Diablo Canyon nuclear plant 'near miss' in report (Accidentally Disabled' For 18 Months)

[kpete]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Diablo Canyon nuclear plant 'near miss' in report

David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle March 18, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011


For 18 months, operators at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant near San Luis Obispo didn't realize that a system to pump water into one of their reactors during an emergency wasn't working.

It had been accidentally disabled by the plant's own engineers, according to a report issued Thursday on the safety of nuclear reactors in the United States.

The report, from the Union of Concerned Scientists watchdog group, lists 14 recent "near misses" - instances in which serious problems at a plant required federal regulators to respond.

The report criticizes both plant operators and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for allowing some known safety issues to fester.



Read more: Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/17/BUA01IDTUO.DTL#ixzz1GzheXZLw

[nc4bo]

1. oh damn. And we're supposed to feel safe with nuclear energy. LOL

:wow: :wow:

[Tesha]

5. Hey! Nuclear power is perfectly safe. (Until it isn't.) (NT)

[CountAllVotes]

2. shut this SOB down now!

Once and forever get rid of this damned nightmare of a nuclear plant! I hate it, yes I do! :grr:

[salinen]

3. I not worried

I live about 40 miles from Diablo. So I'll die. Everyone else is going to lose hair.

[C_eh_N_eh_D_eh]

4. Hang on a sec...

"No one noticed until the valves refused to open during a test in October 2009, 18 months after the engineers made the changes."

You're telling me they went at least a year and a half between tests of the emergency cooling system? Hell, they didn't even do a dry run right after the engineers finished monkeying around with it?

I don't know jack shit about nuclear reactors, but some things in engineering are universal. This story tells me one of two things. Either (A) the engineers at Diablo Canyon are guilty of conduct that would be grossly unprofessional even if they were working with a system that wouldn't endanger thousands of people if anything went seriously wrong, or (B) the executives refused to budget the resources and/or downtime required for proper testing - in which case the engineers are again at fault for not immediately reporting it to the government, and then to the press when the government didn't do anything.

Fuck your "redundant systems". Yes, having a backup system or three is all well and necessary, but if you went 18 months without noticing the primary was broken, how the hell can you be confident in the backups?