Unopened can of beer found in Diablo Canyon Nuke Plant in Cali

a reply to: DJMSN

That's not exactly a fair statement on Fukushima which occurred due to an act of nature and not due to compliance or regulatory lapses. An earthquake or even a serious flooding event from a bad hurricane could have a nuclear facility here in the same situation.

Fukushima was built as a boiling water reactor (BWR) instead of a pressurized water reactor (PWR). BWR designs are much cheaper and faster to construct, but are also much more prone to natural disasters than PWR designs.

The diesel fuel for Fukushima was stored in a lower elevation, which lead to contamination in the case of the tsunami, something that is common in that area.

The plant was not designed to withstand an earthquake of the magnitude expected according to NRC design criteria.

When the plant loses power in a SCRAM, there are two backups to allow it to shut down safely. Primary is the diesel generators, which had their fuel contaminated as mentioned. Secondary is batteries, designed to supply SCRAM power for 10 hours maximum. When the diesel generators failed and SCRAM took longer than anticipated due to damage, auxiliary generators were brought in to handle the overload. The plugs were not the same and they had to be hot-wired. In order to do so, company policy demanded that the workers get approval from headquarters first, which directly led to a temporary loss of power at the plant and the failure of the SCRAM process.

Had any one of those mistakes listed above been corrected, there would have been no meltdown. Had the plant used PWR design, the damage would have been mostly confined to secondary sytems; BWR design uses no secondary system. Had the diesel fuel been located higher, the tsunami would not have contaminated it and the SCRAM would have been successful. Had the plant been built to stricter seismic specifications, the damage would have been less severe, allowing for a faster SCRAM. Had the auxiliary generators been connected when they arrived the SCRAM would have been successful.

Fukushima was a comedy of errors executed in turn by TEPCO. The true danger in nuclear energy is people trying to say it was just a fluke; it wasn't. It was an experiment into the reality of the China Syndrome and a stark example of how NOT to build and operate a nuclear plant.

Three Mile Island still occured under the same regulatory processes in place today, although I am sure we have made changes as we learned from the incidents inside and outside the US.

Three Mile Island was not a meltdown; it was a radiation release to avoid a meltdown. The actual cause was operator error based on faulty sensors inside the reactor chamber. The reactor at the plant I worked at was of the same design, but had several built-in safeguards to prevent another such incident. So yes, we have made improvements.

The NRC, as this story shows, is much more proactive than any global regulatory body. Obviously.

TheRedneck

originally posted by: o0oTOPCATo0o
a reply to: CriticalStinker

Do me a favor...
Whenever (if ever) this gets brought up in conversation, refer to it as "coleslaw Theory"

I don't know why, but that comment is the one today that legit made me laugh. And I'll do my best to remember that.

Also, now that I think about it, two friends who work together likely have that trendy craft beer hobby on the side. One brought one in that his friend "had to try", and kept it cold so it didn't skunk in the car.

I get that it's stupid, and a breach of protocol... But sometime's people are too damn uptight.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

Seeing how the guy obviously didn't think he was doing anything too wrong, I agree.
We do it all the time at my work.. Then again, I don't work there.

It does seem really silly though.

a reply to: TheRedneck

Yes different designs in both Chernobyl and Fukushima could have saved the world from major disasters. And I defer to your experience and expertise in the field. I believe Three Mile Island was described as a partial meltdown narrowly avoiding a full blown disaster. It was a result of human errors and faulty equipment but the safe guards established certainly helped.

Ironically, the movie China Syndrome premiered 12 days before the accident and many officials denied anything like it could ever occur. Fiction turned into history since the film depicted a similar scenario, a combination of equipment failures, human errors and not following NRC regulations established for safety. Three Mile rated a 5 out of 7 so pretty serious but certainly could have been worse without our better designs and tougher standards.

Both Fukushima and Chernobyl rated 7 on the international scale and let's hope those are the only two we ever see. Still believe that nature can be a powerful foe and even with our stringent regulations that combined with the human factors and equipment failures that its arrogant to be so complacent and say never happen here. And thankfully, we do have a regulatory commission to keep the lid tight, but one terrorism incident could be bad.

a reply to: DJMSN

Chernobyl was a partial meltdown... the cores melted, but were contained enough that they didn't go into bedrock. Fukushima was a complete meltdown... the cores, or what's left of them, are sitting right now in the bedrock encased in a pool of magma, radiating away to their heart's content. And we have no way to stop them. Unlike conventional power systems, nuclear is always "on" unless an action is taken to turn them "off." The control rods do not start the reaction; they stop it when inserted.

We actually had a plant-wide briefing on Three Mile Island, so I am pretty familiar with what happened. The heads of TVA apparently thought that was necessary, given that the same reactor was going into the plant where I worked. Every reactor has tons of sensors to check everything from radiation levels to temperature scattered throughout it. Many are backups... redundant sensors to help detect if a sensor itself malfunctions. That's what happened at Three Mile Island: one of the main temperature sensors showed a low temperature reading, and the operator pulled the control rods out a little to compensate. In reality, the temperature was too high, and the reactor began to overheat. The error was that the operator relied on a single temperature reading instead of verifying with the backup, and really, that's not much of an error. The rods are constantly adjusted to temperature readings during operation.

As soon as the backup sensor threw an alarm, they caught the problem and corrected. The reactor was overheated and had to be cooled using the emergency cooling systems, but that requires some venting of the reactor chamber... hence the radiation release. But there was no meltdown. One was imminent, but the problem was caught in time.

The newer design has additional temperature readings at more locations, and an alarm that sounds if the temperatures indicate a failure. Think of it as double-check on the readings, a backup before the backup. That way the operator has notice that there may be a sensor malfunction and has reason to check the backups before adjusting the rods.

Personally, I would like to see BWRs outlawed. At least with a PWR design, even a meltdown can be contained to a large degree; all radiation is contained within the reaction chamber. With a BWR system, it cannot. Radioactive steam is running through the entire plant.

TheRedneck

originally posted by: CriticalStinker

originally posted by: o0oTOPCATo0o

originally posted by: machineintelligence

One unopened can of beer was discovered in a break room refrigerator within the plant's Protected Area.

Along with the tuna noodle salad, thought to have been stolen, weeks prior.

Microwaving fish, especially a dish with canned tuna in a break room that coworkers share is far more of a violation than alcohol IMO.

OMG!

The smell imagery of that (smellergy?) is awful!

Now I need to inhale the scent of a nice perfume to clear my olfactory receptors...

Where is my lady when I need her?

Can of beer will probably get the guy banned from that plant for the rest of their outage. A DUI will get them banned for a minimum of 5 years. Really stupid things like a woman who refused to remove her huge metal belt will get you banned from the nuke industry for life. local plant is shutdown doing refueling right now so lots of road workers in town about 1700 I think.

I live a couple of Miles from the D.C. Cook plant so have lots of nuke worker neighbors. Extremely more secure than 20 years ago where a single can of beer would have brought complaints of you should have brought some for everybody.

Good pay working the nuke road $20 an hour for laborers up to $1000 a day for welders.