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.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Sunday, July 3, 2011
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.
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.
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