On Tue, 6/25/13, Gene Heskett <ghesk...@wdtv.com> wrote: > And some are surprised that Nuke plants have problems periodically! > > Dave > Yes, and with all the NRC mandated paperwork, folks don't understand it > costs them 10 grand in legal fees just to replace a faucet washer or flush > valve in the mens room. > > A failed analog meter movement may cost 100G's because the failed meter has > been made out of pure un-obtainium for at least 30 years now. Gotta go > through all that bull shit to get a change order approved, often by > regulatory drones who would not even know what to call it if the failed one > was thrown down on their desk.
Pointless, petty, regulatory BS like that, which has zero bearing on the safe operation of the facility is why the control rooms of nuclear power plants still look like they're 30 to 40 years old - because they are 30 to 40 years old. Modernization and upgrading not allowed, thanks mostly to the "green" people. What contributed a lot to the problems at Three Mile Island was the light indicating the core vessel pressure valve was open was across the room from where the operators were gathered, looking at the gauges and trying to figure out WTF the temperature kept going up and the pressure kept dropping despite all the water they were pouring into the core. Someone finally noticed the light and hit the manual close button. Problem ended - except for the politics that have kept the reactor from being cleaned up and rebuilt these past 34 years. That's the scary part about old nuclear power plants, many are forced to keep their "vintage" control and monitoring systems and everything else exactly the way they were when constructed. A decently modern setup would be able to flash an alert and exactly what the problem is on a screen in front of the operators, who could then take any required manual action to correct the problem - if the automatic systems hadn't already. But noooo, can't have that! Gotta keep plants like Fukushima in pristine original condition with gauges and blinkenlights encrusting all the walls of the control room. It's not just nuclear plants afflicted with this regulatory stupidity. Old coal, oil and gas burning ones are too. George Bush the 2nd tried for eight years to get changes passed that would allow old power plants to be updated with whatever pollution reduction was *practical*. The "greens" blocked it every time, demanding that the only way any upgrades would be allowed would be bringing them up to current regulations - which would mean tearing them down then spending 20+ years trying to get past their blockade to build new ones. I wouldn't mind having a nuclear power plant, built with the latest technology, close to me. The problem is in the USA they're having to start with a baseline that's 34 years old then trying to get the bureaucrats to approve modern designs. Nuclear power CAN be inexpensive and super safe (it actually *is* safe, the number of death causing reactor incidents can be counted on the fingers of one hand that's missing 2 or 3 fingers*) but only if it's not constantly beset by people determined to make it expensive just so they can claim it's expensive and thus shouldn't be used. *That would be the SL1 and Chernobyl. AFAIK there's been no other reactors, research or commercial power producing, that have exploded. There's been plenty of nuclear incidents that have killed people, but those have all been accidents with radioactive materials or acts of outright stupidity such as a few incidents of people peeling the shielding off RTGs powering old soviet era light houses because they were too lazy to build a campfire to keep warm. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by Windows: Build for Windows Store. http://p.sf.net/sfu/windows-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
