Breaking news: Nuclear event in the US, Palisades Nuclear Generating Station is venting radioactive

Courtesy of RSOE EDIS:

Entergy’s Palisades nuclear plant near South Haven is venting radioactive steam into the environment as part of an unplanned shutdown triggered by an electrical accident. This shutdown, which began Sunday evening, came just five days after the plant restarted from a shutdown that was caused by a leak in the plant’s cooling system. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Prema Chandrithal said that the current shutdown happened because an object slipped during work on a circuit breaker and caused an arc that took out power for one of two DC electrical systems that power safety valves and other devices. According to a notice filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the plant is stable and “controlling temperature using Atmospheric Dump Valves.” “The steam that would normally go to the generators, that steam is now going into the environment … through the steam stack,” said Chandrithal. “This would have very low levels of tritium.” Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. The plant is monitoring the levels and will report them to the NRC, Chandrithal said. Palisades’ 798-megawatt reactor began operation in 1971, and through a license extension granted by NRC, may operate until 2031.

Here is the previous RSOE report for the previous event mentioned above .(Saturday, 17 September, 2011 at 03:38)

The Palisades Nuclear Plant in southwestern Michigan has been shut down due to a loss of water in a cooling system. WWMT-TV reports the facility in Covert Township was shut down just before 3 p.m. Friday. The lowest of four emergency classification levels was declared. The classification means plant workers were notified and were resolving the problem. Officials say the shutdown poses no risk to the public and that no radioactive materials were released. A U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection was held at the Van Buren County plant last month after a water pump component failed. The plant is owned by New Orleans-based Entergy Corp.

Van Buren, is the codename for Fallout 3 when it was still being created by Black Isle studios and Interplay..

hmmm thats interesting, your article says its a leak in the cooling systems,

i read something else here, breaker fault:

whtc.com...

Covert, MI

Guess they haven't learned anything from Fukushima....

This makes me ill...and damn mad

First shutdown-cooling leak

Second shut down- breaker arc

It is this second shutdown that is causing them to vent steam.....

Finding it odd that there's 2 different stories as to why it shut down. Electrical problem caused by accident or cooling system failure. Or did an electrical problem caused by accident short the cooling system?

Never mind. I got it now. I haven't slept.

Originally posted by FloatingGhost
Finding it odd that there's 2 different stories as to why it shut down. Electrical problem caused by accident or cooling system failure. Or did an electrical problem caused by accident short the cooling system?

the plant has had "Two" different shut downs one was because of a Cooling leak....the second is because someone was not paying attention and dropped a metal tool on a live circuit and created an arc causing the system to register a power surge and shut down for the second time...

this poor plant has had 2 accidents...but at least the emergency system are proving to be working flawlessly..so instead of being so pissed off and even trying to compare this to fukushima which is totally different case then this for more then one reason...be glad it proves there systems are working as intended

I used to work in the safety industry some time ago doing IT work, they had videos and things which if you were to believe them, these kinds of accident's are common, a screwdriver placed on the top of the fusebox, falls down and shorts the rails out or somesuch. (Usually lethal to those working on the equipment)

Surely they can bring tanks in and divert the venting, shut the valves manually, pump it into a tanker.

Who knows, seems their media relations or someone is lying over there Seems unlikely to have 2 cooling related accidents so close together. The system should have been fully inspected after the first.

So even if 10/27 is a non-event now in in the failing plants backyard.South Haven is only 30 miles away.Btw,i was only 25 miles from ground zero on 9/11.Its one reason i came to Michigan,lol.

Originally posted by LilFox
I used to work in the safety industry some time ago doing IT work, they had videos and things which if you were to believe them, these kinds of accident's are common, a screwdriver placed on the top of the fusebox, falls down and shorts the rails out or somesuch. (Usually lethal to those working on the equipment)

Surely they can bring tanks in and divert the venting, shut the valves manually, pump it into a tanker.

Who knows, seems their media relations or someone is lying over there

Seems unlikely to have 2 cooling related accidents so close together. The system should have been fully inspected after the first.

edit on 26/9/2011 by LilFox because: adding

Man I know when I worked in IT we had strict OH&S regulations that would result in huge fines and, if the case was bad enough, loss of employment... And this was a dicky little place.

Surely the same should apply to something like this, if it's an issue with occupational health and safety regulations not being followed properly, someone MUST lose their job OR/AND face charges, this isnt an exchange server going down for half an hour, it's deadly...

Geeze this is pretty much in my backyard. I hope they work their problems out and get everything running correctly.

From what I understand, there was an electrical fault which prevented normal operation, and since cooling is still required the plant had to go on backup cooking by boiling water off and venting steam. I don't know anything about the other apparent leak a few days or weeks ago.

I wouldn't call this a leak because it's not really unintentional. Water has a really high enthalpy of vaporization, one of the highest of any substance known so if something hot needs cooling, then boiling water is a really good way to do it. If a reactor is on its backup cooling systems then water is boiled in the steam generators like usual but instead of being sent to the steam turbine to turn that heat into electricity, it's vented into the atmosphere. I presume it's easier and simply to design it this way. It's not very radioactive (if at all) as the steam hasn't gone through the reactor, it has just been close to the some radioactive water that has. Tritium is one of the least harmful radioactive substances so I don't think it's a big deal that slightly radioactive water was released. It's worse, to me, that one of two of the required electrical systems failed in the first place. They should (and probably will) develop a way to stop this from occurring again.

That plant is about a half hour from my house to the east, and the wind is blowing to the west-north west.
I wanna move to another planet were dumb*sses don't live and control everything including nature.

reply to post by LilFox


Here is a recent article from a local news source, this one mentioning that it was shut down because they found a crack.

Nuclear Plan on Lake Michigan shuts down again

It seems as if several different reasons for the plant shut down have come about recently, however it's altogether possible that one problem led to the discovery of another which is a good thing in my opinion as long as they do something about it.

I'm about 10 minutes from there they are not leaking any radioactivity. I have several friends working there. Water leak the bum breaker. The anti nuke people spread lies faster than a bull spreads BS.


local Paper

No alarms and no issues

The water loss issue was because of a cooling non radioactive leak that lost less than 10 gallons. they recorded the leak but was so small it took a while to find. So the massive systems noticed 10 gallons missing pretty good system I would say.

Yup I'm pro nuke it between Cook and Palasades I get about $4500 a month

I wish I had read this before I opened all my windows this Am to get the air circulating. But I think the wind is currently blowing south to north instead of west to east due to that slow moving system, so...

www.intellicast.com...

Originally posted by mikellmikell
they are not leaking any radioactivity.

I found this:

Electrical Problems Trigger Radioactive Steam Release At Palisades
By Eartha Jane Melzer | 09.26.11 | 4:41 pm

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Prema Chandrithal said...“The steam that would normally go to the generators, that steam is now going into the environment … through the steam stack,” said Chandrithal. “This would have very low levels of tritium.”
www.americanindependent.com...

turn the damned things off, make solar fields. nuff said.

if they can't do that much they don't deserve to be the ones in charge of our power.

ed: and don't give me "you wouldn't get enough power that way" because there are -many- alternatives.

Any one remember the stuxnet virus? Maybe all of these nucular miss happs are because of it.