THE ST. LUCIE NUCLEAR REACTOR IS FAILING, NO DOUBT ABOUT IT.
HOW MUCH IT HAS ALREADY FAILED IS WHAT FLORIDA RESIDENTS WOULD LIKE TO KNOW.
Institute Index: Is a nuclear disaster unfolding in Florida?
HOW MUCH IT HAS ALREADY FAILED IS WHAT FLORIDA RESIDENTS WOULD LIKE TO KNOW.
Institute Index: Is a nuclear disaster unfolding in Florida?
Number of tubes that help cool a nuclear reactor at Florida Power & Light's St. Lucie plant near Fort Pierce, Fla. that show signs of significant wear: more than 3,700
[more than 1/3rd of all tubes]Population living within 50 miles of the St. Lucie plant: over 1.1 million
Year in which FPL replaced the St. Lucie steam generators that hold the tubes: 2007
Year in which FPL shut down the St. Lucie reactor for routine refueling and found the tubes were banging against stainless steel anti-vibration bars, leaving dents and worn spots: 2009
Number of years FPL intended the new generators to last: 36
Year in which the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved FPL's request to run the St. Lucie reactor harder to increase its power output, a move that increased stress on the tubes: 2012
Date on which FPL is scheduled to shut down the St. Lucie reactor for routine refueling: 3/3/2014
Date on which the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy called on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to keep the St. Lucie plant from coming back online until the tubes are inspected, and on which it asked Florida lawmakers to review the state's 2006 "nuclear tax" law: 2/24/2014
Year in which Duke Energy permanently closed its Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida after a botched repair job: 2013
HOW SAFE ARE THE AGING FACILITIES?
WOULD YOU BUY A HOUSE NEXT DOOR?
HONESTLY, WOULD YOU MOVE YOUR CHILDREN IN THERE?
HOW SAFE IS TURKEY POINT?
Here are Saporito's five reasons the nuke plant in our own back yard is apocalyptically unsafe. (FPL didn't respond to a request for comment but in the past has maintained that Saporito was canned with cause.)
1. It's old. When Turkey Point went into operation in 1972, it was licensed for 40 years. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently "rubber-stamped" another 20 years, allowing the plant to operate until 2033. "This is uncharted territory," Saporito says. "They cannot dispute that those reactors may crack from being bombarded with high-level radiation."
2. Employees are afraid to report safety concerns. Saporito claims FPL fired him — twice — for whistleblowing. The utility's punitive bent has what he calls a "chilling effect": Nuclear workers don't come forward with safety concerns. His evidence: In the past six years, the NRC has received 160 anonymous complaints about Florida nuclear plants from their workers, "far in excess of any other nuclear plants in the U.S." What concerns Saporito is that those workers didn't feel safe bringing their complaints to FPL.
3. Just like in Japan, Turkey Point is susceptible to a meltdown caused by a natural disaster. A hurricane-spurred tidal surge from Turkey Point's neighboring Biscayne Bay could create catastrophic conditions identical to those in Japan. With power down, the plant would be forced to rely on emergency diesel generators to pump water to cool the reactors. Saporito believes those generators would "certainly" become inundated with water from the tidal surge, causing them to drown and fail.
4. The plant's spent fuel pools are brimming with danger. Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station's spent fuel pools are threatening to boil away and introduce radiation into the air. Last June, FPL was fined $70,000 for violations regarding Turkey Point's spent fuel pools. The negligence "could have resulted in a severe nuclear accident," Saporito says. "That could be a horrific disaster all by itself."
5. If Turkey Point melts down, Miami is doomed. Saporito says there will be no time to evacuate the city to protect ourselves from radiation. If there's a meltdown, "people are going to die," he says, "and the entire city of Miami could become a ghost town that nobody can go back to for 50,000 years."
THINK ABOUT THAT..I ONLY ASK THAT YOU THINK ABOUT IT... THIS APPLIES TO ALL OUR OLD NUCLEAR FACILITIES,, WORN-OUT, SUSCEPTIBLE TO NATURAL DISASTERS AND "TERRORISTS"
Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has spent years pushing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission toward stricter enforcement of its safety rules, has called for a reassessment. Several U.S. reactors lie on or near fault lines, and Markey wants to beef up standards for new and existing plants.
[There are five nuclear reactors at three locations in Florida: Progress Energy's Crystal River plant, 80 miles north of Tampa; Florida Power & Light's St. Lucie 1 and St. Lucie 2 in Jensen Beach, 10 miles southeast of Ft. Pierce, and FPL's Turkey Point 3 and Turkey Point 4, just 25 miles south of Miami. The St. Lucie reactors are some 180 miles south of Palm Coast. The Crystal River reactor is 140 miles west of Palm Coast.
The distance between Palm Coast and the Crystal River nuclear reactor is exactly the same distance separating Tokyo and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, where workers have been struggling to battle a potential meltdown contain the most serious nuclear disaster since the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in April 1986. There are also two nuclear-power reactors at the Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Plant in Baxley, Ga. (Unit 1 and Unit 2). Those are roughly 186 miles from Palm Coast.]
“This disaster serves to highlight both the fragility of nuclear power plants and the potential consequences associated with a radiological release caused by earthquake related damage,” Markey wrote NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko in a March 11 letter.
The New York Times reported last week that the NRC has reviewed the concerns raised by the engineer, John Ma, and concluded that the design is sufficient without the upgrades Ma recommended. Westinghouse maintains that the reactor is safe.
THINK ABOUT THAT...WHY WOULDN'T THEY AT LEAST GO CHECK OUT WHAT THE ENGINEER SAID, LET HIM SHOW THEM WHAT HE MEANS BY HIS CONCERN?
Boiling water reactors, like the ones hit by the Japanese earthquake, are built like nested matroyshka dolls.
The inner doll, which looks like a gigantic cocktail shaker and holds the radioactive uranium, is the heavy steel reactor vessel. It sits inside a concrete and steel dome called the containment. The reactor vessel is the primary defense against disaster — as long as the radiation stays inside everything is fine.
The worry is that a disaster could either damage the vessel itself or, more likely, damage equipment that used to control the uranium. If operators cannot circulate water through the vessel to cool the uranium it could overheat and burn into radioactive slag — a meltdown.
The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale.
The rant of an antinuclear activist?
Hardly. It was the first sentence of an in-depth story in a conservative business magazine, Forbes.
In 1985.
Forbes' point then — that out-of-control costs and poor decisionmaking doomed the nuclear power industry — may prove as relevant in 2012 as it was a generation ago. And it points up a looming question as Tampa Bay faces its own $22.4 billion nuclear project:
A lack of experience and standardized designs caused many utilities to suffer soaring costs. Some plants had to be redesigned. Parts of others repeatedly were rebuilt or reinforced. Major deficiencies began sprouting up — a reactor installed backward, a control panel that caught fire, defective concrete. In one case, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved designs for a reactor even though the utility was building a different type of reactor. Buzz over the U.S. "nuclear renaissance" fades in the wake of the Japan nuclear disaster.
REALLY?
WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO MAKE NUCLEAR FACILITIES SAFE, EVEN 95% SAFE?
MORE THAN WE'VE GOT, MORE THAN WE'LL EVER HAVE.
HEADS UP, FLORIDA!
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