Vt. nuclear plant shuts down to repair leaky pipe

[joshcryer]

MONTPELIER, Vt. – Workers at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant detected radioactive water seeping from a leaky pipe in the complex Sunday, forcing the plant to shut down to make repairs. The Nuclear Regulatory Comission said the public was not in any danger.

Plant spokesman Larry Smith said the nuclear reactor was taken out of service at 7 p.m. and estimated it would take 13 hours for it to cool down enough so technicians could enter the area to make repairs.

Work to fix the pipe would begin Monday morning, he said. The cause of the leak was not immediately known.

Smith said the leak of about 60 drops a minute was spotted earlier Sunday during routine surveillance. It was coming from a 2-foot-wide pipe that was part of the circulation system involving the reactor. The water was being collected by a sump pump and cycled back through the system, he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101108/ap_on_bi_ge/us_vermont_yankee

[wtmusic]

1. My kitchen sink got clogged last week, and I had to call Roto-Rooter.

A fee of $76.12 was incurred. The public was not in any danger.

[joshcryer]

2. Were you able to still wash your dishes?

[wtmusic]

3. Not for a few hours. It was frightening. nt

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Careful. Tapwater contains tritium.

You're lucky to be alive....

[madokie]

12. Big fucking difference here though wt

grrrr

[Roma]

4. Thank DOG no one was killed or injured

and it sounds like all the safety procedures were followed for an orderly shutdown.

Too bad coal and oil production can't be as safe as nuclear.

[wtmusic]

6. When was the last time you heard about a leaky pipe at a coal mine???

But nuclear with its leaky pipes is just as safe. Yah, sure.

Now that WindCoal is here nukes are living on borrowed time

[Dead_Parrot]

8. I believe it was last week

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/twelve-killed-in-china-coal-mine-flood/story-e6frfku0-1225944814746"> Twelve killed in China coal mine flood.

[wtmusic]

11. Apples and oranges.

They were killed from drowning, not radioactivity.

You pronukers love the bait-and-switch game, don't you? :eyes:

[Dead_Parrot]

19. You should have specified radioactivity rather than leaky pipes, then.

Don't worry, nobody gives a shit about dead coal miners anyway.

[madokie]

13. to put the dangers of a leaking pipe in a coal plant compared to a nuclear plant

when you hardly know what all that entails is stupid

and you wonder why many of us don't trust the nuclear industry and the shills for them

[wtmusic]

14. Agreed...drowning deaths are far less deadly than radiation deaths.

I'm on your side now :thumbsup:

[madokie]

15. What ever

[upi402]

9. Renewable energy has been threating us for decades

Thank the cloud beings our Big Oil buddies protect us from that horror!

[kristopher]

5. Did your plumber hide the fact you were leaking raw sewage into your icemaker?

That is comparable to what the operators of Vermont Yankee did for years. You reap what you sow...

(Gov. Elect) Shumlin said Thursday that he doesn't trust Entergy but that a new owner would not change his opposition to the plant's continued operation.

"The promise was that we would host the plant in Vernon until 2012, for 40 years, unless there were safety or other issues that developed," Shumlin said. "And we've kept that promise. The promise that was made to us also was there would be no high-level nuclear waste, (and that) it would be safe."

Despite decades of trying, the nuclear industry and the federal government have not been able to open a long-term disposal site for highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. That material now is being stored onsite at nuclear plants around the country, including at Vermont Yankee.

Shumlin added about the recent leaks, "If you had asked Vermonters 40 years ago if there's tritium, cobalt and strontium that causes cancer ... in the ground when this is over, would that still be acceptable to you? Vermonters would have said no, that's not acceptable."...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x264293

[GliderGuider]

10. And in related news:

Thousands of coal plants refuse to close after deliberately discharging billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

All life on the planet at risk, scientists say.
Company officials respond: "Meh."

Risk assessment, folks.

[kristopher]

16. *Valid* risk assessment is precisely what tells us nuclear power is an inferior soltion to AGW

I highlight *valid* because of the invalid garbage you routinely churn out to support nuclear or attack renewables.

Abstract here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Full article for download here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm


Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[GliderGuider]

17. You mean more like this?

Annual Deaths per TWh

Coal – world average               161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Oil                                36  (36% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass                    12
Natural Gas                         4  (21% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao     1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Solar (rooftop)                     0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind                                0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro                               0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Nuclear                             0.04 (5.9% of world energy)

One interesting point the author makes http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/07/summarizing-deaths-per-twh.html">here is that nuclear power has permitted us to avoid about 3 million deaths from 1951 to 2010 due to the 20% displacement of coal by lower-risk nuclear power.

This is yet another illustration of why I am completely in favour of the expansion of nuclear power. It's a safe, proven, high-capacity technology that has the potential to prevent huge numbers of deaths that will otherwise occur if we succumb to irrational fears and ideology.

[Nederland]

18. Thanks for cutting and pasting that article

I've never seen it before...

:eyes:

[TheWraith]

21. Have you ever actually read that article?

If you went through it with a critical eye, you'd realize it doesn't mean what you think it does.

[TheWraith]

20. Not to mention their releases of mercury, sulfur compounds, benzene, thorium, selenium... nt