Russia Set To Extend Life of Nuclear Reactors Past Engineered Life Span 215
Harperdog writes "Yikes! Russia is extending the lifetime of nuclear power reactors beyond their engineered life span of 30 years, including the nation's oldest reactors: first-generation VVERs and RBMKs, the Chernobyl-type reactors. This goes against existing Russian law, because the projects have not undergone environmental assessments. 'Many of the country's experts and non-governmental organizations maintain that this decision is economically unjustifiable and environmentally dangerous — to say nothing of illegal. The Russian nuclear industry, however, argues that lifetime extensions are justified because the original estimate of a 30-year life span was conservative; the plants have been significantly upgraded; and extensions cost significantly less than constructing new reactors.'"
So does Canada. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So does Canada. (Score:5, Informative)
As does the US, which has re-certified multiple reactors, including both at Nine Mile Point, which were re-certified for an additional 20 years after their initial lifespan.
Re:So does Canada. (Score:5, Informative)
Design life span is a best guess.
Actual use reveals the true life span. Aggressive maintenance can stretch life span even further.
The same is true of small to medium sized hydro dams. They were so over-built that many of them have exceeded their design life. Some have doubled their design life without showing significant degradation, especially with new resurfacing technologies.
It is said that "Engineering is the art of finding the least safe design".
By which it is meant that engineers design to use the least materials, cost, labor, and still achieve a safe result.
When actual measurements and data are poor, or not available, engineers (the good ones) over build.
They design in extra safety factors, excessive strength. The result is you have Brooklyn Bridges, (a whipersnapper compared to the Ponte Fabrico [wikipedia.org] B52s, the aqueducts (some still in use) and similar very over-engineered projects.
That some reactors that were designed when the industry was in its infancy are still safe and suitable today is not all that surprising. People didn't push the envelope as often then.
But it remains to be seen expect that of future designs.
Re:So does Canada. (Score:4, Interesting)
Ponte Fabrico [wikipedia.org]
Shit, I remember reading about that in school. Latin class, to be specific - translating a section of Cassius Dio's Historia Romana about its construction. That alone tells you how incredibly old and overdesigned that thing is.
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Actual use reveals the true life span. Aggressive maintenance can stretch life span even further.
The same is true of small to medium sized hydro dams. They were so over-built that many of them have exceeded their design life. Some have doubled their design life without showing significant degradation, especially with new resurfacing technologies.
See, the key word here is "maintenance". Yes, you can stretch it for a while longer if you have the money and the inclination to maintain it. Problem is, Russia didn't exactly have much of that back in 90s, and maintenance is not really back to USSR levels even today.
It's ironic that you had to mention hydro dams, since they kinda showcase the problem [wikipedia.org]. Of course, this will look much more spectacular when an RBMK reactor goes down in a similar fashion.
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I think they keep that mess limping along because it's one of the few plants still capable of producing isotopes for medical purposes?
I could be wrong, but still pretty scary.
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Not clever (Score:2)
Does not mean it's the right thing to do.
Push it to the limit until it breaks...
Have a look at : http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2010/27c3-4187-en-your_infrastructure_will_kill_you.html [media.ccc.de]
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But was that done illegally with no environmental assessment? I'm all for nuclear power, but with rigorous oversight.
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Chalkriver is kept operational by political decree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk_River_Laboratories#2007_shutdown [wikipedia.org]
On December 11, 2007, the Canadian House of Commons, acting on independent expert advice, passed emergency legislation authorizing the restarting of the NRU reactor and its operation for 120 days (counter to the decision of the CNSC), which was passed by the Senate and received Royal Assent on December 12. Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticized the CNSC for this shutdown which "jeopardized the health and safety of tens of thousands of Canadians", insisting that there was no risk, contrary to the testimony of then CNSC President & CEO Linda Keen. She would later be fired for ignoring a decision by Parliament to restart the reactor, reflecting its policy that the safety of citizens requiring essential nuclear medicine should be taken in to account in assessing the overall safety concerns of the reactor's operation.
This reactor suffered 2 major emergency shutdowns since this incident already. Each resulted in many months downtime.
Basically, it's a reactor used for medical isotopes built back in the 50s kept limping along into 2nd decade when it should have been completely shut down and replaced. But that effort failed,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAPLE [wikipedia.org]
so we are stuck with a leaking, 50+ year old machi
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there is no such thing as FUD
Well, (Score:5, Funny)
What could possibly go boom?
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Good question. The article says nothing about what makes a reactor have a "lifetime". What keeps them from running them for hundreds of years?
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Most metals become brittle when irradiated.
Someone will be along with more details then I can recall offhand.
I would just design the plant to run with brittle metals from day one. Nothing that can't be solved with thicker walls (in many cases anyhow).
Steel also becomes brittle through work hardening. Which is often overbuilt to accommodate the loss of toughness. Nothing lasts forever.
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Most metals become brittle when irradiated.
Someone will be along with more details then I can recall offhand.
I would just design the plant to run with brittle metals from day one. Nothing that can't be solved with thicker walls (in many cases anyhow).
Modern reactors use a neutron shield that goes with the fuel basket. It can be replaced and greatly decreases vessel embrittlement by becoming the sacrificial element to first absorb/slow the errant neutrons.
The problem is with shutdown and startup. This needs to be done with control as things become harder and have less flex.
Re:Well, (Score:5, Informative)
Except it does:
During life-extension projects, engineers determine which components are in need of replacement, and which can remain in service if maintained regularly. Some parts of a reactor, however, cannot be replaced -- including the reactor casing and its internal elements, the graphite stack (found in RBMK reactors), primary coolant circuits, primary coolant pumps, and biological shield systems. These parts are crucial for the safe operation of a reactor, particularly a first-generation reactor.
In the case of the Kola nuclear power plant in northern Russia, for example, the reactor casing should be replaced in order to ensure safer operation, but that cannot be done without building a new reactor. In addition, the proximity of the fuel assemblies to the steel walls in the VVER-440 reactor tank -- such as those used in two of Kola's reactor units -- results in higher neutron irradiation than in other types of reactors, so the walls of the VVER-440 become brittle more rapidly.
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You can also choose to anneal the reactor vessel in place. This will restore much of the original ductility.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annealing_(metallurgy) [wikipedia.org]
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Just take out the fuel rods...?
It's hardly rocket science.
Also, who said anything about "putting the reactor on fire"?
Annealing doesn't have to be done with fire, and it's something that has been done with nuclear piles before.
Re:Well, (Score:5, Informative)
Material decay under long-term exposure to radiation, most likely. Also, as new technology becomes available, they may expect the plant to be out-dated and no longer worth the necessary modifications to match newer standards after thirty years.
Re:Well, (Score:4, Informative)
As I understand it, the RBMK reactors are already a long way from meeting modern safety standards. They have no containment building, they still have a positive void coefficient, the monitoring and control systems are quite limited despite being upgraded and this can't really be fixed, there appear to be a bunch of single points of failure that can't be fixed either, and so on.
Re:Well, (Score:4, Informative)
Modern updates greatly reduced the positive void coefficient. It used to be wildly positive (4.7), which allowed running unenriched uranium on a non-heavy-water reactor. Now it's around 0.7, which gives you a lot more room for error.
The controls are considerably upgraded: no more graphite tips on the control rods, more manual control rods, more neutron absorbers, no more safety overrides, and more.
There aren't many single points of failure, but the safety margin and redundancy is much lower than western designs. A PWR can be leaking like a sieve and still maintain adequate cooling; a RBMK can hit trouble with only a few broken pipes, and as you say, there's no way to mitigate it, since it's part of the design.
They actually do have some some containment. It's not a heavy-duty all-encompassing concrete bunker like a western reactor, but there are high pressure management channels, steam condenser pools, etc. Any routine blowout will be contained... Just don't pull a Chernobyl. :)
I'd say RBMK safety has been upgraded from "Insanely Irresponsible" to "Poor".
Re:Well, (Score:5, Insightful)
No technical limit. Eventually you get to replace the reactor vessel, which for all practical purposes involves disassembling nearly the entire plant, and reassembling it, so you may as well be honest with yourself and call it a brand new plant on the same site. Kind of like the old joke, which is true in my case, that I own my great grandfather-in-laws wood cutting axe, of course its had like 4 new handles and two new heads so there's not much of it older than 50 years or so...
Standard /. car analogy is that eventually a $5 bearing goes out deep in the car innards, and the labor costs to get in there, replace it, and get out, exceed the costs of a new car, or at least exceed the cost of an unbroken car of similar age and quality car.
Much like "reusable" spacecraft have kind of fizzled out because it turns out the recertification process is more expensive than making a new one.
Much like people can spend $75K on a model T restoration, where most people would just buy a much better kia, you could spend the cost of three new nukes trying to rebuild one old nuke, if you really want.
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"Eventually you get to replace the reactor vessel, which for all practical purposes involves disassembling nearly the entire plant, and reassembling it, "
Or you can just anneal it in place to remove much of the neutron damage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annealing_(metallurgy) [wikipedia.org]
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To be fair to the annealing process, the Windscale disaster was down to cutting corners, pushing the design limits of the pile too far, and inadequate instrumentation for monitoring it.
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And also the fact that no one knew about Wigner energy at the time those graphite cores were designed, so no method for efficient annealing was designed in.
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It's been done numerous times already jackass. It's called electromagnetic heating. You offload the core, remove the vessel internals, and lower essentially a big electricmagetic coil to generate currents in the vessel wall to heat it up. It's not rocket science, it's not even nuclear science, it's basic metallurgy.
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isotopes (Score:2)
What could possibly go boom?
Some hundreds of tons of isotopes.
Russia does not really care. Unlike Japan, they can afford to sacrifice (again) tens of thousands of square kilometers.
Awesome! glow in the dark babies! (Score:2, Offtopic)
coming soon near a reactor near you... we may finally get started on this super comics they have been writing about... it's about time :p
Sweet! (Score:2)
Insane (Score:4, Interesting)
A friend of mine was doing electrical panels inspections in Russian nuclear plants (some NGO program), and one time he was in a control center and noticed a door that had no sign. He asked what it was, but nobody knew. He opened it and saw a big rusty pipe. He found out that the pipe was carrying cooling water out of the machine room... The radioactivity level was so high that my friend got a 3-month paid leave to get it out of his system.
I'm no sissy, I could sleep in a haunted houses or dig out bones from indian sacred land, but there is just no way I'll ever set foot in a Russian nuclear plant or a Chinese chemical plant.
Re:Insane (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, that's a fairy tale.
1) There's no way a 'room which nobody knows about' can exist in a nuclear power plant.
2) Especially if it contains components from the freaking primary contour. And the secondary cooling contour is absolutely safe - you can drink water from it.
3) There's no way radiation levels can be large enough to cause significant irradiation in several minutes. Absolutely none at all - primary cooling water is radioactive, but not that much (it's continuously monitored).
4) Power plant operators after Chernobyl are _very_ careful. For a reason.
But what do I know? After all, I have actually worked on a Russian nuclear power plant.
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Sorry, that's a fairy tale.
I am always impressed when someone make that kind of statement, knowing almost nothing of the actual event. This is a two-way street, so for the sake of the discussion, I'll say that you working in a Russian nuclear power plant is also a fairy tale.
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Of course. Yesterday I saw a squad of Martians landing on the Red Square in New York (what? Red Square is in Moscow? Never mind).
Actual event may be anything from "stumbled and got burned by a hot pipe" to "smoked a few pipes of weed with friends". However, some things are just impossible.
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Of course. Yesterday I saw a squad of Martians landing on the Red Square in New York (what? Red Square is in Moscow? Never mind).
Actual event may be anything from "stumbled and got burned by a hot pipe" to "smoked a few pipes of weed with friends". However, some things are just impossible.
What you describe is unlikely, not impossible. Maybe you need to understand the difference, and stop trying to pass your opinions as facts.
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Even if we assume the part about the "unknown room" is true, the physics behind the way radiation works (that we know a lot about) are strongly against this being a true story, unless there's an exposed piece of the core sitting on a table in that room which I find unlikely.
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Spent fuel pools are even more carefully monitored, and are also much simpler in construction. So chances of uncharted pipework leading to/from them are essentially nil.
Ion-exchange resins in filters of course get pretty hot (and are classified as high-level waste), but I somehow doubt that they can be found in a closed room with rusting pipe.
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That sounds, really, really, impressive and scary to the uninformed. But it's not actually. If your friend exceeded his quarterly allowed dose, it means he took the equivalent of a few transcontinental flights or chest X-rays. (I.E. practically nothing.)
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No, you're not a sissy. Just badly misinformed and prone to EWW RAD1AT10N !1!11! syndrome.
Well, thinking of that, haunted houses are not that scary either. I'm still on the fence for the indian sacred land thing.
As for my friend, he did not lose his hair or got leukemia, but still, eww.
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Yeah, his hair and teeth fly out so fast that they can injure you!!!
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Not far. He almost got killed in a freak accident after coming back to America. He was working in a power plant (not nuclear), and one day a newbie noticed that a big breaker was off, he flipped it on and the breaker actually popped out of the socket, hitting my friend in the back of the head. Severe head trauma.
The breaker was off because there was a short on a power line following an ice storm. Power is powerful.
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There is a saying: "at the door of the obvious, no one should have to put up a sign".
It's like those rookie mechanics that stand in front of a semi tire while removing the nuts, and they are pissed when they lose a kneecap. Common sense is the best defense.
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Summons Scotty (Score:5, Insightful)
"A good Engineer is always a wee bit conservative, at least on paper." - Scotty, to La Forge, regarding IRC Tank Pressure Variances Regulation 42/15
This story brings this quote to mind.
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La Forge: But the specifications say no more than X!
Scotty: Who do you think WROTE the specifications?
Re:Summons Scotty (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that was the same exchange. Quoted in full:
Scotty: Shunt the deuterium from the main cryo-pump to the auxiliary tank.
La Forge: Er, the tank can't withstand that kind of pressure.
Scotty: [laughs] Where'd you... where'd you get that idea?
La Forge: What do you mean, where did I get that idea? It's in the impulse engine specifications.
Scotty: Regulation 42/15 - Pressure Variances on the IRC Tank Storage?
La Forge: Yeah.
Scotty: Forget it. I wrote it. A good engineer is always a wee bit conservative, at least on paper. Just bypass the secondary cut-off valve and boost the flow. It'll work.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
I can speak with authority on this... (Score:3)
Having Played SimCity, I can say from experience that this is a terrible idea. They clearly did not consult their advisers who would certainly have recommended upgrading to Microwave or Fusion. But, to be fair, it could be that Russia didn't unlock those yet.
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Par for the Course Sadly (Score:2)
USA, Canada, Russia... so on and so on...
Can we please build modern reactors? Y'know the kind that can actually use waste fuel so we can reduce the existing stockpile and are physically incapable of runaway reactions.
In the long standing tradition of auto comparisons: you wouldn't feel safe in a 35+ year old car if you drove it every day for all those years would you?
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as was your sense of humour.
We do this too... (Score:5, Informative)
So far the US has granted extensions like this to more than SIXTY reactors. How many has Russia given out so far?
http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/15/news/economy/nuclear_plants_us/index.htm [cnn.com]
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So far the US has granted extensions like this to more than SIXTY reactors. How many has Russia given out so far?
To be fair, no US reactor has yet exploded, caught fire and spread radiation across half of Europe.
Re:We do this too... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Uh, you do realise that comparing Three Mile Island to Chernobyl is like comparing spilling your coffee to burning your house down, right?
Re:We do this too... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Three Mile Island had a containment building and a generally less hair-raising design than the RBMK reactors, lacking such misfeatures as a highly positive void coefficient of re-activity. This was probably fortunate; I'm not sure quite how serious a Three Mile Island-style incident would've been in an RBMK, but it's unlikely to have been pretty.
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I'm not sure quite how serious a Three Mile Island-style incident would've been in an RBMK, but it's unlikely to have been pretty.
Three Mile Island was a literal core meltdown, if only a 'partial' one. You clearly know more nuclear engineering than I do, but I'd hazard a guess that if Three Mile Island were an RBMK the safe Zone of Exclusion would be at least fifty miles, and the only safe path up the east coast would have to bypass Pennsylvania almost entirely.
So pretty damn bad. Look at where the island sits; only 75 miles from Wilmington and 100 miles from Philadelphia.
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heaven help the inland USA if a 10 metre tsunami ever hits!
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You're technically right, but you're being misleading by comparing TMI to Chernobyl and you know it. From the article you linked to:
So did it spread radiation to "our east coast"? Yes. Did it sprea
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And how much contamination, do you think, was caused by Chernobyl outside the plant itself, Pripyat city and some swamps for few tens of kilometers around it?
There was a massive push to make it into an anti-Soviet (it was still USSR then) talking point, so everywhere from Poland to UK people were told that big bad radiation is everywhere.
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No
In france, people were told there is no radiation. But there was. A lot. And still, hundreds of thousands of children had thyroid deseases, vomiting, nose bleeding, etc. I am one of them.
If that was the case, you would be long dead by now.
You are talking to a person who not only lived in Gomel when it happened (less than 100km from the power plant) but also performed measurements soon after the disaster, and years later worked in an organization that monitored food and environmental safety in Gomel area.
Any noticeable contamination was directly around the plant and in few spots in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Everywhere else, for all practical purposes, there was no effect whatsoever.
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You just have absolutely no proof of what you're talking about. I have.
Look up any data on radioactive contamination around Chernobyl, and don't forget to compare giant scary blobs on some of them to naturally occurring ionizing radiation levels at, say, any area with granite.
In surrounding fire stations, radiation detectors alarmed, the state just had them shut off. In france.
Do you realize what is the sensitivity of those detectors?
In France, thyroid doses got up to 600mSv for 1 year children :
Based on what, and in what year? I-131 (the isotope that accumulates in thyroids) has a half-life of 8 days, most long-term contamination was from Cs-134, Cs-137 and Sr-90, and those three have no specific effect on thyroids.
I live near one of the highest of the listed sites, and althrough my thyroid was not affected, i had heavy nose bleeding,
Just continue to takl nonsense...
If you had nose bleedin
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I'm not sure where the data in that image you are citing comes from, but please link to the original peer reviewed journal article if there was one.
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The original article regarding the Russian reactors is talking about engineered lifespan, whereas your article is talking about license to operate. This is like the difference between renewing your car's inspection sticker and replacing your tires. One is a legal requirement and the other is a physical requirement. Neither article talks about this distinction, and I'm not sure that they're making it. The Russian plants were licensed for 30 years, and according to the article, their physical lifespan is
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Engineering lifespan on something like this is more of an educated guess, and is( or should be) fairly conservative.
For your example, it's more like when a company produces a radically new tire, with little to no prior experience in the rubber business has to tell the first consumers how long they will last. I'm thinking they're going to err on the side of caution.
Now, after years of running these tires, with regular valve-stem replacements and such, they realise there is a lot of life in them at the end of
Well... (Score:3)
Russia is extending the lifetime of nuclear power reactors beyond their engineered life span of 30 years
What could possibly go wrong ?
In Soviet Russia (Score:2)
Anyway, in Soviet Russia they get this rule of humor, unnlike on slashdot where I've already seen five Soviet Russia comments in this post...
These Reactors Were Dangerous When They Were New (Score:3)
This isn't really an issue about extending reactor life - a perfectly reasonable process if the reactors were safe to begin with. These Water-cooled graphite reacotrs are inherently unstable and were dangerous the day they powered up. They should be shut down ASAP.
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And why did that happen? Because Chernobyl was testing a new backup power system, for cooling the reactor when main power was lost. The idea was to use the energy already present in the system before having to rely on backup generators.
But I g
Re:Big deal... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Conservative estimates are appropriate for things that can melt down. Bigger impacts from "catastrophic failure" justify wider safety margins.
2. The original estimates already factored in maintenance and upgrades over their lifespan. Trying to factor them in again is just plain wrong.
3. Meltdowns are more expensive than construction. See also: Fukushima [wikipedia.org]
4. Nuclear is a comparatively new technology, and there have been a lot of fundamental changes and advances in reactor design in the last 30 years. A coal plant may change out a turbine for a more energy-efficient model during its term, but you can't just pull a reactor core (along with all its infrastructure) and swap in a totally different design as part of an upgrade. Changes like that generally call for outright replacement anyway.
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You say this other nations haven't been doing the exact same thing for YEARS. Like the SIXTY+ granted by the US:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/15/news/economy/nuclear_plants_us/index.htm [cnn.com]
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You say this other nations haven't been doing the exact same thing for YEARS
Where did he say that?
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2. The original estimates already factored in maintenance and upgrades over their lifespan. Trying to factor them in again is just plain wrong.
Nonsense.
The original estimates factored in some maintenance, virtually no upgrades, and much of it based on theoretical guesswork.
Now they have operated these plants for years, They can measure the actual degradation of the materials, and the history of failures
of actual parts in all of these reactors.
What you call just plain wrong is just plain engineering and advancements in materials science.
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The original estimates failed to factor in Chernobyl and a whole bunch of other safety problems waiting to happen. They needed major safety improvements in order to make the reactors even close to safe to run for their intended lifespan, and it appears that even then it was probably a bit questionable as to whether they should have continued to operate them.
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"but you can't just pull a reactor core (along with all its infrastructure) and swap in a totally different design as part of an upgrade. Changes like that generally call for outright replacement anyway."
Of course you can.
Re:Big deal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most all power plants are life-extended past their first thirty years. Why should nuclear be different?
There are several things here.
Obviously a), b) and c) push in the opposite direction from d), e) and f). What this means is that basically we should have a smaller number of safer nuclear reactors run for longer by people who we can trust to ensure that a) and b) don't become a problem. Unfortunately people who support nuclear power tend to be in denial about the potential risks and so aren't the right people. I guess it's like politicians. Anybody who wants to be a politician should probably be ruled out from the job / anybody who wants to run a reactor should probably be banned from doing so :-)
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So? There is nothing new scientifically here, you design for a level of neutron damage and periodically verify your assumptions are correct. And you can always anneal the reactor vessel in place to remove much of the neutron damage and regain operating margins. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annealing_(metallurgy) [wikipedia.org]
Complete B.S. Radiation hardened underwater camera systems have been available for 30 years. And there are fiber optic methods available for remote inspection as well.
More B.S. The most likely parts to fail in a reactor are never in the core. The nuclear industry is well away of which parts are closest to their long term operating margins and which require the most frequent inspection and repair. And the stuff inside the reactor vessel ain't it.
Nuclear power is the only industry that is not permitted to improve, it must be perfect from day one. FYI, hydro has killed more people than multiples of all other power generation methods combined. It's not even close. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam [wikipedia.org]
Ehh? High capital costs are from what? High interest rates. Delays in plant construction and operation many times a result of frivilous lawsuits DESIGNED by environmental organizations to intentionally run up costs. Talk about self fulfilling criticisms. The current generation of plants are avoiding this by getting all that crap doen up front and also by self financing. We'll see.
This is true, but to put some context on this, the volumes are simply insignificantly small. We have many many many times the volume being buried from nasty municipal waste that have chemicals in it that do not decay away, but thats ok right?
Obviously a), b) and c) push in the opposite direction from d), e) and f). What this means is that basically we should have a smaller number of safer nuclear reactors run for longer by people who we can trust to ensure that a) and b) don't become a problem. Unfortunately people who support nuclear power tend to be in denial about the potential risks and so aren't the right people. I guess it's like politicians. Anybody who wants to be a politician should probably be ruled out from the job / anybody who wants to run a reactor should probably be banned from doing so :-)
This makes no sense at all. So you are saying the people who you recruit who show the proper dedication and professionalism cannot be trusted to be nuclear plant operators BECAUSE of that professionalism? What B.S. Wow.
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No; dedication and professionalism are fine. However, paranoia and an inability to communicate and discuss risk are not. The perfect example is point d). I'm clearly making a point in favour of new reactors. I'm precisely saying that reactors are improving and that that's a good thing. Instead you seem to take it as an attack on the nuclear industry. I am sorry, but I wouldn't want you to be the person judging if a new reactor is safe or not.
Too late.
Muhuhuahahaha.
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There are two types of laws that engineers have to consider, and I'm pretty sure that corporations and governments cannot violate the laws of physics.
Re:Laws... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure that corporations and governments cannot violate the laws of physics.
You fool!
Black Mesa, Aperture Science, and UAC mean nothing to you?
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Big deal. I'm a physicist. If the shit hits the fan just give me a gun and a crowbar and I'll take care of things. Don't worry about firearms training either - as a physicist in a desperate situation I'll magically obtain amazing combat skills that go beyond what the US Marines are even capable of, so I'm sure I'll be fine.
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Laughably I remember after Chernobyl 1, hearing how they'll decommission those icky RBMKs real soon now. The day the last RBMK is shut off will be a good day for humanity. Hope I live that long (I figure I only got 50 good years left in me)
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good luck with your next CT scan.
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Hope you never need an MRI again or anything else requiring a radiolabelled contrast agent.
It's also going to be a shame that we'll have to get by without (cheap) smoke detectors too.
Oh well, if it's for the good of humanity!
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After all, you wouldn't want to be a hypocrite, would you?
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how about "longer lifespan kills you sooner!"
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