Published: July 28th, 2011 at 5:20 pm ET
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After tornadoes, TVA will replace emergency sirens, TimesDaily by Eric Fleischauer, July 28, 2011:
A Tennessee Valley Authority official said Wednesday the authority plans to correct a problem that left only 12 of Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant’s required 100 emergency sirens working after the April 27 tornadoes. [...]
The same power loss that left 88 sirens useless also caused problems at the nuclear plant.
All three reactors shut down automatically April 27. Because of the distraction of reactor personnel, according to a report TVA filed this month with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, water levels dropped in the Unit 1 reactor when the water boiled off faster than it was replaced. The cooling systems that control the temperature of the reactors and spent fuel rods stopped working for 47 minutes on April 28, 57 minutes on May 2 and 40 minutes on May 12. [...]
h/t Anonymous tip
Published: July 28th, 2011 at 5:20 pm ET
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brilliant?
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A Clear And Present Danger
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Can anyone name a nuclear plant where there have been no accidents and no leakage?
I gather Fort Calhoun and Los Alamos are perfectly safe?
We need a news blackout to prevent people knowing how awesomely safe they are.
If people knew how safe and clean nuclear plants really are they might run into the streets and panic with joy and exuberation.
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maybe if everyone used bleach lamps we wouldn’t have to build the fool things.
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I had an odd epiphany a few weeks ago.
Could it be that the life expectancy (best case scenario) for a nuke plant is about 40 years and now they are like 60s era Detroit cars that just seem to dismantle themselves under normal operation after a certain period?
The rhetorical question is how bad do they have to get before it is cost prohibitive to try and keep it running (based on a myopic MBA world view of no externalities).
We saw exactly that with the Trojan nuke plant near Portland OR. And Trojan had a pretty bad safety record long before it was shut down due to the accountants saying to do so.
Bad safety?
Keep it running.
Faulty design?
Keep it running.
Super bad location (at the rivers edge)?
Keep it running
No place for spent fuel rods?
Keep it running.
Lose profit margin?
SHUT IT DOWN ASAP!
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Actually Fireguyjeff, from what I have read the lifespan of these plants as designed was for forty years but they all seem to get extensions to operator license irregardless of good or bad safety record.
After Three Mile Island nobody wanted a nuclear plant built in their neighborhood. Just lately the spin doctors have used Global Warming as a good reason to build more.
However using your analogy of a sixties auto, you could rebuild an old car and have a reliable inefficient auto. There is even an argument out there ( not sure if its true) that it takes more energy to build a car then the energy a car uses in its lifetime. If thats true driving a 60′s gas guzzler is actually environmentally friendly! If you couldn’t afford gas for it it would just look pretty in your garage. But even if you shut down all nuclear reactors it will still cost money to cool them and maintain them for years and years. There is still no solution for disposal of spent fuel. Going back to your car analogy, like having to buy a new car still having to maintain your old car and also having to store all car exhaust for a thousand years!
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“Lose profit margin?
SHUT IT DOWN ASAP!”
THE TRUTH, the (w)hole truth and nothing but the truth!
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Devil’s advocate: These reactors were built with forty to fifty year old technology. Even if they were built to the highest standards, they would start to have problems as time passes (ask any car or computer owner.) And no one had ever run a reactor for that amount of time before. That means that no one had any business building so many with no proven safety record. It’s also a fact that no one ever figured out a way to store the waste safely. That means it was criminal to build them in the first place.
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My sister owns a house on Lulu island in the middle of the Fraser river, near the ocean. This island is basically reclaimed marshland with constantly running water pumps, dikes and drainage ditches. Houses are basically built at sea level or even below. My sister can’t get flood insurance. Insurance company knows eventually island will flood. Situation compares well to nuclear reactors. No private insurance company will cover them without government guarantees.
They know eventually there will be an accident. Therefore it is a bad business model. Cost will be born financially and healthwise by tax-payers. (good business model, actually example of corporate well-fare)
The cost of solar panels on a house worth a couple of hundred thousand can be spread out over time with a mortgage. The technology is here now. The money Oh Bum Ah plans to spend on nuclear energy would probably install solar panels on every American home.
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….and would create 100.000s of jobs all over the country.
I agree, Mark!
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But what makes sense for us doesn’t make sense for them because their interests don’t coincide with ours
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@Mark
Mark thy words: except where there is constant electricity interruptions or where you can use electricity luckily so at that time the peak does not result in large quakes solar panels can be built. In a hit and run fashion. And then used on hot tin roofs. Solar panels are costly so costly energetically that in a programme of sufficiently fast solar panel penetrations, the energy delivered to the consumer would be very small or negative! Like nuclear power programmes! You have to increase the the ratio of energy output per panel per unit time to the total energy input per unit time that goes towards building it(including energy consumed in the production of materials used to build the panel) sufficiently to give a net output to the consumer per year ! Only if you have a solar panel on the roof and a quake occurs there nothing of danger occurs to the area around. But have a nuke and a quake occurs very near the nuke Oh! Fuku! Vast areas will be rendered desolate for ages!
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Ramaswami, Mark, i don’t know if you already came across this: Grätzel cells!
A Swiss professor found a way to produce solar panels which imitate photosynthesis…easier, cheaper, damn good idea:
http://www.5min.com/Video/Solar-Innovation-in-Switzerland-516998600
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Interesting technology. Too little too late comes to mind. We have so raped this planet that it will take eons to recover – and that is only if humans disappear.
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I’m afraid you’re right.
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Interesting video, thanks. I have heard of people in USA who have solar panels on homes and have a two way meter such that they sell energy to the power company on sunny days and buy energy at night. I’m no expert but I feel that using a combination of wind and solar and modern efficiencies every house could generate its own power with technology all ready available.
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Hi Mark, that’s absolutely possible. Here in Germany we have a law which favours renewable energy. That means: the renewable energy is the first energy to be used (it has “right of way”, so to speak). The more renewable energy is in the net (for example on sunny windy days)the less nuke energy can be sold.
Private persons who install solar panels on their roofs and put the energy into the public grid get guaranteed prices for this energy over the next 20 (!!) years. That’s why we have solar panels on almost every barn even in the north of the country – it still pays off!
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My friends in L.A. have solar panels on the roof. Their electricity meters run backwards.
It’s a good thing.
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