N.Y. has a nuke plant event - shut down - 230 days since the last one

[ensho]

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php


A suburban New York nuclear reactor has been shut down to repair a pump. Entergy Nuclear, owner of the Indian Point power plant in Buchanan, says there was no release of radioactivity. The pump is one of four that supply cooling water to the Indian Point 2 reactor. An Entergy spokesman says operators had noticed an increase of water flow through the pump's mechanical seal over the past two weeks. He says that on Monday night, the extra flow reached a point at which operators decided to shut down for a repair. He says it's not yet known how long Indian Point 2 will be offline. It had been 230 days since its last shutdown. The other reactor at the plant, Indian Point 3, continued operating at full power.
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[snooper2]

1. Good job Engineers!

Thanks for posting this so we know they are on top of the job!

[RC]

2. How come nobody ever posts anything about coal or gas powered generating plants when they shut down

for maintenance?

[JackRiddler]

3. Hm, because the worst possible catastrophe at any such plant...

would be terrible and possibly kill thousands, but would not render city-sized areas uninhabitable for generations, or force the permanent evacuation of New York City?

Do you think that might have something to do with it?

[RC]

5. Unless there is a 9+ earthquake followed by a 35 foot tsunami, not likely to happen, except

in paranoid people's heads.

Nuclear power has a far better safety record than coal or natural gas (including wind & solar) for power generation. That is a fact. Just like flying is far safer that driving.

[JackRiddler]

7. Unless. Hm. What is the meaning of unless?

Would you like to move into the Chernobyl zone? Be my guest.

Even once you give it the whitewash, nuclear power's supposed safety record over a short period of a few decades is irrelevant compared to the proven risks of rendering large areas uninhabitable for thousands of years.

It's important, when that's brought up, that you immediately reach for the ludicrous false dichotomy of pretending hydrocarbon is the only alternative to nuclear, that the only choice over the next few decades is more MTR coal or more sooner-or-later Fukushima.

And thanks for whatever the convoluted sentence is supposed to mean that seems to include "wind & solar" as a sub-category of "natural gas." Sounds about right.

[RC]

8. Ah yeah, Chernobyl. A pile of graphic blocks.

Where in the USA has there ever been a pile of graphic blocks used for nuclear power? No where.

[font size="5"]Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste[/font]

By burning away all the pesky carbon and other impurities, coal power plants produce heaps of radiation[b/]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

[SidDithers]

4. Because the National Association of Radio Distress-Signalling and Infocommunications...

located in Budapest, Hungary, doesn't breathlessly report every time there's a turbine failure or a bleach spill at a coal or gas-fired generating plant.

Sid

[MineralMan]

6. Nuclear plant shuts down to make repairs.

Mechanical system components need repairs from time to time. When that happens, operations often have to cease during repairs. This is an ordinary event, and has nothing to do with nuclear plants specifically.

Nuclear power generation is not safe. It has never been safe, and cannot made to be safe. That said, normal repairs and maintenance are hardly hazardous events, and don't really need to be reported on this website every time they occur.

[Major Hogwash]

9. Good unresponded to comment.

I hate the fact that we have nuclear plants in the United States.

I guess no one has "googled" or "binged" the nuclear plant in Hanford, Oregon lately or the Snake River Aquifer near NBR-1 in Idaho.

Oh, well.
We didn't need to drink water anyway.
We'll all just glow in the dark and play Apologist Bingo until the day we die.

[SidDithers]

10. Kick for posterity...nt

Sid

[Edweird]

11. I was working in the switchyard of a nuclear plant when something similar happened.

A bad pump caused a 'reactor trip'. There was a release of steam - it was the sound of an explosion and the steam came out of a chute the ends at the top of the reactor dome. I'm don't scare easily but that freaked me out.