Skip to main content

Quick Hits: At Indian Point, Three Plants, The German Psyche

IndianPoint1 CNN’s Alan Chernoff goes into a nuclear plant – New York’s Indian Point, in this case – and nothing falls over on him and he doesn’t topple into the used fuel pool (which he takes a look at). In fact, he finds a spotless, well run industrial structure. Oh, and extremely secure.

Useful type of story for reporters to be doing – folks are probably pretty curious about the inside of a plant right about now.

---

At a House hearing, NRC Commissioner Gragory Jaczko loosely identified three nuclear plants the commission believes need further oversight:

Three U.S. nuclear power plants need increased oversight from federal regulators because of safety problems or unplanned shutdowns, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Thursday, although officials said all are operating safely.

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said the three plants — in South Carolina (H.B Robinson), Kansas (Wolf Creek) and Nebraska (Fort Calhoun)— "are the plants we are most concerned about" among the 65 U.S. nuclear power plants in 31 states.

Jaczko did not say what issues require the extra oversight:

"The NRC felt the three required significant additional oversight but continue to operate safely," said Scott Burnell, an agency spokesman.

The story quite correctly notes that there are four levels of oversight and these plants fall into the second. The third and fourth levels would be far more serious for the plants. Tellingly, Jaczko initially told the House committee that six reactors were on the list, but three of them, at the Oconee plant, had resolved all issues and were taken off the list.

---

Sarah Sloat has a go at German kookiness about nuclear energy:

So then, what’s the source of this “special sensitivity?” It’s hard for the Germans themselves to pin down. Some see its root in German romanticism of the 19th century, the idealization of nature seen, for example, in the landscapes of Casper David Friedrich.

Others attribute it to the national character. “It’s all psychological; it’s typical German nervousness,” said one. Characteristics like “cautiousness” and “risk-aversion” also come up.

Sloat decides its all about Chernobyl, but I liked these better. Risk-aversion! It’s a wonder Germans drive cars or get on a plane – far riskier than having a nuclear energy plant in the neighborhood.

Indian Point.

Comments

Charles said…
IMHO, the specific sensitivity of Germans to anything nuclear stems from
a) horrendous memories of bombing during WW2, quite similar to what can be experienced from an atomic bomb (see the description of the Hamburg firestorm here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II )
b) the fear to be in the middle of a nuclear battlefield during the cold war
These fears have been skillfully exploited by the KGB to try to drive a wedge between FRG and its Atlantic partners. After the end of the cold war, the issue for Russia is more to sell NG than gaining global dominance.
Anonymous said…
Note that Jaczko's comments about the three plants referred to the status of those plants in the action matrix of NRC's normal Reactor Oversight Process -- NOT plants seen by NRC as needing more review in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi accident.

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin