(I have long said that I would be FAR more comfortable with nuclear power as a domestic energy source if the industry were nationalized and placed under the control of the Department of the Navy. Bumped. Bulk of content moved under the jump. – promoted by kestrel9000)
Thank you Sue Prent for writing about the danger from the Entergy Plant in Vernon known as Vermont Yankee. As I have written before, I assembled reactors at the time General Electric designed the reactor installed at Vernon. At that time, when I read what was proposed for the electric power industry, I knew that trouble was coming. No reactor should be operated for profit!
In those years, I encountered a reactor control drive mechanisms that came accompanied by the vendor verification of quality. A book one-quarter of inch thick accompanied it. Every box of the vendor’s shipping inspection report was initialed. Resistance between the terminals for connection of the reactor control rod position indicators was measured and initialed for a reactor control rod position sensor that was not installed beneath the connector. The heads of the screws holding the connector to the mechanism had holes for wire through them and twisted between them to assure that they could not unscrew on their own.
It seemed that no one at the vendors plant had questioned the presence of a left over sensor prior to shipment. There was one very embarrassed field representative who had to cut the wires, remove the screws and try to explain the false readings and initials for his employer.
On another occasion, the source range instrumentation for a reactor could not be made to operate according the manual received with it. Russ Medbery, ship’s manager, assigned the task to resolve the issue to me. After three weeks of work in the shipyard’s instrument laboratory, I was able to report to Russ that operation according to the manual was unacceptable. General Electric had contracted with the DuMont Corporation to design this critical instrumentation.
The source range nuclear instrumentation for a power plant measures the initial background radiation in a reactor vessel emitted by an isotopic source of neutrons. That background radiation is the basis of determining when the reactor is approaching criticality. Criticality is when the fission reaction is self-sustaining. Thermal neutrons, those that have slowed from their initial energy as fast neutrons when emitted from an uranium fission, are slightly more likely to sustain the reaction than when immediately emitted. The difference between whether the reaction is controllable depends upon whether slow or fast neutrons are continuing the reaction. If the thermal neutrons sustain the reaction, there is control. If fast, or prompt neutrons sustain the reaction there is no control.
The last paragraph is written so that readers will become a little more knowledgeable about the seriousness of the source range instrumentation. After criticality, other instrumentation is used to control an operating reactor. DuMont went bankrupt during the vendor process and General Electric took over the project. It must have been discovered that the instruments would not meet the lifetime specifications for the radio tubes in use at the time. This was changed by reducing the voltages in the instruments by adjustment of variable resistors in the circuits. The manual was changed accordingly to be in agreement. When I realized that all of the variable resistors were at one end of their adjustment or the other end, I realized that the circuit was not being operated as designed. I reported my findings to Russ and General Electric started shouting that I had no business analyzing their provided instrumentation. Too bad! The buck ended with those of us who had to test and operate the reactor before the Navy would accept the ship.
As stated above, I do not believe profit and nuclear power are compatible. I will go a little further than that. I do not believe that anyone who is unwilling to voluntarily live next to a nuclear reactor with his family has the right to make decisions concerning them, their maintenance or their financing. You really need to put up or shut up about nuclear power. Nuclear power is here to stay! Mankind has never abandoned any source of energy once it has been discovered. Nuclear power will not be an exception. The US Navy has successfully operated reactors to propel its ships since 1954. That said, there is an immense organizational difference between military and commercial operations. I stand that accepted corporate practices are unacceptable for the operation of nuclear reactors.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not satisfactorily regulate nuclear power. It is well established that the majority of the commissioners of that organization have connections and loyalties to the industry that they have been politically appointed to regulate. In my opinion, they are slick, over-paid shills for the nuclear industry, slippery like snot on a glass door knob.
The above are examples of the misrepresentations I encountered by corporations in my nuclear work. If anyone, including David Usher, believes what Entergy or any corporation tells them, they are foolish. Corporations will write and say anything to close a moneymaking deal. Goldman-Sachs is dumping its incestment in a company pimping under-age young women to make money. I believe somebody in the Goldman firm knew that they had peddled financial incest to a blind trust in the name of Ann Romney, wife of Republican U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. Your local ‘trust’ (sic) company has sold mortgages to firms that have sold collections of them for investment. There are now property mortgages in the US which multiple investment instruments claim to own. Who owns yours? The mortgage market is rife with outright fraud. Your interest counts for nothing with corporations. Bloomberg’s financial news carried an article, today, in which someone associated with finance states, bluntly, that nobody puts the customer ahead of his own interests. That is true! Do not ever believe what a corporation tells you.
Do not allow any Entergy or any corporation to control your personal future or that of the State of Vermont!!!!
April 2, 2012
PS To the Editor, the term ‘financial incestment’ was originally a typo. Since, it fits my opinion of the financial industry, I did not correct it.
Your story illustrates very well some of the pitfalls of corporate control of nuclear energy.
It is utterly naive for anyone to think that Entergy or any other corporation is going to put the best interests of the service area ahead of its own bottom line.
This is great. I really appreciate the detail regarding operating nuclear power technology.
I disagree on on small point, you said, “Mankind has never abandoned any source of energy once it has been discovered.” This is not correct in that Henry Ford backed the hemp industry in the ’30s and American-grown hemp helped us win WWII in he ’40s, but that was stamped out the second the war ended by Standard Oil and Dow Chemical using Hearst Publications for propaganda. Our world today would be a very different place if we had been using annual-replacement hemp instead of ancient-sequestered carbon.
Finally I do not agree that all nuclear tech should be controlled by the Navy, but clearly the DOE is not qualified at present. I 100% agree that all nuclear tech should be nationalized, as you put it, “I do not believe profit and nuclear power are compatible.” What I would like to see is the NRC and DOE adopt the same standards you had back then when you did QC for the Navy.
I have said before, I don’t disagree with the concept of nuclear tech, I strongly disagree with how our society has gone about implementing it for the last 90 years.
among the many, many more is the waste. That said, we can rest assured that no state is likely to want this ticking time bomb in their backyard.
Soo, we can also be assured that each state where reactors are located will be expected to keep it right where it is or build their own underground storage, risks of which are myriad & the same reasons no one wants it. Many if not all states were assured that the waste would be sent to a facility or site in someone elses backyard or we can safely bet that many, if any would never have allowed the reactors to be built in the first place. Gullible public also unaware of the shiftiness of the AEC/NRC & the possibility of relicensing past the design life which produces many times more the waste which was anticipated, as well as more nuclear waste leaking into the groundwater & waterways where reactors are located in part due to the rotting pipes.
Surely lawmakers & residents were not thinking very seriously about these inconvenient truths at that time:
– Providing 24/7 armed guardianship with no way of knowing if the guards or even the integrity of containment can be trusted; into perpetuity, which means it will be left to our children & theirs
– Risk of natural disasters which threaten entire regions including populations as well as water supplies
– We cannot trust the military or the government
Although the profit motive is one of the primary problems with nuclear power production & use, it’s not the only one. Since nuclear power isn’t necessary at all, and since there are too many things wrong, I refuse to entertain a scenario under which it could be acceptable since it isn’t imho.
Reprocessing? Add that to the rest of the myths. “Too cheap to meter” has now become “Too costly-it’s now unaffordable”.