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Storms Knock Out 3 Nuclear Reactors in Alabama ... No Leak, But a Reminder of Nuclear Vulnerability
Reuters reports:
Severe
storms and tornadoes moving through the U.S. Southeast dealt a severe
blow to the Tennessee Valley Authority on Wednesday, causing three
nuclear reactors in Alabama to shut and knocking out 11 high-voltage
power lines, the utility and regulators said.***
All
three units at TVA's 3,274-megawatt Browns Ferry nuclear plant in
Alabama tripped about 5:30 EDT (2230 GMT) after losing outside power to
the plant, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.
A TVA spokeswoman said the station's backup power systems, including
diesel generators, started and operated as designed. External power was
restored quickly to the plant but diesel generators remained running
Wednesday evening, she said.
The Browns Ferry units are among 23 U.S. reactors that are similar in
design to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan where
backup generators were swept away in the tsunami that followed the
massive earthquake on March 11.
The News-Courrier reported
on April 12th that - like the Japanese reactors - the Alabama reactors
shut down by tornadoes store a lot of radioactive spent fuel rods in an
unprotected fashion:
At Browns Ferry, a plant with
the same design as Fukushima-Dai-ichi in Japan, more than 1,415 metric
tons of spent fuel and rods lie in three pools on a massive concrete
pad above the plant’s three reactors.All that encloses the pools is a heavy garage like metal roof and walls.
In contrast, reports on the amount of fresh and spent fuel together at all 6 Fukushima reactors is somewhere between 1,760 and 4,277 metric tons. In other words, when the fuel within the reactors is included, Browns Ferry may have almost as much radioactive fuel in its 3 reactors as are contained in all Fukushima's 6 reactors.
Moreover, the Browns Ferry plants are only built to withstand a 6.0 earthquake, even though the nearby New Madrid Fault could potentially cause a bigger earthquake. As the Huntsville Times wrote in a recent editorial:
Browns
Ferry is built along the New Madrid fault and thus designed to
withstand some degree of an earthquake. A tornado or a ravaging flood
could just as easily be like the tsunami that unleashed the final blow.Energy officials should re-evaluate nuclear plant designs and build in plenty of redundancies for worst-case scenarios.
Moreover, as Reuters noted recently:
Internal
Nuclear Regulatory Commission e-mails and memos obtained by the Union
of Concerned Scientists questioned the adequacy of the back-up plans to
keep reactor cooling systems running if off-site power were lost for
an extended period.
***
"While
the NRC and the nuclear industry have been reassuring Americans that
there is nothing to worry about -- that we can do a better job dealing
with a nuclear disaster like the one that just happened in Japan -- it
turns out that privately NRC senior analysts are not so sure" ....
And Browns Ferry almost melted down in 1975.
Thankfully, there haven't been any reports of radiation leakage, and -
since the diesel generators are working - there shouldn't be any
problems in the near future.
But this is yet another reminder that many nuclear power plants are built with outdated designs and maintained in an unsafe, penny-pinching manner, and are very vulnerable to natural disasters or mischief.
Will we allow a nuclear black swan to happen in America ... which could be even worse than Japan? Or will we be smart enough to tackle this problem now, while we still can?
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Are you sure it wasn't your zionist spies George? From your article the other day, I'd assume any problem with a nuclear reactor would be because of the dastardly Stuxnet.
Do you have a suggestion George?
Can we start with stored spent fuel being reprocessed and permanently stored? That's the absolute most vulnerable disaster scenario (and the biggest problem at Fukushima) - but left-wing nuclear power opponents have created a situation where massive amounts are stored in the worst conceivable fashion. Can we follow that with a deep study of design redundancies and propose new safety measures - nahhh much better to just pump up fear and oppose in toto.
Thanks though - getting rid of nuclear will mean a much poorer America in general but it will line my pockets ( being in the petroleum industry) quite nicely............................
The plants work. What's the problem? Tidal waves in Alabama?
Have 'we' been smart enough to do anything that benefits 'we the people' or the environment lately?
No! I predict a massive population decimation one way or another before long, unless something truely dramatic and or miraculous happens.