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Very OT. Chernobyl and Fukushima

So, does a nuclear plant built on/near a fault zone concern you? Do you have any idea how many are near fault zones? Several are. Let me name two for you; San Onofre and Diablo Canyon. The designs are built to withstand earthquakes. 30 year environmental professional, professional geologist formerly licensed in eight states. Work in the electric power industry. My retirement home is in San Clemente; I have zero concerns. Take it for what it’s worth. Wear a heavy duty tin foil hat if you want or you can listen those very few who really know WTF they’re talking about. You decide.
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.
 
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After watching Chernobyl on HBO, i watched some other documentaries on it which lead me to watch other documentaries on Fukushima and three mile island, etc.

Makes me wonder how well built and newer the nuclear sites are that surround me in the upstate. Oconee and Savannah are the closest, right? Seems like the excuse for most of the disasters in the past is that these sites were outdated and should have been updated. Especially Chernobyl, which relied too heavily on operating humans, and Fukushima which was not built to handle flooding and would have worked if it were built like Tokyo plant.

Anyone know how crazy I am to live in the kill zone in the upstate of SC?
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 ......
 
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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.

Well, I show up there everyday.
Regarding living near a nuclear plant, the number of $1M+ Homes on Lake Keowee indicate to me that there are a lot of rich people who do not fear it.
Arguing about it is, however, a futile exercise.
 
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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 sights in the US.
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.
 
I'm shocked at the level of acceptance ITT. I thought there would be at least a few that saw past the propaganda and lobbying that nuclear pushes.

Look I'm not saying anything happening is likely. Not even close. But if you think a core is impossible to explode and cause more than small damage like Fukushima... You are mistaken. Chernobyl has had a hand in a half a million deaths, not the 4 or 5 thousand Ukraine would have you believe. There was major levels felt in Sweden and all the way to the UK. Think we would just have a few deaths if we had a core explode in Savannah? You are crazy.

The government's most highly regulated areas like nuclear power or nuclear weapons, are not immune to over-site and stupidity over time. Hell we dropped an H bomb off the coast of GA and the not only did we lose it, the govt. can't even definitively say if it had uranium in it or not. When something happens again, and it is when, the same people on this board saying don't worry will call it an anomaly and it wont happen again.
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.
 
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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?
 
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After watching Chernobyl on HBO, i watched some other documentaries on it which lead me to watch other documentaries on Fukushima and three mile island, etc.

Makes me wonder how well built and newer the nuclear sites are that surround me in the upstate. Oconee and Savannah are the closest, right? Seems like the excuse for most of the disasters in the past is that these sites were outdated and should have been updated. Especially Chernobyl, which relied too heavily on operating humans, and Fukushima which was not built to handle flooding and would have worked if it were built like Tokyo plant.

Anyone know how crazy I am to live in the kill zone in the upstate of SC?
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.
 
I'm shocked at the level of acceptance ITT. I thought there would be at least a few that saw past the propaganda and lobbying that nuclear pushes.

Look I'm not saying anything happening is likely. Not even close. But if you think a core is impossible to explode and cause more than small damage like Fukushima... You are mistaken. Chernobyl has had a hand in a half a million deaths.

This is a moronic and factually untrue statement.
 
I'd live next to a nuclear plant before I lived within 25 miles of a chemical plant.
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.
 
This is a moronic and factually untrue statement.
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.
 
US Cores don’t explode. They never would. They melt. There could be hydrogen explosions coming from radiolysis following an accident but the core itself doesn’t explode. We are completely opposite of Chernobyl. I was previously licensed Senior Reactor Operator. I chose to stop working shift work so I have a different position now at Oconee. Trust when I say there are not another group of better trained and immensely scrutinized individuals than those who work in the Nuclear Industry. It really is an amazing power source that the country has damn near priced itself out of.
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.
 
After watching Chernobyl on HBO, i watched some other documentaries on it which lead me to watch other documentaries on Fukushima and three mile island, etc.

Makes me wonder how well built and newer the nuclear sites are that surround me in the upstate. Oconee and Savannah are the closest, right? Seems like the excuse for most of the disasters in the past is that these sites were outdated and should have been updated. Especially Chernobyl, which relied too heavily on operating humans, and Fukushima which was not built to handle flooding and would have worked if it were built like Tokyo plant.

Anyone know how crazy I am to live in the kill zone in the upstate of SC?

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.

I wish more people were informed on nuclear power. It is the answer to all energy needs. Except transportation. [Even though a nuclear Silverado would be awesone]

Im certainly no expert but im on the internet and yall dont know that.

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......
 
I agree. The Navy has been running safe nukes for decades. Yes we have had civ accidents (Three Mile Island), but no disasters with a capital "D". We have had decades to develop and research reactors that produce far less waste. We should be doing more with nuclear power in this country.

TMI was also a watershed moment for Nuclear power. That's when a lot of changes were made to the systems.

Dropped an atomic bomb on Florence as well. The conventional explosives detonated but the core wasn’t armed...

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.

If you add up all the deaths and damage from nuclear energy production over the
world, you don't come within a tiny fraction of the damage done from coal fired
plants, from a physician's standpoint. Wind and solar are space polluting; hydroelectric
is limited. Nuclear is the only logical way. And this is from a democrat, where all the
antinuclear freaks reside.

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).

Exactly. San Onofre produced 2254 MW from an 83.7 acre operations footprint. Pretty tough to top that.

Dumb question - is that a lot per acre? And where is that thing?

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.

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.....

What a weird thing to say.

He's not wrong, though I'm not sure of his context.
 
I have worked in nuclear for 25+ years including the Navy and Oconee. I also have a degree in Nuclear Eng. Nuclear is one of the safest technologies there is and the US nuclear fleet is light years different than the technology in Russia. The Japanese technology is similar, however, their operating procedures and decision making are different which led to the Fuk issue being worse than it could have been.
There is a risk associated with everything, and nuclear is one of the least risky. Look at it this way - The Three Mile Island incident was the worst US nuclear "accident" in 50+ years and not a single person died. Name another industry with that track record.
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.
 
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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.

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.
 
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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.
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.
 
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.
Reasonable.
 
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@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!
 
Dumb question.

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.
 
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I agree. The Navy has been running safe nukes for decades. Yes we have had civ accidents (Three Mile Island), but no disasters with a capital "D". We have had decades to develop and research reactors that produce far less waste. We should be doing more with nuclear power in this country.

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.
 
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.

I think Oconee is in that range power-wise but I can't find out how big the plant is.
 
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.

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.

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 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.
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.
 
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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.
 
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.
 
I believe nuclear is the safest and cleanest form of energy in the world, it’s not even debatable. But humans are humans, we belong to Mother Nature, and we will never be able to plan for everything.

Look at Fukushima... We’re not talking about commy mongoloids slamming shots of vodka and playing games with their reactors, those guys were responsible professionals and it never even dawned on them to protect their backup generators from a massive flood

We can take every precaution in the world but we account for a handful of potential natural disasters when there are an endless amount of things that can happen we probably aren’t taking into account

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.
 
I think Oconee is in that range power-wise but I can't find out how big the plant is.

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.
 
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.

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
 
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