Ooops: "FirstEnergy Falls After Report of Nuclear Reactor Cracks"

[kristopher]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission just gave permission for a 20 year extension of Davis Besse's operating license, now Davis Besse's containment structure has been found to be cracked. This is part of an issue that goes from today back to 2000.

FirstEnergy Falls After Report of Nuclear Reactor Cracks

October 13, 2011, 7:42 PM EDT

By Julie Johnsson and Mark Chediak

Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- FirstEnergy Corp. fell after a report that engineers discovered cracks in the concrete shell of its Davis-Besse nuclear plant.

FirstEnergy fell 2.8 percent to $43.76 at the close in New York. The Akron, Ohio-based power company had earlier dropped 5 percent, its biggest intraday decline since Aug. 8, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Contractors on Oct. 10 discovered a hairline crack measuring about 30 feet (9.1 meters) long as they sliced a hole into the plant’s outer shell in order to install a new reactor vessel head, said Jennifer Young, a FirstEnergy spokeswoman.

The damaged structure poses no safety hazard to Davis- Besse, located 21 miles (34 kilometers) southeast of Toledo, Young said. The cracked shell is the outermost of several layers of steel and concrete that protect the reactor, which has been shut down since Oct. 1 in preparation for the repair work....

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2011/10/firstenergy_moves_a_115-ton_el.html

Cracks found in critical reactor parts at Davis-Besse power plant

March 15, 2010, 11:21 AM


AK HARBOR, Ohio -- Inspectors at the Davis-Besse power plant have found cracking in critical parts that is similar to what caused massive corrosion at the plant eight years ago.

The FirstEnergy Corp. plant near Toledo has been down since Feb. 28 for regular refueling, maintenance and safety inspections, including ultrasonic inspections of 69 control rod "nozzles" in the reactor lid.

The problem parts are known as "nozzles" because of their shape. They are corrosion-resistant alloy steel tubes that penetrate the reactor's heavy carbon steel lid. They allow reactor operators to adjust the nuclear fission by moving control rods into and out of the reactor core.

The cracked parts pose no threat to the public.

"There are indications of cracking in 13 of 54 nozzles checked so far...

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2010/03/cracks_found_in_critical_react.html




It gets worse. This was oberved in 2000.


This photo of the lid of the Davis-Besse reactor was taken during a refueling in April 2000. It shows where rust and dried boric acid were streaming off the reactor’s lid nearly two years before the rust hole was detected. This was one of a set of photos handed by workers to an inspector for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2000—but never acted on. Photo by David I. Andersen/The Plain Dealer.
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/100819/Being-a-Watchdog-of-FirstEnergy-Corp.aspx

-The Three Mile Island nuclear plant experienced a loss of coolant accident in March 1979. Emergency pumps automatically started to replace the water flowing out the leak. Operators turned off the pumps because instruments falsely indicated too much water in the reactor vessel. Within two hours, the reactor core overheated and melted, triggering the evacuation of nearly 150,000 people.

-At the Callaway nuclear plant in 2001, workers encountered problems while testing one of the emergency pumps. Investigation revealed that a foam-like bladder inside the RWST was flaking apart. Water carried chunks of debris to the pump where it blocked flow. The debris would have disabled all the emergency pumps during an accident.

-At the Haddam Neck nuclear plant in 1996, the NRC discovered the piping carrying water from the RWST to the reactor vessel was too small. It was long enough but it was not wide enough to carry enough water during an accident to re-fill the reactor vessel in time to prevent meltdown. The plant operated for nearly 30 years with this undetected vulnerability.

-At several US and foreign nuclear power plants, including the Limerick nuclear plant 8 years ago, the force of water/steam entering the containment building during a loss of coolant accident has blown insulation off piping and equipment. The water carried that insulation and other debris into the containment sump. The debris clogged the piping going to the emergency pumps much like hair clogs a bathtub drain. According to a recent government report, 46 percent of US nuclear plants are very likely to experience blockage in the containment sumps in event of a hole the size found at Davis-Besse opens up. For slightly larger holes, the chances of failure increase to 82 percent.<1>


From Union of Concerned Scientists -- Aging Nuclear Plants -- Davis-Besse: The Reactor with a Hole in its Head

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/acfnx8tzc.pdf


When they finally got around to checking this known problem, this is what they found, a football sized hole nearly all the way through the 6 in thick reactor head. There remained only a 3/8 inch thick stainless steel liner that was already bulging outwards and cracking. It is also important to note that their inspection procedures did not deliberately find this problem. After they had completed their inspection and were dismantling their equipment one of the workers bumped the control rod and it moved when it shouldn't have. Ooops.


NRC File Photo

Davis Besse: Incident history
...Erosion of the 6-inch-thick (150 mm) carbon steel reactor head, caused by a persistent leak of borated water.
Reactor head hole

In March 2002, plant staff discovered that the boric acid that serves as the reactor coolant had leaked from cracked control rod drive mechanisms directly above the reactor and eaten through more than six inches<10> of the carbon steel reactor pressure vessel head over an area roughly the size of a football (see photo). This significant reactor head wastage left only 3/8 inch of stainless steel cladding holding back the high-pressure (~2500 psi) reactor coolant. A breach would have resulted in a loss-of-coolant accident, in which superheated, superpressurized reactor coolant could have jetted into the reactor's containment building and resulted in emergency safety procedures to protect from core damage or meltdown. Because of the location of the reactor head damage, such a jet of reactor coolant may have damaged adjacent control rod drive mechanisms, hampering or preventing reactor shut-down. As part of the system reviews following the accident, significant safety issues were identified with other critical plant components, including the following: (1) the containment sump that allows the reactor coolant to be reclaimed and reinjected into the reactor; (2) the high pressure injection pumps that would reinject such reclaimed reactor coolant; (3) the emergency diesel generator system; (4) the containment air coolers that would remove heat from the containment building; (5) reactor coolant isolation valves; and (6) the plant's electrical distribution system.<11> Under certain scenarios, a reactor rupture would have resulted in core meltdown and/or breach of containment and release of radioactive material. The resulting corrective operational and system reviews and engineering changes took two years. Repairs and upgrades cost $600 million, and the Davis-Besse reactor was restarted in March 2004.<12> The U.S. Justice Department investigated and penalized the owner of the plant over safety and reporting violations related to the incident. The NRC determined that this incident was the fifth most dangerous nuclear incident in the United States since 1979.<3>

[madokie]

1. I'd be pissed if I lived close to this power plant

The obfuscating and outright lies they employ would piss me right the fuck off for sure.

How many people live within a 100 miles radius or so anyway?

These old plants are falling apart and one of them is going to go all Chernobyl on us and when it does are we prepared for what follows, hardly. I still haven't found a cancer rate graph that coincides with the development of atomic energy. I found one on diabetes and the advent of HFCS being added to our food supply. On that one it looked like diabetes just exploded with the use of hfcs. I'm looking for one for nuclear energy and cancers.

rec :hi:

[Kolesar]

5. I imagine radioactive water running into Lake Erie

The billionaire-abettors at the Cleveland Plain Dealer have hardly a bad word about the plant.

[FBaggins]

6. Maybe that's because your imagination isn't news?

Can't speak to the CPD's professionalism... but that makes sense to me.

[Kolesar]

9. See

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=313751&mesg_id=314164

[FBaggins]

10. That caused radioactive water to run into Lake Erie?

When did this happen?

[Kolesar]

13. Boor ... eom

[FBaggins]

15. Wow... how compelling.

:sarcasm:

[FBaggins]

7. Going to be hard to pull that out of the statistical noise.

No way to identify causation as opposed to correlation.

Natural radiation is estimated to cause something like 1% of all cancers. Radiation from nuclear power is obviously a very small fraction of even that amount. So the increase would be awfully hard to spot.

This is complicated by the fact that as our life expectancies climb, more of us die from cancer. Not because cancer is necessarily more prevalent, but because more of us are surviving long enough for cancer to get us.

Lastly, think of all the other factors that account for far more cancers. Mis-estimate the impact of the decline of cigarette smoking and you'll blow your numbers out of the water for instance.

[kristopher]

8. Psssst...

[FBaggins]

11. Oh wow... never seen that image before.

You pretend that issue was potentially seconds away from causing a meltdown. That simply isn't the case.

While obviously far from ideal, there would have to be a number of other failures coincidentally occuring at the same time for it to cause a meltdown.

The real issue is that the rapairs knocked the reactor out of production for years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. That alone would make it significant.

The damage to their feedwater system back 25+ years ago was a bigger deal. But then... you don't have pictures to spam of that. So I suppose there's no point in bringing it up?

[kristopher]

12. there would have to be a number of other failures coincidentally occuring...

You mean like a containment dome weakened by cracked concrete...

As for the immediacy of the problem:
"When they finally got around to checking this known problem, this is what they found, a football sized hole nearly all the way through the 6 in thick reactor head. There remained only a 3/8 inch thick stainless steel liner that was already bulging outwards and cracking. It is also important to note that their inspection procedures did not deliberately find this problem. After they had completed their inspection and were dismantling their equipment one of the workers bumped the control rod and it moved when it shouldn't have. Ooops."

[FBaggins]

14. Nope.

Not that it's stunning that whatever the current problem is magically morphs into the most dangerous scenario in your mind.

The containment dome would generally come into play after an imagined meltdown.

As for the immediacy of the problem:

What's the source?

As for the statement itslef... please see the first sentence above. It really doesn't matter what the event is, you imagine that it's one hair trigger away from a complete meltdown. It wasn't. The calculated risk of meltdown was hundreds/thousands of times higher than is acceptable... but still very small. The risk of significant release of radiation was much smaller than even that.

[madokie]

16. What I'd like to see is a graph of cancers and the beginning of the nuclear age

That wouldn't be so hard to do for those inclined to do so. Diabetes and the advent of HFCS was an easy one and diabetes shot up when hfcs was introduced into our food supply and is still climbing. I don't think it would be hard to correlate cancer deaths in relation to the beginning of the atomic age. I'm not talking about cancer deaths as mankind has made some real inroads on cures for some kinds, I'm talking about cancers cured, in remission or deaths from.

[FBaggins]

17. My point is that the graph would be easy... but the conclusions you want to draw would be impossible

The variation for that specific influence would be lost in statistical noise and overwhelmed by other influences.

[kristopher]

18. That's true and it's a shield every polluter in the world tries to hide behind.

The nuclear industry is not one whit different than the petroleum or coal industries in this regard.

[FBaggins]

19. Statistics for petroleum and coal are much easier to demonstrate

as are smoking and a number of other factors.

The number of cancers from radiation in general is variously estimated... but breaking that into a subset for just radiation from nuclear power (particularly if you're going exclude medical uses and weapons testing) would be too hard to demonstrate (though of course you could estimate on a LNT basis).

Radiation from reactors is just too small a proportion of total radiation.

[madokie]

20. I repeat, I would like to see a graph of cancers before and after the atomic age

Not trying to draw anything from anything, simply I would like to see how the rate of cancers has increased or decreased since then.
That is pretty simple but for some reason you keep trying to tell me that that won't mean anything. Show me a graph and let me make my own conclusions.

Shut the fucking nuke plants down and do it as soon as humanly possible is my stand and has been my stand from day one. I suspect that I've been against nuclear energy longer than its been since you were shitting yellow. I may be wrong there but whatever. My point is I would like to see a graph of cancers to see if they increased like I think they have since the atomic age began or decreased. No bullshit no beating around the bush as you are so inclined to do.
I call what you're doing here as being a shill for the nuclear industry. :hi:

[FBaggins]

21. Because you like pretty graphs?

I'm a fan myself..'but I don't buy it.

You imagine that it would show an increase in cancers and you imagine that that would demonstrate causation.

It wouldn't.

[madokie]

22. Whatever you say

Why is there no graph showing something as simple as the rate of cancers before and after the nuclear age began? We have one for diabetes and hfcs. Why not this?
You let me decide what I want with the information, ok dude.
Oh and why are you so sure that it wouldn't show an increase? If the cancer rate has gone up then why wouldn't it demonstrate causation?

[FBaggins]

23. Of course you can decide why you want the information

Though I confess confusion as to why you would get upset about being associated with a particular position and then shift right on over to embracing it in the next sentence.

Why is there no graph showing something as simple as the rate of cancers before and after the nuclear age began?

I don't know for a fact that there isn't. But I do know that the major source of such statistics (SEER) only started in it's present form in ~1973-1975 (interestingly, also when the CAT scans began)... and you can't graph data that doesn't exist (or doesn't exist in a comparable form). It's also true that when you go much beyond that you run into the problem that lots of people died of cancer... but weren't diagnosed as having cancer (so they wouldn't even show up in the statistics). We're better at identifying it now... so you would expect the numbers to be higher whether or not actual incidence of cancer was increasing.

Oh and why are you so sure that it wouldn't show an increase?

I don't. Some forms of cancer have increased and others have decreased. My assumption is that cancer rates overall have risen over many decades but that's just an assumption. There's more relevant data from events like Chernobyl where exposure rates were significant enough to show through cancers caused by other sources... particularly among cancer types that can be best associated with the types of radiation released (e.g., thyroid cancer). Breast cancer rates have fallen in the UK... but it has nothing to do with radiation levels... because radiation isn't a very large contributor to those cancers (else mammograms would be counter-productive)

If the cancer rate has gone up then why wouldn't it demonstrate causation?

Because correlation and causation aren't the same thing. If it rained every day that you've ever traveled to London... that doesn't mean that your buying the ticket caused the weather to change. The fact that you went to visit Santa at the mall every year growing up and then got presents doesn't mean that Santa brought them. You have to be able to pick out the relevant data from the noise... and there's too much noise.

Take a look at my first reply for a small subset of the reasons. Radiation in general is believed to be a very small proportion of total cancers... and radiation from reactors is a very small portion of radiation in general.

[kristopher]

24. What you asked for was the incident rate for cancer

I couldn't find that, however the death rate is available in a number of places and it shows a steady increase from 1900-2000.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922292.html

The reason the gross data doesn't tell us much in this case is that there is no way to assign cause to any given variable such as radiation leaks. Tracking down the link between any given pollutant and the adverse health effects is something that must be done very carefully and even then it is usually a hard case to make. Let me give you an example. My first wife was also from Japan and she died at the age of 34 from intestinal cancer. She had no chance from the day it was discovered because it was a peculiar tumor - it had developed on the outside of the intestine. that meant two things - most relevant at the time was the lack of symptoms like blood in her stool. It was only diagnosed by the way the spread started affecting other organs in her abdomen.

The second point of significance was that chemical toxins are not known to cause cancer in an area they do not physically come in contact with. Since the cancer started on the outside of the intestine, the doctor was at a loss to speculate on the cause. What I had not considered until recently is that she might have ingested a radioactive particle which had become stuck in her diverticuli. However, there simply is no way that cause could be established as a fact; it is certain that no one looked for it. And even if it were to be established that radioactivity were the trigger, it would be impossible to know the source - she was born in 1954 and grew up in Japan - was it the atomic bombings of Japan, atmospheric testing, or the nuclear plants that surrounded us? No one could possibly tell.

That is why the people working for a sustainable world have developed a different approach. it is called the The Precautionary Principle and is usually stated this way:
"When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established scientifically."

Here is a summary of the reasoning behind it:

The Precautionary Principle in Action – Page 1
For years, the environmental and public health movements have been struggling to find ways to protect health and the environment in the face of scientific uncertainty about cause and effect. The public has typically carried the burden of proving that a particular activity or substance is dangerous, while those undertaking potentially dangerous activities and the products of those activities are considered innocent until proven guilty. Chemicals, dangerous practices, and companies often seem to have more rights than citizens and the environment.

This burden of scientific proof has posed a monumental barrier in the campaign to protect health and the environment. Actions to prevent harm are usually taken only after significant proof of harm is established, at which point it may be too late. Hazards are generally addressed by industry and government agencies one at a time, in terms of a single pesticide or chemical, rather than as broader issues such as the need to promote organic agriculture and nontoxic products or to phase out whole classes of dangerous chemicals. When citizen groups base their calls for a stop to a particular activity on experience, observation, or anything less than stringent scientific proof, they are accused of being emotional and hysterical.

To overcome this barrier, advocates need a decision-making and action tool with ethical power and scientific rigor. The precautionary principle, which has become a critical aspect of environmental agreements and environmental activism throughout the world, offers the public and decision-makers a forceful, common-sense approach to environmental and public health problems. This Handbook describes how it can be used to make preventive decisions in the face of uncertainty and to drive actions that will protect public health and the environment.

This comprehensive presentation of ideas is new, yet precaution is a concept citizen activists have promoted for years. We, the authors, invite you to try these ideas out and write the next chapters on the precautionary principle with us.

We are...

You can download the handbook here: http://www.biotech-info.net/handbook.pdf

As you can see from the snip, the PP was developed in response to a large variety of problems that our present approach is allowing to develop with no oversight whatsoever. Nuclear power is one of them. As far as I'm concerned, this is a crucial policy that needs to be adopted globally.

[FBaggins]

25. That's a good find and fairly reasonably explained.

Madokie,

Take a look at the cardiovascular figures. They had been rising for decades until right about the time that nuclear reactors started popping up... and then started falling (and have been falling steadily ever since). Infant mortality rates have been falling since then too.

Would it be reasonable to claim that radiation reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease or aides in fetal development? Of course not.

Assuming the data is accurate, you'll note that cancer rates increased MUCH faster in the pre-nuclear-power age. Again... we can't assume that reactors slowed the rate of cancer mortality increases. What's far more likely (as I said at the start) is that there aren't that many more cancers... they're just far more likely to be identified. Any theoretical increase in cancer deaths due to reactor radiation is drowning in that identification increase (not to mention all of the known causes of cancer that make up much larger chunks of that stat).





and I'm sorry to hear about your wife kris.

[kristopher]

26. Good find?

Not sure what you are referring to. If it is the table, that is relatively common, but it isn't what was requested. Madokie wanted to filter out advances in medical technology by looking at the incident rate - and tha is something I'd also like to see.

What I consider most important in the post is the method suggested to close the polluters loophole - use of The Precautionary Principle: http://www.biotech-info.net/handbook.pdf

Thank you for your sentiment.

[closeupready]

2. that's actually a good thing - it's like sunshine 24/7!

:sarcasm:

[kristopher]

3. It certainly shines a light on the nuclear industry and its regulators, anyway. nt

[Throckmorton]

4. The Haddam Neck Plant is now a grass field.

and Davis Besse should follow suit.