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.
These are the very people BrianfromWA tells you to believe. He bases all his opinions on what these people tell him, and only on that.
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.
If they're not working for the Feds, they're too stupid to be believed according to BrianfromWA.
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.
Sorry, BrianfromWA. I've been around more, been around longer, been lied to by these people nearly 100% of the time for over 5 decades and about stuff alot more important than nuclear fallout.
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
In a 2009 letter, Mario V. Bonaca, then-chairman of the NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, warned that this approach represents "a decrease in the safety margin" and makes a fuel-melting accident more likely.
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?
Even with last year's weakening of the safety margins, engineers and metal scientists say some plants may be forced to close over these concerns before their licenses run out — unless, of course, new compromises with regulations are made.
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?
Industry and government reports are packed with troubling evidence of unrelenting wear — and repeated regulatory compromises
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.
BRITTLE VESSELS… LEAKY VALVES… CRACKED TUBING… CORRODED PIPING
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.
A decade later, in 1994, the NRC reported to Congress that the critical shrouds lining reactor cores were cracked at a minimum of 11 units, including five with extensive damage
This is what bothers me. Again, either rampant corruption, massive stupidity or both.
In a 1993 report labeled "official use only,"
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.
…an NRC staffer warned that electrical parts throughout plants were subject to dangerous age-related breakdowns unforeseen by the agency. Almost a fifth of cables failed in testing that simulated the effects of 40 years of wear. The report warned that as a result, reactor core damage could occur much more often than expected.
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?
Fifteen years later, the problem appeared to have worsened.
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.
…An NRC report warned in 2008 that rising numbers of electrical cables are failing with age, prompting temporary shutdowns and degrading safety. Agency staff tallied 269 known failures over the life of the industry.
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?
In one of the industry's worst accidents, a corroded pipe burst at Virginia's Surry 2 reactor in 1986 and showered workers with scalding steam, killing four
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?
In August, the operator applied for a 20-year license extension. Under pressure from the NRC, the company has agreed to replace the replacement head in October
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?
For plants with their original generators, "there is no end in sight to the steam generator tube degradation problems," a top agency manager declared. NRC staffers warned: "Crack depth is difficult to measure reliably and the crack growth rate is difficult to determine."
Yet no broad order was issued for shutdowns to inspect generators.
Instead, the staff began to talk to operators about how to deal with the standard that no cracks could go deeper than 40 percent through the tube wall.
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.
Former NRC commissioner Peter Lyons said, "There certainly is plenty of research ... to support a relaxation of the conservativisms that had been built in before. I don't see that as decreasing safety. I see that as an appropriate standard."
And b/c there aren’t people smart enough to realize that he’s saying crazy stuff, he gets away with this…how?
Regulators set aside a strict check list applied to all systems and focus instead on features deemed to carry the highest risk.
I’m going to give you two guesses about whether you think I agree with this or not.
But some safety experts call it "tombstone regulation," implying that problems fester until something goes very wrong. "Until there are tombstones, they don't regulate," said Blanch, the longtime industry engineer who became a whistleblower.
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?
