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Major Nuke Plant Problems
Our nuke plant has no valid backup as shown by the Fukushima nuke failure reported 11 and 12 April 2011 (16 April 2011, now a level 7 failure like Chernobyl) is the category 1 hurricane rated building (95 mph) in other words we can’t protect the diesel generation backup and the 120 to 150 mph common hurricane speeds the gulf experiences and the eight hour battery backups might not last long enough to get the fire trucks in through the debris to pump sea water, much less the problem of how to refuel the trucks with the power lines down!
As is obvious, the new safety factor modification will likely cause large rate increases not considering hurricane season is getting closer!
As 0f 18 April 2011, during Gregory Gargo, chairman of the Nuke Regulatory Commission questioning by Senator Barbra Boxer (Dem-Calif) and another senator, Gregory told them our nuke plants were ok, even though the senators showed him same assurances to Japan before their failures!
Apparently, the nuke regulatory commission is going to stick to its faulty findings and leave our nukes to fail!
It is very obvious our Houston Nuke Plant with the category 1 hurricane (95 mph) building housing the diesel backup generation will not fare very well with the larger hurricanes and the safest procedure will be to brace up that building now before stronger winds break up the building! Obviously, all our backups are probably just as faulty (also the whole nation) but let us get our plant safe and maybe the rest will follow.
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Nuclear Agency Is Criticized as Too Close to Its Industry
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| A cooling tower at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon, Vt., partly collapsed in 2007. |
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By TOM ZELLER Jr.
New York Times
Published: May 7, 2011
{Sun Energy Systems' Comments shown in red}
In the fall of 2007, workers at the Byron nuclear power plant in Illinois were using a wire brush to clean a badly corroded steel pipe — one in a series that circulate cooling water to essential emergency equipment — when something unexpected happened: the brush poked through.
The resulting leak caused a 12-day shutdown of the two reactors for repairs.
The plant’s owner, the Exelon Corporation, had long known that corrosion was thinning most of these pipes. But rather than fix them, it repeatedly lowered the minimum thickness it deemed safe. By the time the pipe broke, Exelon had declared that pipe walls just three-hundredths of an inch thick {less than 1/32" thick!} — less than one-tenth the original minimum thickness — would be good enough.
Though no radioactive material was released, safety experts say that if enough pipes had ruptured during a reactor accident, the result could easily have been a nuclear catastrophe at a plant just 100 miles west of Chicago.
Exelon’s risky decisions occurred under the noses of on-site inspectors from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. No documented inspection of the pipes was made by anyone from the N.R.C. for at least the eight years preceding the leak, and the agency also failed to notice that Exelon kept lowering the acceptable standard, according to a subsequent investigation by the commission’s inspector general. {The NRC did no inspections for 8 years!}
Exelon’s penalty? A reprimand for two low-level violations — a tepid response all too common at the N.R.C., said George A. Mulley Jr., a former investigator with the inspector general’s office who led the Byron inquiry. “They always say, ‘Oh, but nothing happened,’ ” Mr. Mulley said. “Well, sooner or later, our luck — you know, we’re going to end up rolling craps.”
Critics have long painted the commission as well-intentioned but weak and compliant, and incapable of keeping close tabs on an industry to which it remains closely tied. The concerns have greater urgency because of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, which many experts say they believe was caused as much by lax government oversight as by a natural disaster. The Byron pipe leak is just one recent example of the agency’s shortcomings, critics say. It has also taken nearly 30 years for the commission to get effective fireproofing installed in plants after an accident in Alabama. The N.R.C.’s decision to back down in a standoff with the operator of an Ohio plant a decade ago meant that a potentially dangerous hole went undetected for months. And the number of civil penalties paid by licensees has plummeted nearly 80 percent since the late 1990s — a reflection, critics say, of the commission’s inclination to avoid ruffling the feathers of the nuclear industry and its Washington lobbyists.
Although the agency says plants are operating more safely today than they were at the dawn of the nuclear industry, when shutdowns were common, safety experts, Congressional critics and even the agency’s own internal monitors say the N.R.C. is prone to dither when companies complain that its proposed actions would cost time or money {The NRC is not doing its job, i.e. is letting nuke plants make their own rules!}.
The promise of lucrative industry work after officials leave the commission probably doesn’t help, critics say, pointing to dozens over the years who have taken jobs with nuclear power companies and lobbying firms.
Now, as most of the country’s 104 aging reactors are applying for, and receiving, 20-year extensions from the N.R.C on their original 40-year licenses, reform advocates say a thorough review of the system is urgently needed.
Still, David Lochbaum, a frequent critic of the N.R.C. who recently worked as a reactor technology instructor there, said the agency too often rolled the dice on safety. “The only difference between Byron and Fukushima is luck,” he said {BYRON IS LUCKY!}.
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