No There There in NYT Story

The problem for news reporters is that they pitch a story that sounds promising, but it ends up a wash: there’s no news there. So what does one do? Kill the story or make as much of it as possible and, being fair, reveal that there really is no story.

---

Here’s the headline of a story that appeared on the New York Times Green blog: U.S. Dropped Nuclear Rule Meant to Avert Hydrogen Explosions.

Uh-oh. That sounds bad, given that Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors suffered a series of hydrogen explosions. Could it be that the NRC is too much in cahoots with the industry?

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has allowed reactors to phase out some equipment that eliminates explosive hydrogen, the gas that blew up the outer containments of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi in Japan.

There’s that part.

“Post-Three Mile Island, they were considered very important to safety,’’ Mr. Blanch said. He accused the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of having “gutted the rule’’ because the industry wanted to save money.

And there’s the other part. Looking pretty bad, I must say. Blanch is Paul Blanch, “who said that he had been involved in installing such equipment at Millstone 3, a nuclear reactor in Waterford, Conn.” I guess he didn’t say that he was also a consultant for Beyond Nuclear, an anti-nuclear energy group, but maybe time was tight.

But Eliot Brenner, a spokesman for the commission, said that as the commission analyzed its rules to determine which ones actually improved safety and which did not, it had found the equipment was unnecessary.

Oh. Well, wait, is that justified or might Blanch be right?

Depending on the type of reactor, the commission now requires a variety of other precautions. General Electric models of the type used at Fukushima, which are also common in the United States, must pump their primary containments full of nitrogen gas instead of air, for example.

Because hydrogen requires that oxygen be in the air to detonate, this “inerting” of the primary containments is a way of preventing explosions. And some plants have to have “igniter systems” that would burn off hydrogen before it could build up.

So that’s that. There’s no there there. Spike that story!

Comments

Anonymous said…

Hey Mark, you should read another take on this story at Idaho Samizdat.

April 2, 2011 at 2:27 AM

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

How Much Land Does Nuclear, Wind and Solar Really Need?

Not too long ago, we reviewed a report that looked at nuclear energy (and other energy sources) as biodiversity agents. This had to do, in part, with the amount of land a facility needs to function. Nuclear energy and fossil fuel plants use relatively little, wind farms and solar arrays quite a lot of land . Based on an objective and transparent analysis of our sustainable energy choices, we have come to the evidence-based conclusion that nuclear energy is a good option for biodiversity conservation (and society in general) and that other alternatives to fossil fuels should be subjected to the same cost–benefit analyses (in terms of biodiversity and climate outcomes, as well as sociopolitical imperatives) before accepting or dismissing them. Writer Barry Brook, who collected 75 scientists to endorse his paper, is interested in land use as it impacts flora and fauna. Biodiversity concerns do not get as much play as they might – and, when they do, it annoys many when land is withdraw...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog