NY Times Article About Spent Fuel Pools and Dry Casks for Long Term Storage

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/business/energy-environment/06cask.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&src=ig

Above is a link to the article.

This is a great article for understanding how dangerous a situation we are in with all this spent nuclear fuel sitting around.  I don't want to say too much because you should just read the article.

Of note is that if you are exposed to a spent fuel rod, it's radiation levels are so high it will kill you in minutes.  The Illinois plant detailed in the NY Times was in the process of dry casking 57,000 pounds of this stuff.

I know that Fort Calhoun dry casked much of their spent fuel within the last two years.  I believe they built at least 2 concrete bunkers for this purpose.

Another interesting part of the article is how dangerous it is just to remove rods from the pool and put them in the casks.  It doses the workers with 1/4 of the yearly recommended dose of radiation.  And costs about 1.5 million dollars to per cask.


The last thing I'll highlight from this article is the incredibly stupid qoute from Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the NRC, who came to Fort Calhoun last week to look around and say everything is fine.  Jaczko, said the difference between spent fuel pools and dry casks is "like buying one Powerball ticket or 10 Powerball tickets."  It's his way of telling us how unlikely a nuclear accident is at one of these plants.  Read the article and see if you agree with him, and if someone who sees things like that should be listened to at all.

Missouri River Water Levels Stabilizing, Near Flood Being Deemed Non-Inicident

With my previous post you can see the water levels in the successive reservoirs at each of the 5 damns along the Missouri river.  Take a look and it is clear that the waters have at least leveled off and are in fact declining.  This is very good news.  It seems that the damn system built by the Corps of Engineers after the 1952 flood was built just well enough to be up to the task.  And it seems that the Nebraska's nuclear stations were built just far enough from the tamed Mighty Mo.

The semi-official word on the nuclear plant is that barring a great deluge of rains, or a dam failure, all is well.  The story of Fort Calhoun:  It wasn't a Fukushima.  It was barely a national news story.

But ask yourself, was the news about this story enough?  Did it come soon enough?  Since the experts are thus far correct, that no major release of radiation has occurred, maybe so.  However I can't get over some of the early propaganda manuvers.  All the stories emphasizing that it was the nation's smallest nuclear plant and that it had been shut down since April.  No mainstream news explained the dangers of an overheating spent fuel pool.  No news agencies used this event to inform the public that spent fuel needs to be cooled for years after being used in the reactor.  Americans in short still know very little about what could have happened.  Omahans know very little and it was right next door.  Fort Calhoun has been a non-incident.

So where does this leave us?  Well, alive and healthy thankfully.  And I predict that unless something else happens to raise people's blood pressures and consciousness of this plant's dangerous location, Fort Calhoun will be firing up the reactor again come this September.  After all a flood like that only happens once 100 years at least, maybe once in 500 years.

Which leads me to another prediction.  The same folks who said, "nothing to worry about this isn't the big bad 500 year flood", will now say there WON'T  be a flood like this for another 500 years, so it's okay if the plant restarts and everything goes back to "normal."

Although I for one, would prefer the plant closes, and is cleaned up (a hugely expensive operation no doubt).  That spent fuel is moved to a safer location, (instead of being in mausoleums in the path of a mighty river where it's suppose to safely decay for 100,000 years).  That there is a huge local and national debate about closing it, after all it came pretty close to endangering the water supply for how many cities?  How many people?  (Omaha to Kansas City to Saint Louis...to  New Orleans, cough!)  I would prefer a debate about how many wind turbines it would take to replace that plant (geez 500 wind turbines is SOOO Many!).

But I hope none of that actually happens, because this incident has taught me that to have that debate, probably takes a disaster.

The plant just has to sit in the 4 feet of water for another month or two without incident.

How to monitor the 5 Missouri Dams

Here is how to get a personal sense of what the waters are doing on the Missouri:

There are 5 dams (with 5 reservoirs above them) on the Missouri between the mountains in Montana, and the final Gavin's point dam in Yankton South Dakota, on the border with Nebraska.  Luckily we can see how much water is in each resevoir with this website:

http://www.nwd-mr.usace.army.mil/rcc/plots/plots_rollover.html#

An examination of these levels show that the level of snowfall runoff is decreasing, all the way up at the Fort Peck resevoir.  The Garrison damn on Lake Sakakawea is the resevoir that was so overfilled that this whole thing had to start.  And as of today the trend is downward, just barely, through all the dams except Fort Randall.  We need to give it a few days, but this is very good.

Gavins Point is the final choke point, and really it has the final say on how much water hits Fort Calhoun.  Currently it is releasing 160,000 cfps.  They can release alot more through the gates, but lets hope they can hold at this level for a while.  An increase means deeper water for the Nuclear plants to deal with.

There have been reports that Gavins Point is cracking, and even that the Army has planted explosives on it to cut loose part of the damn so the whole thing won't fail.  But this is unsubstantiated.  It is the rant of a man in a ridiculous American flag with constitution words or something-Polo Shirt, on internet.  He heard it through a friend of a friend.  I don't know why they would blow it when they could just open the gates more, but then I don't dress like that.

I won't bother putting his video here until I hear more.  But you can easily look it up on Youtube.

June 27th Aerial video footage

Excellent helicopter footage of the plant since the aquaberm broke.  Thank you Mary Greely for getting this posted.

A quick word, you can see that the berm around the switchyard looks very good.  The rest of it, well it's hard to believe there isn't knee-deep water in all those buildings.

But I encourage you to read my previous post with the elevations of protection to critical gear.  It's important to realize that although it seems some powerful people screwed up and should have planned better, and although we were not told enough soon enough about this plant, details are starting to emerge.  And we have no choice but to hope the provisions hold out if we value our lives and this great land we live in.  When the water clears, the debate about decommissioning should no doubt begin.  But for now, learn the crucial details and please hope the best for us that live near this plant and everyone along Missouri.

Helicopter footage:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxcV0F-H0Vo

Elevations of Flood Protection at Fort Calhoun

This is a breakdown of the elevations above sea level of some crucial gear at the Fort Calhoun plant.  All of this data is taken directly from this World Herald article:
http://momaha.com/article/20110627/NEWS01/706279901

Water is currently at about 1006.5 feet above sea level.

Electrical switchyard:  Protected by a 9 foot earthen berm to 1010 feet.  (3.5 foot to go).  Of note here is that this type of berm has an increased chance of failure within the last couple feet.  They are building it up higher apparently. 

Electrical Components within the Switchyard:  Sandbagged individually to 1011 feet.

2 Backup Diesel Generators:  Protected to 1014 feet above sea level by unknown means.  Note we do not know what level these generators sit at, only the level to which they are protected.  (7.5 feet to go)

Secondary backup generators:  1036 feet.  (30 feet to go).

Spent Fuel Pool:  1038.5 feet.  Apparently this is up very high, which is good.  I would like to know the lowest height of the circuit for the coolant pumps.

Reactor height is not given.  OPPD states that it does not matter since the reactor is an air-tight fortified structure that can sit in the water.

Spent Fuel Dry Casks:  These are protected to 1014 foot and they say they weigh 88 tons and cannot float away.  These would need to be hermetically sealed as well as they are essentially mausoleums for cool spent fuel.  I can't figure out why they would have ever spent the time and money to store this radioactive fuel on such low ground though.

So OPPD also mentions a contingency plan to hook directly into overhead power transmission lines, which sounds a bit crazy but I'm sure there is a daredevil or two that can do it.  I assume this would be attempted if the water hit 1014 feet, as a measure on top of the back-up, back-up generators.

Well, the bottom line seems to be that 1010 feet above sea level is where it becomes a nailbiter.  At 1011 feet they lose external power for sure and are on diesel backups.  At 1014 the diesel backups are in trouble, and water will over take the dry cask storage.  Pretty much at 1014 they will be relying on miracles.  Luckily that is 7.5 foot of river swell to go.

Also the river is so wide now, it rises much more slowly, as noted in the World Herald article.  The Army Corps of Engineers predicts the river will crest not much higher than 1008 feet as long as the rains aren't too heavy in the northern plains.

Let's all hope for the best.

Great Article Answers the Key Questions!!!

Well, it's like the news gods have answered my prayer.
I can hardly believe it, but the World Herald printed a fantastic article telling us the elevations of all the crucial electrical power and the height to which the switchyard, the backup diesels, the reactor, and the spent fuel pool cooling systems are protected to.

The article also gave a play-by-play of the aquaberm popping incident.  It said the workers thought-fast and cut power to the transformers before the water hit them and shorted them out.

In short, read the article, I will do another post with a breakdown of elevations, but here it is, thanks Nancy Gaarder and Sam Womak at the World Herald for writing the most informative article yet on the Fort Calhoun Plant:

http://momaha.com/article/20110627/NEWS01/706279901

Aquaberm protecting reactor and other main buildings fails

Well, this is pretty serious.  The 8 foot tall aquadam or aquaberm, a 2000 foot long rubber hose essentially, filled with water, designed and set in place to protect the main buildings of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station collapsed around 1:30am last night (Sunday 6/26).  You can see the aquaberm as the long black tube around the main buildings in the top picture taken at least 1 week ago and published in the NY Times:



This apparently innudated the plants transformers with floodwater.  Must have shorted them out something incredible.

Here is the article in the Omaha World Herald:

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110626/NEWS01/110629782/1007

So now you've read the article, but what does it mean, and what is true?

First off, they have switched crucial power to diesel backup generators.  But the reporters fail to adress the crucial questions:  Do the diesel generators need to run their electricity through these same soaked transformers????

If not, then the diesel generators must be of voltages that can hook direct to crucial circuits controlling spent rod cooling in both the main reactor and the spent fuel pool.

Secondly, the article says they are working to restore off-site power (power that comes to them via powerlines).  Well, will this power be any good to them now if the transformers are fried???

It is simply not an insane question to ask now, if the 88 hour countdown to spent fuel rods boiling off their cooling waters has begun.  Luckily tommorrwo the NRC president visits town, and maybe that will put extra pressure on the plant to be honest with the public.

Frankly this is step one of a no more than 3 step sequence to disaster.  Remeber that at Fukushima, it was not that they didn't have diesel generators, it was that they had nothing dry to hook them up to to maintain cooling.

I am sorry if this post is alarming, but we now need specific answers before something radioactive at the plant starts steaming.

Levee Breach drops water at Cooper Station

This is a simple direct AP article with good data about water levels as they relate to Cooper Station.  Here's a link to the article, but it's so short I decided to just print it here:  It's officially from the AP:

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20110624/NEWS01/110624004/Nebraska-nuclear-plant-gets-relief-from-levee-breach?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Frontpage|s

BROWNVILLE, Neb. (AP) — The failure of a Missouri River levee in northwest Missouri is offering a brief reprieve from flooding for southeast Nebraska near the Cooper nuclear power plant.
The National Weather Service says the river level dropped more than a foot at Brownville to 43.1 feet Friday morning after Thursday’s levee breach upstream in northwest Missouri.
Before the breach, the river had been 44.8-feet-deep at Brownville on Thursday. The weather service predicts the river to return to that depth over the weekend.
The Nebraska Public Power District owns the nuclear power plant. The river would have to rise to 46.5 feet before reaching Cooper, but the plant would be shut down as a precaution if the river reached 45.5 feet.
Spokesman Mark Becker says the plant continues to operate at full capacity.

New York Times Article Review

Well, a New York Times article did what no local news could figure out how to do, or dare to do.  It straight up told us the level of flooding at the plant in elevation as of yesterday.  That figure, 1007 feet.

The article goes on to explain that OPPD fought kicking and screaming since 2009 to only need to protect the plants operations to 1009 feet.  Boy is it a good thing the NRC stepped in and forced them to reconsider their flood defenses last year.  As of last year the NRC had found that: 

"at flooding levels above 1,008 feet, the plant would experience a loss of offsite power and loss of intake structure and water pumps providing essential cooling water to the plant. In that case, "the plant would be incapable of reaching cold shutdown" with normal operations"

But this has since been rectified this year and this is what NRC spokesman Victor Drakes has now said, "Today the plant is well positioned to ride out the current extreme Missouri River flooding while keeping the public safe."

1010 feet is noted as the 500 year flood mark, and the plant is supposed to be operational to 1014 foot, although this has never been tested.

Here's the whole article, and I gotta say, finally some decent journalism.  Trying to nail down real elevations of critical systems, versus floodwaters.  Bravo New York Times!

Which brings up the point of where has the World Herald been on this story???

Anyway, here is the link to the Times story:  http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/06/24/24climatewire-a-nuclear-plants-flood-defenses-trigger-a-ye-95418.html

How do I monitor Blair, NE water levels?

Blair is the closest point with reported numbers on flood stage.  You can see them here:

ttp://www.wunderground.com/US/NE/045.html#FLO

So what’s the outlook? How much more water can Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station handle before the situation becomes dangerous?

This article:    http://www.9news.com/news/world/204697/347/Could-Nebraska-flooding-create-a-nuclear-safety-risk      states that they can take 3.5 more feet of water at Fort Calhoun.  Incidentally, this statement was made when Blair was just about reading 32.5 foot.  So I feel a good rule of thumb is that IF Blair gets near 36 feet, it’s time to demand information or be at a safe distance.

We don’t get river height levels reported in “feet above sea level”. Instead we are told different river heights at different locations along the river. How can we know how high the river is at the Fort Calhoun Plant?

Good question.  I wish there was an up to date notice on how high the water is at the plant in elevation above sea level.

How are they protecting the plant from floodwaters

There is some impressive and hefty protections at the plant.  The key feature is the 8 foot tall "aquadam," a large rubber tube filled with water that surrounds the key part of the facilty.  It is very long.

The substation where power comes in and leaves when the plant operates has a 9 foot earthen berm built up around it with sandbags as well.

For info and pictures on the protection, visit OPPD's blogspot:  http://oppdstorminfo.blogspot.com/

How high up does the Switchgear room sit at Fort Calhoun?

This is one thing inquiring minds would like to know exactly.  One OPPD press release stated that the switchgear room could be protected to 1011 feet above sea level at Fort Calhoun, unfortunately this press release I can no longer find.  A more recent press release however has them saying the plant will be safe to 1014 and beyond    In general the entire plant sits at 1000 feet above sea level.

But they have back up diesel generators and backup coolant pumps right?

Correct.  They have both.  What is more at issue is the height at which the wiring to coolant pumps exists.  Because wet wires will not be able to power the pumps, regardless of whether the diesel generators are producing electricity.
    This was the end lesson and fatal flaw of Fukushima.  Once they had the diesel gas and generators it didn’t matter because the “switchgear rooms” which are just giant breaker panels for all the wiring, were too low and were swamped with ocean water.

Isn’t the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station not dangerous since it has been shut down since April:

    It is good that OPPD’s Fort Calhoun reactor has been shut down since April for refueling and maintenance.  Spent nuclear fuel in the form of uranium rods however, are still very hot (and radioactive) and require cooling in any nuclear power plant in a facility called the spent fuel pool.
    Spent uranium rods must be cooled in a containment unit for up to a decade.  The rods are sitting in a special water and a large coolant heat exchanger much like a radiator pipes through this type of facility.  The coolant is pumped through the pipes by large electric pumps which must keep running to prevent the spent rods from getting too hot.  If the rods get too hot they can boil the water off themselves, creating hydrogen and possibly blowing the roof off the containment bunker. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool
   
    This is what happened at the spent fuel pool at Fukushima #4 in Japan.  Once the roof is gone radiation will go into the air.
    What is crucial at Fort Calhoun is to keep these electric coolant pumps running in the spent fuel pool.
    OPPD disclosed how long it would take for the rods to boil in a press release after their June 7th fire.  They stated that 88 hours without active cooling is all it would take for the water to boil off of the spent fuel rods.  It should be noted that they fixed the electrical problem on June 7th after only 2 hours.  And as of now the coolant pumps are running fine.

Here is an article about the June 7th fire:  http://www.propublica.org/article/electrical-fire-knocks-out-spent-fuel-cooling-at-nebraska-nuke-plant/single

Purpose of This Blog

This blog is intended to be informative, NOT NEGATIVE.  The author of this blog thoroughly believes in the intelligence and skill of the engineers and workers who are working to keep us safe in this unfortunate situation.

The reason for this blog is that there is a vacuum of good journalism on these plants right now.  We have OPPD and NPPD telling us everything is fine, and the press just passing that “news” after telling us that there too many "swirling rumors" and on the other hand there are some very far out things being said and even conspiracy theories.

If you followed the story at Fukushima, you may, like me, want to know more crucial details about the risks facing these nuclear power stations during this flood.

I sincerely hope this blog will become a trustworthy source of basic information.

I am not a scientist or engineer.  Just a handy person with good research skills.  I don't claim to get everything exactly right, but what I write here I believe to be the truth.  I encourage corrective comments, especially with links.

The format of this blog is question and answer.  It just seems easiest, and I hope it doesn’t sound like I'm talking down to anyone.

Please, lets help each other to keep informed.