Here’s graphic evidence of the unreliability of nuclear power.
See for yourself on LAKE Nuclear Power Status, which daily draws graphs from Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) data.
These examples are for reactors run by Southern Nuclear, which is the nuclear unit of Southern Company, which has only six units operational. About every other month one or another of them is down. Continue reading
Papers forged, fire and oil leak into the Hudson River, fracked methane pipeline planned next door, oh, yet built on a fault line,
and people are surprised
there’s radioactive tritium leaking from Entergy’s Indian Point nuclear plant?
Just like at
Plant Farley on the Chattahoochee River,
Plant Hatch on the Altamaha River and Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River?
How about surprised if there are any nukes that don’t leak tritium?
AP, 6 February 2016, Radioactive Material Found in Groundwater Below Nuke Plant, Continue reading
Not as obvious as Entergy’s Indian Point fire, Southern Nuclear’s Farley 1 on the Chattahoochee River is down and Hatch 1 and 2 on the Altamaha River have ongoing fire safety problems.
NRC Current Event Notification Report for May 8, 2015 says about Farley 1, near Dothan Alabama, on the Chattahoochee River, about 125 miles from here: Continue reading
It doesn’t take a tsunami to take down Fukushima: rats can do it repeatedly.
Mainich.jp, and Google Translate version,
Inspection and rat carcasses found cooling system stop: Unit 2 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant
(23 minutes 15:22 April last update) 01 minutes 13:22 April Mainichi Shimbun in 2013The 22nd, TEPCO announced that it had stopped the cooling system of the spent fuel pool of Unit 2 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Since the corpse of two dogs rat is found inside the transformer in the outdoors, I will check the equipment.
From state = Fukuichi live camera of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant of 50 at around 2:00 pmAccording to the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and Tokyo Electric Power, 15 at around 10:00 am the same day, workers found a dead rat in the two animals terminal near the pool cooling transformer inside. Remove the mouse, stop the power for inspection of equipment 35 at around 11:00 the same. expected start is 3 to 4 hours later.
Water temperature of the pool of power stop time is 13.9 degrees. There is enough time to rise up to 65 degree of operational safety, TEPCO has “no problem. Administrative stopped just in case for inspection” he said. [Torii true flat]
Reuters’ version, Fukushima nuclear cooling system offline for 3rd time in 5 weeks, adds:
Last month, a 29-hour power supply halt affecting nine facilities, including four spent fuel pool cooling systems, was caused by a rat touching exposed wires in a temporary switchboard, triggering a circuit breaker.
In early April, the No.3 unit’s spent fuel pool cooling system stopped, after workers appeared to have had inadvertently caused a power outage when they were trying to install a net to keep small animals from crawling into the reactor building. (Reporting by Risa Maeda; Editing by Chris Gallagher)
Apparently that net didn’t work. Should we trust our safety to nuclear plants that can be shut down by rats? The tritium-leaking reactors at Plant Hatch at Baxley are the same design as at Fukushima. Former U.S. NRC Chairman Jaczko says we should phase them all out while former Indian Atomic Energy Regulatory Board Chair Gopalakrishnan says the reactors currently building in India, already three years behind schedule and now found to incorporate numerous defects and deficiencies amid gross lack of transparency, must be stopped. We know a better way: solar and wind power. Let’s get on with that.
-jsq
Owed to Masaichi Shiozaki.
Finally!
The reactor
only 160 miles from here
that
nobody wanted to pay to fix
is closing for good: Duke is closing Crystal River.
After Kewaunee and Crystal River closing, which one is next?
San Onofre?
The never-opened Vogtle 3 and 4?
Ivan Penn wrote for Tampa Bay Times today, Duke Energy announces closing of Crystal River nuclear power plant,
Duke Energy announced early Tuesday it will permanently close the Crystal River nuclear plant that has been shut down since late 2009.
The company said it is reviewing alternatives, including building a new natural gas plant, to replace the power produced by the nuclear facility.
Duke's four coal-fired plants will remain in service at the same Citrus County complex where the nuclear plant, known as CR3, is located.
How about they build
offshore wind farms
and solar farms
instead, like
TEPCO is doing near Fukushima?
Those can be built on time and on budget, use no fuel, and cause no pollution.
And how about
rooftop solar for jobs and energy independence?
There's more in the article, including this:
Continue readingDo you know how many outages nuclear reactors near here have had? Probably not, because that’s usually not in the news, and you have to dig into day by day NRC reactor status reports to find out. It turns out nuclear power is 0/7 instead of 24/7 on many a day.
Looking at all nine nuclear reactors within 200 miles of here, the graph drips downtime like tears.
The available data on NRC’s website and graphed here goes back to 31 March 2006, through 29 January 2013. Let’s look at each of our closest reactors one by one. Hatch 1 on the Altamaha River, in addition to its recent 40% power on 21 January and 87% on 5 January, has had quite a few outages:
Continue reading
Why is Plant Hatch Unit 1 running at well below capacity?
Saturday 19 Jan 2013 that nuclear plant was
at 100%, according to the NRC,
yet Sunday it was down to 45%, then 40% Monday and 64% today.
What's going on at Hatch 1?
And what happened to nuclear supposedly being 24/7?
There's no event report about this from the NRC; the last item the NRC has on Hatch 1 seems to be from 2003. Southern Company provides no information on this event. Another source (Platts, 4 January 2013) says Hatch 2 (and Vogtle 2) are to refuel in the first half of this year, among Fifty-six US nuclear units to shut for refueling in 2013. But Hatch 1 is not on that list, and a similar Hatch 1 brownout happened 5 and 6 January:
Continue reading
Nobody wants to pay to fix
Progress Energy's Crystal River nuke:
not PGN, not its new owner Duke Energy, not
Nuclear Electric Insurance Ltd. (NEIL).
So maybe this nuke, only
160 miles from here,
will be staying shut permanently?
What say we do the same for the new nukes at Plant Vogtle,
only
200 miles from here,
before they even open?
John Downey wrote for the Charlotte Business Journal, Crystal River nuke plant stymies Duke Energy Utility facing penalties, high costs for repairs,
After two mediation sessions, Progress Energy Florida and its insurer haven't agreed how much of the potential repair costs for the utility's crippled Crystal River nuclear unit are covered.
It appears all but certain that Progress — a Duke Energy Corp. subsidiary — will have to pay millions of dollars as a penalty for failing to make a timely decision on whether to repair the plant.
Repair expenses have been calculated at between $1.5 billion and $3.4 billion, plus what it costs to buy power to replace what Crystal River would have produced while it is being repaired.
What kept shut Crystal River down from 2009 on was a concrete containment separation. Maybe those errors in pouring concrete at Plant Vogtle are Continue reading
The CEO of General Electric, the company that designed the reactors at Fukushima and Hatch 1 and 2, said nukes are economically hard to justify. And that was back in July, before the first new nukes permitted in 30 years, at Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River, slipped 15 months. What’s winning? Shale gas, temporarily, but that’s just a bump in the road on the way to wind and solar power.
Pilita Clark wrote for Financial Times 30 July 2012, Nuclear ‘hard to justify’, says GE chief,
Nuclear power is so expensive compared with other forms of energy that it has become “really hard” to justify, according to the chief executive of General Electric, one of the world’s largest suppliers of atomic equipment.
“It’s really a gas and wind world today,” said Jeff Immelt, referring to two sources of electricity he said most countries are shifting towards as natural gas becomes “permanently cheap”.
“When I talk to the guys who run the oil companies they say look, they’re finding more gas all the time. It’s just hard to justify nuclear, really hard. Gas is so cheap and at some point, really, economics rule,” Mr Immelt told the Financial Times in an interview in London at the weekend. “So I think some combination of gas, and either wind or solar … that’s where we see most countries around the world going.”
GE CEO Immelt may also want to talk to GE’s own research director
Continue reading
Does Hatch nuclear Unit 1 have substandard fire protection, like many reactors built before 1975? Protection against fires that the NRC says cause about half the core damage risk, such as at Fukushima, which is the same design as Hatch?
According to Simplyfy.org 2 Jan 2012, Fire Risk At Older Japan Reactors Shows Potential Worldwide Problem,
The [Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority] NRA announced recently that reactors built before 1975 likely have sub standard fire protection designs. This includes having important cables coated in fire resistant insulation, isolating and protecting cables and creating barriers to prevent fires from spreading to other areas of critical equipment.
Source: The Mainichi, 1 Jan 2013, Over 10 nuclear plants in Japan have flawed fire-prevention equipment: sources.
What else was built before 1975?
Plant Hatch Unit 1
“Operating License: Issued – 10/13/1974”,
according to the U.S. NRC.
100 miles from here,
and the same design as Fukushima.
DOE also instituted upgrades and changes to their reactor facilities which included facility modifications as a result of Browns Ferry fire. Private sector nuclear power reactors in the US are not all fully up to the newer rules. The NRC has issued a number of exemptions that watchdog groups have criticized as being unsafe. Browns Ferry still does not meet the NRC fire rules for cables. 47 of 52 reactors in the US still do not comply with the 1980 fire regulations.
Plant Hatch is privately owned and operated. Has it been upgraded? Continue reading