San Onofre plant 2

[biff44]

Anyone here familiar witht he San Onofre plant? Just saw their mock drill going on on tv. The announcer mentioned that the plant was near or right on a fault line? Also, the brief picture of the plant showed it to be nearly at sea level with a very short wall to stop waves from flooding it. So, basic quetions:

1) Why are they allowed to store spent nuclear rods at a plant so close to a fault line? Why are the nuclear rods not emergency evacuated to a safer location???

2) Why are they allowed to operate with such a short sea wall between them and a potential tsunami in an earthquake prone region?

These both seem like common sense engineering safety quesitons to me! In hindsight from Fukushima, why is nobody thinking about this stuff?

http://www.MaguffinMicrowave.com

Maguffin Microwave wireless design consulting

 

[trottiey]

According to an LA times article, the nearest fault line is 5 miles away, and the sea wall is 25 ft high. According to Wikipedia, that fault line is inactive.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lan...n-withstand-quakestsunamis-officials-say.html

Moving nuclear waste is a problem. Everyone always wants it to be "somewhere else" without specifying where that should be. And spent fuel need continuous active water cooling for a few years after it comes out of the reactor, so whatever transport container you use would need to provide that cooling in a fail-safe way. Not easy.

 

[rmw]

I don't believe anything I read in the press about power plants. The journalists just don't have the background to put the information they glean in the proper perspective.

This is even if they don't have a bias that sneaks into their reporting.

You are better off trying to gain information of this nature from technical sites written by professionals that understand the industry and the issues.

Some great sites are given in some other current threads in this forum.

rmw

 

[gmax137]

Try to find a copy of NUREG-0712, "SAFETY EVALUATION REPORT RELATED TO THE OPERATION OF SAN ONOFRE NUCLEAR GENERATING STATION, UNITS 2 AND 3" this is the NRC evaluation report (1981) that concludes by granting the operating license to the plant. Including the supplements it's probably 1000 pages long, and it is just a summary of the NRC's review. From your post it sounds like you live in the area of the plant. They typically have a "public document room" at a library near the plant where you can look for this NUREG. They're kind of hard to find on the internet. This SER goes a long way towards explaining what the NRC looked at, and it includes earthquakes, faults, and tsunamis.

 

[biff44]

No, I live in New England. Just saw the plant on TV and the comments made made me wonder!

But I think my original post is still valid. Just because someone 30 years ago when designing it thought that a 25 foot sea wall was adequate...how does that absolve engineers from re-examining those assumptions.

The assumptions made in the design of the Fukashima plant were, in hindsight, obviously optomistic!

http://www.MaguffinMicrowave.com

Maguffin Microwave wireless design consulting

 

[biff44]

As far as moving nuclear fuel storage rods to a safer area, yes nobody want them in their own backyard. But that was BEFORE we saw that the fuel rod storage pools were just as big a hazzard in Fukushima as the reactors themselves!

In the clarity of hindsight again, I think the American populace, including the Obama administration, might be more willing to reactivate the Yucca flats facility????

http://www.MaguffinMicrowave.com

Maguffin Microwave wireless design consulting

 

[biff44]

The thing I never heard mentioned was any sort of incentive plan for residents in NV from allowing us to store the nation's spent fuel rods there. How about the govt providing a $1000 per person subsidy to each adult in NV? Expensive, yes, but much less so than if one of those fuel storage pools every cuts loose like in Fukashima!

http://www.MaguffinMicrowave.com

Maguffin Microwave wireless design consulting

 

[mauner]

I don't think the San Onofre plant has a spent fuel pool with a "tin roof" over it like the Fukushima plant.

I think the safest on-site storage method will be in a dry-cask.

The NRC should mandate all spent fuel to be removed from the pool and moved into a dry-cask storage as soon as it is thermally feasable.

These storage containers are welded closed and they can be used to transport the fuel when the time comes.

 

[trottiey]

Sorry to disappoint you, but most spent fuel pools are under a steel roof, outside of the containment structure. In fact there are 23 reactors in the USA that have the exact same GE Mark I containment system as Fukushima Dai-ichi had. (San Onofre is not one of them.)

The thing that makes dry-cask storage so safe is that you can only put old fuel in there that has had a few years to cool in water. Putting fresh spent fuel in a dry-cask storage would result in a fire and contamination release as happened in Fukushima.

 

[mauner]

How many of the 23 are vulnerable to the "one-two punch" of an earthquake and tsunami?

For SONGS, wikipedia states that the decommisioned unit 1 is being used to store fuel - is it under the 6 foot thick concrete containment?

Does anyone know how much time needs to pass before a fuel bundle can be cooled in a non-oxygen atmosphere? My guess would be no more than 5 years.

 

[trottiey]

mauner, your first question is very general. Fukushima Dai-ichi was designed to survive the one-two punch of an earthquake and tsunami, up to a certain level called the "design basis." It appears that the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami were well beyond design basis. The design basis is adapted to each reactor location to try to envelope any plausible disaster, but it is not possible to build an indestructible object. Every plant has a limit to what it can take and is theoretically vulnerable to a beyond design basis accident.

SONGS unit 1 is decomissioned, and its containment now looks like swiss cheese, as you can see in this picture:

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/03/31/Nuclear-fuel-disposal-now-in-spotlight/UPI-86691301591471/

From what I gather on the internet, the land around it is being used for dry cask storage like you wanted. That seems to be what Wikipedia was referring to.

The article above says that spent fuel has to stay in water pools a minimum of 5 to 7 years because of regulation, and Wikipedia says the typical stay is 10 to 20 years. Those numbers sound about right to me.

 

[electricpete]

I hear lots of congressmen yacking about nuclear, but I haven't heard many yacking about Yucca.

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[QAFitz]

In the USA, plant engineering and the NRC constantly monitor the design basis.
.
The thread could be construed to be just as "hindsight plausible" as the press in that only the earthquake and tsunami are mentioned. What about an earthquake, tsunami and jet airliner crashing into the containment building all occurring at relatively the same time? What about an earthquake, tsunami, meteor all occurring at relatively the same time? How about an earthquake, tsunami, airliner, meteor and terrorist attack all occurring at relatively the same time? Or, tsunami, airliner, military tank driven by an extremist, all occurring while the plant operators are slightly distracted by an outside national event (like Japan winning the soccer cup)?
.
If every possible negative event were analyzed for each event that could harm humans (i.e., medical procedures, high-speed trains, auto driving with a cell phone, hydroelectric dams, etc.) would we ever make any progress? Baseline assumptions must be considered at almost every juncture and appropriate actions taken.

 

[racookpe1978]

Each Senator appoints (anoints ?) the staff that he or she wants, and the staff that most closely fits that person's theories and temperament and philosophies towards all things in life - but most especially judgmental and ideological things like political and economic and moral.

Senator Harry Reid (NV, democrat) is tied to extremist liberal philosophies and ideals, most importantly towards the holy grails of "green energy" and "renewables" even though the Yucca Flats is very thoroughly contaminated with the residue from several hundreds above ground and underground nuclear explosions between 1950 and 1996. Harry Reid is the leader, his office is almost the most extreme opponent of the Yucca Flats site, despite the benefits to Nevada and the entire US of properly recycling and disposing of nuclear waste.

Harry Reid's top aide for energy policy was promoted (nominated and approved by democrats) as head of NRC. 'Nuff said.

 

[electricpete]

Maybe there's hope. Unfortunately, it depends a lot more on politics than science:

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/07/16/1747057/house-passes-energy-bill-that.html

WASHINGTON -- As lawmakers argued over long-term deficit reduction, the Republican-led House on Friday cut 20 percent from President Obama's budget request for energy and water projects.

Republicans called the bill a model of restraint, but the White House said it jeopardized economic growth and clean energy.

The $30.6 billion bill, covering Energy Department and Army Corps of Engineers programs, was down $1 billion from this year and was nearly $6 billion less than the White House wanted.

The House bill blocks the administration from closing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project in Nevada.

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