Isn’t He a finite resource? I’ve heard we’ve only have a 30 year supply within the United States (OK and TX produce what ~90% of the recoverable He in the world?) Wouldn’t that have an impact on the long term use of these reactors? Or are we assuming fusion will be the rage by then? (Although, I won’t hold my breath about that technology either).
This explosion and the Grandcamp aren’t the only disasters that have happened at Texas City, though they were probably the worst. Sorry, I don’t have any way to search out all of the major events to check fatality rates.
As someone who was born in Texas City’s shadow and who has/had several relatives who have worked in the area over the decades, the briarpatch has always been a dangerous place to work. Notably, one uncle took early retirement to get out of Union Carbide in the 1970s–he didn’t feel comfortable with how the drug culture of the time mixed with a plant that operated with manual controls. Personally, I remember being five years old, living miles away, and looking out my bedroom window at refineries burning on the horizon.
User Hostile, I don’t know how finite He is as a resource. However, there’s no reason that it’s use in the kind of reactors I’m talking about would be using up the resource. There’s no reason to open the cycle, once it’s set up. I’m not saying it’s perfectly closed, but it’s certainly not a case of petroleum use, or even fissionable use, where it’s just once through the cycle, and it’s gone.
Also, IIRC the US Gov’t has a huge reserve of He stored away, dating back to pre-WWII strategic reserves and rigid airship days. I don’t know whether that’s still the case, or not, but I think that’s more than enough to set up all the reactors we’d need for the forseeable future.
Kimstu, I can’t say you’re entirely wrong.
But, at the moment, I think that the majority of the US population’s view of nuclear power is based on things learned through two popular movies: The China Syndrome, and Silkwood. Certainly, The Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, has gone out of it’s way to imply (if not actually say) that they are accurate descriptions of the nuclear power industry. Certainly that’s something that I’d been confronted with when I mention having worked in nuclear power.
For example, I’ve been asked often whether I’ve had to have wire brushes used on me to clean off contamination, like what happened to Cher in the movie. The question is so frustrating for me, since it shows how little people actually think about the implications of what they’d seen in movies. (And, no, it’s not just something that happens in movies about nuclear power - it’s ALL movies.) The reason for the use of the wire brushes is to get rid of the contamination. So, why is contamination bad? Eventually one can get people to say that there are two basic concerns with personnel contamination: ingestion risks, and the possibility of having wounds allow the contamination to enter the body; and that it will leave contamination in other areas, exposing other people to the same risks. Both of which are real concerns.
But, if the contamination is one someone’s skin why not start with soap and water? And if the soap and water isn’t going to get the crap off, how is it going to come off for ingestion or spreading? And if the concern is to avoid letting the contamination get into the body, why on Earth would you abrade the skin and push the contamination into said abrasions? :eek: Talk about self-defeating strategies. :smack:
Frankly, removal of skin contamination is a real concern - but we never used wire brushes. Start with simply using wipes. Then add isopropyl alcohol. Then try with soap. And if all that fails, wrap the affected area in plastic, seal it, and allow the sweat that builds up over time to cause the top layers of skin to slough off. Still not fun, even horrific for the person involved, but at least it’s not a contradiction between goals and methods. (I always had fun explaining about the real ways of dealing with personnel contamination when I did briefings to newbies aboard ship - they looked sooooo relieved when I said we’d never use wire brushes. And then I watched 'em turn white and green when I told 'em what we would do. <evil grin> After I took over doing the All-Hands Radcon program aboard ship we stopped having non-nucs walking through boundaries.
For a number of reasons accurate science, engineering and procedures are not believed to make for good drama. Until that changes, I don’t think that the majority of people are going to be able to be convinced. 
BTW, I would like to point out that it’s not really fair to claim that it’s a recent phenomenon, this distrust of the gov’t. It certainly goes back to the Vietnam era, and before, I believe.
<aside>
If I sound down on The Union of Concerned Scientists, it’s only because I am. After the revelation in 2003 that a closed nuclear plant in LA county had lost accountability for a section of spent fuel, they had a spokesman saying that there was no real reason to worry because in the years since the plant had closed down the activity in that piece of spent fuel would have died away considerably. I can, if people like, go into why I think that is the most specious bit of technically true double-talk to have been uttered by a special interest group since Paul Revere started talking about The Boston Massacre.
And yet, the media continues to treat the reports, and grandstanding, from this group as legitimate commentary on nuclear power. Until the people reporting on these issues are willing to critically examine everything they’re told, not just the ‘party line’ from the nuclear power industry, I don’t think that it’s going to be possible to change popular opinions.
</aside>
First, thanks for the shout out, Polycarp. I’m actually at a power plant now (well, OK, in a hotel) and talking about emissions controls with them.
The first real beef I have is that this refinery was not making products for power production. Aside from a tiny 1-3% or so, oil is not used for utility electric power production in the US. So there really isn’t a clear link between the refinery and nuclear power, unless you’re advocating a switch to nuclear-source electric vehicles.
Ah, but anthracite really isn’t all that clean-burning from a utility standpoint. In fact, some of the most clean burning coal in the world is sub-bituminous from Wyoming, and from Indonesia. US and English anthracite typically has low ash, but then so does Wyoming PRB sub-bituminous and many other sources. Many coals have lower sulfur content than anthracites, lower NOx production during combustion, and fewer trace elements and heavy metals.
In fact, we have a lot of fairly good coal in huge basins like the PRB, and even bad coal can be burned in power plants fitted with scrubbers to remove a guaranteed 96% or more of the sulfur dioxide, 90% or more NOx, and (maybe) 90% or more mercury. Ash particulate controls are often 99.5% efficient, and can be as much as 99.9%. Much of this ash can be used in concrete, and is a sellable commodity.
Coal can be very, very clean, given the BACT (Best Available Control Technology).
The real question is - can we afford to dump all that carbon into the atmosphere? That is the killer question, and one of the key things that should encourage nuclear as an option.
Thanks for speaking up and the information about coal and coal fired wastes.
I am aware that there’s no link between power production and this plant. It’s not that I think that a switch to nuclear power would have prevented this - I only meant to vent about my feelings about the risks that such plants have to accept, compared to the risks associated with nuclear power, which are not accepted. Though, as a former naval nuc, I’ll admit there’s a certain emotional link on my part with nuclear power competing with oil fired plants. Which isn’t accurate outside of naval applications. 
You mentioning being a former nuc made me think about that a bit. I’m very much in favor of nuc power and not worried about waste disposal issues. Yucca mountain is probably fine if people would stop demanding that someone prove that no radiation at all will ever ever escape.
I do worry somewhat about civilian nuc plant operation though. I spent a standard 6 year hitch on boomers and was never concerned about plant safety. (I suspect I got more exposure from the warheads than the plant.)
The nucs on the boat were a tight bunch and were doing “drills and spills” pretty regularly. All hours of the day and night.
I’m not so sure a civilian could or would put up with that level of training and I think that kind of thing is required.
Regards
Testy
Airman Doors, I’ll see you and raise you.
My father is a retired electrical engineer who worked in research. As I recall, the summer before the accident at Three Mile Island, he developed was a communications system intended for use inside nuclear reactors. As a result, he was called out to TMI during the accident to install it. My family and I spent Easter that year out there while Dad worked inside the facility. They still have the camera test chart signed by the techs who worked on the project – a pinup photo of Loni Anderson! He was required to wear a radiation badge the entire time he was there, and it never registered more than normal, background radiation. He would have picked up more radiation walking through Grand Central Station, since, I’m told, granite’s slightly radioactive. He also mentioned there was a herd of deer living on Three Mile Island and the technicians used to feed them through the fence. I’ve actually got rather fond memories of that vacation – it was the first time I hung out in a hot tub (the hotel had one) and I didn’t realize how big the story was until it turned up on the cover of Newsweek.
I’ve got a theory about why some people object more to nuclear power than oil or gas. Oil and gas, like coal, etc. are easy to understand: you burn it and you get power. The fire is visible and familiar, as are the dangers. If you don’t want to get burnt, you don’t get to close to where you can see the flames are. Radiation, however, is invisible. As a rule, you can tell if something’s burning by looking at it; you can’t tell if something’s radioactive. On the other hand, that’s just a half-assed theory.
CJ
Testy, I don’t know what your rate was, it sounds like you weren’t a nuc, and if I’m wrong, forgive me for this preachifying.
There are a lot of things I’d love to see changed in civilian plant operation. More drills, being one, but before that, fewer alarms for their plants. In one of Rickover’s plants there are approximately 20 alarms on the Reactor Plant Control Panel. At Three Mile Island there were around 200. And the fact that they had alarms for everything was a direct contributor to the accident they had there. Because they had a very small, known, leak on one discharge valve, they’d gotten used to getting high temperature alarms in the discharge lines. It wasn’t investigated as a problem, just assumed to be the ‘normal’ leaking alarm. Actually, what they had was a major failure, but because they didn’t immediately investigate - they didn’t realize how much of a coolant loss they had until the core was being uncovered. :eek: TMI was about the worst possible accident for a US designed plant. I don’t know whether you’ve seen the pictures of what the core looked like - it was half melted. Very scarey. And you can see all the anecdotes here about how little radiation was released to the environment. And, it was all because the operators had been overwhelmed with alarms for everything - and had gotten complacent about them.
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This natural reaction of people to assume that common alarms are all going to be ‘false positives’ is something that really worries me about the current airport screening processes, to be honest. Currently, as I understand it, they’re swiping for organics to check for plastic explosive traces on all luggage and personnel. Which is fine, as far as it goes. But the swipe method being used, also reacts to glycerine AIUI, a common component in many shampoos. If the screeners are getting 20-30 ‘hits’ every day from people who’d just used shampoo - how will they react when a real plastic explosive trace comes in?
</hijack>
The problem with running drills similar to those done on Naval plants is that, well, when the plant’s shut down, you have pissed off customers. Two - the civilian plants aren’t really designed to do a ‘reactor bounce,’ where Rickover’s plants could be recovered within an hour of a scram - sometimes less. And, finally - drills cost money. Not only in terms of lost income, but to properly run drills one needs either a mock-up (and a convincing one) for the drills to take place in, or you need a team of drill monitors who not only set up the drill scenario, but act as an additional layer of control for the reactor in those cases (like the Navy does) where the actual plant is the drill site. Which means you need people: roughly a drill monitor for each watchstander - sometimes more. And these people usually have to be trained above the level of the common watchstander - making them more expensive.
This is one reason I like the design for the pebble bed reactors so much: Between going to a gaseous heat transfer medium, and the fact that the reactor design won’t melt, even if you remove all coolant while the reactor is critical many of the risks associated with PWR’s can be avoided.
Yep, granite is definitely slightly radioactive and a geiger counter will start clicking more rapidly near granite.
[pointless anecdote again]I was doing six months of lab work in Nuclear Chemistry at the University of Darmstadt (Germany) right when Chernobyl happened. We also had to wear a radiation badge all the time, and when entering or leaving the building we had to walk through something that looked a little like an airlock. There were metal grids where you had to place your hands and grids you had to stand on. Only after the check was clear, did the second door open to let you in or out of the building. If you were “hot”, you and your shoes got a really thorough scrubbing before you were allowed to try again. After Chernobyl, they had to temporarily disable this, because the people entering the building were actually “hotter” than the people leaving, and they were continually triggering the alarms due to the radioactive muck on their shoes. :eek:.[/pointless anecdote]
So’s porcelain. Aboard ship we did a very careful scan of living quarters with a sensitive radiac (scintillation detector, not Gieger-Meuller detector) and one fine day someone stuck the probe inside one of the urinals. Counts doubled. :eek:
Half of us who’d heard about this were afraid someone hadn’t been careful with a partner who’d recently had a Barium enema. (Yes, we’d detected those before. And learned who was into anal sex, too.) Fortunately one of our higher ups knew that porcelain has Potassium, IIRC. But we were all flailing about for a few minutes there.
NAV-ET here, stayed out of those sweaty engineering spaces as much as possible. 
I take your point about the expense involved in doing drills but consider people trained to a level comparable to Navy nucs to be extremely important. I suspect the expense would be enormous but might not add very much to the cost of a kilowatt-hour at the meter. The real trick would be getting civilians to stand for it and maintaining standards.
On your point about the excessive use of alarms. In Saudi there is a gas-oil separation plant named Juaymah which exploded in the early '80s. It seems that an alarm continually reported methane leaks and either had too low a threshhold or was just plain marginal. The alarm was routinely reset until they had a serious leak one night. The resulting explosion took out a good deal of the plant.
The pebble-bed reactors sound ideal. Correct me if I’m wrong on this, but wouldn’t the majority of the high-level waste already be vitrified? It would save a lot on disposal.
Again, I’m pretty gung-ho on nuclear power. It seems like the only viable option in the long run. That being the case, it would be better to get started on it now rather than wait until we have rolling blackouts all over the place or end up poisoning the atmosphere.
I know it isn’t the case by a long shot but I would think the more politically astute green-party/tree-hugger types would be pushing for nuclear as fast as possible. They would seem to be a natural allies to the nuclear-power proponants; no CO2, a lot less strip-mining, and people get to keep using their multi-kilowatt hairdryers.
Regards
Testy
Slight nitpick. My Dad ran the nuclear reactor safety program at Sandia Labs for ~20 years. He did risk managment stuff along with a whole lot of other stuff. He was not employed by any company that owned power plants. They studied the heck out of possible issues. This is one of the tests my Dad ran. (I just love that test. He came home one day and drop pictures of that test on my desk and said ‘This is what I did last month’)
There are people out there doing the safety/risk management studies who are not in the pockets of the power companies.
Slee
As a Dem, my feeling about this issue for a long time has been: OK, where do you put the nuclear waste? Solve that problem, and we can talk.
And since all the places we can put the nuclear waste are out in the wide-open spaces of the American red-state West, the NIMBYing is coming mostly from the right - as is most of the lobbying for nuclear power.
What I’d say to conservatives is, argue it out amongst yourselves, and get back to us when you’re done, but don’t blame this one on the enviros when you folks are divided about it. In the meantime, I’ll continue agitating for greater energy conservation as a way of reducing demand (hence reducing cost increases) and keeping carbon out of the air.
RTFirefly, I think you’ve got some pretty strong blinders on, there.
F’rinstance - the person who made the Yucca Mountain facility a Presidential campaign issue was John Kerry. The governor of Nevada who has been fighting against the Yucca Mountain facility is likewise a Democrat. And I find it hard to characterize The Union of Concerned Scientists, to name one of the more vocal ‘public interest groups’, as being Republican or Red State.
Where did anyone blame anything in this thread on the ‘enviros’?
I’ve made specific accusations and gripes about The Union of Concerned Scientists, and there have been several other posters agreeing with my frustration with those who’ve substituted emotion for reason when discussing nuclear power, but I don’t think anyone here’s been complaining about the evil enviros. I suppose my comments about movie depictions of nuclear power might seem anti-Green, but I hadn’t meant them that way - rather it was a criticism of how many people swallow anything they see in movies without thinking critically about it.
How seriously do you take global warming? I can understand the desire to want perfect storage technologies, IF you believe that there’s not already a serious problem with CO2 emissions. But if you believe global warming is a serious problem, how can you allow carbon to be spewed into the air from traditional power plants while you wait for the perfect storage technology?
If global warming is as big a problem as many environmentalists claim it is, shouldn’t you be advocating nuclear power no matter how flawed storage technologies are? Global warming, we’re told, has the potential risk of wiping us off the planet, or at least devastating entire coastal areas, flooding cities occupied by hundreds of millions of people, and causing mass famine.
Compared to that, what’s a little nuclear contamination, assuming you think that’s a real risk? Why do you hold the good hostage to the perfect?
In any event, I think the risks of storage are greatly overblown. We are certainly capable of storing nuclear waste safetly at Yucca mountain for hundreds of years. Will it be stable for 10,000? I don’t know, but I do know that after hundreds of years of decay the waste won’t be nearly as dangerous, and if Yucca means we can buy a couple of hundred years to research longer term storage, I’ve got no problem with that.