here is a quoted passage for you to consider before i respond to your quoted passage from your text. i thought it was pretty accomodating of you to dust off some texts and post a couple of passages. i did NOT find them comforting, and I'll share while with you after you read the following, ok? (there is a personal postscript at the bottom of this reply.)
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The Weakest Link -- -- Emergency
Diesel Generators
by Scott D. Portzline - Three Mile Island Alert
The most worrisome defect is the emergency
diesel generators(EDGs). During a "station
blackout" (loss of offsite power) these
generators supply the electricity needed to bring the plant to a safe
shutdown. If they fail, the chance of an accident approaches certainty.
Former NRC Chairman Dr. Shirley Jackson said, "NRC reviews in
recent years have left no doubt that a station blackout at a nuclear
power station is a major contributor to reactor core damage
frequency." The NRC claims a 97.5 reliability rate but watchdogs say
it is lower. Nearly every month, the EDGs fail at a nuclear plant;
fortunately not during a station blackout.
When a tornado struck the Davis Besse plant (same design as TMI) in
Ohio in June 1998, for 41 nervous hours an array of equipment
problems complicated efforts to keep the reactor under control. One of
the two EDGs overheated and the other failed briefly due to a faulty
relay switch. It was a close call which caused the plant's emergency
director to say, "For a few minutes your heart goes up into your
throat.''
This station blackout also caused the temperature of the spent fuel
pool to increase to the point where water would be lost. <b.Nuclear plants
currently don't have an emergency power supply for these pools. A
petition has been filed by the Nuclear Information and Resource
Services (NIRS) to add this safety feature.
Fires have temporarily knocked out the EDGs at the Limerick and
Crystal River nuclear plants in recent years. Six years ago, TMI's
EDGs were inoperable for one month before the problem was
discovered. Last year, TMI's EDGs were labeled a "fire hazard" by an
NRC administrator who said they were as "ugly as I have ever seen"
because of leaking oil. TMI has since "cleaned up" that situation.
At a June 15, 1999 Y2K meeting between the NRC and the Nuclear
Energy Institute (NEI), I recounted what the administrator said about
TMI. The vice-president of NEI answered, "So what? As long as they
are up to regulations." This is the same kind of arrogance that led to
the TMI accident.
The NRC does not draw a clear line for Y2K safety. The General
Accounting Office (GAO) stated that despite six major reviews over
two decades of NRC regulatory oversight, the NRC still does not
adequately define safety. For example: the very same valve which
caused the loss-of-coolant accident at TMI 20 years ago is still not
rated as a safety component.
The NRC's assurances that all safety systems are Y2K ready does not
rest well with TMIA. When Peach Bottom lost its safety parameter
display for seven hours during a Y2K test, the NRC claimed that safety
wasn't compromised. This system was added to every plant as a result
of the TMI accident. Sometimes the NRC's judgment defies common
sense. The GAO is now recommending that state public utility
commissions publicize descriptions of the probable and worst case Y2K
scenarios.
The NRC will permit plants to violate their licenses to keep them
online come January 1, 2000. This situation is reminiscent of the
Challenger explosion where rocket engineers were literally told to
"remove your engineering hats and put on your management hats" to
get the "green light" for the mission.
Resident inspectors at each plant will grant safety exemptions to plants
in an effort to protect grid stability rather than public health and safety
from radioactivity which is the NRC's statutory mandate. With millions
of lives at stake, the NRC would do well to strengthen the emergency
diesel generators by thorough testing and requiring an additional
backup power source as petitioned by NIRS. The NRC is now three
months late for its own deadline for responding to the NIRS petitions.
**************
for more Nuclear Power Plant Defects Related to Y2K, please click:
tmia.com
Nuclear Information and Resource Services, Y2K Site:
nirs.org
Three Mile Island Control Room home page. (quite extensive)
tmia.com
***************
this website is where I first SAW IN PRINT that GAO has already in existence: d written opinions and warnings about Y2K public information dissemination that are being ignored.
this statement of fact was the basis for my decision to NOT try to post Janelle's and my reply to ron reece and his dc committee members.
such solid information and its impact upon our international leadership and security ramifications which concern ron already exists from within his own organizational structure.
frankly, we both are disappointed that ron, as the threads dc mouthpiece hasn't dug deep enough to expose OR SHARE those GAO recommendations with this or any other thread to the best of our knowledge since he issued the invitation.
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personal note: sorry i was late in responding to your post. no slight was intended. it was unavoidable. i was most pleased that you took me at my word and did the dusting off of texts and typing like i requested. thank you |
