Arnie Gunderson and friend explain why It Can Happen Here. From the blurb about the video at Arnie’s site:
The well-known safety flaws of Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors have gained significant attention in the wake of the four reactor accidents at Fukushima, but a more insidious danger lurks. In this video nuclear engineers Arnie Gundersen and David Lochbaum discuss how the US regulators and regulatory process have left Americans unprotected. They walk, step-by-step, through the events of the Japanese meltdowns and consider how the knowledge gained from Fukushima applies to the nuclear industry worldwide. They discuss “points of vulnerability” in American plants, some of which have been unaddressed by the NRC for three decades. Finally, they concluded that an accident with the consequences of Fukushima could happen in the US.
With more radioactive Cesium in the Pilgrim Nuclear Plant’s spent fuel pool than was released by Fukushima, Chernobyl, and all nuclear bomb testing combined. Gundersen and Lockbaum ask why there is not a single procedure in place to deal with a crisis in the fuel pool?
Some very good questions. Watch the video.
I just finished watching the video and noted that it was sponsored by a number of groups with axes to grind. Which ought to make one suspicious. However, as a former Naval Nuke I found nothing in the presentation I could disagree with. Their concerns are my concerns. Every once in a while interest groups are reasonable and rational. I can’t explain it. It happens. Occasionally.
=====
Some of you may be wondering why I have been missing in action lately (with such a stellar group of writers hereabouts why would you be missing me at all?). I’m working on solving a small social/technical problem by technical/social means. The design of the hardware is basically complete (I’m still doing tweaks as I go) and board layouts are in progress. When that is done I’ll explain what it is all about.
Cross Posted at Power and Control
Comments
One response to “It Can’t Happen Here”
True that a full spent fuel pool contains a large amount of radioactivity. However, loss of cooling to the spent fuel pool has not been classified as an “accident” since there would be no releases of radioactivity beyond the regulatory limit (very low!)
One has many hours to begin to add water to replace the water inventory lost from boiling. One has about 33 feet of water over the assemblies; 10 foot is enough shielding to keep the doses below trivial levels so one has a lot of water loss one can endure.
We will be hard-piping ways to makeup the loss of pool water. Probably add an external connection for a fire pumper truck and perhaps additional internal pumping sources too.
As a nuclear engineer, I would note that we have so darn FEW events like Fukishima and Three Mile Island. We study them carefully and learn everything we can from each.