Overnight, we've seen a lot of breathless coverage about the steam generator leak that happened at San Onfre Generating Station on Tuesday, one that led to a story on the AP's national wire and another during the first segment of ABC's World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer on Wednesday evening.
What happened at San Onofre is a pretty typical operational event. If you don't believe us, feel free to ask David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Here's what he told one Southern California newspaper about the incident at San Onofre:
What happened at San Onofre is a pretty typical operational event. If you don't believe us, feel free to ask David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Here's what he told one Southern California newspaper about the incident at San Onofre:
The "pinhole"-sized leak in a steam generator tube that caused a partial shutdown at the San Onofre nuclear plant Tuesday is something that is actually to be expected when a plant has new generators like San Onofre does, according to one expert.If you want to know why our nation is having trouble devising a sound energy policy, you should know that the sensational coverage we've seen about San Onofre over the past 48 hours is a part of the reason.
San Onofre recently replaced its old generators.
Whenever generators are new or very old, leaks can occur, and engineers know to be alert for the problem, said David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Lochbaum said that as long as sensors detected the problem and the operators were prepared, "it's not the fault of [owner] Southern California Edison. It just happens" with new generators as they are being broken in.
Comments
France's recent study of clusters of childhood leukemia around each of their nuclear power plants leads us to demand a epidemiology study in our area. It also calls for us to demand the city and county to form a radiation monitoring system of their own to keep the citizens informed. ROSE http://residentsorganizedforasafeenvironment.wordpress.com/
"All control rods fully inserted on the trip. Decay heat is being removed thru the main steam bypass valves into the main condenser. Main feedwater is maintaining steam generator level. No relief valves lifted during the manual trip. The plant is in normal shutdown electrical lineup."
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2012/20120201en.html
I doubt that anything even detectable was released, since they were able to use condenser steam dumps. But since radiation so easily detectable, even in amounts millions of times less than harmful, if even a trace were found they have to acknowledge it, or be called liars by the likes of Gene Stoner.
Meanwhile he blithely posts references to thoroughly refuted “studies” and no one has the cajones to step forward and sue him for libel. Here is the reality: http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Low_risk_from_major_accident_consequences-0202127.html
"France's recent study of clusters of childhood leukemia around each of their nuclear power plants leads us to demand a epidemiology study in our area."
An epidemiological study of populations near nuclear facilities is already underway and has been for well over a year. The last such large-scale study, conducted by the National Institutes of Health, found no increased risk of cancer for such populations after studying a wide variety of facilities, going back to the 1940's.
As for the French study, this is from the abstract:
"The results suggest a possible excess risk of AL [acute leukemia] in the close vicinity of French NPPs in 2002-2007. The absence of any association with the DBGZ [dose-based geographic zoning] may indicate that the association is not explained by NPP [nuclear power plant] gaseous discharges."
The French study is very weak evidence of anything -- just a couple of statistically significant results, out of many non-significant results reported in the paper, that merit some additional study. That's all.
http://www.ocregister.com/news/unit-338565-reactor-plant.html
Unit 2 is in an outage and the first of the steam generators they are inspecting has over 800 tubes that have more than 10% thinning. Two of the tubes have enough thinning to need to be plugged, and 69 tubes have thinning greater than 20% of the wall thickness. This is an indication that there may have been some significant problems with their feedwater chemistry control in Unit 2, and possibly in Unit 3 too.
Yet another reminder for the constitutionally impaired: Simply posting a reference to a report is not libel. The first amendment is still in effect.
Also, Citizens United notwithstanding, a nuclear power plant is not a person and so can't be libelled. nor can an industry. \
If he claims company X did Y, and they did not, that could be libel. But you just want to sue because you don't like what's being said.
Sure ... let's put Gene on the stand and have him swear, under oath, that he has never smoked pot. Should be fun!
This seems to me to be much ado over something that is arguably a one-character typo.
My employer wants their name kept out of this stuff, so I'm constrained.
It's not a manhood issue, for crying out loud.