two nuke events - Fl (be sure to read the last sentence) and Calif.

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index.php?smp=&lang=eng


Area: USA, State of Florida, Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant, Homestead

Description:

One of the two nuclear reactors at Florida Power & Light's Turkey Point plant near Miami has been taken off-line because of a leak. Roger Hannah, spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the problem was caused by a small leak in a pipe. The shutdown started on Friday afternoon and was completed on Sunday after several discussions between NRC staff and FPL. FPL spokesman Tom Veenstra said there was never any danger to the public. The event report filed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the shut-down was ''required by technical specifications'' after a leak developed from a ``structural weld crack. . . . The cause of the crack is being evaluated.'' Fueling Station readers may recall Turkey Point made news earlier this year when the NRC hit FPL with a $130,000 fine because security guards had been caught catnapping, and when the state Public Service Commission gave FPL permission to build additional nuclear plants at Turkey Point.
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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j2NGKbFf_G1GFcsN-OgaCb88yKdQD92KTP600


Authorities are investigating a fire at a California nuclear plant that forced a reactor to be shut down.

Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant spokeswoman Sharon Gavin said Monday that there was no danger of a radiation leak after a fire the day before. The blaze was in a non-nuclear part of the plant.

Gavin says one of two reactors was shut down as part of standard safety procedures. She doesn't know when it will be restarted.

The plant started supplying electricity in 1985 and generates power for about 3 million homes in northern and central California.
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Hell, Even Al Gore thinks Nuke Power is safe...

...

I'm not buying it.

Re-use the rods? Hardly

:eyes:
It is standard practice in technologically advanced countries...and anyway even without it, all the spent fuel from every reactor on the planet could be fit into a regular football stadium. Stored spent fuel is no more intrinsically dangerous than the San Andreas Fault, or Yellowstone National Park. I'm no freeper, just an educated engineer and practical Democrat.

Unless you wait out the said half lives.

You can reprocess them a few times, but there will be a point, rather soon actually, where the rods won't have enough radiation to generate power, but enough to kill anyone around them.

the safety procedures at these plants worked as they were supposed to. It's a good thing that the people who designed and run these operations know what they are doing.

"look what almost happened!!!"
:eyes:

Sid

Not even close!

Why go to the former Soviet Union for nuculer accidents, when you can find the very first one (July 26, 1959) in the United States!?

We're number one! We're number one!

Woo-hoo!

I guess that the nuclear industry has learned it's lessons well.

The nuculer industry has learned and so has Boeing and the Defense Department.

We are not idiots.

since 1950. Of these, approximately 15 - or half - were after 1980. Keep in mind this is just North America I'm talking about, and just accidents involving commercial or research sites.. If you include the military, transportation and testing accidents, that number balloons to over one hundred nuclear accidents in the USA since 1950. That's about two a year, on average.

The problem here isn't really the concepts behind the tech, which still isn't ready for prime-time but will be at some point in the future. The problem is with the industry, as I have repeatedly mentioned here.

As others have pointed out, human accidents occur all the time in this business. It's not an 'if' scenario. It will happen again, just as it happened before. Once that genie is out of the bottle, there are no quick cleanups. This technology is not ready for commercial use and rather than face the music the nuclear industry instead circles its wagons and hides its flaws from view. That's simply too dangerous a gamble given the nature of the materials and the track record of those involved. If you doubt this, I have some land to sell you 80 miles north of Kiev.

Pouring money into nuclear power at this time is like trusting Halliburton or Enron. This is not a trustworthy, reputable industry - it's a black hole of fiscal irresponsibility & unaccountability. It's modeled after big oil, only worse. This makes support at the current juncture unwise given the massive risks associated to the public.

I would rather see the money currently spent toward nuclear power redirected to alternatives until the industry becomes accountable, transparent and operationally failsafe. Nuclear power is still in R&D as far as I'm concerned and it should remain there until the rewards outweigh the risks and the CBA is more favorable.

This is simple stuff. Don't fall in love with the tech before it's ready - you're hurting the future of a promising nuclear industry by leaving it in the wrong hands and pushing it out the door too early. The money belongs in the lab or elsewhere, especially now. While we are making the required advances to make nuclear power practical and safe, we can support promising alternative industries that are run responsibility and benefit us today. Everyone wins this way - science, the public and even the markets.

This is a public utility, not an arena bloodsport or a cold war missile strike. There is no Playstation-style 'reset' button for nuclear accidents after they occur, no 'acceptable loss' scenario. This industry has demonstrated on multiple occasions over several decades that it cannot police or manage itself properly and I am unwilling to wait until another truly catastrophic occurrence proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt. Frankly, neither should you.

As I've said elsewhere, give me a transparent and accountable nuclear industry with a failsafe set of operational and disposal procedures and I'm on board. This is not an anti-nuclear stance. Until then, my verdict stands as is.

when most of the people here were learning to write their names with crayons. But 45 years later, given the notable absence of any -disasters- (some people wanted to shitcan our Shuttle program after Challenger...I imagine there were neo-Luddites who predicted an end to building large ships after Titanic) I choose to exercise my right to change my mind, especially in light of the fact there are damn few alternatives to the incipient energy damands of the planet...and you can take to the bank they WILL demand it.

but we aren't there yet. Until we are, I'm not buying into a secretive, corrupted industry that's worse than big oil in every measurable way and currently offers only half the solution even under a best case scenario. There will need to be some major changes to the nuclear industry before they are worthy of the public's trust and money. As things currently stand, they aren't even close.

Put the money into the science, regulate or nationalize to make the industry transparent, accountable & reasonably failsafe and this problem will simply go away - other countries that follow this model for nuclear power do pretty well, even with the limitations of today's methods, but we aren't one of them. I'd rather spend money on the solution rather than keep funding the problem.

on less than a small star scale. I absolutely support further research but I don't think it's at all smart to dismiss out of hand for anachronistic and irrational fears a technology that works and is at least as safe as burning hydrocarbons in the long run.

Yes - I'm sick of people calling for the end of this. There isn't a way to fleece the public out of billions, and that's why there's no R&D. Has nothing to do with viability.

released the third largest amount of radioactive iodine-131 gas in nuclear history. The reason most don't know about the incident is that it was classified until a class action lawsuit filed by local residents stricken with cancers and other health abnormalities forced the details into the public record a few years ago.

Here's a relevant excerpt from Wiki:




Emphasis mine.

It's very easy to make things sounds scary (260 TIMES THREE MILE ISLAND!!!!). Something tells me, though, that the general population exposure to the radiation is less than you get from second-hand smoke or a microwave.

not including the actual workers on the site at the time, many of whom suffered elevated cancer rates and other maladies due to exposure. This happened right in Simi Valley. The problem is that the industry refused to divulge this information for around 30 years until it was forced out via an external investigation that began in the late 1980's. They covered it up, plain and simple.

For decades it was maintained that the facility itself was the only place exposed to radiation. Boeing still won't give simple details, like which direction the radioactive cloud traveled, and settled out of court for 30 million dollars in 2006 rather than let the record be known. With such a clearly established record of malfeasance on this issue, how can you or anyone trust them? This like being a supporter of Enron or Haliburton, just with much higher stakes than money - esp long term.

What has been established is that large amounts of cesium-137 and iodine-131 were released into the atmosphere in Los Angeles - the latter in concentrations that amounted to the 3rd largest accidental release of that material in the history of nuclear energy.

That's a bit more than a cigarette or a microwave, Jack. Time to get that "something tells me..." inner voice of yours examined. How anyone, esp. a Democrat, can support this sort of behavior at the expense of public health and to the detriment of the future of nuclear energy is beyond me. Nuclear power is the future, but before we can realize its vast potential we need to spend more time perfecting the methods and the industry itself will need an overhaul to make it more accountable, transparent and reasonably failsafe. At this time, the current stewards of this industry simply cannot be trusted.

I've found that, for the most part, people not working on these kinds of sites don't understand the safety procedures in place. In ANY kind of emergency event, even if it is a brush fire near the security fence a half-mile away, you shut down, account for everyone, and resolve the situation ASAP just in case it is something that could be dangerous.

just to show how easy it was to get access. My uncle spent the last years of his career at PG&E cleaning up the engineering mess there.

they built Turkey Point right where Hurricanes like Andrew (winds there were clocked at over 200 mph before the meter broke) come roarig through and Diablo Canyon is on an earthquake fault.

I'm so relieved they know what they're doing.

completely safe?

radiation could have been spread all over Florida at about 200 mph.

A big risk to take for "clean, cheap, green" nuclear power.

There was never any danger during andrew... some outside buildings were damaged, but the reactor was never in danger..

Sounds to me like someone missed something on the welding inspection if it was a cracked weld... every weld made in the plant is inspected.. some visually, some via x-ray.... sounds like this one *should* have been x-rayed, though it's almost impossible in some situations. You should see some of the conditions some of these welders work under, too.
(I worked in the welding inspection department)

I wonder who the welder was and if I know him. It's a Union job & Local 725 out of Miami supplies the pipefitters & welders (my father is a 50+ year member of 725 & my grandfather was a founding member).

We do out here in the Chem Demil community, and many of our safety/QA guidelines are based on DOE and experience from the nuclear industry.

:eyes:

What would happen if the nuculers fell into the earth after an earthquake!

OH NOES!

Sorry, you just crapped on your own argument.

they just haven't gotten a lot of press.

Most people are familiar with the disaster that occurred at Three Mile Island in the late 1970's, however that was far from the only nuclear meltdown that occurred at a civilian facility here in North America.

What is that, you say? Didn't know there were more? Well I'm afraid there have been plenty. Don't be embarrassed if you weren't aware of this, in some cases these incidents have been carefully kept from the public for decades.

For example, in California, right outside Los Angeles in the Simi Hills, a meltdown occurred in 1959 that released at least 300 times more radiation than the Three Mile Island accident and resulted in the deaths and sickness of hundreds of people. Even more serious & widespread repercussions from this incident are suspected, however sealed records and stonewalling by both government and industry officials have prevented even the most basic information from being shared about this disaster. Simple public health questions, such as which direction the radioactive cloud traveled, have never been divulged.

The Simi meltdown is just one of several that happened in the 1950's. The very first prototype reactor also suffered a meltdown - EBR I in 1951. This was followed the next year with an even more serious meltdown and radioactive release at the NRX site in Canada that required the removal and burial of the core by a clean up team that included 150 US Naval personnel including a young Jimmy Carter. Then in 1966 there was yet another partial meltdown - this time at the Fermi I reactor in Michigan. Around 10 years later we had Three Mile Island.

Keep in mind that these are just the known meltdown-style accidents at North American civilian facilities. There have been more documented in England, Scotland and of course the former Soviet Union as well as plenty of nuclear accidents that didn't involve meltdowns but were just as dangerous to the public, including all the military accidents of which are only dimly aware. Given that the Simi incident was kept secret from the public for approximately 40 years, we really have no idea how many other serious accidents have been kept from us.

I'm all for the responsible use of nuclear power, but the industry as it stands is simply not trustworthy enough to support at this point as the safety record for these materials, facilities and procedures is not a good one. The publics trust has been repeatedly violated and its health threatened, often without disclosure of any kind. Once proponents of nuclear power can outline transparent, failsafe operational and disposal procedures I'll revisit my view on this matter but until then I can only judge this industry by its own former actions, and that is not a record I can trust.

and lived might I add.

and considering that there have been virtually no fatalities directly attributable to nuclear incidents, you ought to be consistent and
condemn the use of cars because of actual deaths, not speculative ones, on the order of 2 million since then.

how can anyone suggest nuclear is a viable option for stable power?

There are so many things that can go wrong with a NPP. The nukeheads will say "there are lots of safeguards in place to make them safe." Yeah, but a lot of those safeguards basically equate to *turning off the power* when the littlest thing happens.

If Nukeheads could generate power from Al Qaeda they would probably put Bin Laden and a thousand of his followers in a fenced area in Wyoming and do it, and assure us that it is perfectly safe.