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Illinois Nuclear Power Plant Loses Power ... Vents Radioactive Steam
Exelon nuclear power company - the largest nuclear operator in the U.S. - issued a press release yesterday stating:
Operators at Byron Generating Station [around 110 miles from Chicago] declared an Unusual Event at 10:18 a.m. CT, due to the loss of offsite power and Unit 2 coming offline.
The nuclear facility’s diesel generators activated as designed to provide power to the facility when there is a loss of offsite power to the facility. The facility remains in a safe condition. Station engineering experts are looking into the cause of the loss of offsite power.
Byron Station is designed to depressurize to reduce steam pressure as part of the many redundant safety systems built into the facility. Steam from the unit is released through safety relief valves that are specifically designed for this purpose. The steam, which will evaporate quickly, contained expected levels of tritium. Local residents may see or hear the steam release in progress, which will continue throughout the day until the unit cools down. These types of station releases are regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
There is no health or safety impact to workers or to the public from the release, and Exelon Nuclear has notified all appropriate local, state and federal officials of the Unusual Event.
***
Tritium is produced in greater concentrations in commercial nuclear reactors and is routinely discharged into the environment under strictregulatory guidelines.
Indeed, an AP investigation found that 75 percent of American nuclear plants leak tritium. And many plants leak tritium into local water supplies above maximim allowable levelsfor drinking water.
While nuclear apologists pretend that "small" releases - like at Three Mile Island - cause no health effects, this is contrary to scientific evidence. See this and this.
And there have been so many accidents recently, that it makes one wonder whether we have the maturity to operate such inherently dangerous systems. See this, this, this and this.
EVEN WHEN OPERATING NORMALLY, NUCLEAR PLANTS VENT RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS WHICH CAUSE CANCER
It's not just tritium, and it's not just accidents.
While the nuclear industry and its lapdogs in the nuclear agencies say that living near a nuclear plant is safe, numerous scientific studies have found that - even when operating normally - the plants cause cancer.
For example, numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies from around the world show that the incidence of leukemia is much higher for people living near nuclear plants. See this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
The bottom line is that nuclear power can be safe - or it can be cheap ... but it can't be both.
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Tritium half-life is about 12 years, not 10 days, otherwise, a lot of hydrogen bombs would require refueling every 10 days. Not exactly a good way to spend your defense dollars, either way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium
That's why they use Lithium-dueteride instead of cryogenically stored tritium. Well, that and cryogenically storing tritium as part of your nuclear device makes your nuke into a large building.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teller%E2%80%93Ulam_design
The trace radioactive elements in coal release far more radiation into the environment than a
properly operating nuke plant. Pick your poision....
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioa....
It woiuld be nice if the world was powered by rainbow unicorn droppings, but it is not.
There are no real viable soutions at present. There are significant environmental concerns with both wind and solar.
If you account for all the energy necessary from the point of havresting raw meterials , to transporting the equipment to its final destination , to installing working grid tied systems
and then maintaining them for 20 years, its not clear that solar power is not a net energy USER . at best its break even.
It takes a bunch of energy to make solar cells, there is a reason this cost is lowest in china with its unregulated gross poluting coal power.
current domestic solar systems are really coal powered.
If you account for the production energy usage and the significant ongoing maintance its also not clear that wind is a net positive.
The very fact that many wind systems installed in the Jummy Carter rebate era went into disrepair and were not economically viable to just maintain
after all the sunk cost was already spent says all you need to know about wind's real viability.
GW Unless you personally live in an unheated home, never drive, and take cold showers then your on going diatribe against all energy sources is really hypcritical.
Feel good solutions like local solar power that don't work out as a net positive on a global basis are a fraud.
Attacking what we have without offering a viable counter solution is the work of destroyers, not builders. Society is created by builders, so GW grow a pair and take off the rose tinted glasses.
It’s Not Just Alternative Energy Versus Fossil Fuels or Nuclear – Energy Has to Become DECENTRALIZED
Tritium = Hydrogen3, a low energy Beta emitter with penetrance in air 6mm. 1/2 life = +/--10 days.
Not exactly like getting Nuked.
If you've got a half-assed decent watch, it makes the watch dial luminous. Horologists formerly used Radium.
Yes, Radium is a Bitch.
Thanks for sharing!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fib
Unbelievable. Yet another damn thing the FIBS (f#cking Illinois bastards) do to trash Wisconsin.
Jet stream will mostly carry this over Milwaukee and Chicago. Mostly...
FIBS...
Spent some time in WI...That takes me back.
great water = great tasting beer
The NWO folks have already said that we need to reduce the population by at least 2 billion. What better place to start than the most corrupt portion of the Globe: Ill-noise
The idiots in charge should realize there are only so many times you can say "Oopsies." Of course in their world, Diarrhetic Unicorns are running around shitting $100 bills
another travesty is the byproduct of atomic production, fluorine, needed to be disposed of, and guess how
"Fluoride is not an essential mineral for mammals, but does prevent tooth decay. A growing number of drugs contain fluorine. Lipitor and Prozac are notable examples."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorine
will die from cancer but our teeth will survive
There are two very different definitions of "safe" in play. It depends on which environment is the object of discussion. In this case, the safety issues are a non issue, in the corporate environment. The natural environment exists to be mined and harvested. Environmental groups, financed by the corporate structure that they claim to monitor, are strangely silent. When Dow Chemical and Monsanto want to spray a component of Agent Orange over widespread areas of the U. S. , there is no opposition. In this case of radiation release, regulatory agencies just raise the safe limits, and call it good. People wonder why I insist that destruction is coming.
http://thedailyclimb.wordpress.com/
Stuxnet worm going rogue again.
Hi GW, keep doing your thang! Here's a couple of tidbits (it's like a goddamn Old Country Buffet of nasty news these days if you can see the patterns).
http://www.benningtonbanner.com/state/ci_19839383?source=rss
Vt. Yankee refuses to test well for tritiumChristopher Wamser, site vice president for plant owner Entergy Corp., says in a Jan. 20 letter to Public Service Commissioner Elizabeth Miller that such testing would be inappropriate because it could contaminate the bedrock aquifer at the bottom of the well and might not produce reliable results......
....Laurence Becker, the state geologist, said in an interview that Wamser’s reading of the situation is wrong.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120131_09.html
NHK News Japan:
Scientists warn of huge quake east of Japan Trench
Japanese researchers say the March 11th disaster has increased the risk of a major quake and tsunami east of the Japan Trench off northeastern Japan.
GW you should post your findings to the french blogs. Here the debate about energy is hot spot in current election. Sarkozy protects the ONE nutted french nuclear strategy since forty + years based on monopoly technocracy rule, and opaque, complacent economics; in a command economy where market price is what you decree as the sector is 100 % state controlled.
So since TMI in 1979, we know that french nuclear KW calculation has been lied about; as what the private US nuclear industry learnt the french just didn't want to hear; they were all-in and it was state technostructure construct, totally incestuous power play, employing France uber-class of technocrats. All decommissioning as also waste retreatment cost were simply neglected over forty years!
Now after Tchernobyl and Fuku, battered and bewildered, these same shills reluctantly realise their one nutted energy baby is dangerous and costly. As now its going to impact FUTURE KW cost, it can't be hidden under the carpet. Both past and future decommissioning has to be provisioned and waste retreatment in other ways than dump and forget.
The french official body, La COur des Comptes, The financial board, brings out today a 400 page report on nuclear historical cost to date and future projections for the industry. It will be hotly contested, as Merkel has junked nuclear in Germany. And Germany is the economic and technological reference more and more in France. The french technocrats are obsessed by their lack of competitivity relative to German model. The socialists, to please the green party, their allies in election, have promised to take a hard look at nuclear and cut back its part in electrical production, from 76% today to 50 % in 2025 horizon. Time will tell if this occurs. But the new in-house nuclear french technology, third generation, is experiencing very costly teething problems both in Finland and in France, the first two 1000 mega W capacity projects.
It's way behind schedule and way over cost. I hope you can put US inputs into the French pipeline as it could bring convergence on multi country experience, like the present article.
I can give you some Net oriented top blog spots if you like : Mediapart, Rue89, and the new Huffington Post France blogsite review run by Anne Sinclair (Mrs DSK herself, a top TV personality in her day).
Good blogging in France, is all I can wish!
In Fukushima, they make excellent steamed seafood cesium rice with that.
"In Fukushima, they make excellent steamed seafood cesium rice with that."
The great thing about this is that the Fukushima seafood rice dish is self heating from the cesium.
MRI=Meals Ready to Irradiate. Yum!
I don't get it, if venting steam loaded with tritium isn't such a big deal over here, why were they so concerned at Fukushima?
My understanding is that they didn't vent the steam due to fears about contamination, which led to the buildings getting blown open once the hydrogen disassociated from the oxygen, then it ignited.
So, in America, they would've just vented the steam as a routine procedure, but in Japan, they let the building blow up instead?
Mmmm... really good with a little wasabi.
1.2 vaporized. Nothing to see here.