America’s nuclear reactors disintegrating – headed for crisis

Nuke power’s collapse gets ever more dangerous November 30, 2012, Harvey Wasserman
In the wake of this fall’s election, the disintegration of America’s decrepit atomic reactor fleet is fast approaching critical mass. Unless our No Nukes movement can get the worst of them shut soon, Barack Obama may be very lucky to get through his second term without a major reactor disaster.

All 104 licensed US reactors were designed before 1975—a third of a century ago. All but one went on line in the 1980s or earlier.

Plunging natural gas prices (due largely to ecologically disastrous fracking) are dumping even fully-amortized US reactors into deep red ink. Wisconsin’s Kewaunee will close next year because nobody wants to buy it. A reactor at Clinton, Illinois, may join it. Should gas prices stay low, the trickle of shut-downs will turn into a flood.

But more disturbing are the structural problems, made ever-more dangerous by slashed maintenance budgets.

• San Onofre Units One and Two, near major earthquake faults on the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego, have been shut for more than nine months by core breakdowns in their newly refurbished steam generators. A fix could exceed a half-billion dollars. A bitter public battle now rages over shutting them both.
• The containment dome at North Florida’s Crystal River was seriously damaged during “repair” efforts that could take $2 billion to correct. It will probably never reopen.
• NRC inspections of Nebraska’s Fort Calhoun, damaged during recent flooding, have unearthed a wide range of structural problems that could shut it forever, and that may have been illegally covered-up.  According to William Boardman, NRC documents show nearly three dozen reactors to be at risk from dam breaks.
• Ohio’s Davis-Besse has structural containment cracks that should have forced it down years ago and others have been found at South Carolina’s V.C. Summer reactor pressure vessel.
• Intense public pressure at Vermont Yankee, at two reactors at New York’s Indian Point, and at New Jersey’s Oyster Creek (damaged in Hurricane Sandy) could bring them all down.

Projected completion of a second unit at Watts Bar, Tennessee, where construction began in the 1960s, has been pushed back to April, 2015. If finished at all, building this reactor may span a half-century.

Two new reactors under preliminary construction in South Carolina have been plagued by delays and cost overruns. Faulty components and concrete have marred two more under construction at Vogtle, Georgia, where builders may soon ask for a new delay on consideration of proposed federal loan guarantees.

This fall’s defeat of the very pro-nuclear Mitt Romney is an industry set-back. The return of Harry Reid (D-NV) as Senate Majority Leader means the failed Yucca Mountain waste dump will stay dead. A number of new Congressionals are notably pro-green, in line with Obama’s strong rhetorical support.

Continue reading →

December 1, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

A slap on the wrist for Bechtel’s negligence about radiation safety at Hanford

there are mistakes, but not the type of mistakes that come with every project, but incompetent blunders. When workers are not trained and safety regulations are being violated when dealing with radioactive waste, is an inexcusable offence.

‘it is the governments fault for making everything harder for us to do anything because there are all these rules to follow so people don’t get hurt.’

 The corporate executives live in another world that is secluded to ours, in which the rules don’t apply and that any regulations that protect people from something as serious as radioactive material, is government taking away freedom from them.

Corporate Radiation http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/26/1164819/-Corporate-Radiation, 26 Nov 12, Another story of corporate incompetence has surfaced. The Bechtel Corporation is in hot water due to failing safety guidelines, not training workers up to standard, and failing to follow procedures at the Hanford Nuclear plant outside of Richland, Washington. Continue reading →

November 28, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

16 USA nuclear power plants vulnerable to flooding from dam failure

List of Reactors Potentially at High Risk of Flooding due to Dam Failure

Alabama:                          Browns Ferry, Units 1, 2, 3

Arkansas:                         Arkansas Nuclear, Units 1, 2

Louisiana:                         Waterford, Unit 3

Minnesota:                         Prairie Island, Units 1, 2

Nebraska:                         Cooper;  Fort Calhoun

New Jersey:                          Hope Creek, Unit 1;  Salem, Units 1, 2

New York:                         Indian Point, Units 2, 3

North Carolina:             McGuire, Units 1, 2

Pennsylvania:             Beaver Valley, Units 1, 2; Peach Bottom, Units 2, 3;

Three Mile Island, Unit 1

Tennessee:                         Sequoyah, Unit 1;  Watts Bar, Unit 1

Texas:                                     South Texas, Units 1, 2

South Carolina:             H.B. Robinson, Unit 2;  Oconee, Units 1, 2, 3

Vermont:                         Vermont Yankee

Virginia:                         Surrey, Units 1, 2

Washington:                         Columbia

(Source: Perkins, et al., “Screening Analysis,” July 2011)  http://www.nationofchange.org/whistleblower-nuclear-regulators-suppress-facts-break-law-1354009225

Whistleblower: Nuclear Regulators Suppress Facts, Break Law, Nation of Change, William Boardman,  27 November  “…….Event Unlikely, Would Be Sure Disaster  South Carolina’s Oconee plant on Lake Keowee has three reactors, located 11 miles downstream from the Jocassee Reservoir, an 8,000 acre lake.  As HuffPo put it:

…the Oconee facility, which is operated by Duke Energy, would suffer almost certain core damage if the Jocassee dam were to fail. And the odds of it failing sometime over the next 20 years, the engineer said, are far greater than the odds of a freak tsunami taking out the defenses of a nuclear plant in Japan….  Continue reading →

November 28, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Avoiding Pilgrim nuclear safety committee- in order to avoid criticism

(gotta keep ourselves nice)

MARSHFIELD Selectmen reject nuclear advisory committee
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2012/11/21/selectmen-reject-nuclear-advisory-committee/8qqoSYZxLafRDwa1izYrJP/story.html
By Jennette Barnes Globe Correspondent /  November 24, 2012 The Board of Selectmen voted 3-0 Monday against establishing a nuclear advisory committee.

Anna Baker, a member of the Pilgrim Coalition, which seeks to reduce safety risks related to Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, asked the board to create a committee that would review safety plans for an emergency and work on preventative safety. In April, Town Meeting approved a resolution asking the selectmen to consider creating such a
committee.

But after hearing testimony Monday from police Lieutenant Paul Taber, who is the town’s emergency management director, and from Police Chief Phillip Tavares, the selectmen said they believed the town’s Emergency Management Agency was doing an excellent job, with
professional training that committee members might not have.

Selectman John Hall also expressed concern that the committee might be anti-nuclear, and could create friction with emergency planners. Baker said she was pro-safety, not anti-nuclear.

November 22, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Hanford radioactive waste plant – safety violations

Safety, health violations under investigation at Hanford nuclear waste plant, Oregon Live,  By The Associated Press  November 21, 2012 LOS ANGELES — A federal investigation has found that a California company might have committed a wide range of safety and health violations at a plant it is building in Washington state to treat high-level radioactive waste, a published report said Wednesday.  Continue reading →

November 22, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Investigation into Oyster Creek nuclear power plant’s safety response

Oyster Creek is a boiling water reactor, the same type as those at the ill-fated Fukushima Daiichi in Japan. Its spent fuel pool is on top of the reactor and both are in the same containment building.

NRC probes Oyster Creek’s Hurricane Sandy response , 15 NOVEMBER 2012  BY ROGER WITHERSPOON NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM Federal regulators have launched a special probe to determine if officials at the Oyster Creek nuclear power violated rules and waited too long to declare an emergency alert as rising waters threatened critical reactors systems. Continue reading →

November 17, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

USA’s nuclear weapons facilities are far from secure

Our Nuclear Insecurity Complex HUFFINGTON POST, 11/14/2012  By Peter Stockton Back in July, an 82-year-old nun and two fellow peace activists breached the security    at the Y-12 nuclear weapons facility in Tennessee. The red-faced federal officials who subsequently promised thorough oversight proclaimed they had “no tolerance ” for that kind of negligence.

Since then, it’s only gotten worse for the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — the semi autonomous agency in charge of securing nuclear materials at our national laboratories and weapons production facilities. Continue reading →

November 15, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment