Dan Yurman shares some thoughts on New York's Indian Point nuclear plant. Be sure to visit:
New York is the first state to formally oppose relicensing of a nuclear power plant
At a time when the rest of the world is experiencing what is called a "nuclear renaissance," the situation in the Empire State appears to be retrograding into a dark age where all things nuclear are considered a threat, and often on an emotional rather than rational basis. ...
Comments
We may now historically view this corrupt dodge as: "The Eliot Spitzer Method".
The New York State Legislature has passed NO anti Indian Point policy. Cuomo acts alone.
Cuomo got press, and maybe 8000 future Democratic primary votes from the combined mailing lists of the small organized antinuke groups he was pandering to.
The at-large populace is at least 70% to 30% in favor of leaving Indian Point alone.
The business community in NYS is 100% in favor of Indian Point.
So what is left?
A phrase, an illusion?
A lie, a delusion?
A defunct Democratic party sham "moral rennaissance" ?
New York does NOT oppose the relicensing, only citizen Andrew Cuomo.
People should start to realize that the Dem Party is full of obstructionism and corruption (sadly, the Repubs are little better, but at least they FAVOR nuke power).
Oh, and for the latest Eliot Spitzer prize for corruption, it goes to Democrat Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick of Detroit, another known womanizer, liar and thief. Read on:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/us/25detroit.html?hp
Mark my word: elect Obama or Hillary and there won't be a nuclear revival, and the corruption of the Spitzer gubernatorial office will look like a walk in the park. Fortunately, the fights between these two are so tearing apart the Dem Party that pro-nuclear McCain looks like a shoe-in.
Wrong.
The New Jersey Office of Attorney General was the first state to formally oppose relicensing (November 14, 2005)at the Oyster Creek Mark I BWR over the application's failure to do a NEPA-related environmental analysis for its vulnerable elevated spent fuel pool. They are in 3rd Circuit Federal Court on appeal.
Then Office of Attorney General for Massachusetts opposed the relicensing of Pilgrim and Vermont Yankee, two more sky high fuel pools). Massachusetts is in First Circuit Federal Court of Appeals.
So the New York Office of Attorney General is appropriately the third state to engage NRC and industry on relicensing.
Sky high spent fuel pools - what's this guy smokin?
IPEC's plants are PWRs with at / below ground spent fuel pools.
As for BWRs, I say let's replace VY, Pilgrim and Oyster with ESBWRs. 1600 MW of electricity, far exceeding existing plant outputs. No more "sky high" spent fuel pools. But will Gunter et al suport this? Nope. I like this saying in the NY Times: these people replace the audacity of hope with the audacity of nope.
BTW, one has to wonder at the motives of a person who publicly proclaims within Al Qaida's hearing that BWR spent fuel pools are (supposedly) vulnerable to aircrat impacts. Perhaps he wishes for a self-fulling prophecy?
happy to make motives public:
Let's start with the fact that we actively encourage and are willing to cooperate in Congressional, DOJ and FBI investigative activity.
Start with a review of the role of NRC and DHS thus far?
We welcome the opportunity to present relevant NRC documentation along with the National Academy of Sciences report on the same subject.
It is disingenuos for NRC to say that aircraft impact hazard is now satisfactorially mitigated.
It is disingenuous to exempt operating reactors and certified designs from enhanced aircraft impact analysis, particularly any that would credibly assure the public that these things wont crash and burn if attacked.
If there is such analysis that refutes the publicly availably technical evidence of vulnerability, particularly the GE BWRs, it should be presented to affirm that the next Pearl Harbor or 911 will not be radiologically enhanced.
Otherwise, the Ostrich Head-in-the-Sand approach only protects your head while visibly displaying that your tail is still in the wind.
Given the inventory in high-density storage pools sitting six to ten stories up at 35 reactors, this approach is no longer in national security interest.
Furthermore,it makes no sense for you to refuse to erect "Beamhenge" structures around every US nuclear power station; unless of course you're afraid they would also make great structures to hang really large "NO NUKES" banners on.
National security now warrants such a risk and the immediate construction... and bannering.
An overarching outer steel I-beam structure with heavy chainmail overlay, might be a quick and effective means to passively intercept and breakup explosive laden private aircraft at a distance that would increase the assurance that the pools and the irradiated fuel can remain intact and cooled if surprised.
Have you looked at how many private airfields are within ten to 25 miles of US nuclear power stations?
Plain and simple: No early warning nor airguard interception possible.
Think about it, general aviation...
No reinforced cockpit doors, no pilot screening, no passenger screening, no cargo screening...
You think Al Qaide or some Timothy McVeigh-type has not already thought about putting alot of C4 on twin engine private aircraft?
Don't you think somebody should be talking about the fact that Nobody Really Cares about doing the bricks and mortar kind of thing to address this vulnerability?
We care. Why not discuss it here? Where more appropriate?
(wait, let me think about that...)
The outrageous duplicity of groups like NDIRS and others in this spent fuel pool vulnerability issue is simply breathtaking. If you are so concerned about it, why aren't you taking the lead in getting Yucca Mountain approved, so that some of this so-called "spent" fuel and be moved to a secure, deeply-buried and secure location? Surely that would be better, from a security standpoint, than leaving it in the pools?
But then no-nook groups stand up against Yucca Mountain, and when we ask them, okay, you don't want Yucca Mountain, where should we store the material? And they say, at the plant sites. IOW, you are the ones who want the stuff and the plant sites in those pools. Why? So you can hammer the industry on it's so-called "vulnerability" to light aircraft "attack".
Clear-thinking people see through the duplicity and hypocrisy of groups like NDIRS. You want it both ways. You don't want a long-term repository (because that would put to bed your favorite bogeyman of "no place to dispose of the waste). Then you say store it at the plants, and use that as a hammer to beat up the industry over "vulnerability", or lobby for nonsense like "beamhenge" and your silly banners. Just cut the crap, will you?
Yucca won't work, that's why.
Opposition to Yucca is based on the absence of a legitimate scientific process.
Why would we join the political mugging Screw Nevada clan?
Dumping on Nevada doesnt solve the security issue anyways. Only adds to it with the commencement of tens of thousands of shipments on the roads and rails through major cities like St. Louis.
As far as onsite storage, let's be clear that high density storage in fuel pools is no longer acceptable for any units above or below grade. We need to go promptly to low density storage.
Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations that openly congregate dozens of dry casks within line of site of RPGs or Virgina gun show purchased 50-caliber weapons using armor piercing and incendiary munitions is also no longer acceptable. The concern over explosive laden private aircraft applies as well.
The interim plan proposal that has some traction with environmental groups is Hardened Onsite Storage (HOSS) or Robust Onsite Storage (ROSS). Qualified and licensed dry casks certified by more stringent security criteria as well as upgraded QA/QC for interim storage criteria that are dispersed at above ground locations on individual concrete pads that are heavily bermed against a variety of attacks, including low yield range thermonuclear weapons (say, something deliverable in a Ryder truck).
Let me ask a couple of more fundamental questions;
Why was the nuclear industry given the commercial go ahead without scientficially addressing the long term nuclear waste management issue?
Why would anybody allow the industry to increase its nuclear waste inventory in the continued absense of a long term scienfitically based management plan?
Let me also make the correction that we are not talking analysis of "light aircraft" impact, but rather bounding it by explosvie laden private aircraft.
Big difference.
C'mon, anon, where's your inquiring mind, your questioning attitude?
Look at how the whole waste management issue has evolved. You said you didn't want spent fuel at plant sites. Fine, we'll reprocess that material, reduce volume and extract useful things as well. No, you said, you didn't want that, either (might be beneficial to the industry, you see). Okay, well, then maybe geologic disposal is the way to go. So we start down that path. And all you do is find fault with it, too, obstruct it at every step, raise political issues and invoke boogeymen and scare-mongering at every turn (e.g., "thousands of tons of world-ending deadly waste passing through YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD every day for the next hundred years!").
Look, be honest at least with yourself, even if you can't be honest with those of us reading this blog. You don't give a crap about security, or "spent" fuel management, or "elevated" waste pools, or Yucca Mountain and the "screw Nevada" boogeyman. All you care about, for some reason unfathomable to logical, clear-minded people, is shutting down a productive and wholly benign industry. You offer no practical solutions to the long-term problem of energy supply. All you say is NOPE.
1. ASAP: Erect "beamhenge"; a passively vigilant overstructure that can both buy time from surprise attack and break up Airborne Improvised Explosive Devices at stand off distances sufficient to assure fuel pool and reactor cooling integrity.
This structure could be enhanced with rapid smoke screen deployment---as in Germany where mortars can now launch smoke grenades for aerial burst sustained coverage;
2. Go from currently accepted high-density storage in fuel pools to a low-density storage configuration;
3. Offload the irradiated fuel assemblies into licensed HOSS or ROSS design systems.
Here's a perfect example. Back in the '80s there were anti-nook kook groups agitating for research reactors that used HEU to switch to LEU because supposedly that made them "less of a target". Now that many of them have switched, we see anti-nooks agitating about how these reactors are now attractive targets for "dirty bombs", because they switched to LEU (which generates more transuranics.
Give it up, Gunter. You can't hide your duplicity and hypocrisy. You don't care about "constructive" solutions. All you care about is harming the industry and those who work in it. That it will cost many, many good, honest, hard working people their careers as well as endanger the energy security of this country, you don't give a crap about.