Triangle Picked as Nuclear Site

[auburngrad82]

http://www.newsobserver.com/104/story/392027.html

Progress Energy plans to build its next nuclear reactors at its Shearon Harris nuclear plant in Wake County.
Executives with the Raleigh utility said Monday that they will seek a federal license for two new reactors at the site, setting a timetable to build the first of the two reactors within a decade.

The selection of Shearon Harris, about 20 miles southwest of Raleigh, puts North Carolina in the forefront of a resurgence in nuclear power.

Progress Energy and Charlotte-based Duke Power are among a dozen companies seeking licenses to build the nation's first nuclear reactors since a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania paralyzed the industry a quarter-century ago.

I think it's interesting that this announcement came the same week that a nuclear meltdown was the subject of the West Wing. Life imitating art?



Liberal bumper stickers

[loudsue]

1. I live in this area, and there has been a lot of legal turmoil over these

nuclear plants. But, so far, there haven't been any accidents that I know of. I remember when they built the first nuclear reactors at Sharon Harris plant there. They had already planned on expanding some down the road. I guess this is "down the road" time. The area is growing exponentially, and I know that there has been a strain on the power grid because of it.

:kick::kick::kick:

[KoKo]

2. I remember when I lived in NJ and Three Mile Island Reactor had to be

shut down and the fear at that time. Being on the NJ/PA border we would be directly affected by the winds from a melt down and millions of people would have died in a Chernoble type accident. We were all wondering if we would have time to evacuate and how fast we could get out.

I hate to think of a "reactor center" at Shearon when the Triangle area has grown so rapidly. The winds could take it all West and if it was an odd weather even like we are having lately it could wipe out Southern Pines, Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh and all the way West South or North for many miles.

I don't feel comfortable with that. I would protest them being built.

[loudsue]

3. Hi KoKo01! How ya been??

I'm still working out of town -- it's been since June 6. I may be going home soon! :hi:

:kick:

[Massacure]

4. How do you know millions would have died?

Following the Chernobyl accident, emergency officials found the death toll surprisingly lower than they expected. On top of that, Soviet reactors do not have containment domes like U.S. ones do.

[KoKo]

5. Russion Information Services said...death toll "surprisingly lower."

Would you believe that ...if BushCo. tells you the Death Rate for New Orleans was "suprisingly lower?"

Back then...we had REAL MEDIA..and there was a "WATCH" about "Three Mile Island" and the NY/NJ News (in that area they are the same) was warning that "EVACUATIONS MAY BE NECESSARY" the "Mushroom Cloud will BE OVER YOU!

Now..since I was there at that time..and am telling you about the fear in NY/PA/NJ about which way the "wind would drift" you have to understand...I was there..in that time frame just like WE ALL ARE NOW...and if you thought a REAL MUSHROOM CLOUD was drifting your way from a Nuclear Reactor who was in "MELT DOWN" would you be concerned or not? :shrug:

[Massacure]

6. Reactors don't create Mushroom clouds.

There is not a critical mass of Uranium in the reactor for it to grow exponentially. You obviously don't know what you are talking about.

[TankLV]

7. So all the experts and technical papers are wrong?

Put up or shut up.

Give is proof to your claim.

[Massacure]

9. What experts and technical papers are you citing?

Nuclear reactors just don't go up in mushroom clouds. IF a reactor did meltdown and IF the steam managed to breach the containment dome, you would have JUST that. Radioactive steam. No mushroom cloud, no nuclear explosion just like the bomb. And I double doggy dare you to prove otherwise.

[MadHound]

11. You are only partially correct

If worst case scenario happens, no a recriticality event, ie critical mass will be unable to reform. thus no thermonuclear explosion. However the core can indeed melt down through the floor of the containment vessel, and if the configuration is right, generate enough heat through radioactive decay to actually raise the masse's temperature, thus possibly having the mass drop down further and further, until is diluted enough by surrounding material.

If the molten core hits groundwater, or a pocket of methane, etc, you indeed will have a nice little mushroom cloud, being as there will be the mother of all steam or gas explosions. In either scenario, lots and lots of radioactive material will go into the atmosphere, only to return as fallout. A steam/gas explosion will only increase this.

If the material under the meltdown is arranged right, this could go on for days, maybe weeks. They're still not sure if Chernbobyl is fully out yet, in fact they keep adding more and more concrete over it, just to make sure.

[Massacure]

12. A steam explosion does not equal a mushroom cloud, lol.

I mention that in post 9.

[MadHound]

14. Not talking about the intial steam explosion,

The one that comes from boiling off whats left of the pool, I'm talking about the steam explosion that would occur when the molten core hits a nice source of groundwater, say fifty feet below the containment vessel it just melted through. Yeah, that would be equivalent of a few kilotons worth of explosives at least. And don't write off radioactive steam as a petty thing. You would probably hit your max yearly dose of 5 rem within a few minutes of being exposed to this cloud, and given that there will be hot particulate matter contained in such a steam bath, you would be probably inhaling a few, and not the relatively harmless alpha emitters either, but those nasty ass gamma ones, kiss your ass good bye.

And if the the geometry of the bore hole the core meltdown left was right, that cloud could even turn out nice and mushroomy for you.

[Massacure]

15. It is still not a nuclear explosion.

It is still a steam explosion. How powerful it is doesn't matter.

[MadHound]

16. Yes, but still, it is a catastrophic event,

One that will effect the region for possibly thousands of year, and depending on the location, say in a densely populated area like the Triangle, could indeed kill many, many people, possibly numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands. Do we really need to be putting these ticking little time bombs all over our landscape? I don't think so, I think that we have plenty already, and with the possibilities of wind power, they aren't needed. Besides, there is always that 64,000 dollar question, what to do with the waste. Recycling it only goes so far, and at some point or another we'll be accumulating large quantities of it. What then?

[Massacure]

17. Global Warming is a ticking time bomb on a greater scale.

No one has ever died as a result of a nuclear reactor in the United States. The new reactors are even safer than the old ones as they can shut down passively without an operator based on the laws of physics. If anything that should be an incentive to build the new ones to replace the old ones which don't have such technology.

As for wind, what do you do when the wind doesn't blow? Live like a hermit?

[MadHound]

18. Please, no strawman arguements friend

Don't be comparing global warming to a meltdown, not the same, stick to the subject.

And even though there have been no reported deaths due to nuclear operations in the US(though there are some interesting cancer clusters here and there, like around TMI), it doesn't mean that it won't happen. The law of large numbers is a bitch, and if you fuck with it too much, well, you get burned. There have been a number of close calls, and a few times we've gotten real lucky. Luck runs out sooner or later

And they can have all the whizz bang tech in the world friend, but the number one cause of reactor incidents and accidents is human error, somewhere up or down the line. Some of the most technologically sophisticated reactors in the country have had somebody do something stupid and whoops, there it is!

And I notice that you still haven't addressed the issue of radioactive waste. I don't blame you, there is no real solution yet. Bigger problem, many many reactors in use right now are approaching the end of their lifecycle which means, you guessed it, more radioactive waste. Do you really want to see the US a hundred years from now dotted with the husks of mothballed reactors that still have to be monitored? I don't.

As for the wind, it always is blowing somewhere in this country, and gee, with a national electrical grid, we can move that power up and down the lines whereever it is needed. As I stated downthread, there's enough harvestable wind energy in three states to power the entire US through the year 2030, growth factored in. Doesn't sound like anybody would be living like a hermit.

[struggle4progress]

20. U.S. Nuclear Accidents

http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html

You're wrong about no reported deaths ...

[MadHound]

21. My bad, I didn't clearly explain myself

I was talking about deaths due to large scale events, like Chernobyl. And before you say "but.. . .but. . . but. . ." TMI had no reported deaths, and the study by Dr. Sternglass was a LOL event in the peer reviewed publications he published in. His methodogy was bad, and his scientific method was worse, at least in this case.

Yes, accidents happen at nuclear facilites, just like they happen at all industrial facilities. And while I have no doubt that many of these incidents did indeed cause loss of life through cancers later on, there is no way to prove this, especially in a country as filled with radioactive materials as ours is.

[struggle4progress]

22. Link I posted included examples with immediate deaths.

Any discussion of cancer deaths, of course, is complicated by the many-year latency periods, the lack of good available exposure data, and the fact that the best current models for carcinogenesis are multi-stage, which means that two or more genetic insults are required to produce cancer, so that dose-response curves are generally expected to depend on other exposure history.

As a result, it is difficult to do good epidemiology around the issue: the detailed data remains uncollected, or gets lost, even for the worker groups for which such datas would have been easiest to collect.

There is, of course, no question that Chernobyl has had a significant public health impact.

[pitohui]

26. this person isn't just wrong, this person is making shit up

this really ticks me off

there is no way that a person can come in, claim to be interested in nuclear power, and not be aware of basic facts such as that chernobyl had a containment dome and, yes, that we've had deaths in the usa

there's a difference between a supporter for nuclear energy after considering honest risks and between just spouting lies for propaganda purposes

people die to bring us coal

people die to bring us oil

people die to bring us nuclear power, maybe not as many most of the time but maybe a whole lot in one chewy chunk such as at chernobyl

the fact remains, people do make sacrifices to bring us power and those sacrifices should be respected and not swept under the rug

[MadHound]

30. Are you talking about me? And if so,

What the fuck are you talking about. I've done nothing of the sort that you claim.

[jpak]

31. Please tell us all about the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act

and who is eligible

and how much money they get

and how many people have received compensation

and how many hundreds of millions of dollars in claims have already been paid by taxpayers and had how many more are pending.

[TheWraith]

8. Massacure is right.

Most of the estimates of Chernobyl casualties are grossly inflated. Direct casualties were only a few dozen. Nobody really knows precisely how many people have died from cancers caused by the accident, because it's a small subset of total cancers, but a pretty good estimate by the UN, based on usual cancer rates says that it's around 4,000. To say that such an accident would result in "millions" of casualties is hyperbole. Such estimates are often published as unquestioned fact by anti-nuclear advocates for the express purpose of making people think that the accident was much worse than it was. I'm no great fan of nuclear reactors, but exaggerating the issue doesn't do any good for reasoned discourse.

[Mithras61]

28. True, but keep in mind...

that Pripyat (pop. 45,000) at 4km from the reactor, was evacuated in under 10 hours after the accident. All villages inside 30km from the reactor were also ordered evacuated (http://www.chernobyl.info/index.php?userhash=11830371&navID=12&lID=2).

Chernobyl in on the north end of Ukraine with little in the immediate down-wind area:


Three Mile Island is just southeast of Harrisburg, PA, and had around 250,000 living in the immediate area, and Philadelphia & NYC on the down-wind side. There is no way that an evacuation Soviet-style would have been tolerated or possible. To say that millions would have died is probably an exageration, but certainly millions would have been directly affected.

[pitohui]

25. chernobyl had a containment dome

good lord, man, if you don't know even the first thing abt what you're talking abt, i would ask you not to talk abt it

chernobyl had a containment dome, compare the pictures before and after the disaster, it had no containment dome after the disaster, righty-o, they had a big explosion there

but before the disaster, yes, they certainly did have a containment dome

why are people still allowed to spread this big lie in two thousand aught aught six?

[Massacure]

32. No it did not.

Chernobyl had no containment dome.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/chernobyl.html

[mitchtv]

10. as long as the spent fuel remains

in NC. not shipped out of state. "You use it, you store the waste"

[AngryAmish]

19. That is complete nonsense

In our nation the commerce clause still rules.

[mitchtv]

24. Nonsense unless you live in S Nevada or E Calif.

or one of the many towns and cities it will pass through . We don't want it here!

[AngryAmish]

29. Tough

NIMBY! Really, that is why the commerce clause exists.

[mitchtv]

33. look who's saying NIMBY

the ones trying to dump it on another state

[struggle4progress]

23. Federal license for the reactors, federal responsibility for the waste.

Make the states responsible for whatever they retain licensing authority over ...

[MadHound]

13. What's a shame is that such a plant isn't needed

And shouldn't be put up. North Carolina gets some great winds, especially off the coast. Put up some wind turbines, no fuss, no muss, no nuclear waste. Besides, do you really want to strap our country to another source of energy that is finite, and has to come out of ground that isn't ours? Trade in being strapped over the ME oil barrel as opposed to being strapped over the South African uranium ingot? No thanks. According to a 1991 DOE study, there is enough harvestable wind energy in three states, North and South Dakota along with Texas, to supply all of the US electrical needs, including factoring in for growth, through the year 2030. Time we started using it, don't you think?

[pitohui]

27. look it's pretty simple

if nuclear power is so safe, then why aren't insurance companies selling you insurance to protect you against losing everything financially in event of meltdown, go investigate, you will quickly find you can't buy such insurance for your home

by federal law you are limited in what you will receive in compensation if you live near a plant and your home becomes contaminated

clearly the industry and the federal gov't and the insurance industry all agree that it is unsafe

if there was money to be made selling homeowners insurance they wouldn't ever use, the industry would be selling it

actuaries tend to be pretty smart mathematicians, i will defer to their expertise