German Nuke Shutdown Reignites Debate

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German Nuke Shutdown Reignites Debate
Europe July 6, 2009, 12:58PM EST
The weekend shutdown of Germany's Krümmel nuclear plant has prompted political calls to close the country's oldest nukes over safety concerns

The Krümmel nuclear power station near Hamburg was shut down on Saturday after a fault in a transformer, blacking out most traffic lights in the German port city and interrupting the water supply to thousands of homes.

Power company Vattenfall said there was no release of radioactivity and no danger to the public as a result of the incident, which occurred just two weeks after the plant was restarted following a two-year shutdown caused by a fire in a transformer.

Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel of the center-left Social Democrats called on Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives to abandon their demand to delay the planned shutdown of the country's oldest reactors in the coming years.

The previous German government of SPD and Greens introduced the phaseout program for the 17 nuclear reactors by 2021. But the conservatives argue that nuclear energy must be kept alive to allow renewable industries to catch up as Germany must meet long-term commitments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

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It was shut down for two years, and didn't last two weeks before it shut down again.
These things just aren't very reliable.
They are an extremely variable source of energy.
We should stop referring to them as "baseload".
Just like an old car, they eventually become too unreliable to depend on and too expensive to maintain.

The conservatives are pro-nuclear, the center-left is anti-nuclear.
In the US, center-right politicans like Clinton and Obama have said they are "agnostic" and "not opposed" to nuclear energy.

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1. A fault in a TRANSFORMER? That's likely part of the electrical infrastructure ...

regardless of whether the plant is a nuke or coal-burner, etc. It would go between the generator and the power lines, regardless of the ultimate source of power to turn the generator (which is steam in nuke, coal, AND gas plants).

Whatever the cause for concern here, it should be made clear whether it was something af fault within the reactor and its controls, or downstream from the reactor itself. There's a transformer atop many utility poles and at every local substation. You don't see debates over the safety of electricity every time one of them blows up or catches fire. There may well be grounds for debating the future of Germany's nuke plants, but a faulty transformer doesn't seem adequate cause.

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2. The electrical infrastructure is critical for safe reactor operation.

They need electricity to operate the control rods and to pump the coolant. These are critical safety components. The reactor will continue to generate decay heat for several hours after it's been shut down, but they only keep a few hours of fuel for the backup diesel generators. So when there's a blackout or transformer failure, they start up the generators, insert the control rods to shut down the reactor, and then they keep the generators running to keep the coolant pumping while the reactor continues to generate heat. The reactors aren't started up again until after the grid has been powered up by other electricity sources.

In 2003, a blackout in the northeast U.S. caused 21 reactors to shutdown, and they weren't restarted until after the grid had been restored by other power sources.

Blackout Demonstrates Vulnerability of Nuclear Plants and Failure of Electricity Deregulation

The August electricity blackout, which shut down 21 nuclear reactors in the United States and Canada, was a spectacular demonstration of the heightened vulnerability of nuclear power plants in a deregulated electricity market. Nonetheless, leaders in Congress are disingenuously exploiting the blackout to promote more reliance on nuclear power and further electricity deregulation. Consider:

* When a plant loses offsite electrical supply, it automatically shuts down. It must then connect to a generator to keep coolant circulating and prevent the reactor core from overheating and causing a meltdown. However, in only the past 12 months, there have been 15 reported cases in which nuclear plants’ emergency diesel generators were declared inoperable. In four cases, all emergency diesel generators were inoperable at once.

* The large pools where "spent" nuclear fuel is stored at nuclear sites, which circulate cool water to keep the fuel cool, are not connected to backup generators. This material is both highly radioactive and very hot; if the power is out for too long (as little as eight hours), this material may catch fire and contaminate huge areas.

* In case of an emergency, many sirens in place to alert officials and the public may not operate because of a lack of power. In reports submitted to the NRC after the blackout, the Indian Point and Ginna nuclear stations (both in New York) noted that many of their emergency sirens malfunctioned. In the case of Indian Point, the sirens in four surrounding counties—including the densely populated Westchester County, with nearly 1 million people—failed during the blackout. If that were to happen in the event of a meltdown, the region would be left in a tragic state of ignorance.

* Local emergency personnel, who would be risking their lives in the event of an accident or attack, are not confident that they would be able to handle the overwhelming problems that would come with a disaster. In May 2003, 175 Indian Point-area first responders signed a petition to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expressing their concerns that "even <[their> best efforts may not be enough to adequately protect the public health and safety of the citizens of this region."

The House-Senate energy conference committee is currently considering energy legislation (H.R. 6) that piles on subsidies for nuclear power, including incentives for research and development and tax breaks for nuclear operators. Both bills also authorize the U.S. Department of Energy's Nuclear Power 2010 program to promote the construction of new nuclear reactors and the Generation IV program to develop new reactor designs. Further, both bills reauthorize the Price-Anderson Act to extend federal insurance protection to potential new reactors.

Congress should reject H.R. 6 and support a bill that addresses reliability issues separate from the omnibus energy bill.

See the full report, The Big Blackout and Amnesia in Congress: Lawmakers Turn a Blind Eye to the Danger of Nuclear Power and the Failure of Deregulation.

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3. The Current State of US Nuclear Safety Regulations and Transmission Grid Reliability

The Current State of US Nuclear Safety Regulations and Transmission Grid Reliability

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Nuclear power plants are equipped with redundant safety systems, each fully capable of safely shutting down the reactor and provide core cooling during the post-shutdown decay heat phase. These systems draw power from the grid, and cannot be energized by the plant’s main generator. So, if a nuke trips off the line, power must be quickly restored to the safety systems to prevent core damage. Since offsite power loss is a fact of life at any plant, nuclear reactor sites are equipped with several means of supplying power separate and independent of the transmission grid.

As plant operating experience developed through the 1970s, however, it became evident to most risk analysts that the potential for extended transmission grid unavailability coincident with the loss of the onsite emergency power supplies was sufficiently high to warrant additional measures. In the nuclear power industry, this scenario combining transmission grid unavailability (such as occurred in the 2K3 Blackout) with total loss of all onsite emergency power is referred to as a “Station Blackout.”

Depending on circumstances, the Station Blackout reactor accident scenario can be particularly dangerous to public health and safety. The reactor core can melt on time scales comparable to the TMI accident. Unlike the limited loss of cooling event at TMI, however, the core damage scenario in a Station Blackout can be particularly severe, including a so-called “early high energy release” comprising a particularly heavy “portfolio” of fission products dispersed far and wide within a few hours.

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