They got lucky ... it really was incredibly close to a full meltdown. And, I didn't need to watch this doc to know that. I was 12 miles away when it happened, have had enough people who would know tell me.
Right.
Yep. Nuclear is part of the solution. I work for a company that makes, well let's call it "carbon". Yep. We make the evil!!! SHUT US DOWN!
I work for one of the DOEs largest labs. We also have a neighboring facility that does a bit more on the military side of nuclear and radiological materials. I will say, there are lots of stories of guys who put in 30 plus years at both facilities, and have cancer and other issues related to exposure. There are other chemicals and materials in use around facilities that have serious issues, beryllium is a prime example at our lab. I say lab, but we have a high flux isotope reactor for research and plenty of materials on site that have risk with exposure.
Cost is greatly added to by insane regulatory regime timelines and worthless litigation.
Believe it was either before the event or during the cleanup phase.
Thanks, I’ll check out. I was in nuke biz at Westinghouse. Mainly overseas. Brightest guys I ever worked with anywhere were at Westinghouse Nuclear. Anyway, I don’t recall the regulatory side being a big hurdle, at least on the manufacture side. The NRC really had their stuff together. The single biggest issue for delay and overruns was that each and every utility in the states wanted their own custom plant. As noted, it’s like building a prototype every time. So it’s easy to see that regulations, inspections have to be rewritten every time.
We made components for Sizewell. It was pretty funny, I headed up our Nuclear/Military components back then, worked alot with Westinghouse EMD and PAD, and GE and others like the shipbuilding companies like Electric Boat. I was in my mid to late 20's and looked like I was 15. It was great when I would talk on the phone to these program managers and Military officers then go to a meeting and they see me and watch their faces. It was a smallish company, who's former owner worked with Admiral Rickover personally on some of the components and he trained me.
Those of us who came up in the nuclear biz. To me, and I suspect you, it was like a fraternity. I loved it!!! I also worked with all the PWR companies you noted.
Always thought Goldsboro (West side of the river and closer to the plant) got the short end of the stick coverage wise...
Saw it in 1979 while with a subcontractor to a Westinghouse led team reviewing the design for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The original 20-20 short “news“ story creatively cut and spliced hours of interviews to produce a narrative totally at odds with reality and truth. The “other side” piece demonstrated by compare and contrast video how the true story was replaced by the false narrative that suited the agenda of the 20-20 producers.
Another thing, there is always that 60 Minutes or 48 Hours segment on government spending waste on $250 hammers that the public can buy for $10 at Lowe's. No they can't. Those $250 "hammers" cost that because yes, the company is making a nice margin, but the certifications, testing and calibration of the equipment and processes are very costly. What you are trying to do is assure the product won't fail, and they aren't counterfeit. Those bolts out of a certain grade of Inconel steel is different than common stainless steel. The ovens they were heat treated in are mapped out with thermocouples and charts to assure that they were heat treated correctly. Your hammer didn't have an X-ray or some form of NDE test to assure there are no internal flaws. So these "expose's" that these news networks would occasionally do would really piss me off.
apnews.com
Germany may be switching gears on nuclear...
Germany argues over nuclear shutdown amid gas supply worries
Rising concern over the impact of a potential Russian gas cutoff is fueling the debate in Germany over whether the country should switch off its last three nuclear power plants as planned at the end of this year.
People forget the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts were not ratified until the early 70s, and took years of regulatory enforcement to have an affect on industry.
Yes. Chernobyl was a Cold War era Soviet design—had no containment vessel surrounding reactor. Soviets were only concerned with producing nuclear weapons material as an adjunct to generating electricity. People were expendable.
There is no doubt that far, far, far more people have been harmed by chemical pollutants in the US over the years than by radiation. Radiation is overly scary to people due to the Mushroom Clouds first seen at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the deaths that resulted than due to the actual risk posed by commercial nuclear power.
Fallout from above ground nuclear bomb tests in Nevada before all bomb testing was moved underground.
the new small modular reactors are supposed to be a much safer design and much cheaper. The two new behemoths that are being built near Augusta, GA are the same old story, too many years to build and billions over original cost projections
Yes, that is what I understand also. No release during the physical partial core melt event itself, I believe. Been told the small amount released was from the intentional depressurization of the containment vessel. Also was told that the plant operators at the time did just about everything conceivable wrong that they could have. You probably know more about specifics than I do but I mentioned what I had heard from various sources during several decades while working initially on nuclear power plant siting studies and then later in nuclear waste disposal.
You’d think. But there is an enormous fossil fuel presence out there that will fight nuclear energy to the death.
