Subtitle: It Works but Nobody Could Afford It
Recently I attended a technical presentation on the future of hydrogen as a fuel. The fuel would be for transportation and for power generation. The venue, date, and presenter will remain anonymous in this post.
The presenter was quite knowledgeable, an excellent speaker, had very nice graphics and charts and tables in his presentation, and made many excellent points. A few points caused me to raise my eyebrows, however. It is those dubious points that are the subject of this post (for dubious, translate that as flat-out wrong).
The presenter started with hydrogen-fueled cars using fuel cells. A commenter sitting near me stated: "Great! California will have hydrogen cars spewing out the single most powerful greenhouse gas, water vapor." The desert air will have humidity increased and localized warming (not global) will occur. In fact, humid air requires greater air conditioning energy to not only cool the air but to condense the water vapor out of the air. The power grid load will increase.
The first point was that hydrogen will be produced by using nuclear power at $20 per MWh, via electrolysis of water. However, nuclear power cannot be made for $20 per MWh (this is the same as 2 cents per kWh). Even if the incremental cost of nuclear power were 2 cents, one must find a nuclear plant that can increase its load so that the increase runs the hydrogen electrolyzers. The fact is that nuclear plants run as baseload. Therefore, any additional load on the grid will be from the incremental power provider, which most likely will be a natural gas-fired plant. At night, during off-peak hours, the power price is approximately 5 to 7 cents. In the day, during on-peak hours, the power price is anywhere from 15 to 50 cents per kWh.
The second point was that hydrogen will be the logical fuel when a carbon market brings the price of carbon dioxide emissions to $100 per metric tonne. The presenter stated that this must be done to prevent global warming as the IPCC has warned us about. With man-made global warming existing only in the output of faulty computer models and not in reality, this is quite a problem for the hydrogen industry to face.
The third point was that hydrogen as a fuel for cars is much safer than gasoline. The presenter showed a graphic of a fuel-cell car with a hydrogen flame shooting vertically out of the trunk. This was compared to a gasoline-powered car with the entire car engulfed in flames. He also stated (correctly) that a hydrogen flame is invisible in daytime, and barely visible at night. What he did not state is that a car can be in any position after a collision, on its side, crumpled, and the hydrogen flame can be firing out for many feet in any direction. That alone will increase automobile insurance rate far beyond what the average driver can afford. Fuel cell cars will not ever be common for this reason. Earlier advocates make the point that the hydrogen fuel tank cannot explode, cannot be ruptured, and has fail-safe valves to seal the hydrogen inside in a collision. Such claims are pure conjecture. The tangled mass of metal in a high-speed collision could and would puncture any tank.
The fourth point was that hydrogen is safe in use. Those of us who have worked with hydrogen for any time know that is false. Hydrogen has properties that result in it leaking from almost any piping system, and invading the spaces between atoms in the metallic crystal structure. Hydrogen embrittlement results. The metal cracks and leaks even more. When hydrogen leaks, it needs no spark to start burning. It auto-ignites.
The fifth point was hydrogen can be liquefied and used as aircraft fuel. Considering first the safety considerations, loading liquid hydrogen is done by NASA on its rockets as one of the most dangerous aspects of a launch. It may be possible someday to safely load liquid hydrogen onto an aircraft for fuel, but that day is a long way off.
The sixth point was that hydrogen is far more efficient on a well-to-wheels basis compared to gasoline, speaking of vehicle transportation. This is a common statement by hydrogen advocates, but is false. An engineering analysis must include the inefficiency of the water electrolyzer, drying the wet hydrogen, compressing the hydrogen, using the hydrogen to produce power in the fuel cell, the high temperature of the fuel cell, then inefficiency of the electric motor to produce shaft power for the wheels.
The audience was too polite to bring up these points at the presentation, but a few of us made eye contact and shrugged as these points were made.
Hydrogen as transportation fuel is not economic, nor is it safe for the reasons stated above.
As a power plant fuel, hydrogen has potential. Where coal is first gasified then the impurities are removed to leave only hydrogen, that hydrogen can be burned in a power plant to produce electricity. Such a plant is under construction in Mississippi at this time. Another plant that gasifies a mixture of coal and petroleum coke has been designed for central California. That plant is seeking funding for construction.
However, if the economics of hydrogen for transportation fuel depend on obtaining electricity at 2 cents per kWh from a nuclear power plant, it will never be economic.
Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California
Friday, June 20, 2014
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
The Truth About Nuclear Power - Part 22
Subtitle: Fukushima - The Disaster That Could Not Happen
see link to ORNL report
and NRC report: "Recommendations For Enhancing Reactor Safety in the 21st Century" see link
Lessons
The Fukushima Dai-ichi reactor meltdowns have been extensively
watched and written about. This article gives
my perspective. The basics are these:
the plants were heavily damaged by a larger-than-expected earthquake, at 9.0
magnitude, and a larger-than-expected tsunami of approximately 50 feet height about
40 minutes after the first earthquake. (the
initial shock was followed by hundreds of after-shocks.
Some of the after-shocks were major earthquakes themselves, at 7 or greater magnitude.) Meltdowns occurred in 3 reactors, with the extent of the meltdowns yet unknown. Explosions that destroyed containment buildings occurred in 4 plants. Radioactive water was dumped into the ocean because operators had no other place to store it. More radioactive water continues to this day to leak out of cracked foundations, through the porous soil and into the ocean. Fish caught nearby were ruled unsafe for human consumption due to radioactivity. Children living near the meltdown plants already have high rates of thyroid cancer, yet thyroid cancer in children is extremely rare. US sailors on an aircraft carrier developed radiation sickness and other health issues. This disaster is still unfolding, as even the technology-savvy Japanese struggle with what to do and how to do it. No matter what nuclear technology is in place, a meltdown will occur when zero power is available for day after day. That is the fundamental fact of Fukushima Dai-ichi.
 |
| Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, Reactors 1-6 Before Earthquake source: ORNL |
Some of the after-shocks were major earthquakes themselves, at 7 or greater magnitude.) Meltdowns occurred in 3 reactors, with the extent of the meltdowns yet unknown. Explosions that destroyed containment buildings occurred in 4 plants. Radioactive water was dumped into the ocean because operators had no other place to store it. More radioactive water continues to this day to leak out of cracked foundations, through the porous soil and into the ocean. Fish caught nearby were ruled unsafe for human consumption due to radioactivity. Children living near the meltdown plants already have high rates of thyroid cancer, yet thyroid cancer in children is extremely rare. US sailors on an aircraft carrier developed radiation sickness and other health issues. This disaster is still unfolding, as even the technology-savvy Japanese struggle with what to do and how to do it. No matter what nuclear technology is in place, a meltdown will occur when zero power is available for day after day. That is the fundamental fact of Fukushima Dai-ichi.
The lessons for all of the nuclear industry are clear, and
grim: even the best designers and
operators take huge risks when gambling human lives and health against the
powers of Nature.
It should be noted that the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors are not large, but are medium size. If a similar meltdown occurs in a modern, large reactor, the devastation would be proportionately greater.
The nuclear industry advocates continually state the plants
are safe; yet disaster after disaster occurs.
Is it time to invoke the insanity clause: when one repeats the same old
steps over and over, while expecting different results, this is insanity? The Big Three meltdowns thus far are Three
Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima. What plant will be next in the massive
meltdown missive?
Facts on events of March 11, 2011
It is important to note a few features of the Fukushima
Dai-ichi plants: there are six reactors located right on the coast, they use
seawater for cooling, and they are only a few feet above sea level. An earthquake rated at 9.0 occurred, and
reactor units 1, 2, and 3 automatically shut down. The land movement, or shaking, in the
East-West direction was greater than the design. Unit 4
was already shut down for routine maintenance.
Emergency generators started at all six reactors 1 – 6. 40 minutes later, the 50-foot tsunami hit
and all power was lost except for one generator at reactor 6. The other emergency generators stopped. The one operating generator was then connected
also to reactor 5, and those two reactors (5 and 6) were cooled sufficiently to
go into cold shutdown. Note that the diesel-powered generators were
underwater for some time during the multiple tsunami waves.
However, units 1, 2, and 3 reactor cores melted down due to
an extended lack of emergency power.
Also, buildings in units 1, 2, 3, and 4 exploded – probably from
hydrogen production as the fuel melted. It is not yet clear exactly why unit 4
exploded, as
it was not operating at the time of the earthquake.
 |
| Fukushima Dai-ichi Containment Building After Explosion source: ORNL |
In addition, the operators were unable to maintain cooling
in the spent fuel pool at reactors 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Subsequently, operators attempted to cool the meltdown
reactors’ cores, with little success.
Ultimately, out of desperation, seawater was used. Seawater is highly corrosive, so metal parts
in contact with seawater are ruined. Afterward,
a series of water storage tanks were installed and water was pumped through the
melted-down reactors and spent fuel pools and back to the storage tanks.
Substantial leaks through the ground and into the sea
occurred, with radioactive water flowing into the sea. The earthquakes damaged the foundations
sufficiently to provide leakage pathways through the foundations and into the
sea. Note that some nuclear apologist
sites claim that the earthquake itself caused no damage. This is patently untrue. If no earthquake damage occurred, the
foundations would not be cracked and leaking radioactive water into the sea.
It will be years before anyone can open the reactors and
determine the extent of the damage due to earthquake and meltdown, just as was
the case after the meltdown at Three Mile Island.
What everyone needs to know about nuclear power
plants and their designs: designers play the probability game. Somebody (perhaps an expert) provides the
odds of natural disasters of different severities occurring in the next 50 to
60 years, for things such as earthquake, tsunami, dam failure, tornado, volcanic
eruption, hurricane and its storm surge, and others. Typically, a small event is quite common,
but the largest events are extremely rare.
To save money, the plant is designed to withstand a given event with an
appropriately remote chance of occurrence in the plant’s lifetime. The plant is not designed to withstand the
greatest known event of all-time, especially when the odds of the event
occurring during the 50 to 60 year life of the plant are very small. This is
the probability calculus used in designing nuclear power plants. In
the Fukushima Dai-ichi event, the earthquake design was slightly exceeded,
however the multiple aftershocks of large magnitude were likely not in the
design basis. The tsunami design was far
less than the actual 50-foot tsunami that occurred. One source states the design was for a
23-foot tsunami. That then shows that
nature flung a wall of water more than 27 feet higher than was expected and
planned for in the design.
The next unexpected design problem was complete isolation
from any power for days on end. The plants are designed for a power failure,
with onsite diesel-powered generators to supply power for some hours until grid
power is restored. At Fukushima
Dai-ichi, the diesel-powered generators were inoperable after the tsunami. There was no backup plan in place for grid
power loss for days or weeks, plus no diesel-powered generators. The Japanese management and operators were
smart, well-trained, resourceful people, yet even they could not prevent
meltdown in the cores without a power source. What happens when a similar outage occurs in a third-world country?
There are other lessons from Fukushima Dai-ichi. What about other deprivations, other than
grid power and emergency generator power?
What of loss of cooling water – the lake, river, or other source? Even
nuclear plants close to shore, as Fukushima Dai-ichi is, can lose ocean
cooling if the land is thrust upward in an earthquake so that the water intakes
are now above sea level. Even if
electrical power were restored in time, it is mighty difficult to cool reactor
cores without any water. What about dam
break, with flood including mud, debris, rocks, or ice blocks? Ash rain from volcano? Crash impact from missile? Crash impact from a heavy aircraft, even a
bomber loaded with bombs? Multiple
mechanical breakdown of critical pumps – e.g. bolts all failing at the same
time as happened at Salem 2 in 2014. Or,
the electrical grid disconnected plus diesel generators that will not start due
to any malfunction.
What about sabotage – deliberate destruction of key cooling
equipment due to a security breach? This
is a favorite theme of movies, but could it happen? Hopefully not, with security teams on the
alert.
Nuclear advocates falsely insist that the Fukushima Dai-ichi
core meltdowns were due to the old, BWR (boiling water reactor) design. That is false. Even a modern PWR (pressurized water reactor)
design would meltdown without power for several days. This is a fact that is recognized by NRC and
other sober persons.
Foundation cracks and radioactive water leaks, as have
occurred at Fukushima Dai-ichi, are being addressed now, three years
later. The plan is to install an ice-dam
in the earth surrounding the plant. The
ice will be kept cold by refrigeration units, powered by the grid. In effect, there will be a giant section of
artificial perma-frost underneath the leaking foundations. One hopes that this works, and that the grid
does not fail yet again. Meanwhile, for
three years the cracked foundations have leaked radioactive water into the
ocean.
Aftermath
Despite the claims of nuclear proponents, Fukushima
radiation clearly has impacted public health, land, air, and ocean with
contamination. The radioactive air plume
arrived in just a few days at the US west coast, although the radioactivity was
far below danger levels. Tsunami flotsam arrived in other countries,
radioactive water flowed into the ocean, fish, crops, and milk were
contaminated.
It is early yet in the life of a nuclear meltdown, but there
will be cancers, diabetes, thyroid illness, and mental problems (worry, stress). There may also be birth defects. Unlike at Chernobyl, there will likely be no
early deaths from radiation sickness.
However, there very well could be early deaths from cancer.
Japan has made decisions on shutting down other nuclear
reactors, instead using other fuels / plants for power – oil, coal, and natural
gas. Recently, some reactors have been
restarted. Nuclear power is very
controversial in Japan at this time. Germany has declared it will not build new
reactors, and will shut down existing reactors in a few years’ time. China has declared it will continue building
reactors, as will India.
Other countries took a long, sober look at their own
reactors and preparations for a similar situation: if a long period without
power occurs, what would they do? The US response is to have a few resource
centers, with critical equipment being available to any reactor in dire
straits. One hopes the nature of the disaster lends
itself to timely delivery of the critical equipment.
Other new requirements were issued by the NRC. The NRC issued a long report with about 20 new
requirements for the existing fleet and any new construction. See link.
Conclusion
It appears the world has reached a tipping point, or perhaps
is beginning to lose patience with the never-ending lies and deceptions from
the nuclear industry. Before Three Mile
Island, the industry insisted the plants were safe. Even the NRC bought into the “things are safe”
mantra, until operator error after a common equipment malfunction (a pump
stopped pumping) at Three Mile Island showed the “things are safe” line was
totally wrong. Then, Chernobyl exploded and
spewed radiation all around the northern hemisphere – yet the nuclear
apologists stated this was an aberration, rogue operators in a badly designed
plant were doing an unauthorized test (it had graphite for moderation – basically carbon that can easily burn). Now,
Fukushima Dai-ichi has three reactor cores melted down, with four containment
buildings blown apart in four separate explosions, a spent fuel pool that
overheated, cracked foundations that allow radioactive water to flow into the
ocean, and many children already diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Their young lives are changed forever. Even today, nuclear apologists insist that the
Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster (they don’t call it a disaster, rather the word
they use is “incident”) was just an unfortunate natural event that is too rare
to ever be concerned about again.
The truth about nuclear power is this: no design is adequate
for what Nature can put forth. No humans
can accurately and confidently run the numbers and predict the odds of a
massive natural disaster. No
contingency plan can anticipate every eventuality. The price we pay as a society, as a human
race, is living with the very real, and rational, fear of another meltdown in a
reactor near you. How many more human
errors will be made, as equipment breaks down, as natural disasters occur, in
combinations that were not planned for? How much more unsafe are the plants, when the
regulatory agency relaxes rule after rule after rule?
This concludes the article on Fukushima: The Disaster That
Could Not Happen. Next, is the San
Onofre Shutdown Saga.
Previous Articles
The Truth About Nuclear Power emphasizes the economic and safety aspects by showing that (one) modern nuclear power plants are uneconomic to operate compared to natural gas and wind energy, (two) they produce preposterous pricing if they are the sole power source for a grid, (three) they cost far too much to construct, (four) use far more water for cooling, 4 times as much, than better alternatives, (five) nuclear fuel makes them difficult to shut down and requires very costly safeguards, (six) they are built to huge scale of 1,000 to 1,600 MWe or greater to attempt to reduce costs via economy of scale, (seven) an all-nuclear grid will lose customers to self-generation, (eight) smaller and modular nuclear plants have no benefits due to reverse economy of scale, (nine) large-scale plants have very long construction schedules even without lawsuits that delay construction, (ten) nuclear plants do not reach 50 or 60 years life because they require costly upgrades after 20 to 30 years that do not always perform as designed, (eleven) France has 85 percent of its electricity produced via nuclear power but it is subsidized, is still almost twice as expensive as prices in the US, and is only viable due to exporting power at night rather than throttling back the plants during low demand, (twelve) nuclear plants cannot provide cheap power on small islands, (thirteen) US nuclear plants are heavily subsidized but still cannot compete, (fourteen), projects are cancelled due to unfavorable economics, reactor vendors are desperate for sales, nuclear advocates tout low operating costs and ignore capital costs, nuclear utilities never ask for a rate decrease when building a new nuclear plant, and high nuclear costs are buried in a large customer base, (fifteen) safety regulations are routinely relaxed to allow the plants to continue operating without spending the funds to bring them into compliance, (sixteen) many, many near-misses occur each year in nuclear power, approximately one every 3 weeks, (seventeen) safety issues with short term, and long-term, storage of spent fuel, (eighteen) safety hazards of spent fuel reprocessing, (nineteen) health effects on people and other living things, (twenty) nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, (twenty-one) nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, (twenty-two) nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima, (twenty-three) near-disaster at San Onofre, (twenty-four) the looming disaster at St. Lucie, (twenty-five) the inherently unsafe characteristics of nuclear power plants required government shielding from liability, or subsidy, for the costs of a nuclear accident via the Price-Anderson Act, and (twenty-six) the serious public impacts of large-scale population evacuation and relocation after a major incident, or "extraordinary nuclear occurrence" in the language used by the Price-Anderson Act. Additional articles will include (twenty-seven) the future of nuclear fusion, (twenty-eight) future of thorium reactors, (twenty-nine) future of high-temperature gas nuclear reactors, and (thirty), a concluding chapter with a world-wide economic analysis of nuclear reactors and why countries build them. Links to each article in TANP series are included at the end of this article.
The Truth About Nuclear Power emphasizes the economic and safety aspects by showing that (one) modern nuclear power plants are uneconomic to operate compared to natural gas and wind energy, (two) they produce preposterous pricing if they are the sole power source for a grid, (three) they cost far too much to construct, (four) use far more water for cooling, 4 times as much, than better alternatives, (five) nuclear fuel makes them difficult to shut down and requires very costly safeguards, (six) they are built to huge scale of 1,000 to 1,600 MWe or greater to attempt to reduce costs via economy of scale, (seven) an all-nuclear grid will lose customers to self-generation, (eight) smaller and modular nuclear plants have no benefits due to reverse economy of scale, (nine) large-scale plants have very long construction schedules even without lawsuits that delay construction, (ten) nuclear plants do not reach 50 or 60 years life because they require costly upgrades after 20 to 30 years that do not always perform as designed, (eleven) France has 85 percent of its electricity produced via nuclear power but it is subsidized, is still almost twice as expensive as prices in the US, and is only viable due to exporting power at night rather than throttling back the plants during low demand, (twelve) nuclear plants cannot provide cheap power on small islands, (thirteen) US nuclear plants are heavily subsidized but still cannot compete, (fourteen), projects are cancelled due to unfavorable economics, reactor vendors are desperate for sales, nuclear advocates tout low operating costs and ignore capital costs, nuclear utilities never ask for a rate decrease when building a new nuclear plant, and high nuclear costs are buried in a large customer base, (fifteen) safety regulations are routinely relaxed to allow the plants to continue operating without spending the funds to bring them into compliance, (sixteen) many, many near-misses occur each year in nuclear power, approximately one every 3 weeks, (seventeen) safety issues with short term, and long-term, storage of spent fuel, (eighteen) safety hazards of spent fuel reprocessing, (nineteen) health effects on people and other living things, (twenty) nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, (twenty-one) nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, (twenty-two) nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima, (twenty-three) near-disaster at San Onofre, (twenty-four) the looming disaster at St. Lucie, (twenty-five) the inherently unsafe characteristics of nuclear power plants required government shielding from liability, or subsidy, for the costs of a nuclear accident via the Price-Anderson Act, and (twenty-six) the serious public impacts of large-scale population evacuation and relocation after a major incident, or "extraordinary nuclear occurrence" in the language used by the Price-Anderson Act. Additional articles will include (twenty-seven) the future of nuclear fusion, (twenty-eight) future of thorium reactors, (twenty-nine) future of high-temperature gas nuclear reactors, and (thirty), a concluding chapter with a world-wide economic analysis of nuclear reactors and why countries build them. Links to each article in TANP series are included at the end of this article.
Additional articles will be linked as they are published.
Part One – Nuclear Power Plants Cannot Compete
Part Three – Nuclear Power Plants Cost Far Too Much to Construct
Part Four – Nuclear Power Plants Use Far More Fresh Water
Part Five – Cannot Simply Turn Off a Nuclear Power Plant
Part Six – Nuclear Plants are Huge to Reduce Costs
Part Seven -- All Nuclear Grid Will Sell Less Power
Part Nine -- Nuclear Plants Require Long Construction Schedules
Part Eleven - Following France in Nuclear Is Not The Way To Go
Part Thirteen - US Nuclear Plants are Heavily Subsidized
Part Fourteen - A Few More Reasons Nuclear Cannot Compete
Part Fifteen - Nuclear Safety Compromised by Bending the Rules
Part Sixteen - Near Misses on Meltdowns Occur Every 3 Weeks
Part Seventeen - Storing Spent Fuel is Hazardous for Short or Long Term
Part Eighteen - Reprocessing Spent Fuel Is Not Safe
Part Fourteen - A Few More Reasons Nuclear Cannot Compete
Part Fifteen - Nuclear Safety Compromised by Bending the Rules
Part Sixteen - Near Misses on Meltdowns Occur Every 3 Weeks
Part Seventeen - Storing Spent Fuel is Hazardous for Short or Long Term
Part Eighteen - Reprocessing Spent Fuel Is Not Safe
Part Nineteen - Nuclear Radiation Injures People and Other Living Things
Part Twenty - Chernobyl Meltdown And Explosion
Part Twenty One - Three Mile Island Unit 2 Meltdown 1979
Part Twenty Two - this article
Part Twenty Three - San Onofre Shutdown Saga
Part Twenty Five - Price-Anderson Act Protects Nuclear Plants Too Much
Part Twenty Six - Evacuation Plans Required at Nuclear Plants
Part Twenty Seven - Power From Nuclear Fusion
Part Twenty Four - St. Lucie Ominous Tube Wear
Part Twenty Six - Evacuation Plans Required at Nuclear Plants
Part Twenty Seven - Power From Nuclear Fusion
Part Twenty Eight - Thorium MSR No Better Than Uranium Process
Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Fukushima Children Showing Thyroid Cancer
Subtitle: Radiation-induced thyroid cancer rises among children
“The people, including children, are living in a highly contaminated area adjacent to the Fukushima plant. There have been some surveys that looked at what the consequences for kids will be. According to the survey, the past few years have seen an increase in diabetes, thyroid nodules and thyroid cancer among local children. Japan's Mainichi newspaper recently published a report which said that one in four children living in the disaster-hit regions needs mental care over problematic behavior. And the region will not be safe again for generations,” -- Voice of Russia see link
Nuclear power proponents insist that nuclear plants are safe, no one is harmed by their operation, yet studies like the one cited above clearly show that people are exposed to cancer-causing radiation. In addition, stress over living in a region known to be contaminated with radioactive fallout from the meltdowns of 2011 requires mental care.
For more on radiation-induced illness and sickness from nuclear power plants, see Article 19 of The Truth About Nuclear Power at this link.
Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/radio_broadcast/no_program/273403296/
“The people, including children, are living in a highly contaminated area adjacent to the Fukushima plant. There have been some surveys that looked at what the consequences for kids will be. According to the survey, the past few years have seen an increase in diabetes, thyroid nodules and thyroid cancer among local children. Japan's Mainichi newspaper recently published a report which said that one in four children living in the disaster-hit regions needs mental care over problematic behavior. And the region will not be safe again for generations,” -- Voice of Russia see link
Nuclear power proponents insist that nuclear plants are safe, no one is harmed by their operation, yet studies like the one cited above clearly show that people are exposed to cancer-causing radiation. In addition, stress over living in a region known to be contaminated with radioactive fallout from the meltdowns of 2011 requires mental care.
For more on radiation-induced illness and sickness from nuclear power plants, see Article 19 of The Truth About Nuclear Power at this link.
Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/radio_broadcast/no_program/273403296/
Friday, June 13, 2014
The Truth About Nuclear Power - Part 21
Subtitle: Three Mile Island, Unit 2 Meltdown 1979
The Three Mile Island accident, TMI, is one of the most heavily written-about nuclear incidents in history. An internet search returns more than 25 million webpages, or hits using the search term “Three Mile Island.” More than 14,000 books are listed on a popular internet book selling site. With that, this article strives to provide a different perspective – a perspective based on principles of safety and process engineering. For comparison, a search for the Fukushima meltdown produces only 12 million webpages (about half) and only 1500 books on the same book-selling site.
Three Mile Island nuclear plant consists of two almost-identical units, number 1 and number 2, located on an island in the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, about 80 miles west of Philadelphia and 50 miles north of Baltimore. (see photos) It is very near the heavily populated northeast corridor running from New York City through Philadelphia, Baltimore, and
Washington DC. The meltdown was caused by a combination of mechanical failure, design flaws, improper training, and human error. This accident was one of, if not the first wakeup calls to the nuclear industry that the plants are not safe. Despite the industry’s loud insistence that the plants were safely designed and operated, TMI showed at least a few of the deficiencies. Those deficiencies existed in most, if not all of the other plants. The NRC required the existing plants to correct their deficiencies, and all new plants to incorporate the changes to increase safety.
This accident at TMI showed clearly and emphatically that a meltdown was possible even without the very rare events that caused the problem at Chernobyl, performing an unauthorized test with safety systems disabled, and at Fukushima, where an earthquake was followed immediately by a tsunami, both of which were greater in magnitude than the plant was designed to handle.
TMI was caused by a routine mechanical failure of a pump. Nobody can claim that a pump failure is a rare event. The problem at TMI was made much, much worse by a valve that stuck open. It is inexcusable that nuclear plant designers, operators, and oversight agencies failed to recognize that valves sometimes stick. The fact that valves sometimes stick in the open position, sometimes closed, and sometimes in-between is well-known to those in the
process industries. This particular valve was a relief valve. Relief valves are even more prone to sticking open, a fact that is common knowledge. Yet, as the facts below demonstrate, TMI operators made blunder after blunder because they believed the relief valve closed by itself – they believed it had not stuck open.
Nuclear proponents frequently argue that the reason nuclear plants cost so much is due to needless design changes by the NRC during plant construction, and costly retrofits to those plants already in operation. The argument is invalid. We would indeed be a stupid society to allow plants to operate with known safety deficiencies such as existed at TMI before the accident. In fact, if not for the existence of all three required containment systems, deadly nuclear radiation would have spewed all over the northeastern corridor of the United States. Those three levels of containment are the fuel tube, the reactor vessel, and the containment building. Ultimately, the fuel tubes failed and melted, the reactor vessel barely contained the melted fuel, and the containment building contained most, but not all, of the gaseous radioactive particles.
With the passage of time, more than 3 decades now, TMI has faded into the background. Yet, the lessons from that incident are serious, and point to what we can expect going forward.
Summary of Events from NRC website see link
“The accident began about 4 a.m. on Wednesday, March 28, 1979, when the plant experienced a failure in the secondary, non-nuclear section of the plant (one of two reactors on the site). Either a mechanical or electrical failure prevented the main feedwater pumps from sending water to the steam generators that remove heat from the reactor core. This caused the plant's turbine-generator and then the reactor itself to automatically shut down. Immediately, the pressure in the primary system (the nuclear portion of the plant) began to increase. In order to control that pressure, the pilot-operated relief valve (a valve located at the top of the pressurizer) opened. The valve should have closed when the pressure fell to proper levels, but it became stuck open. Instruments in the control room, however, indicated to the plant staff that the valve was closed. As a result, the plant staff was unaware that cooling water was pouring out of the stuck-open valve. (emphasis added) (design flaw – operators relied on bad information. Also, when water pours out of a relief valve, there should be an indication – a flow measurement – of that water. The receiving vessel also should have a level indicator that can be observed as increasing. -- RES )
As coolant flowed from the primary system through the valve, other instruments available to reactor operators provided inadequate information. There was no instrument that showed how much water covered the core. (design flaw) As a result, plant staff assumed that as long as the pressurizer water level was high, the core was properly covered with water. As alarms rang and warning lights flashed, the operators did not realize that the plant was experiencing a loss-of-coolant accident. They took a series of actions that made conditions worse. The water escaping through the stuck valve reduced primary system pressure so much that the reactor coolant pumps had to be turned off to prevent dangerous vibrations. To prevent the pressurizer from filling up completely, the staff reduced how much emergency cooling water was being pumped in to the primary system. These actions starved the reactor core of coolant, causing it to overheat.
Without the proper water flow, the nuclear fuel overheated to the point at which the zirconium cladding (the long metal tubes that hold the nuclear fuel pellets) ruptured and the fuel pellets began to melt. It was later found that about half of the core melted during the early stages of the accident. Although TMI-2 suffered a severe core meltdown, the most dangerous kind of nuclear power accident, consequences outside the plant were minimal. Unlike the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents, TMI-2's containment building remained intact and held almost all of the accident's radioactive material.
Federal and state authorities were initially concerned about the small releases of radioactive gases that were measured off-site by the late morning of March 28 and even more concerned about the potential threat that the reactor posed to the surrounding population. They did not know that the core had melted, but they immediately took steps to try to gain control of the reactor and ensure adequate cooling to the core. The NRC's regional office in King of Prussia, Pa., was notified at 7:45 a.m. on March 28. By 8 a.m., NRC Headquarters in Washington, D.C., was alerted and the NRC Operations Center in Bethesda, Md., was activated. The regional office promptly dispatched the first team of inspectors to the site and other agencies, such as the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, also mobilized their response teams. Helicopters hired by TMI's owner, General Public Utilities Nuclear, and the Department of Energy were sampling radioactivity in the atmosphere above the plant by midday. A team from the Brookhaven National Laboratory was also sent to assist in radiation monitoring. At 9:15 a.m., the White House was notified and at 11 a.m., all non-essential personnel were ordered off the plant's premises.
By the evening of March 28, the core appeared to be adequately cooled and the reactor appeared to be stable. But new concerns arose by the morning of Friday, March 30. A significant release of radiation from the plant's auxiliary building, performed to relieve pressure on the primary system and avoid curtailing the flow of coolant to the core, caused a great deal of confusion and consternation. In an atmosphere of growing uncertainty about the condition of the plant, the governor of Pennsylvania, Richard L. Thornburgh, consulted with the NRC about evacuating the population near the plant. Eventually, he and NRC Chairman Joseph Hendrie agreed that it would be prudent for those members of society most vulnerable to radiation to evacuate the area. Thornburgh announced that he was advising pregnant women and pre-school-age children within a five-mile radius of the plant to leave the area.
Within a short time, chemical reactions in the melting fuel created a large hydrogen bubble in the dome of the pressure vessel, the container that holds the reactor core. NRC officials worried the hydrogen bubble might burn or even explode and rupture the pressure vessel. In that event, the core would fall into the containment building and perhaps cause a breach of containment. The hydrogen bubble was a source of intense scrutiny and great anxiety, both among government authorities and the population, throughout the day on Saturday, March 31. The crisis ended when experts determined on Sunday, April 1, that the bubble could not burn or explode because of the absence of oxygen in the pressure vessel. Further, by that time, the utility had succeeded in greatly reducing the size of the bubble. “ (this was an acceptable conclusion. Basic chemistry shows that the hydrogen was formed by catalytic and heat-driven reactions from hot zirconium in the fuel tubes with water; basically water (H2O) was split into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen formed a gas, but the oxygen combined with the zirconium to form ZrO2, zirconium dioxide. )
Also, see the Report of the President's Commission on Three Mile Island see link
Also "Three Mile Island; A Report to the Commissioners and to the Public," by Mitchell Rogovin and George T. Frampton, NUREG/CR-1250 see link
Commentary
Plant operators on shift that night were all ex-navy nuclear submarine. Yet, with all their vaunted training, they made one critical mistake after another.
A nuclear reactor core requires continued cooling even after a shutdown – it requires days to cool the tons of nuclear material in the core down to a long-term safe temperature. Circulating water, with the water externally cooled is the means of cooling the core.
Each time an incident occurs in a nuclear plant, the industry advocates insist the plants are safe. They insist that the event was an anomaly, it cannot happen elsewhere. Yet, another accident happens.
It is significant in the TMI meltdown saga that industry experts had witnessed a similar minor loss of coolant accident at a different plant only a year or so earlier. No meltdown occurred, but a sharp analyst noted that such an incident could easily result in a meltdown. A written warning was sent to the NRC, but nothing came of it. In short, the “dots” were collected, but nobody connected the “dots.”
In this case, a cooling water pump failed. This particular pump was located on the steam-generator side. It is important to know that there are three primary water circulating loops in a pressurized-water nuclear plant such as the design at TMI. The first loop is of radioactive water, this circulates through the core at very high pressure, and releases its heat in the steam generator. The water in the first loop remains a liquid at all times under normal operation. The second loop, the one with the pump failure at TMI, has non-radioactive water at high pressure that is turned to steam in the steam generator. This steam then spins the turbine. Exhaust steam from the turbine is condensed back to water in the condenser. The condensate is then pumped as liquid water back to the steam generator. It was the pump for the second loop, sending water to the steam generator that failed at TMI. The third water loop is the cooling water, usually from a cooling tower but sometimes from the ocean or a lake or river. The third water loop circulates cool water through the condenser, and other areas of the plant that require cooling.
Damage to the reactor vessel was extensive. A 1998 report shows that 45 percent of the fuel – 62 metric tonnes -- melted. It is important to note that TMI unit 2 was not a large reactor by today’s standards. It produced only about 900 MWe. More modern plants produce 1200 MWe, and some are designed for 1600 MWe. This means that approximately twice as much core material exists in the largest designs. It is questionable (doubtful?) that a larger reactor would withstand a similar core meltdown. The reason for this is the reactor vessels are made in the form of a vertical cylinder with a closed head at top and bottom. The diameter is only a bit larger (approximately 40 percent greater) for double the volume. TMI 2 Vessel Investigation Project Integration Report, Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, June 1998. (note: this report was 19 years after the accident)
See link
Almost 1 million gallons of radioactive water accumulated in storage tanks and in the bottom of the containment building (700,000 gallons were reported).
Upon eventual opening the reactor and removing the melted mess, the still-radioactive fuel was shipped across the entire US – from Pennsylvania to Idaho – for treatment and disposal. It must have been a comfort to all those citizens along the route to know that radioactive, melted core material from TMI was passing by their homes.
One final note: the TMI meltdown occurred during the showing of one of the most-watched movies ever made on nuclear plants, The China Syndrome, starring Jack Lemmon and the infamous Jane Fonda.
Conclusion
The Three Mile Island meltdown, due to a minor loss of coolant accident, was not caused by a rare event such as an earthquake, tsunami, or other natural disaster as happened at Fukushima. It was not caused by plant operators who violated a planned test as happened at Chernobyl. TMI meltdown was caused by a combination of bad design, a normal equipment failure, a stuck valve that should have been recognized immediately but was not (even by the vaunted former-Navy submarine nuclear operators), improper training, misinterpretation of available data, and general confusion. In the TMI meltdown, operators had perfectly good equipment ready to inject water into the reactor to prevent a meltdown. Instead, they stopped the water flow long enough for the meltdown to occur. Only by sheer good luck was the water flow re-started when it was.
The reactor wall and bottom head were badly damaged by the melted core, and only good luck intervened to provide adequate cooling to the core in time to prevent a breach of the reactor itself. Had a reactor breach happened, melted core material would have flowed onto the containment building floor, and vast quantities of explosive hydrogen gas would have mixed with air in the containment building. The hydrogen most likely would have exploded with devastating consequences, exactly like the explosions at Fukushima 30 or so years later.
Modern reactors continue to have mechanical failures, electrical failures, security breaches, and emergency core shutdowns, as documented in article 16 of TANP (see link below). The major incidents amounted to 70 events in just the past four years – a rate of one every 3 weeks. Minor incidents number in the hundreds each year. It would not take much for a similar combination of operator confusion, lack of training, system replacement with different characteristics, and bad luck this time to have a much worse nuclear nightmare: a complete meltdown and reactor wall breach. It would not create the China Syndrome, but the results would be devastating.
Previous Articles
The Truth About Nuclear Power emphasizes the economic and safety aspects by showing that (one) modern nuclear power plants are uneconomic to operate compared to natural gas and wind energy, (two) they produce preposterous pricing if they are the sole power source for a grid, (three) they cost far too much to construct, (four) use far more water for cooling, 4 times as much, than better alternatives, (five) nuclear fuel makes them difficult to shut down and requires very costly safeguards, (six) they are built to huge scale of 1,000 to 1,600 MWe or greater to attempt to reduce costs via economy of scale, (seven) an all-nuclear grid will lose customers to self-generation, (eight) smaller and modular nuclear plants have no benefits due to reverse economy of scale, (nine) large-scale plants have very long construction schedules even without lawsuits that delay construction, (ten) nuclear plants do not reach 50 or 60 years life because they require costly upgrades after 20 to 30 years that do not always perform as designed, (eleven) France has 85 percent of its electricity produced via nuclear power but it is subsidized, is still almost twice as expensive as prices in the US, and is only viable due to exporting power at night rather than throttling back the plants during low demand, (twelve) nuclear plants cannot provide cheap power on small islands, (thirteen) US nuclear plants are heavily subsidized but still cannot compete, (fourteen), projects are cancelled due to unfavorable economics, reactor vendors are desperate for sales, nuclear advocates tout low operating costs and ignore capital costs, nuclear utilities never ask for a rate decrease when building a new nuclear plant, and high nuclear costs are buried in a large customer base, (fifteen) safety regulations are routinely relaxed to allow the plants to continue operating without spending the funds to bring them into compliance, (sixteen) many, many near-misses occur each year in nuclear power, approximately one every 3 weeks, (seventeen) safety issues with short term, and long-term, storage of spent fuel, (eighteen) safety hazards of spent fuel reprocessing, (nineteen) health effects on people and other living things, (twenty) nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, (twenty-one) nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, (twenty-two) nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima, (twenty-three) near-disaster at San Onofre, (twenty-four) the looming disaster at St. Lucie, (twenty-five) the inherently unsafe characteristics of nuclear power plants required government shielding from liability, or subsidy, for the costs of a nuclear accident via the Price-Anderson Act, and (twenty-six) the serious public impacts of large-scale population evacuation and relocation after a major incident, or "extraordinary nuclear occurrence" in the language used by the Price-Anderson Act. Additional articles will include (twenty-seven) the future of nuclear fusion, (twenty-eight) future of thorium reactors, (twenty-nine) future of high-temperature gas nuclear reactors, and (thirty), a concluding chapter with a world-wide economic analysis of nuclear reactors and why countries build them. Links to each article in TANP series are included at the end of this article.
Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California
The Three Mile Island accident, TMI, is one of the most heavily written-about nuclear incidents in history. An internet search returns more than 25 million webpages, or hits using the search term “Three Mile Island.” More than 14,000 books are listed on a popular internet book selling site. With that, this article strives to provide a different perspective – a perspective based on principles of safety and process engineering. For comparison, a search for the Fukushima meltdown produces only 12 million webpages (about half) and only 1500 books on the same book-selling site.
Three Mile Island nuclear plant consists of two almost-identical units, number 1 and number 2, located on an island in the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, about 80 miles west of Philadelphia and 50 miles north of Baltimore. (see photos) It is very near the heavily populated northeast corridor running from New York City through Philadelphia, Baltimore, and
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| Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant Unit 1 (top) and Unit 2 (bottom) Showing operating cooling towers at unit 1, idle towers at Unit 2. Containment domes can be seen at left center. credit: from google maps |
This accident at TMI showed clearly and emphatically that a meltdown was possible even without the very rare events that caused the problem at Chernobyl, performing an unauthorized test with safety systems disabled, and at Fukushima, where an earthquake was followed immediately by a tsunami, both of which were greater in magnitude than the plant was designed to handle.
TMI was caused by a routine mechanical failure of a pump. Nobody can claim that a pump failure is a rare event. The problem at TMI was made much, much worse by a valve that stuck open. It is inexcusable that nuclear plant designers, operators, and oversight agencies failed to recognize that valves sometimes stick. The fact that valves sometimes stick in the open position, sometimes closed, and sometimes in-between is well-known to those in the
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| Three Mile Island Units 1 and 2 in 1979 Unit 1 is on the left, Unit 2 is on the right source: NRC |
Nuclear proponents frequently argue that the reason nuclear plants cost so much is due to needless design changes by the NRC during plant construction, and costly retrofits to those plants already in operation. The argument is invalid. We would indeed be a stupid society to allow plants to operate with known safety deficiencies such as existed at TMI before the accident. In fact, if not for the existence of all three required containment systems, deadly nuclear radiation would have spewed all over the northeastern corridor of the United States. Those three levels of containment are the fuel tube, the reactor vessel, and the containment building. Ultimately, the fuel tubes failed and melted, the reactor vessel barely contained the melted fuel, and the containment building contained most, but not all, of the gaseous radioactive particles.
With the passage of time, more than 3 decades now, TMI has faded into the background. Yet, the lessons from that incident are serious, and point to what we can expect going forward.
Summary of Events from NRC website see link
“The accident began about 4 a.m. on Wednesday, March 28, 1979, when the plant experienced a failure in the secondary, non-nuclear section of the plant (one of two reactors on the site). Either a mechanical or electrical failure prevented the main feedwater pumps from sending water to the steam generators that remove heat from the reactor core. This caused the plant's turbine-generator and then the reactor itself to automatically shut down. Immediately, the pressure in the primary system (the nuclear portion of the plant) began to increase. In order to control that pressure, the pilot-operated relief valve (a valve located at the top of the pressurizer) opened. The valve should have closed when the pressure fell to proper levels, but it became stuck open. Instruments in the control room, however, indicated to the plant staff that the valve was closed. As a result, the plant staff was unaware that cooling water was pouring out of the stuck-open valve. (emphasis added) (design flaw – operators relied on bad information. Also, when water pours out of a relief valve, there should be an indication – a flow measurement – of that water. The receiving vessel also should have a level indicator that can be observed as increasing. -- RES )
As coolant flowed from the primary system through the valve, other instruments available to reactor operators provided inadequate information. There was no instrument that showed how much water covered the core. (design flaw) As a result, plant staff assumed that as long as the pressurizer water level was high, the core was properly covered with water. As alarms rang and warning lights flashed, the operators did not realize that the plant was experiencing a loss-of-coolant accident. They took a series of actions that made conditions worse. The water escaping through the stuck valve reduced primary system pressure so much that the reactor coolant pumps had to be turned off to prevent dangerous vibrations. To prevent the pressurizer from filling up completely, the staff reduced how much emergency cooling water was being pumped in to the primary system. These actions starved the reactor core of coolant, causing it to overheat.
Without the proper water flow, the nuclear fuel overheated to the point at which the zirconium cladding (the long metal tubes that hold the nuclear fuel pellets) ruptured and the fuel pellets began to melt. It was later found that about half of the core melted during the early stages of the accident. Although TMI-2 suffered a severe core meltdown, the most dangerous kind of nuclear power accident, consequences outside the plant were minimal. Unlike the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents, TMI-2's containment building remained intact and held almost all of the accident's radioactive material.
Federal and state authorities were initially concerned about the small releases of radioactive gases that were measured off-site by the late morning of March 28 and even more concerned about the potential threat that the reactor posed to the surrounding population. They did not know that the core had melted, but they immediately took steps to try to gain control of the reactor and ensure adequate cooling to the core. The NRC's regional office in King of Prussia, Pa., was notified at 7:45 a.m. on March 28. By 8 a.m., NRC Headquarters in Washington, D.C., was alerted and the NRC Operations Center in Bethesda, Md., was activated. The regional office promptly dispatched the first team of inspectors to the site and other agencies, such as the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, also mobilized their response teams. Helicopters hired by TMI's owner, General Public Utilities Nuclear, and the Department of Energy were sampling radioactivity in the atmosphere above the plant by midday. A team from the Brookhaven National Laboratory was also sent to assist in radiation monitoring. At 9:15 a.m., the White House was notified and at 11 a.m., all non-essential personnel were ordered off the plant's premises.
By the evening of March 28, the core appeared to be adequately cooled and the reactor appeared to be stable. But new concerns arose by the morning of Friday, March 30. A significant release of radiation from the plant's auxiliary building, performed to relieve pressure on the primary system and avoid curtailing the flow of coolant to the core, caused a great deal of confusion and consternation. In an atmosphere of growing uncertainty about the condition of the plant, the governor of Pennsylvania, Richard L. Thornburgh, consulted with the NRC about evacuating the population near the plant. Eventually, he and NRC Chairman Joseph Hendrie agreed that it would be prudent for those members of society most vulnerable to radiation to evacuate the area. Thornburgh announced that he was advising pregnant women and pre-school-age children within a five-mile radius of the plant to leave the area.
Within a short time, chemical reactions in the melting fuel created a large hydrogen bubble in the dome of the pressure vessel, the container that holds the reactor core. NRC officials worried the hydrogen bubble might burn or even explode and rupture the pressure vessel. In that event, the core would fall into the containment building and perhaps cause a breach of containment. The hydrogen bubble was a source of intense scrutiny and great anxiety, both among government authorities and the population, throughout the day on Saturday, March 31. The crisis ended when experts determined on Sunday, April 1, that the bubble could not burn or explode because of the absence of oxygen in the pressure vessel. Further, by that time, the utility had succeeded in greatly reducing the size of the bubble. “ (this was an acceptable conclusion. Basic chemistry shows that the hydrogen was formed by catalytic and heat-driven reactions from hot zirconium in the fuel tubes with water; basically water (H2O) was split into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen formed a gas, but the oxygen combined with the zirconium to form ZrO2, zirconium dioxide. )
Also, see the Report of the President's Commission on Three Mile Island see link
Also "Three Mile Island; A Report to the Commissioners and to the Public," by Mitchell Rogovin and George T. Frampton, NUREG/CR-1250 see link
Commentary
Plant operators on shift that night were all ex-navy nuclear submarine. Yet, with all their vaunted training, they made one critical mistake after another.
A nuclear reactor core requires continued cooling even after a shutdown – it requires days to cool the tons of nuclear material in the core down to a long-term safe temperature. Circulating water, with the water externally cooled is the means of cooling the core.
Each time an incident occurs in a nuclear plant, the industry advocates insist the plants are safe. They insist that the event was an anomaly, it cannot happen elsewhere. Yet, another accident happens.
It is significant in the TMI meltdown saga that industry experts had witnessed a similar minor loss of coolant accident at a different plant only a year or so earlier. No meltdown occurred, but a sharp analyst noted that such an incident could easily result in a meltdown. A written warning was sent to the NRC, but nothing came of it. In short, the “dots” were collected, but nobody connected the “dots.”
In this case, a cooling water pump failed. This particular pump was located on the steam-generator side. It is important to know that there are three primary water circulating loops in a pressurized-water nuclear plant such as the design at TMI. The first loop is of radioactive water, this circulates through the core at very high pressure, and releases its heat in the steam generator. The water in the first loop remains a liquid at all times under normal operation. The second loop, the one with the pump failure at TMI, has non-radioactive water at high pressure that is turned to steam in the steam generator. This steam then spins the turbine. Exhaust steam from the turbine is condensed back to water in the condenser. The condensate is then pumped as liquid water back to the steam generator. It was the pump for the second loop, sending water to the steam generator that failed at TMI. The third water loop is the cooling water, usually from a cooling tower but sometimes from the ocean or a lake or river. The third water loop circulates cool water through the condenser, and other areas of the plant that require cooling.
Damage to the reactor vessel was extensive. A 1998 report shows that 45 percent of the fuel – 62 metric tonnes -- melted. It is important to note that TMI unit 2 was not a large reactor by today’s standards. It produced only about 900 MWe. More modern plants produce 1200 MWe, and some are designed for 1600 MWe. This means that approximately twice as much core material exists in the largest designs. It is questionable (doubtful?) that a larger reactor would withstand a similar core meltdown. The reason for this is the reactor vessels are made in the form of a vertical cylinder with a closed head at top and bottom. The diameter is only a bit larger (approximately 40 percent greater) for double the volume. TMI 2 Vessel Investigation Project Integration Report, Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, June 1998. (note: this report was 19 years after the accident)
See link
Almost 1 million gallons of radioactive water accumulated in storage tanks and in the bottom of the containment building (700,000 gallons were reported).
Upon eventual opening the reactor and removing the melted mess, the still-radioactive fuel was shipped across the entire US – from Pennsylvania to Idaho – for treatment and disposal. It must have been a comfort to all those citizens along the route to know that radioactive, melted core material from TMI was passing by their homes.
One final note: the TMI meltdown occurred during the showing of one of the most-watched movies ever made on nuclear plants, The China Syndrome, starring Jack Lemmon and the infamous Jane Fonda.
Conclusion
The Three Mile Island meltdown, due to a minor loss of coolant accident, was not caused by a rare event such as an earthquake, tsunami, or other natural disaster as happened at Fukushima. It was not caused by plant operators who violated a planned test as happened at Chernobyl. TMI meltdown was caused by a combination of bad design, a normal equipment failure, a stuck valve that should have been recognized immediately but was not (even by the vaunted former-Navy submarine nuclear operators), improper training, misinterpretation of available data, and general confusion. In the TMI meltdown, operators had perfectly good equipment ready to inject water into the reactor to prevent a meltdown. Instead, they stopped the water flow long enough for the meltdown to occur. Only by sheer good luck was the water flow re-started when it was.
The reactor wall and bottom head were badly damaged by the melted core, and only good luck intervened to provide adequate cooling to the core in time to prevent a breach of the reactor itself. Had a reactor breach happened, melted core material would have flowed onto the containment building floor, and vast quantities of explosive hydrogen gas would have mixed with air in the containment building. The hydrogen most likely would have exploded with devastating consequences, exactly like the explosions at Fukushima 30 or so years later.
Modern reactors continue to have mechanical failures, electrical failures, security breaches, and emergency core shutdowns, as documented in article 16 of TANP (see link below). The major incidents amounted to 70 events in just the past four years – a rate of one every 3 weeks. Minor incidents number in the hundreds each year. It would not take much for a similar combination of operator confusion, lack of training, system replacement with different characteristics, and bad luck this time to have a much worse nuclear nightmare: a complete meltdown and reactor wall breach. It would not create the China Syndrome, but the results would be devastating.
Previous Articles
The Truth About Nuclear Power emphasizes the economic and safety aspects by showing that (one) modern nuclear power plants are uneconomic to operate compared to natural gas and wind energy, (two) they produce preposterous pricing if they are the sole power source for a grid, (three) they cost far too much to construct, (four) use far more water for cooling, 4 times as much, than better alternatives, (five) nuclear fuel makes them difficult to shut down and requires very costly safeguards, (six) they are built to huge scale of 1,000 to 1,600 MWe or greater to attempt to reduce costs via economy of scale, (seven) an all-nuclear grid will lose customers to self-generation, (eight) smaller and modular nuclear plants have no benefits due to reverse economy of scale, (nine) large-scale plants have very long construction schedules even without lawsuits that delay construction, (ten) nuclear plants do not reach 50 or 60 years life because they require costly upgrades after 20 to 30 years that do not always perform as designed, (eleven) France has 85 percent of its electricity produced via nuclear power but it is subsidized, is still almost twice as expensive as prices in the US, and is only viable due to exporting power at night rather than throttling back the plants during low demand, (twelve) nuclear plants cannot provide cheap power on small islands, (thirteen) US nuclear plants are heavily subsidized but still cannot compete, (fourteen), projects are cancelled due to unfavorable economics, reactor vendors are desperate for sales, nuclear advocates tout low operating costs and ignore capital costs, nuclear utilities never ask for a rate decrease when building a new nuclear plant, and high nuclear costs are buried in a large customer base, (fifteen) safety regulations are routinely relaxed to allow the plants to continue operating without spending the funds to bring them into compliance, (sixteen) many, many near-misses occur each year in nuclear power, approximately one every 3 weeks, (seventeen) safety issues with short term, and long-term, storage of spent fuel, (eighteen) safety hazards of spent fuel reprocessing, (nineteen) health effects on people and other living things, (twenty) nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, (twenty-one) nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, (twenty-two) nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima, (twenty-three) near-disaster at San Onofre, (twenty-four) the looming disaster at St. Lucie, (twenty-five) the inherently unsafe characteristics of nuclear power plants required government shielding from liability, or subsidy, for the costs of a nuclear accident via the Price-Anderson Act, and (twenty-six) the serious public impacts of large-scale population evacuation and relocation after a major incident, or "extraordinary nuclear occurrence" in the language used by the Price-Anderson Act. Additional articles will include (twenty-seven) the future of nuclear fusion, (twenty-eight) future of thorium reactors, (twenty-nine) future of high-temperature gas nuclear reactors, and (thirty), a concluding chapter with a world-wide economic analysis of nuclear reactors and why countries build them. Links to each article in TANP series are included at the end of this article.
Additional articles will be linked as they are published.
Part One – Nuclear Power Plants Cannot Compete
Part Three – Nuclear Power Plants Cost Far Too Much to Construct
Part Four – Nuclear Power Plants Use Far More Fresh Water
Part Five – Cannot Simply Turn Off a Nuclear Power Plant
Part Six – Nuclear Plants are Huge to Reduce Costs
Part Seven -- All Nuclear Grid Will Sell Less Power
Part Nine -- Nuclear Plants Require Long Construction Schedules
Part Eleven - Following France in Nuclear Is Not The Way To Go
Part Thirteen - US Nuclear Plants are Heavily Subsidized
Part Fourteen - A Few More Reasons Nuclear Cannot Compete
Part Fifteen - Nuclear Safety Compromised by Bending the Rules
Part Sixteen - Near Misses on Meltdowns Occur Every 3 Weeks
Part Seventeen - Storing Spent Fuel is Hazardous for Short or Long Term
Part Eighteen - Reprocessing Spent Fuel Is Not Safe
Part Fourteen - A Few More Reasons Nuclear Cannot Compete
Part Fifteen - Nuclear Safety Compromised by Bending the Rules
Part Sixteen - Near Misses on Meltdowns Occur Every 3 Weeks
Part Seventeen - Storing Spent Fuel is Hazardous for Short or Long Term
Part Eighteen - Reprocessing Spent Fuel Is Not Safe
Part Nineteen - Nuclear Radiation Injures People and Other Living Things
Part Twenty - Chernobyl Meltdown And Explosion
Part Twenty One - this article
Part Twenty Two - Fukushima The Disaster That Could Not Happen
Part Twenty Three - San Onofre Shutdown Saga
Part Twenty Five - Price-Anderson Act Protects Nuclear Plants Too Much
Part Twenty Six - Evacuation Plans Required at Nuclear Plants
Part Twenty Seven - Power From Nuclear Fusion
Part Twenty Four - St. Lucie Ominous Tube Wear
Part Twenty Six - Evacuation Plans Required at Nuclear Plants
Part Twenty Seven - Power From Nuclear Fusion
Part Twenty Eight - Thorium MSR No Better Than Uranium Process
Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Conversations with UCI Chemical Engineering Students
Thoughts on recent conversations with chemical engineering students at UCI - University of California at Irvine. [UPDATE - 6/12/2014: added a link to a virtual slide rule]
I recently had the honor to attend a graduation celebration for chemical engineering students at UCI, the class of 2014. I had met many of them earlier during one of my speeches to their AIChE student chapter. Their exuberance, intelligence, and thoughtful questions are always a pleasure to behold.
This post describes a bit of the conversations I had with some of the students, with no names mentioned to protect their privacy.
I asked several what they intended to do after graduation. I asked others who are not yet graduating what attracted them to chemical engineering as a course of study. The answers gave an opportunity for great conversation.
One student wants to work in the oil and gas industry. Another already has a job with a major engineering design firm. Yet another will pursue an advanced degree in nuclear engineering. Other new graduates don't yet have a job offer and will work very hard to find a job.
I mentioned that this is a golden age for new chemical engineers, since the oil and gas boom due to hydraulic fracturing has created much work for all the new plants that are being designed and constructed. Most of the plants are along the US gulf coast and not in California, however.
One student mentioned that he or she (privacy concern here) went into chemical engineering to be able to design nuclear power plants because those are the energy supply for the future. This was not the student who will pursue the advanced degree in nuclear engineering.
I paused and thought about what to say. I do not believe the student was aware of my views and my blog posts on nuclear engineering. Finally, I decided to speak up and mildly told the student and the others who were listening at our table that nuclear power plants are inherently uneconomic and unsafe. Besides, there are not sufficient raw materials to build enough power plants to rely on them for the world's power. The student was not pleased to hear this, as I expected. I gently suggested the student visit my blog and read the articles there on nuclear power - after final exams, of course.
Another student wanted to know what had changed in engineering since I had graduated. I usually get a laugh on this one, as I replied that when I started my studies in 1972, we were still using slide rules. To my surprise, a few students at our table did not know what a slide rule is. The others described it very quickly. I told them that the first pocket calculators were available for sale in my second year, and by our third year we all were expected to have one or borrow one for the exams.
I suggested they not laugh, because most of the world's infrastructure was designed and built by engineers who used slide rules, not computers. They doubted this, until I told them that every bridge built before about 1970 was designed via slide rules. Similarly, refineries, chemical plants, power plants - even the nuclear plants - were designed in that way. Even skyscrapers and their elevator systems were designed in that manner. This information was a bit sobering, I believe.
I related my oft-told story of taking a small circular slide rule on my trips to Brazil in the late 1970s as a backup to my pocket calculator. The heat and humidity in the jungle ruined the calculator and I used the slide rule for my calculations. It worked, no matter what.
I told them that having a laptop with a powerful spreadsheet such as Excel (TM) was an unbelievable advance in chemical engineering studies. We would have almost died for access to such a marvel when facing our homework problems. We did have a mainframe computer available to us for a few problems, but the input was via punch-card decks and output was hours if not days later.
Here's to the UCI 2014 graduates: may you have long and very happy careers!
UPDATE - 6/12/2014: here is a link to a virtual slide rule. Warning: this thing is addictive! Instructions for use are included in the link. see link Note for use: click and drag the center section left or right. Also, click and drag the cursor left and right. -- end update
Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California
I recently had the honor to attend a graduation celebration for chemical engineering students at UCI, the class of 2014. I had met many of them earlier during one of my speeches to their AIChE student chapter. Their exuberance, intelligence, and thoughtful questions are always a pleasure to behold.
This post describes a bit of the conversations I had with some of the students, with no names mentioned to protect their privacy.
I asked several what they intended to do after graduation. I asked others who are not yet graduating what attracted them to chemical engineering as a course of study. The answers gave an opportunity for great conversation.
One student wants to work in the oil and gas industry. Another already has a job with a major engineering design firm. Yet another will pursue an advanced degree in nuclear engineering. Other new graduates don't yet have a job offer and will work very hard to find a job.
I mentioned that this is a golden age for new chemical engineers, since the oil and gas boom due to hydraulic fracturing has created much work for all the new plants that are being designed and constructed. Most of the plants are along the US gulf coast and not in California, however.
One student mentioned that he or she (privacy concern here) went into chemical engineering to be able to design nuclear power plants because those are the energy supply for the future. This was not the student who will pursue the advanced degree in nuclear engineering.
I paused and thought about what to say. I do not believe the student was aware of my views and my blog posts on nuclear engineering. Finally, I decided to speak up and mildly told the student and the others who were listening at our table that nuclear power plants are inherently uneconomic and unsafe. Besides, there are not sufficient raw materials to build enough power plants to rely on them for the world's power. The student was not pleased to hear this, as I expected. I gently suggested the student visit my blog and read the articles there on nuclear power - after final exams, of course.
Another student wanted to know what had changed in engineering since I had graduated. I usually get a laugh on this one, as I replied that when I started my studies in 1972, we were still using slide rules. To my surprise, a few students at our table did not know what a slide rule is. The others described it very quickly. I told them that the first pocket calculators were available for sale in my second year, and by our third year we all were expected to have one or borrow one for the exams.
I suggested they not laugh, because most of the world's infrastructure was designed and built by engineers who used slide rules, not computers. They doubted this, until I told them that every bridge built before about 1970 was designed via slide rules. Similarly, refineries, chemical plants, power plants - even the nuclear plants - were designed in that way. Even skyscrapers and their elevator systems were designed in that manner. This information was a bit sobering, I believe.
I related my oft-told story of taking a small circular slide rule on my trips to Brazil in the late 1970s as a backup to my pocket calculator. The heat and humidity in the jungle ruined the calculator and I used the slide rule for my calculations. It worked, no matter what.
I told them that having a laptop with a powerful spreadsheet such as Excel (TM) was an unbelievable advance in chemical engineering studies. We would have almost died for access to such a marvel when facing our homework problems. We did have a mainframe computer available to us for a few problems, but the input was via punch-card decks and output was hours if not days later.
Here's to the UCI 2014 graduates: may you have long and very happy careers!
UPDATE - 6/12/2014: here is a link to a virtual slide rule. Warning: this thing is addictive! Instructions for use are included in the link. see link Note for use: click and drag the center section left or right. Also, click and drag the cursor left and right. -- end update
Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California
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