Leaks shut down 2 Nuclear Plants at Kansas & Michigan

[whirlygigspin]

Officials at Wolf Creek Generating Station in Burlington, Kansas discovered that water used to cool a main electrical generator had been leaking, on Saturday night they decided to shut down the plant so engineers could find and repair the leak-
It was reported Monday.

http://kansascity.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2005/01/24/daily4.html

Plant operators shut down the Fermi 2 reactor about 4:20 p.m. Monday after discovering that cooling water was leaking into the containment structure -- a steel and concrete structure that surrounds the steel reactor vessel. Plant personnel were able to pinpoint the source of the leak to non-radioactive water in a support cooling water system.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050124/nym278_1.html

[alittlelark]

1. I am soooo happy I live sooo far from the nearest

Nuclear power plant.

[Sleepless In NY]

2. kick

[Last Lemming]

3. Gotta do something

to justify the draft

[Dcitizen]

4. Another link (Local ABC7)

http://www.detnow.com/wxyz/nw_local_news/article/0,2132,WXYZ_15924_3494434,00.html

[atommom]

5. This is the third time in the last 6 months that Wolf Creek has been

shut down due to mechanical problems. (It happened in August and October 2004.) Could that be why this story hasn't gotten better coverage locally? I've found a few mentions of it in the local press, but not a lot of detail.

[Massacure]

6. Current nuclear reactors are old and expensive to maintain

It would be a good idea to replace them.

[NickB79]

7. But replace them with what?

New nuclear plants, or coal-burning plants? It seems some people here would rather see coal burned than a nuclear plant built.

[Massacure]

9. nuclear. It would be hard to replace 25% of our electricity with coal.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/data/coalprice.html

From what I can see, coal has risen $20 to nearly $60 per short ton in the last four years. China is spiking prices in the coal market with their high demand.

[NNadir]

8. I used to include in the titles of threads like "Everyone in _ will die!"

This is cooling water that leaked. It's not even radioactive, and if it were, it still wouldn't have harmed anyone.

Why is this major news, say compared to this news:

http://news.bostonherald.com/national/view.bg?articleid=57777&format=

In the nuclear case, nobody was injured, in the natural gas case, 5 people were sent to the hospital and several hundred neighbors of the shop were evacuated from their homes.

On April 22 of last year up to 3,000 North Koreans were killed by a natural gas explosion. The only interest shown in the case was when some people interpreted the even as a "nuclear" explosion. When it was found that the explosion was NOT nuclear the world as a whole said, "So what?" and "Nothing to see here, folks," and when on its merry stupid way.

http://www.freenorthkorea.net/archives/freenorthkorea/001208.html

The main difference between this case, which is trivial by the way, and the gas cases is the inclusion of the word "nuclear," a sure fire scare word. (Colon Piddle, Gorge Bash, and Dick Teeny used this word "nuclear" again, and again and again to incite people to wholesale murder in a little oily country called Iraq.) Every minor glitch in every single nuclear plant is reported as a tragedy, whether or not anyone is injured. (Usually though such reports are coupled with lots and lots of "could have," "might have," "if," and dubious "according to experts...") Meanwhile millions of people die each year from air pollution unremarked, thousands are killed by natural gas explosions, unremarked, thousands more are burned in gasoline and oil fires unremarked.

This report is exactly why our planet is doomed. "Can't see the forest..." thinking.

[NNadir]

10. Acetylene Gas Blast in New Jersey Kills Three.

Certainly not international news, but this seemed a good place to post it.

"PERTH AMBOY, N.J., Jan. 25 - Three men were killed and another critically injured in an industrial gas explosion on Tuesday that destroyed part of a warehouse, briefly blackened the sky near an industrial area here known as "the chemical coastline," and could be heard miles away.

The victims were moving acetylene, a highly flammable fuel used in welding torches, from large canisters to small ones at a loading dock of the Acetylene Service Company on State Street when the blast occurred at 10:43 a.m., said Larry Cattano, the Perth Amboy fire chief...

...For those who live and work near the site, the explosion provided a sudden reminder of acetylene's chemical force. Only a few months ago, in October, Giles Lison, 27, was killed when a leaky cylinder of the fuel exploded in the back seat of his Volkswagen while he was driving on Hackensack Road in Weehawken, N.J. Miguel Taveras, who works at an auto repair shop across the street on State Street, said Tuesday's fatal blast felt like an earthquake. "The ground shook and I saw debris flying through the air, then I felt the wind blast, wind pressure. It was powerful."



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/nyregion/26explode.html

In a way it's a shame that the acetylene wasn't located in a nuclear plant. If it were, this story would be getting worldwide attention.