Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant To Close, Latest Symbol of Struggling Industry (npr.org) 393
The remaining nuclear reactor still operating at Three Mile Island in South-central Pennsylvania will shut down by September 30th, Exelon announced Wednesday. The decision to close the reactor comes 40 years after the nation's worse commercial nuclear accident. NPR reports: The company says the plant has been losing money for years. The nuclear industry generally has struggled to compete with less expensive electricity generated from natural gas and renewable energy. Exelon first announced it would close two years ago unless lawmakers stepped in to keep it open. It then campaigned to save the plant by seeking a subsidy from Pennsylvania's legislature. The company argued that, in light of climate change and efforts to address it, the plant deserves compensation for the carbon-free electricity it produces.
That argument has worked in other states, including Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and New York. But in Pennsylvania, the state's powerful natural gas industry opposed it, along with industrial users and consumer advocates, calling the proposal a "bailout." When it became clear the subsidy legislation wouldn't pass within the next month Exelon decided to retire the plant, which was licensed to operate for 15 more years. Exelon says it will offer positions elsewhere in the company to employees who are willing to relocate. But the plant also employed thousands of contract workers during refueling and maintenance outages. On March 28, 1979, Three Mile Island Generating Station Unit 2 "suffered a partial meltdown after a pump stopped sending water to the stream generators that removed heat from the reactor core," reports NPR. "The accident was the start of a backlash against the nuclear industry that halted its growth for decades."
That argument has worked in other states, including Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and New York. But in Pennsylvania, the state's powerful natural gas industry opposed it, along with industrial users and consumer advocates, calling the proposal a "bailout." When it became clear the subsidy legislation wouldn't pass within the next month Exelon decided to retire the plant, which was licensed to operate for 15 more years. Exelon says it will offer positions elsewhere in the company to employees who are willing to relocate. But the plant also employed thousands of contract workers during refueling and maintenance outages. On March 28, 1979, Three Mile Island Generating Station Unit 2 "suffered a partial meltdown after a pump stopped sending water to the stream generators that removed heat from the reactor core," reports NPR. "The accident was the start of a backlash against the nuclear industry that halted its growth for decades."
Funny how nobody was even seriously hurt (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet so many people will still tout the TMI incident as a "major nuclear accident".
It's not the worst, but even the worst only killed dozens of people where fossil fuels kill millions when working as intended.
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You do not understand risk. It was damn close and a lot of people would have died.
Re:Funny how nobody was even seriously hurt (Score:5, Informative)
You do not understand risk. It was damn close and a lot of people would have died.
No it wasn't. It was never even close. Three Mile Island has been so over blown that you would think it went up in a mushroom cloud. Which is by the way impossible.
Three Mile Island was caused by human error, not by a design flaw. The safety systems in place worked exactly as intended. There was no significant radiation released into the environment and the people directly exposed received less radiation than a normal chest x-ray.
In the end 3 Mile Island was a testament to reactor design and the effectiveness of the safety protocols in place. It should be hailed as a success instead of the disaster you anti nuke kooks like to make it out as.
Re:Funny how nobody was even seriously hurt (Score:4, Interesting)
Three Mile Island was caused by human error, not by a design flaw.
I disagree: TMI has almost become a case study in human factors design. I mean yes human error was involved, but the design of the control room made it really really easy for that error to happen, almost encouraging it.
In the end 3 Mile Island was a testament to reactor design and the effectiveness of the safety protocols in place.
Absolutely yes. The human interface design was bad, but the overall reactor design had failsafe after failsafe such that when shit hit the fan, it wouldn't go everywhere. Shit did hit and it went nowhere.
Now imagine if we could have put the last 40 years of learning int oreactor design rather than stretching ancient models increasingly psat their lifespan.
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Newer isn't always better. Some of the tech on aircraft is relatively ancient but well proven and understood.
Basically you can design something that looks extremely safe and foolproof, but until it's actually tested you can't really be sure that it is. Testing is very hard and it's often extremely difficult to find the kind of faults that appear after years of operation.
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Interesting that you take aircraft as an example given how their development of technology has been case studies on how newer technology and advances continuously improve safety.
Re:Funny how nobody was even seriously hurt (Score:4, Interesting)
Three Mile Island was caused by human error, not by a design flaw.
I disagree: TMI has almost become a case study in human factors design. I mean yes human error was involved, but the design of the control room made it really really easy for that error to happen, almost encouraging it.
You disagree for the wrong reasons. Poor human factor design is always an after-the-face case. There is absolutely no denying that human error was the cause. There is absolutely no denying that by today's standards and with today's knowledge of human and machine interaction the design is poor.
But given the standards and the knowledge of the day there was absolutely no "design flaw". We just happen to have since found a better way of doing it which would make it flawed if used in a project built to today's standards.
But then you could also say that every industrial plant and piece of equipment built before 2001 has design flaws, since our designs and understanding of people and equipment is continuously evolving. Why 2001? Well IEC 61513 the standard for instrumentation and safety systems for nuclear reactors wasn't published until then.
Just because you don't have best current practice doesn't mean you have a "design flaw".
Re:Funny how nobody was even seriously hurt (Score:4, Interesting)
You do not understand risk. It was damn close and a lot of people would have died.
No it wasn't. It was never even close. Three Mile Island has been so over blown that you would think it went up in a mushroom cloud. Which is by the way impossible.
Yep. Exactly.
In fact it's a testament to nuclear safety (in the West, anyway). We make a huge deal about incidents, because of our commitment to safety, even if the incidents result in essentially nothing.
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They very narrowly avoided a hydrogen explosion. That would have done it. Stop revising history. Stop lying.
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No one is lying dweeb. There is no revision history here. There NEVER was even a remote chance of hydrogen explosion. The safety system worked EXACTLY as they where supposed too. There was NEVER any real danger to ANYTHING.
Fucking hippies.
Re: Funny how nobody was even seriously hurt (Score:2)
It would be "similar" in the same way that a firecracker is similar to a 5,000 lb bomb.
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This is utter bullshit. Most capital costs of nuclear accrue in the initial construction phase.
Ah, this classical lie again. Most of the cost is tearing them down and storing the waste. That is hugely more expensive than getting them to run. In fact, it is so expensive that nuclear companies are planning to just going bankrupt so they do not have to pay for it.
Um... I don't know anyone who calls TMI (Score:2)
I still haven't heard a good answer to that. How do you keep stupid voters tired of paying taxes from privatizing nuke p
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I remember TMI. I followed it on the news, live. It was a very close thing. They narrowly avoided a (conventional) hydrogen explosion. Nobody knew whether the containment would hold that in and it would basically have assured a melt-down with a 500 year (or longer) cleanup phase.
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Again, no they didn't. There was never a danger of a "hydrogen explosion."
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When did they say that on the news? Was it the night that it happened? I also remember that night. The talking heads on the news then where talking about it going up in a nuclear explosion. Which can't and didn't happen.
Besides, where did the hydrogen come from?
Re:Funny how nobody was even seriously hurt (Score:5, Insightful)
Natural gas has killed more people in the last 5 years than Nuclear Power has, ever.
Every life has a price, and most people are too cowardly to admit it.
Re: Funny how nuclear apologists don't read much (Score:2)
YET THEY SAY NOBODY EVER DIED. NOBODY! EVER!
I take it that "they" are the voices in your head?
Re: Funny how nuclear apologists don't read much (Score:2)
I'll take that as a yes. Get help Pete.
True, but Coal doesn't make an entire city (Score:2)
Like I said on another thread, tell me how you'll keep voters from privatizing nuke plants and then greedy businessmen from making them unsafe. We don't hold the rich accountable for their actions.
Re: True, but Coal doesn't make an entire city (Score:3, Interesting)
Lol. Your definition of "unlivable" is funny.
First, which city did Fukushima make "unlivable"? There were a few villages in the 30km zone that were evacuated, but no major cities.
And in most, evacuation happened out of fear - few people continued to live, and most can now return.
With the cumulative doses the first group has accumulated, there is at most a likelihood of minor increase of treatable cancers.
WHO estimates the total of cancer cases due to Chernobyl to a few thousands, and at least 90% of that is
Re:Funny how nuclear apologists don't read much (Score:5, Insightful)
Virtually nothing is worse than coal [sourcewatch.org]. From two separate studies on coal power in the US:
...particle pollution from existing coal power plants is expected to cause some 13,200 premature deaths in 2010, as well as 9,700 additional hospitalizations and 20,000 heart attacks.
[The study] tallied the economic, health and environmental costs associated with each stage in the life cycle of coal [...] to be between $175 billion and $500 billion dollars annually.
Nuclear looks pretty good in comparison, and less expensive too. Whether it can compete against gas and renewables is a different question, but there should be no arguments about shutting down coal ASAP.
Re:Funny how nuclear apologists don't read much (Score:4, Insightful)
So, I was starting to come around to nuclear the other day, and decided to, as I often do, see if the numbers could persuade me. First, let me start by saying the numbers around nuclear have a lot of variance because they are typically presented from old data (lots of plants built in the 60s) and aren't price adjusted for inflation. I decided to try to stick to numbers for plants that came online in the last 2 decades. Further more, I decided just to run numbers for what it would cost to replace the US power generated by coal ONLY. Not gas, not all the other stuff. Just coal, mainly because of personal beliefs that it is the most environmentally damaging form of power generation.
So, the short version, to build enough plants to replace the power created by coal, would cost between $ 600 billion and $1.8 Trillion. Not a small chunk of change, but absorbable over a long enough period. Which is good, because the average time from beginning of construction to power generation is 13 years. That is the world wide average, from countries with vastly different regulatory structures factored in, but the minimum seems to be around 10 years, which leads me to believe a modern plant just takes a long time to build.
Now, one very important thing to consider is that there are currently 100 plants being built worldwide. Just in the US, replacing coal would require more than that number of plants by a lot, and there are only so many construction companies world wide with the expertise to accomplish the completion of a plant. It's guaranteed that this scarcity of labor will increase the time to complete all of the plants.
So while the cost of Nuclear is no joke, over a 20 year likely timeline or more, it is absorbable. The central flaw, however, in using nuclear as a stepping stone to renewables is that, even if we started TODAY to build these plants, we would still be using coal for a minimum of 10 more years before we saw any benefit. Reactors are big projects that don't provide benefit in half measures. Wind farms (the most economic renewable) can be brought up in small chunks. With the same type of investment, they would probably be able to replace the power we get from coal in the time frame it would take for us to turn the first reactors on.
And that doesn't even address natural gas. If you want to replace that, you have to basically double these numbers. I honestly don't think that nuclear is overtly harmful or dangerous, at least not modern, competently designed plants. But it's just not a solution for today, at best, it is a solution for 2 decades from now, and there is just no reason to wait that long.
Re: Funny how nobody was even seriously hurt (Score:2)
Nope, not even once.
Re: Funny how nobody was even seriously hurt (Score:2)
Sure, just like I never once acknowledged that your hosts files are 100% effective, Pete.
Color me surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Rightfully so, we've been subsidizing the renewables to advance their efficiencies.
Questionably so, depending on your vocation and/or portfolio, we've been subsidizing petroleum-based energy. It's not entirely impractical, as we require a reliable baseline electrical generation source to work whenever we need to charge something or change the indoor temperature.
Yet. Stupefyingly so, we demonize and ignore the planet-saving electrical generation magic of nuclear plants. Go. Figure.
Re:Color me surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Nuclear power (all forms) costs more than solar + batteries. Fusion doesn't even work yet and it's already obsolete. The lack of new nuclear power plants gets blamed on regulation, but it's really just economics.
Solar and batteries (all forms) cost more than electrical generation by natural gas and anthracite coal... yet we subsidize their improvement and implementation.
The lack of new nuclear power plants gets blamed on regulation and economics, but it's really just fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Re:Color me surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear power (all forms) costs more than solar + batteries. Fusion doesn't even work yet and it's already obsolete. The lack of new nuclear power plants gets blamed on regulation, but it's really just economics.
Solar and batteries (all forms) cost more than electrical generation by natural gas and anthracite coal... yet we subsidize their improvement and implementation.
The lack of new nuclear power plants gets blamed on regulation and economics, but it's really just fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Coal is cheaper than Solar power? Bollocks .... According to the German Federal Environment Agency the external costs of electricity (i.e. the costs that energy producers and consumers impose on others without paying the consequences, including the impacts of air, waste and water pollution and of climate change) from:
Lignite is 10.75 Eurocent/kWh
Hard (anthracite) coal 8.94 Eurocent/kWh
Natural gas 4.91 Eurocent/kWh
Photovoltaics 1.18 Eurocent/kWh
Eind 0.26 Eurocent/kWh
Hydro 0.18 Eurocent/kWh
Nuclear 10.7 to 34 ct/kWh
Even if you just look at the levelled cost of energy, the cost energy generated with coal is at between 2-3 times the cost of solar and terrestrial wind power and this includes data from the US Energy Information Administration.
Re: Color me surprised (Score:2, Insightful)
LOL, keep quoting baseless made-up numbers that German bureaucrats use to justify their policy blunders.
Germany closed its nuclear and replaced it with thermal power.
Why do you think Merkel is building these gas pipes to Russia?
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Coal is cheaper than Solar power? Bollocks .... According to the German Federal Environment Agency the external costs of electricity (i.e. the costs that energy producers and consumers impose on others without paying the consequences, including the impacts of air, waste and water pollution and of climate change) from:
Way to move the goalposts. External cost != Internal cost. Internal cost is what the consumer pays and its what everyone thinks when you say cheaper. It would be better if there were no external costs. Coal in most places has a lower internal cost than solar. That doesn't mean we should use coal as it has a huge external cost and we should consider the total cost of power, not just internal cost. Solar is only price competitive because we subsidise it and even then its very expensive. Its just that y
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Solars biggest drawback is the sun isn't shining 24x7 at the same spot on the ground. Weather and rainy seasons screw this up too. This puts geography as an element of productivity. Some areas will not facilitate much production. Solar should be used to produce hydrogen for a more stable infrastructure. There have already been some great discoveries of materials with specific molecular shapes that result in direct light -> hydrogen production. Hydrogen makes for a great ‘battery’ and most of
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Coal is cheaper than Solar power? Bollocks .... According to the German Federal Environment Agency the external costs of electricity (i.e. the costs that energy producers and consumers impose on others without paying the consequences, including the impacts of air, waste and water pollution and of climate change) from:
Way to move the goalposts. External cost != Internal cost. Internal cost is what the consumer pays and its what everyone thinks when you say cheaper. It would be better if there were no external costs. Coal in most places has a lower internal cost than solar. That doesn't mean we should use coal as it has a huge external cost and we should consider the total cost of power, not just internal cost. Solar is only price competitive because we subsidise it and even then its very expensive. Its just that you confuse nameplate capacity with how much power you actual get from a given power source when you say its cheaper. A 100W solar panel != reliable 100W sources.
Also, how the fuck do you get 10.7-34 cents/kWh for nuclear? You could buy Europe and turn it into a theme park for Chinese tourists cheaper than that "cost". That's so far out of bounds that the other values which seem reasonable no longer carry any weight.
Moving goal posts? The point here is that both external cost internal cost are higher for coal, way higher, unless you consider in the massive subsidies coal needs to come anywhere close to wind, solar and gas unimportant. That said, it is the consumer that pays the taxes that are used to subsidise coal and feel with the external costs to the environment so in the end it is always the consumer that pays more for dirty coal than wind solar, and even natural gas if you factor in the external costs. There is
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Well, if that is the case, why not just use government money to subsidise wind 100%? Then, by your argument, the internal cost will be 0 and the consumer will get all their power for free. Man, that sure was easy to solve!
Base load vs. peaking (Score:5, Insightful)
Cost per kWh isn't a direct comparison. Solar is competitive for peaking loads in the top couple of percent of electricity consumption. But nuclear provides constant power during all times of day in all weather conditions. It's easier to replace peak load than base load. Coal and nuclear were (and often still are) used for base load, with gas providing peaking. Now that gas has gotten cheaper, it is being used for base load, supplanting coal and nuclear.
Not saying the nuclear isn't expensive (it is), but we're a long way away from having our electricity demand based on a foundation of solar + batteries.
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Expensive is relative... are we considering initial generation costs only?
Or. Are we taking into account accessory costs like environmental damage cleanup costs?
I'd include contribution to climate change, but I'd rather not start a bipartisan pissing contest.
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Nuclear power (all forms) costs more than solar + batteries
Cost per kWh isn't a direct comparison. Solar is competitive for peaking loads in the top couple of percent of electricity consumption. But nuclear provides constant power during all times of day in all weather conditions.
Yes, that is inferior to solar+wind+battery. When you don't have sun, you tend to have wind, and vice versa. Nuclear provides constant power, but battery backup provides instantly load-following power. Nuclear has to produce over consumption in order to handle changing demand.
It's true that solar alone won't provide for our needs. We also need wind, including offshore wind. We don't need nuclear, and wasting time, money, and effort on it is just that — a waste. We will find nuclear power necessary whe
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Talk to Germany about their competitive electricity prices ($0.35/kWh before taxes and fees).
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This is after taxes and fees. The fees for renewables is $0.07/kWh and those have intentionally been added and not hidden in general taxes to encourage saving. This works as electricity consumption goes down in Germany and this generally had a lot of support from the population.
Re: Color me surprised (Score:2)
Fusion doesn't even work yet and it's already obsolete.
The rest of your comment was pretty dumb, but this bit .... that's just insanely stupid.
Re: Color me surprised (Score:2)
It's idiotic because we have absolutely no clue what the overall cost will be. Your "expected to require larger initial outlays than fission" is just begging the question. Besides being a logical fallacy it's also rather silly because the "initial outlays" are only one factor when looking at overall costs.
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That statement does not seem to be very pausible. Do you have any numbers to back it up?
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Solar and batteries are heavily subsidized and are environmentally much less friendly. You'd have to cover an area the size of California to get enough solar panels and wind turbines to replace fossil fuels in the US not even speaking about growth and overbuilding for periods when the sun doesn't shine or wind doesn't blow.
Re:Color me surprised (Score:4, Informative)
that is patently ridiculous - California is about 163K sq mi;
estimates of total area for solar production are less than 25K sq mi.
(and much of it could be rooftop with batteries in
the basement).
Why make up things like this? How does it help the
conversation?
Re:Color me surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear energy suffer significant competitive disadvantages in the US. Coal is plentiful, and natural gas is almost a waste product that we use or discard. There is plenty of land to build coal and gas fired power plants. We have never had a plan to deal with nuclear waste, so it sits there costing money, limiting the ability fo nuclear power to proliferate.
This later is the big issue. Nuclear power is unique is that it produces significant dangerous waste, and that waste, unlike other energy sources, if regulated heavily. If conservative lawmakers in the US would end their denial of climate change, and admit that the waste from fossil fuel power plants were an equal danger to nuclear waste, then nuclear would have been much more competitive and maybe more successful in the US. But the right of the fossil fuel power plants to unlimited destruction of the environment has lead to a situation where any competing technology is at a significant disadvantage.
Nuclear has had a two generations at least to prove itself, and it still is not cost competitive. Wind has had a generation, and know overnight spot prices are often essentially zero, negative with subsidies. Fossil fuel is only competitive because we allow it to external costs of the waste products.
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The upside is that you can hold it in your (heavily protected) hand and do something with it.
That's not an up side. It is hazardous and expensive to reprocess nuclear fuel, and the process does not eliminate all of the waste. The only other thing it's good for is making dirty bombs, which are another thing we don't want.
Fossil fuel is only competitive because we allow it to external costs of the waste products.
So nuclear power isn't so unique after all?
Right, it sucks in much the same way as fossil fuels, not least because they have so very much in common. Their fuels are extracted from the crust, with attendant ecological impact, for example.
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You know those loud ass commercials that come on after you've been watching appointment TV for 30-60 minutes, with everything prior at virtually the same decibel level? They kind of startle you out of the recliner... I like those commercials more than your post.
This is how progress stops (Score:2, Interesting)
With emotional responses instead of logical solutions. A pump stopped sending water? Why was that even a possibility? Why weren't there multiple fail-safes in place for something so critical and why wasn't it foreseen? Where were the engineers who considered the contingencies & planned ahead for them before the plant was even built. I mean you have a substance just giving off free energy and you don't have to do anything with it except boil some water and make steam and you got the spinning shaft upon w
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You do not understand electrical engineering. At all. One tiny mistake and you end up with a nice fire, making things massively worse. Also, this would not have worked in the first place. You see, voltage, current, AC/DC, fuses, phases, etc. all have to match.
Re:This is how progress stops (Score:5, Interesting)
The main pumps are in the 10,000 HP size, not easy to have backups or to power. Admittedly the emergency pumps are much smaller, but still huge and need huge generators. I agree, there needs to be more contingency and redundancy.
As an engineer (not nuke design) I get appropriately defensive whenever people blame things on engineers. It's never the engineers who make the decisions, unless engineers are also running the company (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, etc.) and even then there are (too) many MBAs running the show. Challenger's engineers told NASA managers "do not launch" but the managers overruled them. In my world, engineers would have absolute last word. Admittedly some engineers will over-design a thing into the ground. One of the major reasons the US has built very few new nuclear plants in the past 40 years is the massive design and construction cost overruns.
There's a push, including at DOE, for reactor designs where there are many smaller nuclear power stations, and in each are multiple small reactors, all in a large pool of water- enough to cool them passively.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm all for engineers and engineering, in fact I bet if more engineers had been involved to critically review the plans the plant would have been better. It just seems like people want to abandon a technology because of past failures. Maybe solar, wind and geothermal will have some breakthroughs to make them scale better, but nuclear could actually replace fossil fuels right now for electric vehicles if we had developed the technology more instead of mothballing it because of fear, we just have to get it ri
Re:This is how progress stops (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks. This is difficult because I recently started doing some work in that industry and I don't want to say too much. It in fact involves safety systems, including things that could have been done at TMI, but weren't, and I don't know why not, but cost-cutting is always a strong force. Sadly the TMI accident badly damaged public opinion, and due to demand-side economics, drove up the cost of pretty much everything, especially safety systems.
As long as I can remember I've been a huge believer in solar, wind, wave, tidal... renewable energy. But we need something to power society until we collectively decide to build out renewables. I'm very happy to see how much is being done, but we have a long way to go.
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I'm all for engineers and engineering, in fact I bet if more engineers had been involved to critically review the plans the plant would have been better.
I'm not so sure. Engineers, especially design engineers, tend to place a lot of faith in their design and in technology; and as a result may underestimate the probability of failure. In addition, they underplay the man-machine interface and fail to understand the human factors involved in good design. As a result, systems display confusing information or overload an operator with information during an event, leading to errors that inevitably get blamed on the operators when in fact the system lead them to t
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In my world, engineers would have absolute last word.
Maybe that's a pipe dream. But I don't know if it's more or less so than a world where they would tell the media and/or public exactly how it went down within a few months of the event.
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Maybe that's a pipe dream.
Yep! And one I keep having. :)
But I don't know if it's more or less so than a world where they would tell the media and/or public exactly how it went down within a few months of the event.
That all depends on what the managers allow us to say, and/or how much we value our jobs and careers.
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Careful. Don't defend engineers too much, and especially not for these reasons. You sound like you're getting appropriately defensive of engineers being overriden by management, but the reality is this is a plant built in the 60s. We engineers aren't magical creatures. We certainly didn't through to the start of history get everything right, and a lot of things can rightfully be blamed on our ignorance.
Now the question is could other engineers do better. At the time, the answer was likely no. Modern concept
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The main pumps are in the 10,000 HP size, not easy to have backups or to power. Admittedly the emergency pumps are much smaller, but still huge and need huge generators. I agree, there needs to be more contingency and redundancy.
Good. It being hard is certainly no reason not to do it.
As an engineer (not nuke design) I get appropriately defensive whenever people blame things on engineers. It's never the engineers who make the decisions
The engineers share the blame equally with the managers. The manager says "do this bad thing" and then the engineer does the bad thing, they are two parts of a whole. We all make choices.
Re:10,000 HP? (Score:4, Informative)
Got any brains or just another troll?
https://www.nuclear-power.net/reactor-coolant-pump/ [nuclear-power.net]
Let me know if you have difficulty reading or calculating.
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Thank you!! I'm so irritated by the childish sniping trolls I just didn't want to give that to him. If he's so brilliant, let him show it. And in fact, there are different pump motor sizes depending on the size / design of the plant. I got the 10,000 figure from an actual power plant design because I have access to that info. Please consider a real userid here- we need people like you to help flush out the trolls. Have an awesome day!
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With emotional responses instead of logical solutions. A pump stopped sending water? Why was that even a possibility? Why weren't there multiple fail-safes in place for something so critical and why wasn't it foreseen? Where were the engineers who considered the contingencies & planned ahead for them before the plant was even built. I mean you have a substance just giving off free energy and you don't have to do anything with it except boil some water and make steam and you got the spinning shaft upon which civilization was built.
First of all, there were emergency pumps; the confused operators shut them down.
There are also design decisions that make things safe(r) even if all the pumps fail.
Like automatic scram - the control rods drop and hit the bottom, they soak up too many neutrons to let the chain reaction continue. (that did happen).
Or, make the design depend on the water to slow down the neutrons - then if the water goes away, the neutrons don't get slowed down and the reactions stop. (I'm no expert on TMI, but it sounds to
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The usual: Somebody thought their profits should be higher.
Nuclear could have been made safe. But greed and stupidity ruined it.
RECs (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure how I feel, but Exelon has a point. They're forced to buy renewable energy production credits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Energy_Certificate_(United_States)/ [wikipedia.org] from renewable energy producers (mostly solar and wind), including homeowners. The main reason is because renewables are (nearly) carbon free. But nuclear power generation produces little carbon, so they should get credit.
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The amount of carbon produced by nuclear power depends heavily on where the fuel comes from and where it goes when it's spent. When you factor in some of the mining and transport operations it can have very high CO2 emissions per kWh.
We really need to stop externalizing CO2 production and other costs.
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Same goes for solar and wind, production includes heavy metals and rare minerals without feasible recycling.
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The amount of carbon produced by nuclear power depends heavily on where the fuel comes from and where it goes when it's spent. When you factor in some of the mining and transport operations it can have very high CO2 emissions per kWh.
We really need to stop externalizing CO2 production and other costs.
Yes, but the renewables industry no doubt would fight that since suddenly they are no longer a carbon free source of energy; given the operations needed to get the raw materials and build and transport them to a site also have CO2 emissions on a similar scale as others in quantity.
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Renewables would have no need to fight it because they would still be the lowest of the available options. Any additional costs would be more than offset by the increased demand as other forms of energy get much, much more expensive.
I am slightly surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead of directly subsidising Nuclear power, it should be possible to decide the unit price paid for electricity on a number of factors including availability and the carbon footprint required to produce it. This would create a system where nuclear would be a reasonable option for 'base load', and since it's not a specific subsidy for the nuclear industry, more acceptable to all.
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Instead of directly subsidising Nuclear power, it should be possible to decide the unit price paid for electricity on a number of factors including availability and the carbon footprint required to produce it.
We cannot have a fair market for electricity without fairly accounting for costs. Deciding on a price per Wh by fiat is insane. Decouple production from distribution, tax carbon (and other pollutant) release based on actual cost of cleanup, and let the market work out a fair solution. Nuclear costs more than wind+solar+battery; coal, gas and oil would all become cost-prohibitive with a carbon tax. Coal isn't economical if you have to scrub the thorium and uranium out of the exhaust, let alone the soot.
Decou
Extra Compensation (Score:2)
I can't believe this actually worked in several states, like the summary says. The plant already gets "compensation for the carbon-free electricity it produces" -- it's called "people paying their electric bill".
Politics (Score:2)
What bothers me isn't that it's being denied a bailout on grounds of economics or even on grounds of safety, but because a lobby for a competitor out-muscled them.
I'm all for nuclear power plants being closed or at least government run, but what I'm not for is politics interfering in economics because some butthurt competitor wanted to drive them out of town.
Small wonder (Score:2)
"Exelon first announced it would close two years ago unless lawmakers stepped in to keep it open. "
I guess every lawmaker just _loved_ the idea to be associated with such a recognizable brand like 'Three Mile Island'.
TM-1 ... (Score:3)
This is about closing TM-1 not TM-2 which had the accident ...
TM-1 is 45 years old, and is of a very old design it has been upgraded but is woefully inefficient
The industry is fine except it has a lot of these very old, legacy systems still in operation costing a lot to run
Re:Assault Rifles (Score:4, Funny)
The only purpose is to assault somebody.
That requires a single shot.
Only defense rifles should be allowed.
Like with full auto suppressive fire.
I like the way you think!
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The US 2nd amendment says nothing about guns or rifles.
I want what ever counts for 'arms' in international deals then I can just put a "Protected by MAD" sign outside my house.
Re:Ironically.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm all for nuclear power, but this statement:
When it became clear the subsidy legislation wouldn't pass within the next month Exelon decided to retire the plant, which was licensed to operate for 15 more years.
Makes it seem like they are only playing politics to get tax money. We really need to do away with corporate welfare.
Re: Ironically.. (Score:2)
Since it is closing the company is going to dump 75% of the clean up costs on the tax payer. Nuclear power companies are supposed to set money aside for closing and clean up. Those funds barely of 10% of the money actually needed to do a proper site shutdown.
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It will be hard to find anyone willing to say that Nuclear power should be unregulated. Left or Right.
To keep nuclear power effective you are going to need an amazing safety record. Fossil Fuel and Renewable energy sources don't have to meet those standards. Because a disaster in these can be managed and cleaned up. While a Nuclear Problem leaves large areas that are inhabitable.
Price and cost [Re: Ironically..] (Score:2)
yes, everything is "cheaper" because most costs of nuclear are internalized, some well in excess of their true value.
I think you mean that the prices are internalized, sometimes in excess of their true costs.
The answer to that is... nobody really knows.
Nuclear power pays the federal government for disposal of the spent fuel. But the government is not disposing of the spent fuel (the repository at Yucca mountain got derailed by, guess what, politics.)
Nobody actually knows what the spent fuel disposal will cost. It is a complete guess as to whether it is higher or lower than the price being paid, but I'll wager that it w
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Are you retarded? Serious question here. Fukushima and Chernobyl were both worse than 3 Mile Island.
Re: Good riddance (Score:2)
Didn't the enormous subsidies offset that somewhat? Are there no regulations on other hugely polluting industries. Are there no nuclear industry lobbyists?
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Don't start talking about energy generation subsidy without talking about the externalized cost from all fossil fuels of waste disposal, and the literally trillions of dollars of damage being done to the planet in the form of stronger storms, elevated respiratory disease rates for downwind residents, etc.
That's an enormous subsidy.
Subsidies [Re: Good riddance] (Score:3, Interesting)
Didn't the enormous subsidies offset that somewhat? Are there no regulations on other hugely polluting industries. Are there no nuclear industry lobbyists?
By "enormous subsidies" you mean what exactly?
The main subsidy of nuclear power is that the federal government indemnifies them against accidents. If they had to insure, this would be insanely expensive. Other than that, the highest subsidy has been the large amounts of Research and Development dollars put into next-generation nuclear power [ref [world-nuclear.org]]
On the converse side, the hugest of the many subsidies for fossil fuels is that other people pay for the effects of their carbon dioxide emissions on the environment. If they had to pay for that, fossil fuel w
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Sez the AC [Re: Good riddance] (Score:2, Interesting)
Kek, I have a degree in nuclear power engineering and over a decade in a reactor physics department in a real NPP. What are you?
No, the question needs to be reversed. Who are you?
The answer is, you're an anonymous coward. Any anonymous coward can claim to have a " degree in nuclear power engineering and over a decade in a reactor physics department."
Nope. You're an anonymous coward. Anonymous cowards have multiple degrees in advanced bullshit. Easy to tell from the advanced bullshit they post.
Re:Good riddance (Score:5, Informative)
to the worst nuclear disaster in history.
I hope you are not serious. Or perhaps you are confusing that TV movie of the week with actual events. Nobody died. No radiation leaked. The containment vessel held and that's the worst nuclear disaster in US history. Learn something [wikipedia.org] next time before posting, not after.
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Except history marches on. What was "the worst" then was outdone in 1986, so TMI hasn't been the worst for 30 years. Saying it's "the worst" now is just incorrect, and no amount of equivocation changes that.
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The worse American Nuclear Disaster. Their have been worse [wikipedia.org]
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Not even close.
At least Chernobyl and Fukushima were worse. Don't be an idiot.
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I'm pretty sure that Hiroshima was the worst nuclear disaster in history.
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For sure, if we nuke the hoover dam and then russia nukes the hoover dam we are in big trouble.
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Chernobyl was not a Nuclear bomb, please get your facts right.
The severity of the Nuclear fall-out depends on the type of Nuclear bomb used and whether it was detonated in the air or near the ground.
The Hiroshima and Nagasaki Nuclear bombs each killed about 100,000 people. Today, there are no exclusion zones there and people live there. The Nuclear fall-out was minimal.
Chernobyl killed about 100 people and these were brave workers reacting to the aftermath of the Nuclear accident. Residents in the area were
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Breeder reactors are renewable energy. Three mile island should have been shut down decades ago but libtards won't let us build new, safer reactors so we have to keep designs from the 70s going,
Breeder reactors are indeed a solution to the fact that nuclear power from uranium is not a renewable fuel but an exhaustable one. But the problem with breeders is not safety (or, not only safety)-- it is proliferation.
Ordinary nuclear reactors don't easily produce the isotopes that can be isotopically separated for a bomb. But breeders do.
That's somewhat of a devil's bargain. Nearly unlimited, carbon-free energy... but you have to put it behind serious barriers with army units guarding it.
not following the tech tree in the proper order (Score:2)
You stupid monkeys need figure that one out before mucking about with radioactive isotopes.
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Every time I see nuclear pop up, I see someone mention the amount of deaths per terawatt, and nuclear power is pretty good on that statistic, even factoring in radiation.
The problem is that nuclear power doesn't have many stakeholders. If a company made a reactor head out of zinc cast pot metal, they would laugh all the way to the bank because it would be the government that has a new Superfund site on their hands, with the CEO getting a bonus and maybe a spot in a magazine with "glowing reviews" on what t
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we are too stupid for nuclear power with our business structure.
Stupid? No. Corrupt. It's irresponsible to create a nuclear power plant because its safe operation depends on responsible operators, and you can't ensure that it will be operated responsibly. That would be true even if it didn't have all its other problems, like the environmental impact of uranite mining, or the astronomical cost of decommissioning.
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The problem with Fukushima wasn't proximity to the ocean. It wasn't even vulnerability to earthquakes. It was vulnerability to the tsunami. In particular it was because the backup generators failed due to the tsunami.
The fact that spent fuel pools might be even more covered in water is not really a problem. In fact, you probably want spent fuel pools to be close to the ocean because you can then ensure that you always have water available if you need it.
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The problem with Fukushima wasn't proximity to the ocean. It wasn't even vulnerability to earthquakes. It was vulnerability to the tsunami. In particular it was because the backup generators failed due to the tsunami.
It wasn't vulnerability to earthquakes, but it WAS all of those other things. Fukushima was sited someplace that even ancient Japanese knew was not a good place to put things you cared about, AND the generators weren't placed on pylons like they should have been because Tepco didn't want to be known for spoiling the view. ISTR that the site was chosen by American engineers, though.
The fact that spent fuel pools might be even more covered in water is not really a problem.
No, but the fact that they exist is.
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Dumb fucks are pushing for America to destroy nuclear power, and increase our CO2. These same idiots scream about CO2 and yet, are increasing it.
You still don't seem to be able to grasp that nuclear is neither renewable nor as cost-effective as renewables, which explains why you think that other people are the dumb fucks. You, sir, are that fuck.