Very OT. Chernobyl and Fukushima
- Thread starter haymond1977
- Start date
Exactly. San Onofre produced 2254 MW from an 83.7 acre operations footprint. Pretty tough to top that.
Nice resume Doc Brown - who wins the World Series in 2038? Yes, I know there are plenty of plants that are in seismic areas but they are usually designed with that in mind. Are you suggesting I wear a tinfoil hat because I wonder about a 70 year old plant not specifically built for EQ? I don’t stay awake at night concerned. However I don’t think I need to tell an eductated man such as yourself how quickly chaos and anarchy would reign in the TriState if there was an incident. Significant tail risk caused by the large population panicking.
Last edited:
Jmho, but if I were emperor I’d build natural gas turbine power plants and scrap all nuclear. They’re far cheaper to build and produce and maintain and no deadly toxic byproducts. CO2 is a naturally occurring element that is essential to all life, and NG produces minimal amounts of CO2 and the turbines are produced locally and relatively cheap compared to nuclear. U.S. Has the largest NG reserves in the world and will be exporting millions of tons of it if the establishment ‘Pubs don’t deliberately sabotage Trumps re-election which is a distinct possibility ......
Yep showing up at ONS is all I do as well. We’ve probably cross paths on occasions.
People wouldn’t believe the safety measures that are in place at our plant and other US nuclear sites in the US.
People wouldn’t believe the safety measures that are in place at our plant and other US nuclear sites in the US.
Last edited:
Ive heard rumors that Savannah has a fully loaded black hawk on site. I still think a guided missile attack against a couple sites could cripple our country if successful. Big If on multiple levels but hate people don't have a healthy fear of that event. Too many people sleeping well and over confident for comfort.
Any links on the death count you mentioned?
Checked the googles and found a figure of 42 which includes deaths caused from the event up to a few years ago.
Now I fully understand how/why this number could be manipulated by authorities. Still there’s a huge discrepancy between that and what ur stating.
I’m with you on the risk of a terrorist event. Still my bet is a European target would be hit first due to logistics. My bet is France.
I’m not willing to listen to anyone concerned about the environment/emissions if nuclear isn’t a cornerstone of whatever they are proposing
Do you guys realize how much technology has progressed since these disasters?
Do you guys realize how much technology has progressed since these disasters?
Dont panic but VC Sumner north of Columbia and Vogtle south of Augusta are closer to you than Savannah. Plant Vogtle is a few miles down the river from where I live but I dont worry about it. There ain't much we can do about it if a disaster did happen.
This is a moronic and factually untrue statement.
I worked in a chemical plant for 10 years. Saw some wild stuff in that time. Fires, explosion, acid burns, guys passing out after being overcome with hydrogen sulfide and an unplanned release of Bromine which is just like Chlorine in how it affects humans. It just has a brownish, orange colored cloud instead of a greenish cloud when released. I'm amazed noone has ever been killed out there.
From my experience, I would definitely feel safer working in a nuclear plant as opposed to a chemical plant.
Nuclear is the way to go though it is likely to expensive to be the 100% solution for power generation we should target getting it up to roughly 33% of our power generation from the current 19%. This is an excellent TED talk on the benefits to include environmental of nuclear.
What is factually untrue? I don't mind you calling me a moron. Heck I don't have much of a clue how the inter workings of a nuclear core even works. So in that way, I am a moron. But I do know that history points to anything a large group of humans believe could not happen, more than likely, will fail and fail big! The allusion is control.
Was it moronic for less than 1% of the financial world saying the housing market was about to crash in 07,08? You think our dollar is never going to fail? You think our power grid and infrastructure are not exposed?
Easy to call people who look for weakness conspiracy theorists or morons.
The Russian core exploded because of the graphite. Doesn’t mean a meltdown couldn’t occur in the US.
I'm guessing most ITT aren't aware of the resources the US nuclear fleet has spent on external hazard assessments and other Post-Fukushima upgrades (FLEX)
I'm sure we have a million safe guards. I really don't think it would come down to operator error or a simple power outage or puff of wind.
My fear will always reside with terror attacks. 10 people ITT have stated the American core's cannot explode. I promise you if a MOAB hits the chamber, the core will be exploded, which is the same thing. If enough explosives are set off near the core, it will explode! Do this to a any other power source and it's not a huge deal. Do this to 10 tonnes of uranium and all these people saying there is nothing to worry about will be buried in concrete caskets.
Chernobyl was a radical new design (graphite cooled I think) that was not ready for implementation - especially by the Russians who have a history of fvcking up with this stuff.
The US Nuclear Power industry is also HEAVILY regulated. I'm sure you gotta report everything that happens.
Operator farts - report it.
We were discussing this at work one day. The idea seemed solid until you consider a wreck.
But then, with the amount of power available you could build the truck like a tank......
TMI was also a watershed moment for Nuclear power. That's when a lot of changes were made to the systems.
I wouldn't classify that as the same thing. Dropping something accidentally doesn't have much to do with a core issue on a nuke site.
My understanding is that wind and solar - along with their own environmental issues - are severely limited as to what they can produce (mainly solar). They just can't get us there. Especially if more power requirements hit the board (electric cars for instance).
Dumb question - is that a lot per acre? And where is that thing?
I'm told that if you are near the Oconee Nuke site, and you pull over for too long, you will be visited by their security. And these aren't American Security yokles.....
He's not wrong, though I'm not sure of his context.
I don't deny that nuclear is relatively safe. The problem today is economics, which is why there aren't any nuclear power plants being built and probably won't be in our lifetimes. The regulatory oversight costs, the engineering costs ... all of the costs compared to alternative sources of energy. Frankly it is a shame but there is no CEO of a power company willing to plunge his or her shareholders into the long-term risks of building such a plant.
I have no clue the context or rationale for 99% of this post, but the moronic, factually untrue part of your original post was the comment that Chernobyl had a hand in 500,000 deaths. There's not a single reputable study that acknowledges a worst case death total even reasonably close to that.
It's simply not true, but I'm sure you know that.
Used to work in the industry myself, and nuclear plants are some of the most secure places you'll find in the country. Not only do they have an army of well-armed security personnel onsite, they are also in constant contact with local law enforcement and military installations to guard against terror attacks. They train yearly for the scenarios you just mentioned. And they train for just about any other scenario you can think of. The likelihood of a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant being successful is extraordinarily low.
So explain to me how you are going to get a MOAB near the core of a nuclear plant? You aren't going to sneak it in. And I doubt you are going to get through the dome made of three feet of reinforced concrete. Going to drop it from a plane? Yeah, the Air Force is going to pick you off before you get close. Sure, they is always a small chance for something to go wrong. But they is also a small chance we get hit by an asteroid too.
@RaleighTiger used to work for SCE&G (also a former client of mine from my early career). He’s spot on. They’re called “Force on Force” events. Go to the NRC website; you can read about them. I would encourage you to be like @athigpe; take an interest and educate yourselves as to the facts and not the tin foil hat hysteria. Learn the distinct differences regarding the situations at TMI vs. Chernobyl vs. Fukushima, rather than blindly citing them as reasons why the industry should be scrapped. Go Tigers!
No, not a dumb question at all. That’s a huge amount of power for that small of a footprint (Solar PV on that footprint would bring 100 MW at best). Too small...we barely have room for our ISFSI and sewage treatment plant. It’s right on the coast; by that, I mean seriously right ON the beach about 5 miles south of San Clemente on the OC/San Diego County Line. Three units; one decommissioned, two & three will start later this year, most likely.
Last edited:
I hear you brother... The Navy is without a doubt THE gold standard here. BUT I'd also point out that these are warships without a war. IF the bullets start flying and the reactor spaces start taking hits from explosives, all bets are off.
I think Oconee is in that range power-wise but I can't find out how big the plant is.
Oconee is just shy of 1000 megawatts per reactor so just shy of 3000 when all 3 units are operating
You touch on the major problem with solar power - it's just too inefficient. IMO right now it's best suited for supplemental power local to the panels - ie put them on a house to help keep the power bill down. On a macro scale, we need something else.
Wind has it's own problems. It tends to destroy birds and there are issues with the turbine blades getting damaged.
In the future both will become better but right now it just isn't there.
Yes, the traditional large nuclear plants require billions of dollars to be spent before there is a return on investment. It is hard for plants to put that kind of capital at risk for one project. For example, when Duke Energy started preliminary discussion on building 2 units in Gaffeny, it didn't make sense since those units would have cost half the value of the entire company. That was one of the driving factors for the merge with Progress.
On another note, the economics for wind and solar don't work either which is why they are subsidized by the tax payers. The government justifies it by pointing at global warming; however, they don't do the same for nuclear even though it is the best source of carbon free power.
Well, there's an old saying:
"Every day the bucket goes to the well. Someday the bottom will drop out. "
Now, I'm not an anti nuke guy. It's pretty obvious that this can be done in a safe manner. I've read that 3 mile island was actually one of the 1st modernized reactors with tons of remote sensing all over. The reason that they had to release the radioactive gas stemmed from the fact that the operators actually didn't believe what the sensors were telling them and ignored procedure until they physically got confirmation of their readings. The problem is that we can operate for decades with a perfect record (which we have really), but if it does go bad one day, it's not like you can just clean it up, bury a few people, and move on. It's a BIG OLE MESS that essentially is there forever. The half life of Uranium 238 is 4.5 BILLION years.
Personally, I think we stick with nukes util we can figure out fusion. That's the holy grail right there. Free power for essentially nothing. 4 hydrogen atoms -> 1 helium atom + a shit ton load of energy. with no waste.
But guys, solar is the answer for us right now. According to the US Dept of Energy, enough solar energy hits the planet every 1.5 hours to power the whole planet for a year. It's figuratively raining soup. We just need to make a bowl. We can do better than digging stuff out of the ground and setting it on fire. (or bombarding it with neutrons). If we invest the kind of cash into this research that we have into hydrocarbons and nuclear energy, we could have clean abundant power.
"Every day the bucket goes to the well. Someday the bottom will drop out. "
Now, I'm not an anti nuke guy. It's pretty obvious that this can be done in a safe manner. I've read that 3 mile island was actually one of the 1st modernized reactors with tons of remote sensing all over. The reason that they had to release the radioactive gas stemmed from the fact that the operators actually didn't believe what the sensors were telling them and ignored procedure until they physically got confirmation of their readings. The problem is that we can operate for decades with a perfect record (which we have really), but if it does go bad one day, it's not like you can just clean it up, bury a few people, and move on. It's a BIG OLE MESS that essentially is there forever. The half life of Uranium 238 is 4.5 BILLION years.
Personally, I think we stick with nukes util we can figure out fusion. That's the holy grail right there. Free power for essentially nothing. 4 hydrogen atoms -> 1 helium atom + a shit ton load of energy. with no waste.
But guys, solar is the answer for us right now. According to the US Dept of Energy, enough solar energy hits the planet every 1.5 hours to power the whole planet for a year. It's figuratively raining soup. We just need to make a bowl. We can do better than digging stuff out of the ground and setting it on fire. (or bombarding it with neutrons). If we invest the kind of cash into this research that we have into hydrocarbons and nuclear energy, we could have clean abundant power.
The problem is capturing it. Current panels are only at about 20% efficiency. And I don't know how far away we are to getting that number up.
Not to mention WTF do you do when the sun goes down? You can store energy if you can capture enough to have an excess, but we aren't close to there yet.
Problem is that wind and solar only operate ~30% of the time with variations depending on where it is. The rest has to be made up with traditional sources. Vermont had 1 nuclear plant and it shutdown a couple of years ago due to the activists that wanted solar/wind. The net effect was the Vermont carbon footprint went up due to the natural gas plant that had to be built right next to the solar/wind farm. Another example is the new solar farm completed last year in southern Cali. That project had to submit an application to the state to have carbon output, again due to the natural gas plant built.
Other problem is the space needed for both wind and solar. The power density values are terrible. You also can't produce it in Wyoming and "ship" it to New York because of storage and voltage drop.
Wind/solar have a place in the overall solution but they are not in a position to support base load power needs.
Other problem is the space needed for both wind and solar. The power density values are terrible. You also can't produce it in Wyoming and "ship" it to New York because of storage and voltage drop.
Wind/solar have a place in the overall solution but they are not in a position to support base load power needs.
He isn't wrong but it's still a bizarre thing to say. I hear they have some on Venus.
Fukushima is what we call a beyond design basis event. Build a higher sea wall. No brainer. Fukushima response turned into a huge waste of money.
3 units, 880 MW each. B&W (yeah, same as TMI). Not sure the # of acres but larger than most since the "footprint" includes the Keowee Hydro Station.
I don't want to hijack this thread or, heaven forbid, generate more pages of back and forth; BUT
I worked the Savannah River Plant (now Site) in the 1970's.
No one on here, I think, wants to know what really went on at the government-run reactors and processing plants (SRS, Hanford, Rocky Flats, oak Ridge, etc.).
I will just say that I feel totally safe working at a commercial nuclear plant as compared to there.
The government had two sets of rules, one for public operators and one for themselves.
What does a war have to do with this discussion? My point was that we have had nuke powered ships for decades and we've done it safely....j
I agree. I'll add that building nuclear plants so close to a subduction zone with known large earthquakes & high ground acceleration values isn't a good idea.
Similar threads
