years old? The engineering supports it.
Why do we operate nuclear reactors for over 40 years?
Price-Anderson (Score:3)
To me your post looks deceptive, so I'm going to expand upon it a bit.
By law, every reactor must carry the maximum amount of private insurance possible*. Currently, this is $375M. For $860k, which gives you that the insurance companies think there's roughly a .22% (yes, less than 1%) chance that they'll have to pay out.
Add up all the benefits and my auto insurance is roughly $450k worth of benefits. Annual premium is ~$1k. Seems they think that I'm about as likely to have an accident as the nuke plant (
Re: (Score:3)
I personally drive a 25 year old SUV with 340K miles on it. Its mostly original. I don't believe the engine has been replaced, nor have any of the other major components. It has seen regular maintenance, and it is a good, reliable old truck. It was built to be stout (its siblings raced in the Paris-Dakar rally, and won!) and it was built to last a long time.
So, if an 80 year old reactor was engineered to last that long, and was properly maintained during its lifetime, why not?
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Either science and engineering is right or it isn't. If you think engineers can safely build a nuclear reactor and operate it for 40 years, why is 80 years different if they can demonstrate strong engineering judgement? And if 80 years isn't safe, then what arbitrary number is it that it becomes unsafe?
But in fact they designed and built it to operate safely for 40 years...
We have been lucky that they were being conservative (as most good engineers are) and it has lasted 60 years. I'd rather not push my luck to 80 years.
If it were designed and built to last 80 years, yes I would trust it to last 80 years. We know a lot more about nuclear physics than we did when these plants were designed. We have a much better understanding of what not to do, which gives us a much better understanding of what to do. If the engineers say that the new design is good for 80 years, great. If the engineers say that it is good for 40 years, I am certainly not going to try and talk them into 80 years. That would be the difference between engineering and politics.
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:5, Funny)
If you think engineers can safely build a nuclear reactor and operate it for 40 years, why is 80 years different if they can demonstrate strong engineering judgement?
If I can safely run 40 feet along a pier without falling into the water, why is 80 feet any different?
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:4, Funny)
Well, the original estimate was 30 feet, but then I increased that estimate to 40 feet. Then I figured that since I hadn't fallen into the water after one extension of my estimate, I could extend the estimate to 80 feet.
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what, should we get our power from unicorn farts? The energy has to come from somewhere. The people arguing that Nuclear isn't safe might have fingers in the Oil pie. Just like the people against pipelines who are in the rail-transport business....
It would be interesting if we could find a way to close the circle - each group preventing something because they profit from something else, but rely on something that is prevented by another group, etc.
less people demanding resources (Score:3)
Fine. You can lead the way.
What? You're unwilling to give up your nice house, computer, car/motorcycle/bicycle, etc...?
Saving resources is only part of the puzzle. It's been a while since I did the calcs, but shifting to 100% electric vehicles would increase the average* family's electricity usage by ~50%. You can indeed do a bunch of power shifting in such a scenario to keep demand even, such that you'd need a lot less than 50% build up in power lines and such, and you certainly wouldn't need 50% more
Re: (Score:3)
I don't see a problem. Engineers double estimates to ensure safety. For critical situations like military (or nuclear) they triple or quadruple their estimates. So I don't see a problem with a reactor being extended from 40 to 80 in lifespan since it was probably designed to handle 120 years. I wouldn't go beyond double though.
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
I see a problem. Although engineers usually have large safety margins, the margin is only relative to the known data at the time. Over 40-60 years, better data points become available which may not have been apparent when the original margin was computed resulting in a much smaller real margin.
The problem: although people can do recomputations for the problem that are obvious to newcomers (a 35yo experienced engineer 60 years later is 95yo consulting engineer long retired or dead), how many built-in assumptions did the original designers make that weren't thought to be critical design issues are now violated by new information? Probably quite a few. How will this likely be addressed? By ignoring this issue because is it too expensive to address.
Your attitude is similar to what was pointed to in the Challenger report, appendix F [nasa.gov]. To paraphrase: If it is true that if the reliability was so high that it could handle 120 years, it would take an inordinate number of tests to determine it (you would get nothing but a string of perfect results from which no precise figure, other than that the probability is likely more than the number of years so far). But, if the real probability of failure is not so small, similar reactors would show troubles, near failures, and possible actual failures with a reasonable number of trials and standard statistical methods could give a reasonable estimate.
However, sometime people attribute the lack of actual failure as proving the design and "go-with-their-gut" instead of using available statistical methods to do real analysis change the definition of margin to justify their conclusions.
Given the number of reactors is small and we have seen trouble and near failures in some reactors of similar design already (such as the one pointed out by this article), perhaps this estimate is a bit optimistic? Just sayn...
Re: (Score:3)
There are really good reasons for these safety margins. There are variations and tolerances in every single component and in the environment that each component is subjected to. These range from impurities in materials, variation in workmanship, tolerances in moving parts, variation in the levels and types of radiation, temperature pressure components are exposed to and a lot of unknown variables such as the long term effects of exposure to variou
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I wouldn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
I might trust an 80 year old reactor, but I wouldn't trust the suits running it.
If only there were another solution... (Score:4, Insightful)
Like building new reactors to replace the old ones.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
And just what makes you think they're not?
I'm pretty sure the newer ones aren't as safe (Score:3)
The newer ones were built in a much stronger regulatory climate, which is not to say a much more stringent one, but instead one in which the regulations were constantly changing during construction.
As a result, newer plants have a lot of "engineering modifications" on top of their original designs, and every one of those modifications is a potential point of failure because the system was not considered as a whole when the regulation was decided, and the minimum delta necessary to comply with the regulation
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
More than enough fuel. Especially because nearly all plants currently in operation only go so far. You've only truly spent the fuel once it's stable (non-radioactive), and even then, you might be able to extract even more energy from it.
Unfortunately, that requires new reactor designs, which the usual crowd hates more than Satan himself. Ironic, isn't it? Hippies are more likely to contribute to our collective demise than the devil himself.
Re: (Score:3)
No, I'm talking about right now, where the hailing of breeder reactors as the second coming of nuclear power is all hype and no cattle. If they were half as great as the fanboys claim, the nuclear power industry would be in a rush to build them and start using all that spent fuel.
Re: (Score:3)
The core issue is: they are!
Stop and think: it was needed a full, cataclysmic tsunami to make Fukushima colapses. This is not small shit.
Granted, I'm not saying modern reactors are safe. But they're a lot safer than the old ones - or perhaps, less unsafe.
But they're not cheap.
Re:If only there were another solution... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, a once in a thousand year event. But how many places on the planet experience a "one in a thousand years" event in a given year? How about after hundreds of new reactors are built around to world to meet increasing power needs and as replacements for old reactors?
Re: (Score:3)
Cataclysmic tsunamis tend to happen at the same time as massive earthquakes for some reason. It's almost as if there's some kind of casual link between the two...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They could [thorium.tv] be [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Re:If only there were another solution... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If only there were another solution... (Score:5, Funny)
That's why I'm terrified of nuclear families.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They are safe and cheap...
But coal is "safer" [1] and cheaper.
I get a bit cynical when I see people grumbling about old nuclear technology. To use the car analogy, it would be akin to banning cars since someone's Edsel or Packard threw a rod.
[1]: Safer because it doesn't conjure up the radioactive boogyman, even though some statistics say coal plants toss up more radioactive crap in the air on an annual basis than nuclear reactors even use.
Re: (Score:3)
According to a study done by under the Bush administrator, coal power plants kill 24,000 a year, including 2,800 lung cancer deaths [msn.com], in the US alone.
A more recent source "only" blames coal for 13,000 deaths a year in the US.
We would be outraged if normally functioning nuclear power plants caused even a t
Re: (Score:3)
Except when an Edsel or Packard throws a rod, it wouldn't render entire cities uninhabitable for thousands of years.
Re: (Score:3)
the problem is the near pure U233 that can trivially be extracted from the thorium fuel cycle. that stuff's very good for making nukes.
i don't see it as a problem - anyone who wants nukes and has the capability to solve the not insignificant design challenges involved, already has nukes.
anyone who does not, wont get them from thorium when magnox plans are available essentially for free.
Re: (Score:3)
The history of industrial development shows it's better to let OTHER people waste their money on research/development (and also advertising the new product to educate the public). Then you just copy the end result.
Microsoft is extremely good is this (or used to be). So too is Apple: They didn't invent laptops, iPods, or tablets... they just copied other designs & then tweaked the interface (to be easy to use by their non-technical fans).
Re: (Score:2)
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Get rid of them, build new ones. Simple enough, but of course, there's always the usual group, saying how bad nuclear power is... The only thing that accomplishes is a mixture of more coal/natural gas power plants and increasingly old nuclear reactors, operating way beyond their designed lifespan.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree political opposition is a big problem, but afaict the capital costs and potential liability are a big problem as well.
The biggest problem is liability, which I believe is currently covered by a government guarantee. It is puzzling, though, that nobody big will take on construction of a nuclear plant without substantial government liability protection and guarantees. Dick Cheney even said that "nobody" would build a plant without that protection, because they don't want to take on the potentially unlimited liability if something really bad happens. But why would you be worried about a risk of an accident that basically can't happen due to modern safety protections? Skeptics suspect this reveals that the risk isn't as close to 0% as claimed. Another explanation is that it is but the management of power companies are out of date with their information, or irrationally conservative on the matter.
Re: (Score:3)
Even a hypothetical foolproof reactor will not prevent a class action lawsuit if disease rates go up in the vicinity of the reactor.
Nuclear is such a boogyman that correlation may equal causation for a jur
Re: (Score:3)
I can buy that, but then why was there so much noise about renewing the Price-Anderson disaster-liability limitation? If there aren't really safety risks with new plants, why does the nuclear industry care about being indemnified from them?
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's all the fault of those damn greenies. There's no way the entrenched powers who actually control things could possibly have anything to do with it - secretly, you know, a bunch of dirty hippy flower children control all the world's investment banks, that explains everything!
Let's face it, in the USA "greens" have less power than dog fanciers. This Rush Limbaugh meme of blaming them for all US nuclear power issues is hilarious.
Re: (Score:3)
Let's face it, in the USA "greens" have less power than dog fanciers
Bull fucking shit.
Ever hear of the northern gateway pipeline in Canada? There's thousands of fake petitioners on the committee hearing list for the environmental oversight meeting up here in Canada placed on there by various groups linked directly to Tides Foundation Canada, and the Tides Foundation in the US. Including people in other countries who didn't sign up.
They do it in Canada, they do it in the US. If you don't think they do, you're woefully ignorant.
Let's make a deal (Score:3)
Ding ding ding ding! We have a winner! (Score:3, Insightful)
I get the feeling the industry is making excuses to save money. I just don't buy that the anti-nuclear group is running the whole show.
Whenever industry - any industry- points fingers at environmentalists, lawyers, politicians, or anything else, they are lying.
Industry has Congress in their pockets. They can thumb their noses at environmentalists or anyone else.
When a company says, " We can't do 'x' because of liability or whatever" they are making excuses to cover their ass so that they don't have to admit - "We're not doing 'x' because we don't make as much money."
That is ALWAYS the real reason - not enough money.
Re: (Score:3)
So you've never brought a car in for a checkup and either gotten a clean bill of health or some minor fixes, and been told everything is running great, only to have something major bad happen not that long after?
If you haven't, I bet someone you know has.
Pathetic (Score:2)
I think it's pathetic that it's the 21st century, and we've harnessed the power of the atom to boil water to make steam to make electricity.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it's pathetic that it's the 21st century, and we've harnessed the power of the atom to boil water to make steam to make electricity.
Dunno.. Sounds to me like that's more impressive than burning old plant and animal carcasses dug up from underground to boil water to make steam to make electricity.
Re: (Score:3)
Not quite as impressive as using the gravatational force of the planet or tidal power tho.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah. And where's my flying car?
Re: (Score:3)
Gravatational rotation of the planet = Tesla tower
Kinetic energy from the ocean waves = Salter's duck
Both would/could supply our energy needs but instead, our political process have been subverted by the nuclear lobby...
Jesus H. Christ, do you really think anyone would have gone through all the trouble of electrifying the entire world, laying all of that copper cabling when there was a plausible option for sending it wirelessly?!?!
Obligatory XKCD link [xkcd.com]. However, I must add, that I have walked through the halls of power, I know the people whom control the levers of society and they are all WAY to incompetent to pull off such a conspiracy.
No worries (Score:5, Insightful)
Well sure the regulators would not extend the license unless it was absolutely safe. And the power companies know they would get a painful slap on the wrist if anything went wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
The trouble is the slap on the wrist is just that - a slap and no more. It should be a capital crime (electric chair for added irony, or perhaps radiation poisoning) for the entire board, CEO down, if a nuclear power plant were to melt down.
SimCity (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Wait, I thought the whole point of Sim City was to create the best city you could, only to play with the multitude of options at your disposal to destroy it.
Would you trust an 80 year old dam? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait, we are [wikipedia.org].
Re:Would you trust an 80 year old dam? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure what your point is.
I really wonder who thinks the comparison between a huge chunk of steel reinforced concrete and the corrosive environment of a nuclear reactor is somehow insightful.
Ultimately, a dam's lifespan is determined by the build up of silt behind it.
The Hoover dam will be put to rest when either the silt builds up high enough or
the cost to maintain it is higher than the cost to remove it. Whichever comes first.
Re: (Score:3)
Concrete gets stronger the longer it cures. Metals tend to corrode and fatigue.
Although the age they were built does help. They didn't have as advanced analysis as we do today so they tended to overbuild things to compensate.
Technical Analysis (Score:5, Interesting)
The process currently requires that licensee demonstrate using technical analysis that the vessel is fully capable of performing its design function for the entire licenses period. As long as technical analysis demonstrate that the vessel will continue to function, why not allow the plants to extend their license indefinitely? If the stress on the vessel due to cooldowns, heatups, and neutron flux is less than the margin for performing its design function, then preventing a extending license is an action based on fear not science.
A common misconception is that plants were only initially licensed for 40 years due to technical concerns. As it turns out the AEC (the predecessor to the NRC) just picked an arbitrary amount of time to issue operating licenses. There was not a technical basis to the 40 year time period. That being said, some manufactures may have used the 40 year time period as a design input for reactor designs. However there is no mysterious phenomenon that causes the reactor to turn into a pumpkin.
I nearly died today (Score:3, Interesting)
No really, I came within a cat's whisker of having a terrible blowout at highway speed and being crunched by an 18 wheeler.
But what actually happened is I didn't drive anywhere today, so I didn't have a blowout, so I didn't lose control of my car, so I wasn't crunched by an 18-wheeler.
WHEW, that was close!
OH, and the Davis-Besse reactor didn't cause any probvlems either.
Has anybody bothered to read the report? (Score:4, Informative)
Quote:
Task Force Conclusions
The lessons learned task force (LLTF) concluded that the DBNPS VHP
nozzle leakage and RPV head degradation event was preventable. While
this review was primarily introspective, this question could not be
answered without considering industry activities and DBNPS’s per-
formance. At DBNPS, early indications of RPV corrosion were missed
such as radiation element system filters being clogged by boric acid and
corrosion fines, the build up of boric acid deposits on containment air
cooler fins and large amounts of boric acid deposits on the RPV head.
The task force concluded that the event was not prevented because: (1)
the NRC, DBNPS, and the nuclear industry failed to adequately review,
assess, and follow-up on relevant operating experience, (2) DBNPS
failed to assure that plant safety issues received appropriate attention,
and (3) the NRC failed to integrate known or available information into
its assessments of DBNPS’s safety performance. Furthermore, an NRC
investigation concluded that DBNPS did not adequately execute the
boric acid corrosion control program in response to an NRC Generic
Communication, and the NRC did not adequately review the industry
implementation of long term commitments, such as the commitment to
maintain a boric acid corrosion control program.
The problem is not the age of the reactor, but proper implementation of safety reviews. I hope this will be changed.
I got a fix for this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Start letting industry build new ones! There are some excellent modern designs which would be a great improvement on safety and even some that can help us dispose of high level long half life waste by converting it to stuff with shorter a half life. We are simply storing this stuff at the plant that generates it right now and that's CRAZY. We should be using it to generate power with these new reactor designs.
Start reprocessing all the spent fuel into forms where we can use it again. There is 40 plus years of used fuel assemblies just sitting inside these plants that could be reprocessed and reused with the side benefit of making the physical size of the high level waste much smaller and easier to handle. The waste can be encased in glass or ceramics and made ready for long term storage. Which brings me to the final thing we need to do...
Get one or more high level waste sites completed ASAP so we can start dealing with the *real* problem here. I'm worried more about the thousands of fuel assemblies just sitting in storage pools corroding than the danger from aging power plants springing leaks and melting down. We need to get this really dangerous stuff into more secure locations and stabilized environment where it can be stored in a more permanent way.
O.G. Nuclear Reactor (Score:4, Funny)
I trust the sun.
Old or new reactors? (Score:4, Interesting)
Clarity (Score:5, Informative)
1) Just to be clear: There are NO 80 year old reactors. If Chicago-Pile 1 was still operating, it would turn 70 this year. The oldest currently operating nuclear reactor is the Oyster Creek facility. This reactor came online December 23rd 1969 making it 42 years old curerntly. This is according to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_Creek_Nuclear_Generating_Station [wikipedia.org]
2) All NRC regulated reactors have maintenance performed on the systems every outage, to the point that much of the facility is newer than the day it turned on. This is due to maintenance and repair activity, as well as upgrades to improve efficiency. The article calls this "midlife refurbishment". The industry does this because it is easier and less costly than a new reactor. The thought process of the industry is that it is easier to tear down and rebuild under the existing license than it is to get approval for a new license. If the industry could feasibly replace a reactor vessel, I would bet they would.
3) ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Section 3 is a good code. Creep, Fatigue, Corrosion, and many other issues are addressed in this code that the non-nuclear codes for B&PV only tough upon exotic need, and then refer the engineer to the section 3 code. I encourage you to read it.
4) Some reactor operators send material samples to the Advanced Test Reactor at the INL for accelerated radiation age testing. This information is sought by the reactor operators to gain a better understanding for themselves about their own equipment.
5) Reactors are designed for a much longer life than 40 years, but the NRC set the 40 year license to force a mid-life review. Reactors get far better treatment than any car or plane that most people have ever have ridden in. In this context, a 40 year old reactor properly maintained is very possibly not a safety concern.
6) The Davis-Besse RPV head mentioned by the article was a case of criminal conduct in the eyes of some people, and is not considered normal operating behavior by people I have met from the industry. Whatever the facts are, the indictment can be found here. http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/documents/indictment.pdf [corporatec...porter.com]
7) Reactors designed to operated under the NRC have a "defense in depth" safety approach. The reactor and facilities are given a design basis accident that is a conservative forecasting of potential accident scenarios.
8) The NRC has a glossary available to you http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary.html [nrc.gov] note the term "meltdown" is not there. Many people associated with the nuclear field feel that it is a poor term that does not adequately describe a problem's behavior or severity. This is borne out of the use of the term for several reactor failures that all had different designs, behaviors, and severity of failure.
9) New reactor designs offer some stimulating improvements. The Generation 4 reactor effort can be found at http://www.gen-4.org/ [gen-4.org] currently the US is operating Gen 2 reactors.
one slight issue left out of that neat list: (Score:3)
The profit motive. As long as for-profit companies are running nuclear power plants, pennies will be pinched and corners will be cut. It's a question of when, not if.
Cases in point: the location of the Fukishima reactor, U.S. plants turning off earthquake sensors to save money, U.S. plants wanting to stop evacuation drills, and the top U.S. regulator being forced out because he (gasp) wanted to focus on safety. Which costs money.
New technology is great, but we need to get the profit motive out of nuclear
ex post clusterfart (Score:3)
It would have been damn stupid to license them for any other duration. Forty years is about the minimum for the operators to feel confident about the horizon to recover their capital cost, and it gives you a long time to gain experience (which was thin on the ground in the 1960s) about how long this kind of facility actually lasts.
The forty year original term had ZERO absolutely ZERO implications on whether anyone back then believed these reactors would run another zero to fifty years after the original license term, and I'm sure many suspected that even making it to forty years was something to be hoped for and not necessarily expected, no matter what was stated in the original design guidance.
In engineering terms, there's no other way to do it. The problems begin when graft enters the license extension process, and when the expensive process of monitoring how well your facility is holding up is forsaken in exchange for a corporate jet and a lot of fancy dinners in Washington.
Re: (Score:2)
That's the same thing as saying airplanes are inherently unsafe and using your car to get from A to B is much safer.
Guess what. Neither statement is true.
Re:What is there to turst? (Score:5, Insightful)
People keep comparing the deaths per capita from nuclear to things like car and plane accidents and especially other methods of power generation. I would suggest its NOT A USEFUL METRIC.
Our society has the means to absorb the geographically dispersed individual and and handfuls of people lost in car wrecks each day all over the place. Even the the total number is large, its dilute and the long term loss of economic resources such as land is minimal. The odd air craft accident that claims a few hundred is more painful but still manageable.
The slow deaths from coal and such get spread out across decades of somewhat elevated medical expenses and environmental clean up projects. Even an major accident like a slag spill can be contained and cleaned up with conventional equipment and means.
A major Chernobyl or Fukushima like accident however rare stands to displace tens of thousands of people at once and render major economic assets and surrounding land unusable for decades, all at once! That is the sort of thing that derails entire economies.
Its the difference between being shot and say having HIV. Over the long haul HIV and sympathetic infections probably do more total harm, but its spread out you can live with it for a long time. The bullet on the other though it might kill few cells on initial impact, often does enough damage that its immediately catastrophic anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
Nuclear disasters are disasters in slow motion. Yes, it's possible for radiation to have a fast kill, but most of the concerns are over very slow kills. Aka, you can't *stay* in the area. It's a disaster you can run from. Heck, it's a disaster you could crawl from. So the death tolls are generally going to be very low. The damage is economic, because while you can escape it, you can't *ignore* it. You can't just stay in a contaminated area. You can't just haul away and reuse contaminated infrastruct
Tragedy of commons or similar (Score:3)
Me I would rather have a spike which is more controllable with added security, rather than non controllable few regular death ov
Re: (Score:2)