Gotta love the Chinese approach - to “fix” the problem increase the permitted amount of radiation release!
Seems the French part-owners weren’t making headway and are now asking the US for assistance. I’m sure the Chinese will be as happy to be of assistance as they have been in exploring the origins of covid-19. [/sarcasm]
Do hope this is another case of looks potentially nasty but not actually a problem. As compared to Fukushima or Chernobyl.
Why mention Fukushima and Chernobyl in the same breath? Fukushima was also “looks potentially nasty but not actually a problem”, by every objective measure (i.e., measures other than “We call this a Category 5 disaster, meaning severe impact, and the impact is severe, as evidenced by us calling it Category 5”, or however it goes).
While Chernobyl was clearly the worse problem Fukushima had not one but three meltdowns and damage to all units. There were releases of radioactivity, some dangerous hot spots, and some elevated risk to people in the vicinity. Was the evacuation of the area an over-reaction? In retrospect, perhaps, but at the time exact hazards (or lack thereof) were unknown and the decision was made to err on the side of caution.
Fukushima demonstrated that you could have catastrophic failures at a nuclear plant without a Chernobyl-level disaster, but there were real failures that, had they not been managed properly, would have be extremely nasty.
I would say that is my greatest concern here - IF there is a failure will it be handled well or poorly? Will the safety protocols and features do the job or not?
My concern is more that the Chinese will do their best to say everything’s fine, and all’s well, until they absolutely can’t, and by then it’ll be too late for the international community to significantly help, and we’ll have a major radiological disaster as a result.
Right. Like at Chernobyl, where the Soviets denied there being any problem until Sweden pointed out that they were detecting higher levels of radiation outside their nuclear facilities than inside, and various other foreign observations made it undeniable that, hey guys, something went to shit in Pripyat.
Which might be why US aid is being enlisted, for remote observation, among other things.
“If the government denies it, it must be true.”
That is not what I read (German link). It seems there is a problem with the nuclear fuel, between 2 and 20 (French link) of the 70,000 fuel rods in use may be leaking some noble gasses (probably Xe-133 and/or Xe-135). This is normal, but the ammount of gas is somewhat too high, two times too high, it seems. To solve this you can either shut down the reactor and change the defect rods, which the Chinese authorities are unwilling to do as there is already a severe electricity shortage in the area, or you can change the way you operate the plant and hope it helps. The French would like to make some suggestions concerning this second possibility, but because they fear that this could contravene the rules the US has set up for the Entity List (link to Wikipedia) they are asking for a waiver, writes David Fishman on Twitter (sorry for linking there).
It is also relevant IMO that this is the only functioning Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) plant in the world and that Framatome, former Areva, owned by Electricité de France has enormous financial stakes in the success of this power plant type. All the other reactors of this type Framatome is building in France (Flamanville), Great Britain (Hinkley Point) and Finland (Olkiluoto) are running late and way over budget. Taishan-1 operates since December 2018, Taishan-2 since September 2019. Together they generate 1.66 GW electricity.
Taishan uses the new 3rd generation PWR.
Pressurized Water Reactors aren’t new but these EPR’s are the latest design…
Oh, hell. Nevermind.