Japan finally admits 3 nuclear reactors melted down after quake.

Luckily, there is no danger of a major earthquake in the US.

barfo

 

That's a great, well-written article. I wish it would've asked the tougher questions, but since NPR is a liberal mouthpiece ( ) maybe they didn't want to indict any political figures or impugn the stupidity of staffers and committee members.

You may stop lying at any point. I tell you to believe ME, b/c I have 7 years of engineering training and almost a decade of plant operation experience, and not psychology-trained stay-at-home moms and kid bloggers suckling the teat of GreenPeace. I talk about the science and engineering of nuclear power, and not scare-tactics based on ignorance.

Again, not true. I don’t work for the feds, and I’m a pretty good source for this stuff. Just ask, when you have questions. Right now you’re lying, which is ignorant and immoral and doesn’t become anyone.

I’m sorry that you allow people to lie to you about important things and then still vote for them. I’m sorry that you want to remove an entire industry based on your uneducated fears and the lies people tell you. I choose not to work that way, and feel that my way is better and more logical.
Fortunately, I saw nothing in there about incompetence from the Navy, or science or engineering issues that aren't already known, and evidence contrary to my long-standing take that, when left to the ignorant, the uneducated and the immoral, stuff breaks down. I wholeheartedly agree with that, too. In fact, what this shows me is that there needs to be more DoE and DoD oversight of such a strategic program and national danger, that in the hands of the stupid and the corrupt and the ignorant bad stuff can happen.
In the Navy, when you falsify a record, you're stripped of your ability ever to work on a reactor again, the Engineer in charge and the Captain are generally both relieved.
In the Navy, reactor core lifetimes are strictly monitored and enforced by Commander, Naval Reactors and his staff. Here’s an article about Congress wanting to save money by telling the Navy that they don’t want to

Seems like the process is working here, where the Chairman of the Safeguards Committee lets the gov’t know about problems. What did the legislature do? How much did they invest in this?

Do you for one second think that I am in favor of engineering and safety compromises to solve someone’s lack of foresight, poor maintenance practices and b/c an arbitrarily-given 20-year license hasn’t been completed. Of course not. So where, again, does this show that nuclear power shouldn’t be much more heavily invested in?

Why do people get “compromises”. Who gave it, and why aren’t you lambasting that right now, instead of trying to lump me (someone who’s given you nothing but truth to your wild-eyed Chicken Little tactics) with the brush of people immoral, corrupt and stupid? Or insinuating that I’ve never said that nuclear power
The analogy you’re shooting for here is akin to saying cars must be taken off the road and humans go back to horses and bicycles because a 12 year-old stole a car and drove down the freeway at 100mph. “But Your Honor, his reckless abandon, immaturity and stupidity might kill a bunch of people someday.” True, but it’s better to punish the kid and parents than take cars away from society.

None of this is news to me, other than their responses to it. You can’t run your car for 50 years without corrosion unless you take meticulous care of it. And that’s a CAR, not a mass of steel, concrete and alloys you can’t even pronounce, much less spell with high-pressure and –temperature steam running through it 24/7.

This is what bothers me. Again, either rampant corruption, massive stupidity or both.

I don’t know why they put this in there…almost all technology-based reports and data are classified. If it was FOUO, that actually means that they might’ve redacted some of the technical parts.

They’re right. When cabling degrades, the nuclear instrumentation that relies on fine measurements aren’t reliable and you have degraded plant monitoring. Again, this isn’t news…no one believes that if you leave an electrical cable in any environment (much less a high-pressure, high-temperature one) that it will be “unforeseen” that in 40 years it might degrade. Again, what did Congress do about this when NRC reported it?

Yes, another fundamental principle of engineering is that, when it comes to age-related issues, as time goes by they get worse. Don’t know what more to say about that.

So again, the people charged with inspecting and reporting did their jobs correctly. They noted the failures, issued the shutdowns for maintenance and wrote the report. What happened after that? Where was the legislation, the shutdown, the fines, or the maintenance to fix it?

I can’t think of another industry, including the realty or fast-food industry, where the “worst” thing that’s happened in the industry is that 4 people got killed. How many people die in coal, solar, wind, oil, natural gas industries in their “worst accidents”? Yet you want to extrapolate this to show that nuclear plants should just go away?

So, to get this straight in all of our heads, a civilian operator wanted a license extension, and before they got it the agency made them fix some broken things before they failed? Amazing! That seems like EXACTLY what you want inspectors and regulators to do. Now why hasn’t that been done in the other scenarios?

So the regulatory agency sees problems, warns in reports, and the legislature does nothing about it except relax safety standards. Hm. I’m seeing a trend here.

And b/c there aren’t people smart enough to realize that he’s saying crazy stuff, he gets away with this…how?

I’m going to give you two guesses about whether you think I agree with this or not.

This isn’t new in reactor world (car safety, smoking bans, industrial safety, etc.) but it’s not good practice, I agree. So what’s the gov’t doing about it?

 

Long story short: Nothing in that article (from an engineering or science perspective) was new (at least to me). Reactor safety, plant maintenance, and operator training are paramount in the operator of a submarine (even to the exclusion of other things like “shooting torpedoes” and “sleep”). Strict standards are placed, adhered to and inspected regularly to ensure that
In the Navy, when you falsify a record, you're stripped of your ability ever to work on a reactor again, the Engineer in charge and the Captain are generally both relieved, and your ship is shut down from operation until Commander, Naval Reactors is confident that you can run your ship safely again. Even to the detriment of other operations around the world. I don’t see anywhere where people were fired, voted out, or questioned about competence when these things were brought up. I’d love to see NPR investigate that. Who were these reports sent to? Who vetoed the penalties against the civilians for their violations? Why do these companies still have licenses?
Great questions, and a great article. Now, what are you guys going to do about it? Ensure that the Congress, instead of giving 800B to unions or banks, gives some money to support the national energy infrastructure? Training inspectors and regulators? Taking over the business? Instead of leaving in the hands of the immoral, corrupt and ignorant, ensuring that standards are enforced? Or just say “Nuclear power sucks and is dangerous! Get rid of it!”

 

Wow. Normally my guesses don't turn out like this...

Actually, one of the problems might be that a member of the House Energy Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations was a guy who didn't think that lying to the nation for a week was worth losing your job over.

 

If that's the case, no problem. If the lawmakers decide that we're not going to let any more plants get built, and will close ones that get too old, that's what they decide. I'm just pointing out that it's supremely ignorant and hypocritical to say that nuclear power is unsafe and then drill more oil wells, dig more coal mines, investing in fracking, and have people drive gas-powered cars to work.

If you leave this up for a popular vote (like Yucca Mountain), my take is that most Americans are too ignorant of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math to even understand the basics of the problem, much less the nuances. Nuke-u-lur, indeed.

 

Nuclear plants would be cheaper to build if they all used the same blueprint. If we don't want to burn coal, of which we have an abundant amount, nuclear is the solution.

I lived 90 miles from Yucca Mountain and I had no fear of it being used to store nuclear waste. If the waste is encased in glass, or bonded to it, it can survive train crashes, plane crashes, etc., without a problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_JhruRobRI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyZ1AeK_XeQ

One thing I'm convinced of in this forum is that Brian knows his shit.

 

One of the biggest problems we have with nuclear energy is poorly conceived regulations. Brian wrote about it and you just wrote about it.

We're living with Jimmy Carter era regs that weren't very good in the first place and are now seriously outdated.

Waste can be reprocessed in the reactors which generates more energy and makes better byproducts to manage. Yet our regs forbid it. The French have been doing it for decades, generate like 80% of their power from nuclear plants, and are two or three generations ahead of us technology wise. We can learn from their experience.