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Indian Point is very close too, even though it's in NYS.
As to your second paragraph, I think the U.S. would respond much worse than the Japanese in this crisis.[/QUOTE]
sadly....i think so too.
Japan is getting bashed at the moment for being slow to give out information about how bad the situation was at the nuclear power plant. Not to say we wouldn't do the same, but they haven't exactly been great.
[quote=NJGOAT;18301465]Surprisingly from what I've been reading on the news, the United States actually has far stricter safety and disaster response standards in terms of nuclear plants than the Japanese (and the rest of the world for that matter) do.
This was in the local news as Hope Creek station in Salem is the same reactor design as the one in Japan. They said that the containment dome over the reactor here is roughly 150% stronger than the one used in Japan. The cooling systems and backup generators that power them are far more redundant and robust and there are systems in place to rapidly encase the reactor in concrete and lead in the event the cooling systems did fail.
The main thrust of the article was that the issue in Japan is that the primary cooling systems were damaged and the backup generators fuel supplies were destroyed. This allowed the water levels to drop and once they do, it is very hard to get them back up to where they are supposed to be and cool the reactor. Apparently in the U.S. the design of the backup generator systems is such that they are not nearly as vulnerable as the ones in Japan.[/QUOTE]
this is always true of any plant built more recently than another plant.
i'm trying to find the editorial i read either in nytimes or wsj that talked about why the nuclear energy industry needs to come out and talk about how they will address the issues of backups and redundancy plans. it was really interesting, and was pro-nuclear power. but it said that in the past, the industry always took the approach of "but this wouldn't happen here because we have more x, y, z....". instead of saying "this is why it happened, and this is what we can do and are doing to prevent it". it was an interesting op-ed for sure.
There was one thing I was surprised by (but maybe I shouldn't have been). I was thinking the international community would be able to jump on this and get this under control pretty quickly. Like there would be some kind of disaster plan where maybe a country couldn't get it fixed due to the disaster that happened and other countries would have the abilty to pretty much send whatever supplies/expertise was necessary.
As far as storing fuel rods, we do the same thing. They are stored in large concrete ponds on site and covered with water when they are first removed from the reactor. After they have been cooled for about a year, they place the fuel rods into a dry cask storage container that is basically a giant steel drum that is welded shut and then encased in concrete and steel reinforcement. As of right now all spent fuel is stored onsite at the reactors.
At one point we were working to build a large storage site in the Yucca Mountain range in Nevada where the fuel would be stored/buried for millions of years. That project was cancelled by the Obama administration.
The reason for the cancellation was that current storage methods are good for decades more and there are new technologies coming online that will allow that fuel to be used to the point it is no longer a threat (for instance reactors that can run on the spent fuel rods). Any material that is left over and isn't usable can be buried in salt caverns where the salt formations would surround the material and be geologically stable for up to 100 million years.
it also was something many residents of nevada opposed
i
That's 2 of us goat. People forget quickly about the gulf oil spill, refineries blowing up, Exxon-Alaska. 55 percent of energy in NJ is supplied by these plants. If they close u can bet your energy bill will double. IMO we need a combination of all things for energy. Oil, nuclear, wind, solar, natural gas, ETC. My one problem with the Japan plants is wouldn't u have positioned the emergency generators in a tall building maybe on some sort of pilings just in case of a tsunami wave?
the problem with disaster recovery planning is that we plan for things we know we need to plan for....
they received backup generators after their generators failed, but they were the wrong type of connections. only when rendundancies fail do we see the need for other precautions.
They had some report though about how the US nuclear plants had a stricter code in place. So while in general what you are saying may be true, I'm not sure it would apply to the plants.
but this is newer plants, not all plants. there has been debate whether plants should be retrofitted as well, at great costs of course. i'm not anti-nuclear, but the point is, we can always improve the way we go about this.
i really wish i could find that op ed! searching still
it also was something many residents of nevada opposed
i
I didn't mean for that to come off as a political slant, just giving the facts that it had been cancelled. The vast majority of people in Nevada were opposed and the prospect of trucking thousands of tons of radiactive waste across the country to the site also wasn't exactly popular.
There are better ideas and technology available now that simply didn't exist in the 60's and 70's when the whole idea was conceived.
I didn't mean for that to come off as a political slant, just giving the facts that it had been cancelled. The vast majority of people in Nevada were opposed and the prospect of trucking thousands of tons of radiactive waste across the country to the site also wasn't exactly popular.
There are better ideas and technology available now that simply didn't exist in the 60's and 70's when the whole idea was conceived.
true. good points.
so has no one else read this op-ed i saw? someone must have?! lol
the author was arguing that the country shouldn't dismiss nuclear, but that the industry has to address the concerns, instead of brushing them under the rug like they have in the past. it was really good article, and really reiterates the points that the plants are extremely safe, and provide multiple redundancies, but that doesn't mean that they cannot fail. it's something we should constantly be addressing and updating.
that plant in japan supplied 15% of the country's power.
There was one thing I was surprised by (but maybe I shouldn't have been). I was thinking the international community would be able to jump on this and get this under control pretty quickly. Like there would be some kind of disaster plan where maybe a country couldn't get it fixed due to the disaster that happened and other countries would have the abilty to pretty much send whatever supplies/expertise was necessary.
I'm pretty sure the Japanese have access to pretty much every expert and material they could possibly need. The problem is once the reactor begins to reach this stage it is almost impossible to stop. The reactors require a careful balance to be maintained so that the fuel rods don't get too hot. Once they begin to overheat, they simply boil off whatever water is thrown at them to cool the reactors down. The key is getting a large enough volume of water on them and continually pumping to begin cooling the rods.
The end game scenario is slathering the reactor with concrete, sand and boric acid. The acid helps neutralize the neutron reactions and the sand and concrete encase the reactor and trap the radioactivity. Of course, doing that basically destroys the reactor and makes it unusable. The last step is building a lead, steel and conrete sarcophagus over the reactor and leaving it alone for the next few million years.
At this point the Japanese are still trying to get them back under control in hopes that the reactors could eventually be repaired and restored to normal operation.
If you compare this to Cherbnobyl the difference is that the Japanese plants were a better design that has given them the chance to contain the reaction. In Chernobyl once the core had gone critical and since there was no containment vessel all they could do was seal the reactor. Many experts are saying that all the Japanese are doing at this point is delaying the inevitable and they will eventually need to give up and seal the reactors.
I'm pretty sure the Japanese have access to pretty much every expert and material they could possibly need. The problem is once the reactor begins to reach this stage it is almost impossible to stop. The reactors require a careful balance to be maintained so that the fuel rods don't get too hot. Once they begin to overheat, they simply boil off whatever water is thrown at them to cool the reactors down. The key is getting a large enough volume of water on them and continually pumping to begin cooling the rods.
The end game scenario is slathering the reactor with concrete, sand and boric acid. The acid helps neutralize the neutron reactions and the sand and concrete encase the reactor and trap the radioactivity. Of course, doing that basically destroys the reactor and makes it unusable. The last step is building a lead, steel and conrete sarcophagus over the reactor and leaving it alone for the next few million years.
At this point the Japanese are still trying to get them back under control in hopes that the reactors could eventually be repaired and restored to normal operation.
If you compare this to Cherbnobyl the difference is that the Japanese plants were a better design that has given them the chance to contain the reaction. In Chernobyl once the core had gone critical and since there was no containment vessel all they could do was seal the reactor. Many experts are saying that all the Japanese are doing at this point is delaying the inevitable and they will eventually need to give up and seal the reactors.
i thought the use of salt water destroys future possible use of the reactor?
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