NUCLEAR INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING
Nuclear terrorism is INEVITABLE
PRIMARY DOCUMENT RECIPIENT: Paul Lavely, Office of Radiation Safety, UC Berkeley
DOCUMENT CODE NAME: "42" (for its deep philosophical meaning)
ORIGINAL DOCUMENT SOURCE: Russell D. Hoffman, Concerned Citizen, Carlsbad, CA
FIRST RELEASE DATE: Tuesday, May 21st, 2002 (GMT)
SUMMARY: Nuke "experts" are so specialized, that they aren't so "expert" after all!
Paul,
This letter is in response to your remarks (shown below) disputing my previous statements about the possibilities of spontaneous fires in nuclear power plant spent fuel dry cask storage systems. I am confident that my Davis-Besse Newsletter #12 accurately reflects the potential danger. My extremely-reliable-coauthor (I can't recall a single successful challenge to her facts) for the spent fuel comments used, among other technical references, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Feb. 2001 Technical Study of Spent Fuel Pool Accident Risks at Decommissioning Power Plants (NUREG 1738). (If you can get your hands on two copies, I'd appreciate receiving one.)
Although NUREG 1738 is specifically about spent fuel pools after a rapid "drain-down", the cases are similar. Spent fuel must cool in a pool for at least five years before even the most care-free nuke-plant operator would consider moving it to dry cask storage. Time/temperature curves for DOE Yucca Mountain studies require logarithmic timescales to show temperature drops. The stuff is hot, fragile, and dangerous.
One thing about relying on individual government reports such as NUREG 1738 is that the "Executive Summaries" often fail to accurately represent the data contained within. My comments were based on the data within (and additional technical references and other sources).
Another thing about government reports generally is that, over time, each successive report tends to re-minimize the real dangers of the things it deals with. So, a series of ever-more-watered-down government reports which starts with some semblance of truth can, after a few stages, make it sound as though it's perfectly safe to go up and lick a spent nuclear fuel rod!
(You may be interested to know how this whitewashing is done. First, the original Government Report aggregates thousands of accident scenarios, and publishes, as if it were an absolute "worst case scenario", the averaged accident scenario, which is nowhere near a real "worst case scenario". This averaged value is just about as useful as determining that the meaning of life is "42". (This was in fact done, humorously, in the great science fiction classic: "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" by the late Douglass Adams. A short time later, "42" became a permanent part of the famous TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) computer graphics file specification, as a required field in the file,
the value being described in the technical documentation distributed to the computer graphics industry as having been chosen "for its deep philosophical meaning".) The second Government Report whitewashes what is left of the truth from the first by using the averaged value as if it were a true worst case scenario, and the third Government Report waters down the dangers again. In the end, the only place the facts are truly spelled out is in an obscure comment in some Appendix of the first report, perhaps just as a response to an activist's very-carefully-worded complaint. For example, that's the only place I ever found where NASA actually admitted the size of plutonium dust particles which would be created in the event of an accidental re-entry of the Cassini space probe (2 to 10 microns, the ideal size for lodging in the human lung).
Regarding the other things you say you know about (and should know about, based on your professional experience, namely, how well the nuke plants really are run), it's obvious that you haven't bothered to read ANY of my discussions of the litany of events at San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station just since January of last year (2001) -- events which have cost the facility hundreds of millions of dollars:
* Explosions
* Fires
* Radiation releases
* Security breaches including: Unaccompanied guests, uninspected packages during security tests, and a hole found cut into the perimeter fence big enough for a person to crawl through.
* Dropped Loads
* Unguarded gates (I witnessed this myself, when a retired Navy Seal accompanied me on a non-motorized tour of the western perimeter edge.)
* Fallen fork-lift tines (you might have trouble finding this one, but my contact inside the plant has been 100% reliable.)
* Spilled Hydrazine (aka "rocket fuel")
* Multiple SCRAMs
* An airplane crash just hundreds of feet from the perimeter of the plant (Merry Christmas! We almost lost SoCal!)
* Terrorist threats against the plant by a recently-fired 17-year employee with a massive arsenal (300+ assault weapons). San Onofre's P.R. spokesperson blithely claimed, while actually standing in front of this incredible collection of rifles, grenades, rocket launchers, tear gas, etc., that the plant's security forces were fully capable of repelling such a force, regardless of how many friends the guy brought with him (and he had to have friends, to acquire all those weapons)
* Additional lies to the public too numerous to catalog
These are serious problems, and that's all stuff from just one facility (two nuke plants). All of these incidents are already documented at my web site (most of them are also available in the public press). So don't bother to patronize me by telling me the plants are run safely. They aren't. If you don't know that, you don't know Jack. Or Ed. Or Osama.
Monticello's Primary Containment Vessel was inoperative for THIRTY YEARS (that is, ever since the plant was built). That was unquestionably during your shift at the NRC, since it covers the whole time the NRC has been in existence and then some. Why was it inoperative? Because 32 shipping bolts were left on 8 bellows after the units were installed. One of Diablo Canyon's reactors was put in backwards and had to be turned 180 degrees. One of San Onofre's reactor heads was dropped six inches while they were installing it. This could be the root cause of brittle fracture later, but by now, even after Davis-Besse's incident occurred, San Onofre's head-drop has been, of course, completely forgotten by most people.
So don't tell me these plants were carefully constructed. They weren't.
Davis-Besse's corrosion apparently took at least four years to develop. So don't tell me anybody's been paying attention since you left the NRC inspection team. They haven't been.
And I guess you came into the discussions late, but I'm sure one of your friends can dig up a copy of my essay: "25 Simple Ways a Small Group of Suicidal Terrorists Could Melt Down A Reactor, Kill Millions of People, and Lay Waste to Thousands of Square Miles of America". It took an afternoon to write (this took far longer, frankly). Probably anybody could have written it. Of course, you'd have to be utterly mad (AND suicidal) to actually carry out any of those ideas (and 1000s of others like them). But, you'd ALSO have to be utterly mad to expose thousands of square miles of our nation's most precious land to such vulnerabilities -- but that's EXACTLY what we have been doing by having nuclear power plants (see Bennett Ramberg's seminal work: "Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril", or talk to any well-trained ex-military person). The plants are weakly defended.
Devastating terrorist attacks on our nuclear power plants are inevitably going to occur -- unless we SHUT THEM DOWN and protect the fuel carefully, in guarded bunkers etc. etc., as I've outlined in previous intelligence reports. A running plant simply cannot be protected. Spent fuel is vulnerable, but vastly less so. A new dry cask must appear somewhere in America every 2 or 3 days at today's rate of spent nuclear fuel waste output. Each of these casks could wipe out thousands of square miles of our homeland if a terrorist attacked it.
The media is now widely reporting that Al Queda is threatening another terrorist strike, BIGGER than 9-11 -- with VASTLY MORE American deaths.
How does one get much bigger than 9-11 without going nuclear? Oh sure, it can be done, but maybe a better question is, would you bother with anything in-between, if you were a terrorist? If the bloody aftermath of 9-11 just made you madder, what would you do? What do you expect Al Qieda to do? AFTER 9-11 and the overwhelming "Depleted" (our military's spin; but actually not a very accurate description) Uranium attacks WE have made since 9-11, what do you think Ally-Q will resort to next? What will satisfy UBL's wrath, if he still exists, or the wrath of his deluded followers if he doesn't? What American facilities have they threatened -- time and again? Nuclear power plants.
We now know that the Bush Administration's "response" -- the attack on Afghanistan -- was fully planned and ready to go before the 9-11 terrorist attack -- what was the Bush Administration waiting for? An excuse? As if the Taliban's treatment of women was not a good enough one?
But what kind of a war could we go in and wage with that provocation? Instead, last year at about this time, we were still giving the Taliban millions of dollars in Foreign Aid -- why? To curry favor to get the long-term rights to an oil pipeline at cheap rates. And to attempt to muscle-in on the centuries-old drug trade, where careful growing has produced a quality product which can be used to alleviate the pain of cancer with minimal side effects compared to all other known substances. It can also be used to alleviate the misery of poverty, I hear. Subsidies for substance-abuse education where it's called for? Never! Help end poverty in Afghanistan? Forget it! Just bomb them with Depleted Uranium!
What kind of logic is that?
It is clear now that the Bush Administration had ample opportunities to know that some type of devastating hijacking was likely to occur. When it happened, reality demanded an immediate and intelligent military action, of which we were amply capable. The Bush Administration apparently thought they were dealing with four lightly filled, hijacked airplanes which would be flown to a central location and ransomed. Or maybe they thought the planes would be crashed into the ground. Or what? What did the Bush Administration think was happening once they already knew that four planes had been hijacked? Once they knew that one had been crashed into a WTC building? Once they knew that two had been crashed into the WTC?
"What did he know and when did he know it?" on 9-11 demands a second-by-second accounting!
My guess is the Bush Administration hadn't prepared for what actually happened, but they HAD prepared Bush for the moment he was told that a terrorist attack -- as expected -- was in progress.
And by pretending not to blink at that moment, he blinked.
When lightening struck four times on 9-11, Bush wasn't ready. If the nuclear power plants are still operating when they are attacked (by Mother Nature or UBL), Bush (and the country) won't be ready. The difference is, this time, everyone knows (except you, Paul, because after all, terrorism isn't your area of expertise, so you have nothing to say about that part of my previous intelligence briefing (code word: Davis-Besse Newsletter #12)).
Because of revelations from the past few days, it also appears that Bush let the 9-11 attacks happen in the hopes (so far, fulfilled) that they would galvanize the country against terrorism. But he was outfoxed. He had no idea the terrorists would smash those planes into those buildings. Or was that, somehow, negotiated? What if the terrorists threatened to destroy our nuclear power plants with missiles if the U. S. Government didn't let the planes proceed to their targets? Would such a scenario explain why none of the planes were shot down? Where was Flight 93 really headed? Three Mile Island or one of the four other nukes near its flight path?
A standard terrorist threat early on in a hijacking is undoubtedly that they have other operatives around the world who are ready to mount a far-worse strike than the one in progress, if the current action (which is invariably a cruel publicity stunt) is stopped. Did this happen on 9-11? If so, who delivered the threat? Who verified it?
The official timeline presented by the U. S. Government to explain why America's multi-million dollar fighter jets didn't intercept ANY of the lumbering (comparatively speaking) commercial airplanes on 9-11 doesn't make any sense.
While we may never know exactly who knew what when on 9-11, hindsight really is only useful to figure out what we need to do next. And what we need to do next is shut the reactors down. While running, nuclear reactors are orders-of-magnitude more vulnerable to meltdowns -- that is, they are harder to protect -- than when they are shut down by having the control rods inserted, then the fuel rods separated away from each other. Time is the ONLY thing that makes spent fuel safe -- and it takes thousands of years! (The peak offsite dose from Yucca Mountain doesn't occur until year 100,000 or so, according to the Department of Energy, but that's presuming nothing goes wrong, so the DOE's hopeful projections probably have about a 0.01% chance of coming true -- and those projections are no picnic, anyway!)
A successful nuclear attack will cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Our reactors are vulnerable. Our nuclear weapons policies and our nuclear energy policies are unsustainable.
After our country's use of radioactive weapons (so-called "Depleted" Uranium) during the Gulf Oil Company War, and the extreme sanctions which have followed, hundreds of scientists, doctors, and statisticians outside the United States have assigned the deaths and deformations of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children to those two actions. Again in Yugoslavia, and then in Afghanistan, radioactive uranium weapons (let's dispense with the misnomer "depleted" unless we add the modifier "slightly" as in "slightly depleted uranium", okay?) have been widely used by our armies. So it follows logically that we should expect a radiation attack in return.
That is how "NBC" war works. That is how WWI was fought (with Mustard Gas). (The plight (and sight) of WWI's gas victims shocked society, and so combat in WWII had predominantly other tit-for-tat atrocities (such as Germany's V1 and V2 bombs, and Allied firebombing) until the end, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki). We are now on the verge of -- or should I say, a few steps into -- World War Three. What do YOU expect us to be hit with NEXT? And WHY?
I love my country, and I like to believe that my country hesitates as long as it can before resorting to violence to solve its problems. But do we hesitate long enough each time? And when we resort to violence, do we really work to minimize the "collateral damage" enough, each time? Unfortunately, for all our rhetoric, we don't get it right each time. And maybe each time doesn't matter much to you, but it matters a whole lot to someone.
That is why we have to stop engaging in brutal military tactics which destroy other people's ability to live on their own land after we come though and bomb the hell out of them for whatever reason -- justified or unjustified. Killing combatants is considered rather forgivable in this violent world we live in. Destroying environments is not. Killing civilians is not. Targeting children is not. Radiation, as you know, effects infants and fetuses at least an order of magnitude more than it effects healthy adults. This is not forgotten by our enemies, even if we don't talk about it much, here in America.
It's what they (scientists and civilians, both) are talking about around the world! That, and solving "the Palestinian question". That, and raising the price of a barrel of oil, which all the oil fiefdoms want to do. That, and freeing people to live however they want, even if it means mutilating their young girls (as many cultures do in a senseless procedure known variously as female genital mutilation or female circumcision), or some other crime or heinous act, like cooking dogs, or employing young children, or stoning the victims of rape, or killing intellectuals, or maybe, just permitting drugs to be grown that suck American dollars by the bucketful.
We have to stop bombing water systems, sewage systems, dams, electrical supply systems, not to mention bombing foreign news service headquarters, and then pretending we didn't know where Al Jazeera's offices are located in Afghanistan! Nobody's fooled, and the killing of reporters is a heinous crime; one not soon forgotten.
There are International Conventions for war. When we violate their spirit or their words, we undermine our "moral authority". There are International Treaties regarding nuclear proliferation, testing, number of weapons, types of weapons, etc.. We withdraw at will from these treaties, and we insist that they be watered down before we'll sign them in the first place.
Where does it end? What steps do we need to take to be a better neighbor? If we are going to remain the only 800-pound gorilla in the world, shouldn't we -- at least -- tread lightly? Even an 800-pound gorilla has an Achilles Heal. What is ours? Our nuclear power plants.
We attack other countries with radioactive weapons ("D.U."), and threaten to attack them with "conventional" nuclear weapons. A nuclear retaliation now appears to be likely. Hold on to your gas mask! (Don't let your neighbors know you have one.) It could get mighty dirty.
Nuclear weapons and nuclear energy have brought us nothing but trouble and heartache. The time has (finally) come to rethink America's pro-nuclear planet-destroying behavior. True, other nations MUST stand down these weapons (and power plants) as well. The activists were right all along -- nuclear power and nuclear weapons were really bad ideas.
But now, Paul, even at this late date, as the clock on the wall strikes midnight (twenty-four hundred in military-speak), instead of finally admitting these things (since they are, after all, obvious now to nearly everyone), you have tried to rewrite history with your email (shown below), asserting to me that the nuclear power plants are safe etc. etc., and focusing on whether dry storage casks can suddenly burst into flame if perfectly-plausible conditions are accidentally met! Or, as when you first contacted me, you argue about the exact shape of the spray emanating from a burst Reactor Pressure Vessel Head at Davis-Besse, while dismissing out-of-hand the possibility that a shattered RPVH could prevent a sufficient number of control rods from dropping, in clearly foreseeable accident scenarios. Such ridiculous details!
Do you really think that beating me around on such relatively minor technical issues could ever prove your case for nuclear power? How many nozzle configurations have you modeled on your available supercomputers, anyway? How many head fractures?
What ARE the real warnings that America's elected leaders need to hear from its experts (that'd be you, supposedly)?
How is America to decide that it's finally time to stand down from our nuclear world-attack and threats, and to reduce our homeland vulnerabilities, and -- NOT "reason with the terrorists", for that is impossible, but rather, simply, REASON with OURSELVES?
Instead, your answer is: "I can't speak to what I'm not an expert in, but Russell, my boy, spent fuel won't burn quite so easily as you describe!" Minor details! You'll have to do better than that, Paul Lavely, Former NRC Inspector, now Director, Office of Radiation Safety, UC Berkeley!
Since you first contacted me about two months ago, I've learned that the ORS in your title stands for Office of Radiation Safety. So, tell me, in your opinion (for no one really knows for sure, right?) how much plutonium 239 does it take, inhaled into the lung of a one-day-old, three-months-premature infant, to cause the premature death of that person? How much plutonium 239 would it take to adversely effect that infant's health in any way over its lifetime? How much Pu 239 does it take to kill a full-grown man?
According to the UC Berkeley web site, if Berkeley campus police can't answer a radiation call from a student, teacher, or citizen, you are next to call on the list. In fact, you're the second (and third, and fourth) person listed. But in your email shown below, you shirk responsibility -- you claim not to be an expert in many things related to nuclear issues (everything I claimed in Davis-Besse Newsletter #12 which you didn't respond to). In fact, only a very small segment of the problems I've outlined drew any comment from you at all.
So I wonder how you can protect Berkeley's staff and students, and the local community, when nearby reactors are spewing out uncontrolled -- and unreported -- amounts of radionuclides daily into the atmosphere and risk catastrophic terrorist attacks or accidents daily. Evidently that's alright with you, despite the fact that you are now in charge of protecting the people around the Berkeley campus from the very product which, in your previous job, you helped create!
Personally, I don't understand how can you go from permitting the industrial process which resulted in our current 50,000 ton "stockpile" of high-level radioactive waste, most of which is spent fuel, to protecting Berkeley citizens (and the rest of us) from that same waste in nearly-infinitesimal, minuscule quantities, for thousands of years, and not see a conflict of interest. To me, that sounds like the fox guarding the hen house! You blame government for not resolving the waste issue. But YOU couldn't solve it, and every scientist before you couldn't solve it either! And if you really know anything about nuclear waste, you shouldn't find that at all surprising!
You claim the nuke industry isn't secretive. Then why couldn't YOU find the litany of accidents, incidents, and near-catastrophes at San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station, and not make the irresponsible comment that the plants are well-run? They aren't. What they are is poorly inspected. This may make them appear to be well-run to anyone who trusts NRC inspection reports. No one else is fooled.
The real world is so different from the dream-world the nuclear proponents live in, Paul! I've seen the RADSAFE listserv comments about "hormesis" and other specious claims in support of nuclear power. I've seen proponents and officials bounce around a complaint because it's not any one person's particular area of expertise. Don't worry, we're told -- another "expert" will answer that part of your question. But not ONE of you can put it all together!
According to the President, fighting terrorism is everyone's responsibility.
I've heard x-ray technicians (the folks that give kids with sprained ankles x-rays in the hospital) tell me THEY CAN'T AGREE WITH MY POSITION ON NUCLEAR POWER BECAUSE OF THEIR PROFESSION. Period. End of discussion. And that's happened since 9-11 -- they still can't separate the two under any circumstances -- the only question left would be to ask how many nuclear power plants would have to melt down before such people would see a difference between their professional connection to "radiation", and commercial nuclear power's vulnerabilities and its dangerous production of vast quantities of radionuclides.
This inability to separate the various nuclear activities -- that is, being pro-nuclear with no real limits based on logical considerations, when you come right down to it -- has two major fallacies in this specific instance: First: MRIs and Ultrasound have been around for years and can completely replace most medical x-rays, and the additional up-front cost is more-than made up for by the fewer cancers which will occur later. Blood tests can determine if bones are fractured at all or not, but might be more expensive than an x-ray. But since our current medical system won't make the changes, some number of people will get cancer from the x-rays and die.
Second: Medical uses of radioactivity and the radioactive waste thus produced (including urine, feces, body parts, etc.), although still a serious concern in our environment, are minuscule amounts (as measured in Curies) compared to the waste created by commercial nuclear power and military nuclear power (for propulsion, generally) and weapons production.
Before you write me again, Paul, I suggest you get YOUR facts absolutely straight -- all of them. Concern yourself with the whole picture of nuclear power's costs to society -- including costs resulting from a successful terrorist attack, and the cost of the intractable, unsolvable, growing problem of nuclear waste, and the cost of trying to protect the plants in a post 9-11 world even if that security effort is 100% successful -- let alone, if it isn't.
Of course, it's entirely possible that embrittled nuclear bomb components, which are rumored to exist, MAYBE EVEN AT BERKELEY, may make this discussion MOOT (for you, anyway) at any moment! (The person I heard this from has already made his complaint (including the names of those who have direct knowledge) to the FBI, DOE, and NRC, and I believe he's told the UC Berkeley Campus Police as well, but I have no idea if it was ever acted on. I doubt it, because he's been complaining about it for years.)
But of course, a nuclear explosion at Berkeley would be blamed on terrorists, even it if was caused by a combination of embrittlement and negligence, just as a Davis-Besse meltdown would undoubtedly have been blamed on terrorists, too. The terrorists, for their part, seem comfortable with such blame, since they have claimed that they plan to melt our plants down anyway. We live in interesting times, don't we, Paul?
Many of my most distressing predictions have, over time, been proven accurate. But, it's silly that I have to be the one to say these things. The things I warn about are obvious to anyone who gives nuclear power a close inspection. In 1979, after Three Mile Island, a Sandia National Labs report surfaced, which showed that nuke plants were vulnerable to airplanes, whether from accidents or terrorist attacks. Then what happened? We forgot, and built many more nuke plants anyway.
You "experts" try to knock me down with a "fact" here and there (though sometimes, I think you're just trying to discover the source of a fact you'd like to make inaccessible to the public!). But you can't disprove our logic, Paul -- you can't even come close.
One NEED NOT be an "expert" to see the stupidity of nuclear power. In fact, since all "experts" (like yourself in your most recent email) can't speak (or think?) outside your area of expertise, I'd have to say that you HAVE TO not be an "expert" to grasp the logic against nuclear power! Okay -- there are exceptions. Brilliant and brave nuclear physicists like John Gofman at Berkeley, or Jack Shannon, who risk their careers for the public good. But so far, to no avail.
How much more time do we have, with Al Q. threatening, and Mother Nature hovering, each ready to strike at any moment (and don't forget Brother Murphy and Father Time, who manufactures embrittlement -- oh, but that's outside your area of expertise, isn't it?)?
It's time to STOP BICKERING about plant safety records and such, and it's time for you and the entire rest of the "fringe" of the Nuclear Industry to unequivocally admit that tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, terrorists, and so on, which are relatively INSIGNIFICANT problems for all other forms of energy in terms of their comparable effects on society if a power plant is struck, are INSURMOUNTABLE problems for nuclear power.
A single spent fuel PELLET can wipe out scores of city blocks. A single spent fuel ROD can wipe out a large town. A single spent fuel ASSEMBLY can wipe out a major U.S. city. A single DRY CASK fire can easily wipe out a whole state, and there is enough fuel in America right now for about 5,000 dry casks, if we took it all out of the spent fuel pools (A dry cask would look lovely next to your home, wouldn't it? Especially instead of an ugly WINDMILL!). People say these thousands of dry casks are somehow safer than the 100 or so "carefully guarded" (not my description!) spent fuel pools and, by logical extension from choosing the nuclear option as an energy source -- both are somehow, bewilderingly, considered SAFER even than WINDMILLS! (That is, their production is considered a reasonable energy alternative to wind power, as well as to hydro, biomass, geothermal, wave, tide, solar, and other green energy solutions, and also compared to coal and oil.)
If our "experts" can't figure out a way to get rid of nuclear waste (and 50 years of trying makes the answer to that self-evident outside the nuclear industry -- they can't), then they at least had better stop making 40 new tons of combined high-level (10 tons) and low-level (30 tons) radioactive waste every day from our commercial nuclear power plants in America (PLUS hundreds of tons of even lower-level waste which is, for no scientific reason known to humans, "beyond regulatory control", PLUS military nuke waste.)
(By the way, there's no difference between "high-level nuke waste" and "low-level nuke waste" except the amount of filler in it -- brass, iron, copper, gold, lead, cement, rubber, glass, plastic, photographic film, clothing, water, etc. etc. etc.. -- things that once were useful to society, but now are useless radioactive waste.)
"Experts" like you need to help America switch from "CON" (Coal, Oil, Nuclear) energy sources to GREEN, RENEWABLE energy sources. Let's stop the bickering and the BS, before millions of casualties occur, because, as a country, we refused to change our nuclear energy policies (and our military nuclear policies, and our oil policies) in time.
Nuclear energy, being about a million times more dangerous than coal or oil energy per kilowatt of power produced, should be the first to go, and it's high time it made its ungraceful exit. Maybe some future generation of nuclear power technology will achieve the dream (I doubt it). But the current generation of nuclear power plants, especially in today's threat environment, is unquestionably a nightmare. And there is NO solution on the horizon. PBMRs (Pebble-Bed Modular Reactors) have inherent and unsolvable safety and waste generation problems.
Warnings from the terrorists are clear. Embrittlement, on the other hand, carries no warning, but look what it did to Davis-Besse. Carelessness caries no flag to mark its position as it marches into battle. It blows no trumpet. It sends out no threats. But look what it did at Monticello, at Davis-Besse, and many other places.
Tsunamis can strike in seconds -- Earthquakes just HAPPEN -- there's no signal that's been scientifically detected. Earth-impacting asteroids routinely go undiscovered until fireballs streak across the sky, perhaps smashing into a dry storage cask. What ARE the chances of that? Someone who promotes nukes ought to know, because it's NOT zero. What are the chances of additional terrorist attacks in America? About 100%, according to the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and Tom Ridge.
Before 9-11, Bush had a warning, which his administration did not share with the world.
Now, terrorists have given him another warning, but this time the whole world knows he's gotten it. He knows what the targets are. Sure, we MIGHT get lucky and they'll "just" blow up some apartment buildings, as mentioned in yesterday's news. But that's NOT what they've been threatening to "put together" for years now.
What will Bush do? What will Usama (or Osama, or whatever) do? What will America do? What will Mother Nature do? What will YOU do?
Sincerely,
Russell D. Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA
P.S. #1: Regarding your comments shown below, a "system" can encompass both humans and equipment, as well as multiple locations, software and hardware interconnections, methods of management, etc. etc. etc.. Your "misunderstanding" of that, below, appears to be symantec quibbling.
P.S. #2: Also, regarding your comments, the gasses referred to were NOT outgassed elements from the fuel pellets, according to the original article.
P.S. #3: Here's the Davis-Besse Newsletters home page where D-B #12 can be accessed:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/besse/index.htm
P.S. #4: In the letter below, I have not made any additions or deletions, and the only change I have made is to accent your new text in maroon.
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At 08:48 PM 5/15/02 , Paul lavely <lavelyp@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote:
Russ,
I would like to disagree with a few of the items in your posting. I am ONLY responding to those that I have personal experience dealing with. My comments are not meant to be criticism or harsh - just my opinion as to the facts.
Paul lavely <lavelyp@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
Bang bang we're dead...
Davis-Besse Newsletter #12
May 15th, 2002
Besides, if dry casks are so safe, why did it take about four decades, and the filling of all their spent fuel pools, and the failure to build a Federal repository, for industry to come up with the idea?
Russ, the same could be said for the catalytic converter on a car. Why did it take X years to produce. Why develop casks if the feds are going to do what they were told to do. That is, the reason that dry casks were not developed in the late 1960's was that the entire nuclear power industry was relying on the US government to meet their Congressionally mandated responsibility to have a facility for high level (fuel) waste. When it became clear that the government was not going to meet that commitment on site storage became the only effective method. Some plants (such as Rancho Seco are looking to dry cask storage so that the spent fuel pool can be decommissioned and the fuel stored in a location and manner that they believe is just as safe as the spent fuel pool (some say safer).
So, if they are to continue to operate and pool is filling fast, they need to either build another pool or use casks. That is, you are correct that the filling of the pool is an operational limit. However, they could build pools but casks seemed more secure and cheaper.
The main purpose of dry cask storage is to keep the reactors going without having to build a new spent fuel pool or national nuclear waste repository.
Correct.
Safer would be a "dry" cask IN a spent fuel pool -- but that would cost the industry a lot more money. Safer still would be to put the fuel in casks in pools inside the containment domes! That would require shutting the reactors down, of course, but that has to happen anyway.
Well actually the best would be dry casks in a containment that would stop entry and contain any release. This is a problem for pools now. That is, your idea is not the "best" answer. The best is small containments to hold the casks.
When a nuclear plant has problems that can be blamed on management or workers, rather than on a system, that's who they blame. That way, they can fire people, or even give up and sell the facility to new investors (as was done with Indian Point recently) if there is too much public outcry. The new owner promises that things will be better, and life goes on.
Management and workers are the system. That is, the components are not part of the system. I have never heard of the "system" causing a plant to have problems. Usually, the cause for problems is worker error or lack of management oversight.
The past saw a push for lots of profits and no problems. That has changed. The push is now for no problems.
As far as I know EVERY plant has an independent review group and a root cause group. They are responsible to tell what is the cause of a problem. Often management disagrees; however, that has not changed the conclusions.