25th Anniversary Of Three Mile Island 418
fbform writes "March 28, 2004 is the 25th anniversary of the Loss Of Coolant Accident (LOCA) at the nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. It's a good time to reflect on the impact it has had on our nuclear safety policy and interface design in general."
Shame (Score:5, Insightful)
The truth is that modern techniques could probably make nuclear power an extremely safe alternative.
Stop and pause (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shame (Score:0, Insightful)
Yep, and we all believe that it is completly impossible for anyone to attack any plant and cause any damage.
In any form, nuclear forces are way too powerful to trust to any human IMHO.
Re:Shame (Score:4, Insightful)
But there is still the waste disposal problem. Until we have a solution for the disposal of the higher-level waste that is in place and shown to be working, I for one will not be supporting nuclear powery.
I parsonally am not happy with long term repositories such as Yucca Mountain - too many unknowns. My favoured version was the subduction zone disposal - return it to the earth's core, which is used to it. Does anybody know why this disappeared off the map?
Consequences of cheap nuclear power? (Score:5, Insightful)
I noticed recently that in Arizona so few people have clotheslines. It is 100 degrees and sunny for most of the year there, but most people still seem to dry their clothes in the electric clothes dryer.
That approach is not as common in Australia, where we take advantage of 100 degrees of sunshine to get our clothes nice and dry.
Are we weird, or what?
Re:Shame (Score:2, Insightful)
You'd have to ditch the radwaste casks in the ocean, where they might be prone to leaking in a harsh, high pressure ocean environment. I suppose if the radwaste is significantly heavier than the water so it won't float, and it can be dropped into a trench so any leaking has no chance of washing up, it would be a viable idea.
Re:Shame (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a shame that sloppy and incompetent management by the nuclear power industry has created an entirely justified bad image.
The big lie told about three mile island was that the design is 'failsafe'. As a matter of definition it is not, no light water reactor design is. Failsafe means that if something breaks it breaks in a safe way. Three mile island had redundant safety systems, that is not the same thing.
The truth is that modern techniques could probably make nuclear power an extremely safe alternative.
The truth is that the better designs of forty years ago could have made safe nuclear power. The CANDU heavy water system is genuinely fail-safe. The coolant doubles as the moderator. That means if you loose one you loose the other and the reaction is halted.
Today there are vastly better designs, like the pebble bed reactor that MIT and others have been looking at.
The real problem is not technical, it is political. The concerns about nuclear power are completely justified. The nuclear industry has lied and deceived in the past. In the UK there was a long history of accidents, coverups and blatant deception. The true economics of nuclear power only became apparent after the Thatcher government tried to privatise nuclear power. When the books were opened it turned out that nuclear power had been vastly more expensive than claimed - and there are still the costs of decommissioning the plants.
Research into new types of nuclear reactor are required for many reasons. Even the idiots who ignore global warming see that energy reserves are running low. If we do not start looking at better nuclear options now we may end up being forced into repeating the light water mistake.
Re:Oh little isle, of 3 Mile... (Score:3, Insightful)
How such horrible, idiotic poetry could be modded up is beyond me.
Incidentally, TMI's miniscule radiation release was projected to cause less than 1 extra death for the hundreds of thousands of people potentially exposed. INCLUDING THE PEOPLE WHO WORKED THERe, who would get the worst exposure.
Re:too bad they stopped building them... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What surprises me... (Score:5, Insightful)
You have no idea buddy... take a look at the Presidential Report. Your above-included description lacks many other key elements that contributed to the factor. The failure that you list in (1) was most probably caused by cleaning the scrubber - the device that removes assorted crap from the incoming water into the secondary system. Unfortunately the scrubber regularly deposited large amounts of thick resin in the feedwater line. This resin is highly resiliant to chemical attack and needs to be cleaned away using a high pressure water hose. The control valve for the feedwater system works on pressurised air, and the cleaning process forced water and resin into the control system, resulting in a half open "8" (one of the valves, there's a complementary valve called a "12"). So the failure here was operational - Metropolitan Edison chose a poor method of cleaning.
There existed a secondary feedwater system, but unfortunately the operators had left the "8" of the secondary system closed (as mentioned in step 6). They didn't see the light telling them it was closed, as it was covered by a maintenance tag. If no stupid cardboard-tag based maintenancy strategy was used then they would have seen. The failure here was operator error/poor operational specification.
The operators didn't know that the PORV (pilot operated relief valve) was stuck open, and made assumptions about its behaviour. There was an emergency PORV-valve, known as a block valve. The operators didn't close this, despite the fact the drain temperature for the containment tank was over 2800 degrees farenheit, while normal operating temperature was in the range of 200. During a conference call with the senior Met. Ed. engineers they asked if this valve was closed. One of the operators said "yes", then covered the phone mouthpiece with his hands and shouted to the other engineer to close it. The failure here? Operator error and a terrible corporate culture that resulted in operators lying to senior engineers.
there's a shitload more problems with TMI, but to blindly say that this could have been solved by better engineering practice? No, you sir, are talking shit. A large number of the failings were operaional/human/organisational and outside the scope of any engineers ability to deal with.
Re:Stop and pause (Score:1, Insightful)
Exactly: I'm wondering what might have been if the Soviet Union had the standards as good as the US for safety, especially regarding basic reactor design.
If the Chernobyl plant had been designed as well as TMI's was, then even with the appalling mismanagement of the plant, the accident would not have had a significant affect on anyone outside the facility itself. Thousands of lives would not have been lost.
And in fact, much tha same can be said for other Soviet industrial practices. Safety of the workers, the nearby population, and the environment were routinely ignored in the Soviet Union. The track record of capitalism-with-some-regulation is far, far superior to that of any communist system that has been tried.
Re:Consequences of cheap nuclear power? (Score:1, Insightful)
By many US standards I am considered to have a very comfortable life financially. In my home country my family was considered very wealthy. But even though hanging clothes was considered a normal part of life before (i.e., even the "rich" did it, or rather, had the domestic help do it), over in the US people are so concerned with how "ghetto" this appears that homeowners associations actually ban clothes lines.
The Difference Between TMI and Chernobyl (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stop and pause (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true. It allows us to realize how fortunate it is that our engineers rejected the open-pile design which caused Chernobyl to be so dangerous. It also makes me thankful that, due to the skillful design, the TMI incident is a disaster only in the terms of public-relations among those who don't understand, or want to understand the science.
I don't think that anyone who isn't rabidly anti-nuclear power would consider these to events to be anywhere near equivalent. It says a lot for the systems that, despite the chain of human and mechanical failures, the incident at TMI was limited to such a small environmental impact. That wasn't by luck, it was by design decisions, choosing a much safer way to use nuclear energy to create power.
Bringing Chernobyl into the context of TMI shows that the person doing so either doesn't understand the science, or is trying to use fear of Chernobyl to convince others who don't understand the differences.
Re:Consequences of cheap nuclear power? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:slashdot is run by communists (Score:1, Insightful)
Or did you mean the use of the word 'communist' that seems to serve as a catch-all derogative amongst some Americans? Nice to see McCarthyism is alive and well, comrade!
Re:Shame (Score:4, Insightful)
If nuclear reactors were mass produced, then making a "farm" of smaller units would make sense. But they are not. The navy uses small reactors because they have to fit into the boat and still have enough room for everything else.
So when building individual units - bigger = more power for your money. Economics. Plus, nearly all of the engineering work for building a regular plant has been completely worked out, which means you have a set of plans that you know works. Why fix what isn't broken?
Now, if you could come up with a way to build a modular nuclear station with cost-per-megawatt lower than a traditional plant, you might get someone to listen. Then you have to convince people that it's just as effective, which means getting someone to pay for the first plant wil be a challange. Once you've got your foot in the door it might be a little easier, though.
=Smidge=
Re:Stop and pause (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheers, Gene
Re:Shame (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, yeah... but then again, wood in the fireplace is very romantic, and if I *might* lose a day of life when I'm 80 because I had an hour of sex in front of a nice warm fireplace today... heh, I'll take my chances
Re:Nuclear power industry not safe. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing is completely safe. Thing is, the alternatives - the real, viable alternatives -- to nuclear power are even less safe.
You may recall the recent FDA advisory [fda.gov] warning pregnant women and children to limit their intake of several types of fish because of mercury contamination in those fish.
The FDA guidelines call for children and pregnant women -- and women who "may become pregnant" to abstain completely from shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or tilefish, and to limit intake to six onces of albacore tuna a week.
What you might not have heard is that the panel that made the recommendation contained two members who were former lobbyists for the fishing industry [alternet.org] -- or that another member, a scientist, not a lobbyist, resigned in protest because he believes that even six onces a week of albacore tuna is dangerous, and that that recommendation was only made because of industry lobbying.
What you also might not have heard is that the primary source of mercury in fish is from "mercury rain" -- and the primary source of mercury rain is from coal fired power plants
As it happens, the EPA is retreating from plans to more closely regulate mercury pollution from power plants, and "just coincidently" some of the language justifying that retreat is word-for-word the same as language in utility company memos.
So on the one hand, the fishing industry influences the FDA to soft-pedal its warnings to children and pregnant women, and on the other hand the power industry gets the EPA to continue to allow pollution.
And this is not to mention the other dangers of coal: despoiling the environment by digging it up, despoiling the air with smog when it's burnt, giving miners black-lung, etc.
I grew up a few miles from Three Mile Island, and I was still there when the accident happened, and I'll take clean nuclear power any day. Even in the worst case, we can contain a nuclear plant accident -- but we can't contain an ocean of mercury contaminated fish.
Re:Nuclear power industry not safe. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blah. (Score:4, Insightful)
The situation is indeed different. E.g. it was said for the last 30 years or so that Germany's nuclear plants would be completely safe against aircrashs, terrorist attackes, malfunction, even most kinds of military activities. However, recent studies undertaken on behalf of the German government had the result that none of Germany's nuclear power stations would be able to withstand the direct impact of a large airliner without considerable damage, some of them would even be catastrophically destroyed.
How could this happen ? On one hand, when those plants were built between the 60s and 80s, terrorist activity was understood mostly as single bombs or sabotage as was commonly acted out by the left-wing terrorist of the time. Attacks of 9/11 or Madrid scale or suicide attacks of the kind we see in the middle east were unthinkable back then. It was also thought that the Red Army would not see to actively destroy nuclear power stations as they wanted to make use of land they conquered. Regarding aircrashs, the problem is similar to the planning parameters of the Twin Towers. On one hand everyone assumed an air crash to happen by accident, so mostly fast but small military aircraft were taken into account. On the other hand, the largest commercial aircraft when a lot of these plants were planned were Boing 707 and the like, which apparently could cause much less damage than modern aircraft.
The problem with long-lived technologies like nuclear energy is that in a couple of decades a lot of key parameters regarding the security of them can drastically change.
Human (un)reliability... (Score:5, Insightful)
Both Chernobyl and TMI happened because the humans didn't fulfill their role in the reliability chain.
In both cases, humans misreading or misinterpreting information worked against the automatic protection systems correct safing actions.
To technocrats like us, the obvious solution is fully automatic, unmanned atomic powerplants.
Considering that we cannot even drive a car 20km by computer, I don't think we are anywhere close to ready for that sort of challenge yet.
So while nuclear energy may be ready, we're not.
(And there's also that pesky detail about the spent fuel.)
Re:too bad they stopped building them... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What surprises me... (Score:2, Insightful)
It occurs to me that if they had simply had that direct valve status indication, rather than just the command, none of this would have happened. For that matter they should have also had a flow meter on the pipe so they could directly measure how much water was leaving the reactor.. instead somebody else has to call them about standing water.
We put end switches on valves that could break a US $5K device if it breaks. If find their lack on a nuke reactor to be total unbeleivable.
Overall the amount of reactor status that they were expected to deduce from indirect measurements was just crazy. You'll never get switch board operator type people who will be able to navigate those kind of intellectual waters in a crisis. I wonder how many nuke physists could navigate those waters knowing that a mistake means their ass.
I'm just a lowly HVAC control guy. I would never trust my company to do nuke control. But, damn, even I could design a better control system than what I read about here.
Re:What surprises me... (Score:2, Insightful)
That valve should have had direct status indication. That pipe should have had direct flow indication. Inferring flow from temperature is just shitty, particularlly in a nuke plant.
The nuCLEAR Truth (Score:5, Insightful)
The trush is that nuclear power is already the safest and cleanest power source in the USA - even when you include taking care of radioactive waste.
The truth is, as has been pointed out here several times, that coal powered plants in the USA (trace radiation) are more radioactive then nuclear plants.
The truth is, that 3 mile island was the ultimate example of why nuclear power in the US is so safe. Even in worse case scenarios, and with 20 simeltanious managment and design failures - nothing harmfull happened to anybody.
The truth is, the movement against nuclear power has far more to do with OPEC financing than concern for safety, liabilities, or the environment.
The truth is that 3 mile island wasn't a nuclear disaster by any measure, it was a political disaster.
The truth is that dealing with nuclear waste isn't a problem either, it's also a political problem.
The sad truth is that we could all have had clean, cheap, safe, and environmentally friendly power a long time ago. But big huge nuclear powerplants are just simply too tempting of a target
Unfortunately, the popular mob is all to often like a herd buffalos, the stampeed that saves one from a lion kills thousands as they head toward the cliff.
Re:Nuclear power industry not safe. (Score:3, Insightful)
Demand-side management, renewables and co-generation should be considered. While none are perfect, they are much cheaper and don't have some of the liabilities of nuclear energy.
Re:What impact? (Score:4, Insightful)
Recycle it, wind up with 90 to 95% less material and more fuel. The remaining 5 to 10% (i have heard) is about as radioactive as your car and would fit under your desk. Disposal problem solved.
And if you say that "If thats true, why don't we already do that?" take a look at the Anti-Nuclear-Anything loby that would lobby against anything with the word Nuclear in it even if it solved all our energy problems, every known disease including cancer and produced no pollution in any way, as long as it had anything to do with anything Nuclear.
Re:Your ignorance is a shame. (Score:3, Insightful)
*energy production* not safe. (Score:3, Insightful)
i'm not arguing for nuclear or against coal per se, rather that the ENTIRE energy production picture MUST be considered at once, otherwise we merely displace risk and may even cause more aggregate harm.
Re:too bad they stopped building them... (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.nirs.org/mononline/CONSEQU.HTM
Note NIRS is an institution with an incentive to exaggerate the situation (because then they get more donations), and even they admit this count! (Of course they also quote the Ukranian government, which stretches the numbers in order to get EU subsidies/gifts/loans).
And Chernobyl was a very old, very unsafe design way behind what is used in the U.S.
Would you stop flying because some Antonov or Ilushyn somewhere crashed?
Re:Your ignorance is a shame. (Score:3, Insightful)
They wanted immediate casualties, a high body count. They wanted TV coverage of bloody people. Their supporters in the Arab Street do not understand radiological poisoning. Seeing an empty NCY would be good, but seeing distruction is better. The images of the mighty americans fleeing the center of power must have put them into fits of extasy.
If they precipitated a long term disaster, it would damage their cause.
They do not want to destroy us Infidels, but to rule us. They need our "decadence" as an example, and they need our money to fund their cause.
Re:Shame (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:*energy production* not safe. (Score:3, Insightful)
americans are familiar with cheap energy and relatively minimal government. auto gas in denmark or germany costs what, double? triple? (i pick cars b/c i know at least a little about it.) arguments for behavior-inducing gas taxes, or more efficient cars (e.g., CAFE has been frozen since Reagan), have been shot down even though, yes, they probably would have reaped larger dividends in "externalities." americans angrily notice a 10 cent difference in gas prices (even if adjusted for inflation our gas has gotten cheaper) and not externalities, in fact few will listen to (my) arguments about thinking in inflation-adjusted dollars or counting the price of middle eastern entanglement, and would be quick to complain about the "tin can" cars people favor in countries with expensive gas. The Hummer -- only in america?
i don't mean to knock americans too harshly -- heck, i *am* one -- but to say old ways reinforced by pandering politicians die hard. this is plain old cynical politics, not an intellectual exercise. just because an argument makes perfect sense doesn't mean it will carry the day.
i would urge the public to insist on a comprehensive plan, and to be wary of emotional appeals to do this or that. industry is likely to rig the game if overall performance is not a well-defined quantifiable goal as it is in something like air quality. gee, wouldn't this be a good topic for a candidate for president? this is fight that can be won, but only if we pick it.
btw, i have been watching wind with interest and am especially curious where "cape wind [capewind.org]" will come out. again politics are key -- which side will win and why?
Re:Your ignorance is a shame. (Score:2, Insightful)
What sort of strike were you thinking of?
--
Size doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
It would seem that safety is more a factor of the cultural or organizational differences of the Navy versus the private sector. Possibly the balance of safety versus bottom line is weighed differently in the two organizations. If so, this would argue for nationalizing nuclear power plants and running them as the Navy does.
Re:SL-1 (Score:2, Insightful)
The speed of movement of the control rod also has an effect on criticality, btw. SL-1 went prompt critical and the water moderator flashed to steam. The 'pocket' of steam caused a water hammer which lifted the reactor vessel (about 5 metric tons in weight) over 3 meters. It also blew out other control rods and part of the core causing massive contamination of the reactor containment area. It was estimated that a neutron flux in excess of 1000 n/cm^3 was produced during the incident.
Re:Shame (Score:4, Insightful)
The links in question connect to people who live near to TMI and were affected. I think that calling people who have been lied to and betrayed as they have 'paranoid' or 'phobic' is disgusting.
As I keep saying, look at the people, look at the tactics. It is possible that they are merely trolls or agent provocateurs from greanpeace, but I doubt it. It was exactly this type of attitude, that the only reason someone would doubt nuclear power would be if they were an imbecile that causes me to not trust them.
None of the profs I at any of the labs I have worked with would endorse your position. Even Teller, who I never met but was frequently compared to (for proposed applications, not insight into physics) would not endorse your position. You are asking for blind faith.
I am a scientist, blind faith is something I try to eliminate.
One final point. The worst effect the nuclear mafia had on energy policy was their ruthless campaigns to kill studies of 'alternative energy'. When I visisted Rutherford Appleton Labs the folk there were very upset about the way Salter's duck, a promising wave power technology was sunk by outright deception by the fanatically pro-nuclear 'review board'. They could not even bear to see the idea of alternative energy sources being examined. When the true costs of nuclear power came out during the privatisation fiasco it turned out that Salter's duck would have produced energy at half the real cost of nuclear - even with the ridiculously inflated costings used.
Re:Shame (Score:3, Insightful)
If the plant can separate the tritium from the duterium why throw it away? Considering that it might come in useful for building hydrogen bombs.