Editorial--And my reply

[NHSparky]

Frankly, I'm surprised they published it...

First the original opinion piece in the Portsmouth Herald:

LINK

Nuclear plant still requires vigilance
Opinion
December 08, 2009 2:00 AM

The Seabrook Station nuclear power plant has been operating without major incident since 1990, but that doesn't mean those of us who live within the 10-mile Evacuation Planning Zone around the plant can become complacent.

Just recently, we learned the local plant is dealing with a problem faced by almost every nuclear plant in the country — debris that collects in the water that pools at the bottom of the building that houses the reactor and can be used to cool the plant in the event of an accident. If that debris gets into the cooling pumps, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is concerned that it could damage them and further jeopardize efforts to bring the accident under control.

We also recently learned the plant is operating at only 65 percent power because of vibrations in one of its three generators. The problem was discovered when operators attempted to bring the plant back up to full power after a recent refueling outage.

If there was any doubt the nuclear plant still poses a threat to residents of this region, the required test of the public alert system, with its wailing sirens, that took place recently should be an indication. The fact that there still is — and will probably always be — a public notification system in place around the facility is an admission by those who are most familiar with the production of electricity using nuclear fuel that an accident can happen.

While we fully believe the operators of Seabrook Station are doing the best they can to keep us and themselves safe, there have been changes at both the plant and in the community that could make any major accident more dangerous and its effects much more far-reaching.

For example, used nuclear fuel rods, which are highly radioactive, used to be kept exclusively in a spent fuel pool at the Seabrook site. That pool was filled with water and boron, which was meant to prevent any sort of nuclear reaction from occurring in the pool, which is located outside the reactor building.

The plan was to eventually move the spent fuel to a national repository at Yucca Mountain in New Mexico. However, technical problems and political issues have kept that site from being developed, while nuclear plants all across the country, including Seabrook, continue to spew out thousands of spent fuel rods every year.

At Seabrook Station and many other nuclear plants, room in the spent fuel pools has run out and those rods are now being stored in specially designed, above-ground casks. Just how long they will remain there — and the as yet unknown effects of long-term storage of radioactive materials, as well as harsh New England winters and salt air — remain an issue.

In addition, the Seacoast community has grown substantially since the plant went online in 1990. That means more people to be evacuated in the albeit unlikely event of an accident, and more vehicles will be on the evacuation routes than ever before.

Now, with issues of climate change coming to the forefront, there is more pressure on the government to find alternatives to the use of petroleum and coal as fuels for electricity production. Many are supporting a resurgence of the use of nuclear fuel as that "clean" alternative and advocating building new nuclear power plants.

Seabrook Station was the last nuclear power plant built in the U.S. because of public concerns about safety. It is critical that as we consider our options in mitigating the threats posed by climate change that we don't forget the threats posed by what is being considered a viable option in that mitigation, both nationally and locally.

And now, my reply:

LINK

Nuke plant editorial fails on facts and substance
Opinion
December 11, 2009 2:00 AM

It is with great disappointment that I read the very poorly written and even shorter on facts "editorial" you published today (Dec. 8).

The tone of the editorial smacks of something written by either someone in the Clamshell Alliance or someone wholly uneducated and unacquainted with the facts, but I repeat myself. I'd like to correct a few errors, if I may.

Disclaimer: While I am an employee of Seabrook Station, I do not speak for the plant owners, management, or any of my co-workers. The opinions expressed are my own.

First, the containment sump screens do filter out water that could be used to cool the vessel in the event of a breach of the reactor (primary) system. This is, however, by no means a first or even the most desirable method. Many other systems must fail before this source of water is relied upon for cooling of the reactor.

Second, we have one generator for supplying electricity to the grid. This generator is turned by a series of turbines, specifically a high-pressure and three low-pressure turbines. The reason the plant was limited to 65 percent power is not because of an actual problem, but because of the potential damage which could have been caused by resonant vibration of one of the low-pressure turbines in the event of an electrical fault, not one within the plant. This problem is not unique to nuclear power plants.

Next, accidents can happen in any situation. The fact that such alarmist rhetoric is used by you shows your ignorance of what the true hazards of nuclear power are and how they measure up to other everyday activities. Nor are you demonstrating awareness of exactly when such an alarm system would be used, which is only in a General Area Emergency, the most severe of the four action levels as set forth by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Seabrook Station has been awarded INPO-1 ratings (Institute of Nuclear Power Operations) for a decade now — a nearly unprecedented record in the nuclear industry. The previous operating cycle set another record for Seabrook Station — 511 days online.

The reactor at Seabrook Station has 193 fuel assemblies, of which only about one-third are changed out every refueling outage, about 18 months apart. The dry fuel storage is for those assemblies sufficiently decayed to where water cooling is no longer necessary. Currently, the dry fuel system allows Seabrook to continue operations until the year 2050. Storage on site was only meant to be a short-term option until fuel could either be reprocessed or sent to Yucca Mountain (in Nevada, not New Mexico as you stated). While there have been technical issues, the political issues are far more substantial. Reprocessing was stopped by the Carter administration in the late 1970s. Yucca Mountain, even if it was available, has been fought for more than two decades by our current Senate majority leader, Senator Reid. The problem with Yucca Mountain is more NIMBY than flawed technology. And now, the Obama administration has all but eliminated funding for long-term waste storage development.

Finally, Seabrook was not the last plant built in the United States. Others such as Watts Bar and Comanche Peak came on line after Seabrook. However, hysteria after the Three Mile Island incident and lack of political will and foresight have prevented any substantial development of new nuclear plants since the late 1970s. New reactor designs far safer than any currently in existence are available, and currently nearly 20 applications have been applied for in the last few years, including plants in Florida and Texas.

Alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar, are nice ideas, but without substantial government subsidies, their construction and generation costs are still well beyond the affordable range, and availability of these sources is measured in the 20 to 30 percent range. Nuclear power plants in the United States average more than a 95 percent availability. Even carbon-based generating plants using coal, oil or gas cannot approach such reliability.

The goal of a responsible media is to inform the public using facts on both sides of an issue, not hyperbole or rhetoric. The editorial written today is a sad example of how the media has failed in their fiduciary duty to educate and inform the public.

Xxxxx  Xxxxxx

Rochester

[bkg]

:golfclap:

Well done.

[IassaFTots]

 

[Chris_]

Well written, but I'm wondering why you bothered "X"-ing out your name.

[Hawkgirl]

Great rebuttal!

[NHSparky]

Well written, but I'm wondering why you bothered "X"-ing out your name.

Yeah, good point.

[zeitgeist]

Well written, but I'm wondering why you bothered "X"-ing out your name.

 

Can't wait to see how natives react to this.  P_town North could actually be declared a Dummy Coven.

[Eupher]

Nice job, Sparky.

[Thor]

I have been a proponent for Nuclear Power as long as I can remember. 3 Mile Island scared most of the country out of it. The way I look at it, ESPECIALLY now, is that the Navy has been using nuc power for as long as I am old, possibly a little more. They have been VERY successful in it's use. The majority of today's nuclear power plants are manned by ex-Navy nukes. I feel safe with that knowledge.

[bkg]

I have been a proponent for Nuclear Power as long as I can remember. 3 Mile Island scared most of the country out of it. The way I look at it, ESPECIALLY now, is that the Navy has been using nuc power for as long as I am old, possibly a little more. They have been VERY successful in it's use. The majority of today's nuclear power plants are manned by ex-Navy nukes. I feel safe with that knowledge.

If the French can do it....


Just sayin.

[Thor]

If the French can do it....


Just sayin.

I dunno, bkg, that almost reads like a slam against my shipmates........

[Odin's Hand]

If the French can do it....


Just sayin.

How many orders of reaction are involved in a nuclear reaction and what are those orders of reaction called?

[NHSparky]

How many orders of reaction are involved in a nuclear reaction and what are those orders of reaction called?

Not really a chemical reaction as one would think of an order of reaction.

However, fission being a neutron (typically thermal) and a U-235 nucleus momentarily creating an unstable U-236 nucleus which fissions into two fission "fragments", an average of 2.08 neutrons and a total energy (in kinetic energy of the fission fragments, neutrons, gammas, and other stuff) of 210MeV per fission due to the mass defect.

From there, we'd go into what we referred to in Nuclear Power School as the "six-factor formula".

More on that later.

[rich_t]

Excellent job NH.

[Odin's Hand]

Not really a chemical reaction as one would think of an order of reaction.

However, fission being a neutron (typically thermal) and a U-235 nucleus momentarily creating an unstable U-236 nucleus which fissions into two fission "fragments", an average of 2.08 neutrons and a total energy (in kinetic energy of the fission fragments, neutrons, gammas, and other stuff) of 210MeV per fission due to the mass defect.

From there, we'd go into what we referred to in Nuclear Power School as the "six-factor formula".

More on that later.

I meant strictly as a kinetic energy release from binding energy.

[Oceander]

Not really a chemical reaction as one would think of an order of reaction.

However, fission being a neutron (typically thermal) and a U-235 nucleus momentarily creating an unstable U-236 nucleus which fissions into two fission "fragments", an average of 2.08 neutrons and a total energy (in kinetic energy of the fission fragments, neutrons, gammas, and other stuff) of 210MeV per fission due to the mass defect.

From there, we'd go into what we referred to in Nuclear Power School as the "six-factor formula".

More on that later.

Would that be

The "six-factor formula" is the neutron life-cycle balance equation, which includes six separate factors, the product of which is equal to the ratio of the number of neutrons in any generation to that of the previous one; this parameter is called the effective multiplication factor (k), a.k.a. Keff. k = LfρLthfηЄ, where Lf = "fast non-leakage factor"; ρ = "resonance escape probability"; Lth = "thermal non-leakage factor"; f = "thermal fuel utilization factor"; η = "reproduction factor"; Є = "fast-fission factor".

?  (Dontcha just love Wikipedia :D ).

[NHSparky]

I meant strictly as a kinetic energy release from binding energy.

Okay.  Well, as you know, each fission of a U-235 nucleus results in a release of about 210Mev of energy, about 80-85 percent of which is kinetic energy of the fission fragments.  The remainder is in the form of gammas, neutron energies, and other subatomic particles.

How do we get 210MeV, however?  Simple--Einstein showed us that matter does equate energy, to be specific, 931MeV per amu.  If we take the mass of the individual components (neutrons + protons), we would find that their mass is greater than the measured mass of the nucleus.  This mass defect per nucleon is referred to as the binding energy, and can be shown in a curve which looks something like this:



So if we take the average mass of the fission fragments and neutrons, and compare them to the mass of the neutron plus Uranium nucleus, the difference in mass is about 0.22 amu, or 210 Mev.

[NHSparky]

Would that be
?  (Dontcha just love Wikipedia :D ).

So much for being told all the shit we were taught was considered classified.  I'm sure specifics on the reactor and systems were, but the Physics of it, not so much.

And yeah.  But I still remember the numbers involved in each step...which pretty much makes me a 

[Oceander]

Okay.  Well, as you know, each fission of a U-235 nucleus results in a release of about 210Mev of energy, about 80-85 percent of which is kinetic energy of the fission fragments.  The remainder is in the form of gammas, neutron energies, and other subatomic particles.

How do we get 210MeV, however?  Simple--Einstein showed us that matter does equate energy, to be specific, 931MeV per amu.  If we take the mass of the individual components (neutrons + protons), we would find that their mass is greater than the measured mass of the nucleus.  This mass defect per nucleon is referred to as the binding energy, and can be shown in a curve which looks something like this:



So if we take the average mass of the fission fragments and neutrons, and compare them to the mass of the neutron plus Uranium nucleus, the difference in mass is about 0.22 amu, or 210 Mev.

       

[littlelamb]

Great letter

[Chris_]

So much for being told all the shit we were taught was considered classified.  I'm sure specifics on the reactor and systems were, but the Physics of it, not so much.

And yeah.  But I still remember the numbers involved in each step...which pretty much makes me a 

Great letter, and good process explanation.......

The Navy has been classifying nuke shit that was/is general knowledge in the academic community for four decades, at least.......I don't know why, since most of their powerplant stuff is actually designed in the private sector to begin with, but I guess they have their reasons.......knowledge never makes one a loser, except in the eyes of one.....

doc

[bkg]

I dunno, bkg, that almost reads like a slam against my shipmates........

Wasn't meant that way.
~~
Just that we're getting our ass kicked by the french in Nuclear energy. I mean.... if they can go ~85% nuke, WTF can't we?

[Doc]

Wasn't meant that way.
~~
Just that we're getting our ass kicked by the french in Nuclear energy. I mean.... if they can go ~85% nuke, WTF can't we?

Simple.....political will.......we have the technology (in fact most of France's nuke plants are US designs)......our politicians won't allow any new licenses to be approved for decades......GWB started the process of accelerated approval for some new plants, but it is my understanding that the messiah's administration has decided not to go forward with them.

The same political rationale applies to drilling in ANWAR, or offshore.......America has enough energy resources to provide for our needs for centuries, and new ones are being discovered all the time.......our leaders lack the spine to tell the environmentalists to go pound sand.....and actually develop them.......

They would much rather play around with wind and solar crap, that is neither economically feasable, nor practically possible to come close to meeting our energy requirements.........but it plays well with the "tree huggers"......

doc

[bkg]

Simple.....political will.......

It was rhetorical, but you're correct.

[NHSparky]

Bingo--and now that Yucca is all but dead and there's a cut (actual cut) in funding for long-term storage research, it'll be real easy to say, "Well, we'd LOVE to license your construction, but darn it, we're just plum out of places to put that pesky waste now!!!"