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Keeping Up With the Anti-Nukes

Over on our blogroll to the right, you'll notice that we added a section on anti-nuclear activists. We think it's important to track these folks, which is why we're including them.

But rather than simply listing their links, we've added a new wrinkle: Whenever we have dealt with these groups in print before, I've included a link to our archives where you'll find detailed responses to their charges. Click here to see what we did with the Rocky Mountain Institute.

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Comments

Anonymous said…
Eric,

Is the Union of Concerned Scientists still an "anti-nuclear" group? I believe Dave Lochbaum has morfed UCS into a "nuclear safety critic." And nuclear energy certainly aligns with their greenhouse gas focus.

Jim
Eric McErlain said…
You're right about that, Jim. I've taken the UCS link out. We'll find a more appropriate category.
Anonymous said…
Greetings,

What an honor and credential particularly coming from the lobby group that runs interference on federal enforcement actions and "overly burdensome regulations" to subordinate nuclear safety margins to company profit margins.

Judging by these comments on UCS, you probably never met Robert Pollard who provided David with a distinguished legacy of nuclear safety criticisms (i.e. Yankee Rowe RIP)

Paul, NIRS
Anonymous said…
Mr. Primervera-

To answer your question, well, we could start this discussion on 10 CFR 50 Appendix R III.G.2(a)(b)(c) if you want. The reg was promulgated in 1980 after the 1975 Browns Ferry fire.

NUMARC played the central role in stonewalling industry compliance following disclosures in 1989 that standardized fire tests for Thermo-Lag fire barriers were falsified and the stuff didnt work to protect safe shutdown circuitry.

Following subsequent disclosures that industry on the large abandoned its corrective action programs for the bogus fire barriers, NEI lead the charge to replace physical fire protection features with illegal and unauthorized operator manual actions.

That plan recently failed with the abandonment of a rulemaking to codify manual actions over prescriptive fire barriers, cable separation and detection/suppression leaving safe shutdown systems in a similar state as the pre-Browns Ferry fire.

Why not just install and maintain operable fire barriers and be done with?

Apparently that would be too simple for NEI whose agenda appears to prioritize avoding such capital costs with paper fixes.

By the way, UCS agrees with us on this safety item.

gotta go,
Anonymous said…
Mr. Primavera,

Then you should ask them how many unapproved and illegal operator manual actions are incorporated into the fire protection program rather than adequate cable separation and operable fire barriers for safe shutdown. Its an industrywide problem and your site would be the exception rather than the rule.

How about Generic Safety Issue 191, then? Has your site installed adequately sized sump screen in the containment sump system. This safety issue has been kicking around for more than a decade, now. The ECCS craps out without an operable sump and all the indications are that containment debris and the "TMI Slime" would block most screens early into an accident. NEI and NRC have colluded on this safety issue for some time, even though Davis-Besse demonstrated that it can be addressed today.

Paul, NIRS
Anonymous said…
Gunter,

Recirculation failure has been studied in many IPE and PRA. The scenario you postulate is quite unlikely, as the problem is well-known and there are safety features in place to prevent it, but noone can prove that it impossible.

But recirculation failure is not synonymous with containment failure and there are many things an operator would do to mitigate the accident and render it relatively minor on the grand scale of industrial accidents. The operator can keep injecting water in any number of ways (LPI, HPI, charging pumps, containment sprays) until core debris is covered. If a single containment fan cooler continues to operate (there are at least two of them), releases would be limited to containment leakage, which would not be enough to cause a single death.

In other words, for recirculation failure to lead to significant off-site consequences, you must also postulate that everyone at the plant gives up and goes home as soon as they realize the pumps are clogged. That's not going to happen.

That's the great thing about nuclear power: the accidents are purely hypothetical. You can keep saying what if this and what if that as long as you like. We can argue about them day and night, knowing they will never happen.

In the meantime, Gunter, someone, or perhaps many, will die today from coal plant emissions today because a nuclear plant was not built to replace it.

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