nuclear-news

Potential disaster at Hanford reservation’s nuclear power plant

Sadly, we have a similarly designed GE Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) with the same potentially disastrous arrangement of spent fuel storage at the Columbia Generating Station (CGS) — formerly known as the WPPSS 2 nuclear power plant — on the Hanford reservation on the Columbia River.

In view of the lessons learned from Fukushima Dai-ichi, it is unfortunate that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved an extension of the CGS license for another 20 years. …  A serious accident at the CGS nuclear power plant could provoke a double disaster because it would probably compromise cleanup of nuclear and toxic wastes at the site.

Shut down the Northwest’s only nuclear power plant, Oregon Live, , June 17, 2012 By John Howieson The Fukushima nuclear power accidents, resulting from the earthquake and tsunami that struck the northeast coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, have brought home to people around the world the perilous nature of nuclear energy. If a country as advanced as Japan cannot adequately regulate its nuclear industry to run its reactors safely, then we cannot assume anyone else is capable of it. ……
Recently, a wall of the spent fuel pool located over the Fukushima Dai-ichi number 4 reactor has revealed a bulge increasing the concern about its stability. Failure of this structure or of the precarious water supply cooling the spent fuel threatens a disastrous further release of radioactivity — an even greater amount than was released last year.

Sadly, we have a similarly designed GE Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) with the same potentially disastrous arrangement of spent fuel storage at the Columbia Generating Station (CGS) — formerly known as the WPPSS 2 nuclear power plant — on the Hanford reservation on the Columbia River.

In view of the lessons learned from Fukushima Dai-ichi, it is unfortunate that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved an extension of the CGS license for another 20 years. …  A serious accident at the CGS nuclear power plant could provoke a double disaster because it would probably compromise cleanup of nuclear and toxic wastes at the site.

Currently, this nuclear plant provides only a small percentage of the
power in the Pacific Northwest…. The Columbia Generating Station
“Fukushima-style” nuclear power plant should be shut down. ..

June 20, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA