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aemeijers aemeijers is offline
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Default Safety of Nuke Power

wrote:
No, I've seen the effects stupid people can have on even the simplest
operations. Plus, I can't at this moment think of a single incident at a
nuclear power facility that wasn't caused by stupidity. Not even one single
incident caused by an actual materials or design failure runs through my
mind.


and how do you guarantee a stupid person in the future wouldnt create
a disaster.

one tech looking for air leaks caused a electrical fire in the control
cables....

top of reactor core nearly ate thru, one and i believe it was around
the great lakes, a water deflector came loose and blocked cooling
water, the nearly brand new reactor nearly melted down and was
permanetely shut down and encased in a oncrete vault.

Fermi II, IIRC. 1967. Described in a sensationalist book 'We Almost Lost
Detroit. No idea how accurate the book was.

how many old reactors have been shut down, disassembled and the ground
cleaned up, core sent for proper disposal?


Not very many, so far. I think NRC and the Navy just got around to
dismantling the R&D reactors for the original nuke sub program a couple
of years ago. The earliest commercial reactors are just now reaching
end-of-life, and many got their licenses extended (according to the
papers) by doing upgrades and reinspections. Commercial ones that are
offline permanently are mothballed in place, if the newspaper reports
are accurate.

They really do need to move all those old fuel rods to a centrally
located real deep hole, sooner rather than later. I'm sure the taxpayers
will end footing most of that bill. After a century or so, the stainless
cylinders inside those concrete casks will start to deteriorate.

They put a lot of thought into the 'keep out' markers for Yucca Mountain
and similar sites. Granite and gold for durability, supposed to still
be legible in 10k years. Multiple languages, as well as diagrams showing
atomic structure of the stored materials, that will hopefully mean
something to anyone still around then. (presuming no current languages
will still be spoken.) ISTR they also buried markers around the
perimeter in some way that would call attention to itself to any
prospectors, in case the above-ground markers got stolen or recycled as
grave markers or something.

Of course, if some calamity produces a general societal collapse and
loss of all historical records, and a reversion to a barely literate
agrarian economy led by local Jefes and Shamans, the dump sites may
become very holy places.

aem sends...