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Nuclear Reactor Design Chosen - Not Because It Was Safe - But Because It Worked On Navy Submarines
Virtually all
of the nuclear reactors in the U.S. are of the same archaic design as
those at Fukushima (Indeed, MSNBC notes that there are 23 U.S. reactors
which are more or less identical to those at Fukushima.)
Called "light-water reactors", this design was not chosen for safety reasons. Rather, it was chosen because it worked in Navy submarines.
Specifically, as the Atlantic reported in March:
In the early years of atomic power, as recounted by Alvin Weinberg, head of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in his book The First Nuclear Era, there was intense competition to come up with the cheapest, safest, best nuclear reactor design.
Every
variable in building an immensely complex industrial plant was up for
grabs: the nature of the radioactive fuel and other substances that
form the reactor's core, the safety systems, the containment buildings,
the construction substances, and everything else that might go into
building an immensely complex industrial plant. The light water reactor
became the technological victor, but no one is quite sure whether that
was a good idea.
Few of these alternatives were seriously
investigated after light water reactors were selected for Navy
submarines by Admiral Hyman Rickover. Once light water reactors gained
government backing and the many advantages that conferred, other
designs could not break into the market, even though commercial nuclear
power wouldn't explode for years after Rickover's decision. "There
were lots and lots of ideas floating around, and they essentially lost
when light water came to dominate," University of Strasbourg professor
Robin Cowan told the Boston Globe in an excellent article on "technological lock-in" in the nuclear industry.
As
it turned out, there were real political and corporate imperatives to
commercialize nuclear power with whatever designs were already to hand.
It was geopolitically useful for the United States to show they could
offer civilian nuclear facilities to its allies and the companies who
built the plants (mainly GE and Westinghouse) did not want to lose the
competitive advantage they'd gained as the contractors on the Manhattan
Project. Those companies stood to make much more money on nuclear
plants than traditional fossil fuel-based plants, and they had less
competitors. The invention and use of the atomic bomb weighed heavily
on the minds of nuclear scientists. Widespread nuclear power was about
the only thing that could redeem their role in the creation of the
first weapon with which it was possible to destroy life on earth. In
other words, the most powerful interest groups surrounding the nuclear
question all wanted to settle on a power plant design and start
building.
***
President Lyndon Johnson and his
administration sent the message that we were going to use nuclear
power, and it would be largely through the reactor designs that already
existed, regardless of whether they had the best safety
characteristics that could be imagined. We learned in later years that
boiling water reactors like Fukushima are subject to certain types of
failure under very unusual circumstances, but we probably would have
discovered such problems if we'd explored the technical designs for
longer before trying to start building large numbers of nuclear plants.
The Atomic Energy Commission's first general manager - MIT professor Carroll Wilson - confirmed in 1979:
The
pressurized water reactor was peculiarly suitable and necessary for a
submarine power plant where limitations of space and wieght were
extreme. So as interest in the civilian use of nuclear power began to
grow, it was natural to consider a system that had already proven
reliable in submarines. This was further encouraged by the fact that
the Atomic Energy Commission provided funds to build the first civilian
nuclear power plant ... using essentially the same system as the
submarine power plant. Thus it was that a pressurized light water
system became the standard model for the world. Although other kinds of
reactors were under development in different countries, there was a
rapid scale-up of of the pressurized water reactor and a variant called
the boiling water reactor developed by General Electric. These became
the standard types for civilian power plants. in the United States and
were licensed to be built in France, Germany, Japan and elsewhere.If
one had started to design a civilian electric power plant without the
constraints of weight and space as required by the submarine, quite
different criteria would apply.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues that there was another reason why all safer alternative designs - including thorium reactors - were abandoned:
The plans were shelved because thorium does not produce plutonium for bombs.
As Boing Boing notes:
Reactors
like this [are] flawed in some ways that would be almost comical, were
it not for the risk those flaws impart. Maybe you've wondered over the
past couple of weeks why anyone would design a nuclear reactor that
relied on external generators to power the pumps for it's emergency
cooling system. In a real emergency, isn't there a decent chance that
the backup generators would be compromised, as well?
It's a
good question. In fact, modern reactor designs have solved that very
problem, by feeding water through the emergency cooling system using
gravity, rather than powered pumps. Newer designs are much safer, and
more reliable. But we haven't built any of them in the United States
...
Not the Navy's Fault
This is in no way a criticism of the U.S. Navy or its submarine reactors. As a reader comments:
There are some things to know about Navy reactors:
- They don't store thirty years worth of used, spent fuel rods next to the reactor.
- They don't continue to operate a reactor that had a design life of 25 years for 60 years.
- The spent fuel pool is back on land on a base somewhere.
(In
addition, the reactors on subs are much smaller than commercial
reactors, and so have almost no consequences for the civilian population
if they meltdown. And if an accident were to happen on a nuclear sub,
the sub would likely sink or at least flood, presumably keeping the
reactor from melting down in the first place.)
There Are No Independent Regulators and No Real Safety Standards
But at least the government compensates for the
inherently unsafe design of American reactors by requiring high safety
and maintenance standards.
Unfortunately, no ...
As AP notes today:
Federal
regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry
to keep the nation’s aging reactors operating within safety standards
by repeatedly weakening those standards or simply failing to enforce
them.***
Examples abound. When valves leaked, more
leakage was allowed — up to 20 times the original limit. When rampant
cracking caused radioactive leaks from steam generator tubing, an
easier test of the tubes was devised so plants could meet standards.
***
Records
show a recurring pattern: reactor parts or systems fall out of
compliance with the rules; studies are conducted by the industry and
government; and all agree that existing standards are “unnecessarily
conservative.’’
Regulations are loosened, and the reactors are back in compliance.
Of course, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - like all nuclear "agencies" worldwide - is 100% captured and not an independent agency, and the NRC has never denied a request for relicensing old, unsafe nuclear plants.
Indeed, Senator Sanders says that the NRC pressured the Department of Justice to sue the state of Vermont
after the state and its people rejected relicensing of the Vermont
Yankee plant, siding with the nuclear operator instead. The Nation notes:
Aileen
Mioko Smith, director of Green Action Kyoto, met Fukushima plant
and government officials in August 2010. “At the plant they seemed
to dismiss our concerns about spent fuel pools,” said Mioko Smith.
“At the prefecture, they were very worried but had no plan for how
to deal with it.”
Remarkably, that is the norm—both in Japan and
in the United States. Spent fuel pools at Fukushima are not equipped
with backup water-circulation systems or backup generators for the
water-circulation system they do have.
The exact same design flaw is in place at Vermont Yankee, a nuclear plant of the same GE design as the Fukushima reactors.
At Fukushima each reactor has between 60 and 83 tons of spent fuel
rods stored next to them. Vermont Yankee has a staggering 690 tons of spent fuel rods on site.
Nuclear
safety activists in the United States have long known of these
problems and have sought repeatedly to have them addressed. At least
get backup generators for the pools, they implored. But at every turn
the industry has pushed back, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC) has consistently ruled in favor of plant owners over local
communities.
After 9/11 the issue of spent fuel rods again had
momentary traction. Numerous citizen groups petitioned and pressured
the NRC for enhanced protections of the pools. But the NRC deemed
“the possibility of a terrorist attack...speculative and simply too
far removed from the natural or expected consequences of agency
action.” So nothing was done—not even the provision of backup
water-circulation systems or emergency power-generation systems.
As an example of how dangerous American nuclear reactors are, AP noted in a report Friday that 75 percent of all U.S. nuclear sites have leaked radioactive tritium.
Indeed, because of poor design, horrible safety practices, and no real regulation, a U.S. nuclear accident could be a lot worse than Fukushima.
- advertisements -
Since it seems highly likely that we will be exposed
radiation from aging, poorly designed nuke plants
in the foreseeable future, maybe we should start
exposing ourselves to small doses of radiation now
and slowly increase the amount over time to build
up an immunity. Or better yet, lets close these
plants down and replace them with natural gas
plants. Hell, we've got more natural gas than we know
what to with.
greek guy--how's those riots working? Do you fly above like 30k feet agl to get to the islands that will be sold off? What kinda dose do you get?
"Hell, we've got more natural gas than we know what to with."
Very unlikely. Fracked Gas isn't all it fracked up to what the media and industry claims.
The price of Frack gas will need to more than triple in the next four or five years. The small companies drill for frack gas are doing it at a loss in order to get a Big company to buy them out so they can cash out before the gig is up. Much like all those dot-com startups did a decade ago.
If you look closely, frack drilling is way down. and will continue to fall until the price of Ngas rises substantially. I have seriou doubts about the future of fracked natural gas. I suspect that drillers are targeting the cheapest spots, and it will only take a few years before they are all drilled. That and the pending endless wave of lawsuits as ground water becomes hoplessly containmated caused by frack drilling.
"start exposing ourselves to small doses of radiation now and slowly increase the amount over time to build up an immunity."
Very dumb idea. Would you hold your hand over a flame so you can build up an immunity to fire?
I think he was just being sarcastic. Or maybe not - you never know how stupid people may be.
The dummies all use circular logic to keep running these plants and have no real interest in safety other than the bare minimum which is on a sliding scale down. The NRC is told by the plants what is needed in terms of regulation, the NRC adjusts stuff so the headlines can read "safe".
Nothing will be done PERIOD until a massive disaster happens. I would estimate it would be a magnitude 8.0 earthquake in an area that never (or rarely ever) has them, with the last recorded event perhaps 100 years ago. It will knock out power, disable the generators and the plant will melt down. At this point its too late, but that is unfortunately the only thing that changes the status quo.
Since its all about profit motive rather than safety, the government is encouraging bad behavior and does not really care about the people. Most of the existing plants should be shut down but cannot be, because there is NO PLACE TO STORE THE SPENT RODS other than at the current plant. Shut it down, who would pay for and monitor the spent fuel? No one.
Win the Future--
NRC does the unter-Lake Woebegone thing: there is always a "bottom 10%" to help: cf: Northeast Utilities (now defunct), APS, SCE.
Since you are so stupid (and such an evident child) you now have to go into the corner where the adults can't see you and fuck yourself.
- Ned
{and, further, Cas is not pleased, even in his new clothing, so you are sentenced to 3.4 months of self-criticism before you can opine on this or any other public subject}
"Nothing will be done PERIOD until a massive disaster happens."
I don't think the jury is in yet on Fukashima......it's pretty bad.
Are you implying its a collective death wish, like a civilization that wants to die as it has no future... ? Desperation killed that cat of nine lives.
Bu some can see the light at the end of the tunnel...whew about time!
+. It's a collective wish by the olig for us sheeples. Don't forget a nuclear submarine is a killing machine. So, when the "design" is used on...
Please, don't start with the thorium mania. Let's concentrate on practical matters.
Yeah, let the Canadians and Indians be all maniacal with that stuff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_thorium-fueled_r...
America will keep its leaky nuclear Edsels running for another 60 years...
The insane policy of kicking the can of "spent" fuel down the road will surely bite us, if a Fukushima style "leak" doesn't first. Now, the entirely for-profit and almost entirely deregulated companies must only maximize power and minimize cost; any re-regulating, or forced new procedures, would be an economic taking and unthinkable in the current climate. The economic end-game can be seen at the sites of giant, old mines in Monatana. Too expensive to remedy? Fold it and walk away.
General Electric is the only nuclear technology supplier and some westinghouse because they are part of the kleptocracy facist govt-media-business-elites cabal. GE's reactors are as crappy as their toasters.
GE reactor designs were well before the six-sigma religion. - Ned