2002 Davis-Besse problem ranked among worst ever (US nuclear plant)

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040921/NEWS17/409210330/-1/NEWS

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's research arm yesterday ranked Davis-Besse's recent meltdown threat as one of the most serious ever at an American nuclear plant.

The Oak Harbor facility now has two of the five most serious meltdown threats since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Davis-Besse had a serious problem in 1985 as well.

According to the NRC, there was a 6 in 1,000 chance that Davis-Besse's emergency core coolant system would fail if the reactor's badly corroded head had blown open at any point during the year preceding the plant's Feb. 16, 2002, shutdown.

The calculation was released as part of the NRC's accident sequence precursor report.

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Anything with a failure rate greater than 1 in 1,000 is considered a "significant precursor" to a major event and reported to Congress, the NRC said yesterday.

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It's such a shame that the American people kick and scream when the industry proposes a new nuclear power plant, yet don't give a hoot when the industry gets a license to run the old ones for another 20 years. The new ones are much much clearner and safer than the one's the U.S. currently uses.

A pebble bed reactor or something? They have a bunch of spheres of uranium inside encased in graphite, rather than exposed fuel rods. And supposedly they can't meltdown due to the small amount of fuel in each sphere. Sounds pretty cool, but still, where do we put what's left over?

On grounds of nuclear proliferation if I recall. Nuclears reactors create plutonium as waste product, and it is really good for nuclear weapons. Some reactors designs can use plutoniums to make electricity though. That's how the U.S. got rid of it's left over nukes. They sent the plutonium to other countries to be used. In fact, Green Peace got pissed off the other day because the U.S. sent a load of it over to France.

There are some other elements good for reactors, but the more you reduce the waste products down, the more it costs. Burying it is the economically cheapest option, unfortunately. No one can say it is the cheapest morally though.

Edit: Oh and I almost forgot, ya there does seem to be a lot of interest with pebble bed reactors. There are several other designs that look good too. No one designs fits all purposes though.

It's a wikipedia entry on a new type of reactor. Sounds REALLY promising. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_amplifier

A lot of radioactive waste is winding up being used in ammunition and bombs that are being used by US soldiers against the civilians of other nations.
The factories where these bombs and bullets are made are being shut down by OSHA because the workers are dying from the radioactivity.
The soldiers who truck and load the bombs are falling down with cancer, but the Pentagon keeps insisting that the handling the recycled radioactive waste is not hazardous to human health.
The people in areas which are bombed are giving birth to creatures that are so badly deformed that there are no words to describe them.
And US soldiers deployed to those places come back with burning semen and create children with damaged chromosomes.

There is NOTHING good about nuclear weapons.
And there is nothing good about nuclear energy either.
Ask the people of Nevada.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste

about the use of depleted (what a misnomer) uranium

http://www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html

We tried unsuccessfully to have it shut down permanently.