Why were nuclear reactors built on the waterfront?

[Courtesy Flush]

I can understand building on a fresh water source, for cooling purposes, but sea water is not used for cooling, and they know the tsunami risks, so why the beach front locale?

[Submariner]

1. Seawater is used for cooling

Seawater is run through heat exchangers which are seawater pipes inside fresh water pipes. Primary vs. secondary cooling. The ocean is the place to be for ample cooling water.

[grahamhgreen]

2. Especially in the country that invented the word "tsunami". Greed. It's nuclear's friend.

[Earth_First]

3. Access to vast amounts of cooling water...

I'm not close friend of nuclear power, but this makes the most sense.

[CJvR]

4. Better question...

...why wasn't the backup generators secured against a tsunami? It is not as if it is very difficult to do or very expensive even. Place them 20 meter above the waterline in the hills behind the plant with a wall to keep debries away and underground cables and there wouldn't have been any problems at all.

[Wilms]

6. That's what has been bothering me.

Then today I read that the tsunami may have damaged other electrical systems including pump motors, control panels, and such.

[Statistical]

10. That is the biggest question.

Had even some of the generators survived the tsunami we wouldn't even be talking about this today.

[Hugabear]

11. Because GE is an evil corporation who doesn't give a shit

Who cares if there's a chance of catastrophic meltdown, as long as you can cut a few corners and save a little bit of money

[badtoworse]

12. GE doesn't make decisions about where plants are sited.

The plant's owners do that. Learn a little bit about the power industry and you won't make foolish posts

[Hugabear]

15. I wasn't replying to the OP, I was replying to a follow-up question

GE designed the nuclear plant.

[badtoworse]

16. My apologies. I missed that.

I was once involved in bidding on repowering a plant on the coast of southern Peru. We were definitely concerned about tsunamis and our design included protection for critical systems. We would not have designed it that way and our plant would have used distillate oil as a fuel.

[The Straight Story]

5. Because it is too hard to build them in the water (nt)

[Misskittycat]

7. The San Onofre power plant is on the waterfront at San Clemente in So. Cal. n/t

[Statistical]

8. Seawater IS used for cooling. There are two cooling loops.

The inner loop uses pure fresh water. It is actually very very pure water. It needs to have no mineral or contaminants. It is a closed loop (water stays in the loop).

The outer loop uses any water in this case seawater. The more water you have the less the temp of the cooling water rises. So huge access to water is better than small access to water as it has less effect on the waters temp.

The inner loop passes through the core, it boils into steam, goes into turbines (creating power) then passes through a heat exchanger where the steam is cooled and condenses back into water, the water is pumped back into the core. The outer loop draws water from ocean, removes heat from inner loop (via the heat exchanger) and then returns water to the ocean.

Usually seawater is only used in the outer loop. As an emergency solution they connected seawater pumps to the inner loop and used then to inject seawater into the core. That is not normally done but even in normal operation millions of gallons of seawater are used in the outer loop.

[bullwinkle428]

18. So the reason for the corrosion that's occurring was the decision

to use seawater in the inner loop, in a "last-ditch" effort of sorts?

[Statistical]

20. Yeah under normal operations one would never use seawater inside the core.

However the risk of using seawater was less than the risk of allowing the core to melt.

[Shagbark Hickory]

9. To make it easier for mother nature to spot the giant bird we are flipping at her with this shit. nt

[Erose999]

13. Because they coulda been a contenda?

[Erose999]

14. And by that I mean of course, proximity to organized crime.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

17. The sea water is used for cooling via heat exchangers (not direct)

[robdogbucky]

19. When the nuke crisis in Japan began I warned they had no

emergency plans in place for such a situation. Look what we have, the clusterfuck of panic in a situation any logical person (obviously not TEPCO) would have at least considered the possibility of occurring.

Then the reason there are this many reactors (6 reactors over 2 plants) in Fukushima is that logical people in all other communities they tried to build the plant in, objected to and prevented that from happening. Hence, this multiple set reactor plant array is situated in a far north, low population rural area that needed jobs.

Remember this was 40 years ago too.

In honor of Nadin:

Oh, and ask if earthquake planning was required for Diablo Canyon plant on Califoenia coast? Denied by Cal Supreme Court when protestors demanded they do it. They sued, trying to get them to require an earthquake preparedness plan in place for Diablo Canyon. Supremes struck it down saying enough safety precautions had already been made. Nice to know the influence of the industry does not effect judicial decision.... sarcasm:

No plan in place in Cal due to this "considered," decision by our own courts. Nice to know that we have a similar quake/tsunami vulnerability situation in Cal, yet no plan is in place to deal with such a double catastrophe here.



"Me, I'm waiting so patiently

Lying on the floor

I'm just trying to do my jig-saw puzzle

Before it rains anymore..."

Jagger/Richards


rdb

[robdogbucky]

21. Correction to above post:

It was a US Appeals Court that struck down the protestors petition, not the US Supreme Court:


"...The case made its way to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., where a 5-4 majority -- including current Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and former Clinton independent counsel Kenneth Starr -- ruled that earthquakes did not have to be included in the plant's emergency response plans..."

http://m.aol.com/portal/file-01.do?file=N9992%2FN4133%2FN512344133%2Ftnsc-372415489.html



Even better to have Scalia and Starr making these decisions, no?

And they say a career in the judiciary isn't rewarding? I'll be these two have been rewarded handsomely, don't you think?


Is it fascism yet?


"...Me, I'm waiting so patiently
Lying on the floor
I'm just trying to do my jig-saw puzzle
Before it rains anymore..."

Jagger/Richards


rdb