Another San Onofre style nuclear plant failure in the offing?

[kristopher]

St. Lucie nuke plant tube wear problem prompts calls for investigations
Ivan Penn February 24, 2014 12:59pm

Lawmakers and consumer advocates on Monday called for investigations into whether the St. Lucie nuclear plant in South Florida is safe and whether ratepayer money was used appropriately to boost the reactor's power.

The questions came a day after a Tampa Bay Times story detailed how tubes inside the steam generators that help cool the reactor had abnormal amounts of wear.

The Times report also prompted a former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission engineer to say that federal regulators aren't using the right criteria to measure the damage. Until they do, the plant cannot be declared safe, he said.

"There is damage there and quite a lot. How do you account for it?" said Joe Hopenfeld, an expert in degraded steam generator tubes who still consults on nuclear plant cases.

St. Lucie's owner, Florida Power & Light, the state's largest utility, replaced the steam generators at its St. Lucie 2 plant in 2007, intending them to last until the plant's license expired in 2043....

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/st-lucie-nuke-plant-tube-wear-problem-prompts-calls-for-investigations/2167072


Through the example of the nuclear industry in Florida the rest of the article gives wonderful insight into the national scale issues of public interest related to nukes. Put succinctly, the ratepayers in Florida are getting hosed.

[kristopher]

1. "The damn thing is grinding down"

Cooling tubes at FPL St. Lucie nuke plant show significant wear
Ivan Penn Saturday, February 22, 2014


....."The bottom line is, these components are functioning within their requirements, and if they weren't they would be removed from service," said Michael Waldron, an FPL spokesman.

FPL is so confident in St. Lucie's condition that it boosted the plant's power. The utility acknowledged that will aggravate wear on the tubes, located inside steam generators.

Critics say that's like pressing hard on the accelerator, even when you know the car has worn brakes.

"The damn thing is grinding down," said Daniel Hirsch, a University of California at Santa Cruz nuclear policy lecturer. "They must be terrified internally. They've got steam generators that are now just falling apart."

....

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/cooling-tubes-at-fpl-st-lucie-nuke-plant-show-significant-wear/2166886

At the link there's an interactive schematic to explain the system.

[madokie]

2. Its only a matter of time

I guess they're going to have to have a catastrophe before anything is done. If it was just a matter of blowing out a tube or tubes and they could shut it down without much damage that would be one thing but the thing is nuclear power plants have the potential of causing great harm. I'd rather we didn't get to that point myself.

[kristopher]

3. The nuclear money makers have captured the nuclear regulatory mechanism

So you are right, it might very well take a major disaster to effect substantial change.

But then again, if the present trends continue, there is no reason to operate nuclear or coal plants if the utilities lose their customer base.

Report: Customers to leave utilities as grid parity nears for solar-storage
By Ethan Howland
FEBRUARY 26, 2014 | Print:

Dive Brief:

- As solar and energy storage prices fall, utilities in California and New York will likely see increasing customer defections as grid parity for commercial businesses could come in 2025 and 2031, respectively, according to a report. Parity has already arrived in Hawaii.

- The likelihood of favorable long-term customer defection signals the eventual demise of traditional utility regulatory models, the report said.

- Grid parity will take longer to reach for residential customers, the report said.

http://www.utilitydive.com/news/report-customers-to-leave-utilities-as-grid-parity-nears-for-solar-storage/232262/

The more customers they lose the higher the price the rest of the customers will have to pay, and that accelerates the process of change.