The top nuclear operator at Turkey Point resigned after a huge outage because he felt his bosses were demanding an unsafe restart.If not for a legal case I would not be writing about this because that is how it came out. We all knew there was a shutdown at Turkey Point last year. What we didn't know was that FP&L executives ordered it back up within 12 hours. According to an expert cited in the article, talking about the Xenon Effect (caused by too quick a restart):
"The biggest nuclear disaster in history, at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986, happened because operators tried to restart the reactor too soon after a shutdown..." Morse said. He also said:
E.C. Morse, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said in an interview that xenon is a chemical element that is a byproduct of nuclear fission and ''gobbles up neutrons,'' reducing the fission process.
During regular operation, the xenon's effect is neutralized, but when control rods shut down the core, the xenon process keeps going for another 10 hours or so. To bring a reactor back online after only 10 or 11 hours ''is really asking for trouble,'' Morse said.
To say this stinks (my usual reaction) is just such an understatement. To think they want to add two more reactors at this site, to the the two they already have, is frightening! Reporter John Dorschner says, "The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has found 25 or more violations of reliability standards because of the incident, and FPL is now facing millions of dollars in fines." To know that one in four works at Turkey Point disagrees with this statement strikes fear in my bones:
"I am confident that nuclear safety and quality issues reported through the ECP are thoroughly investigated and appropriately resolved."
9 comments:
FPL cannot be trusted!
This does not look good for FPL. Before making full judgement see how this plays out with the NRC. They will get the facts out. Does the Herald story tell all the facts? What was the real risk?
For an operator to walk off the job because he believed what he was asked to do was a risk tells a lot.
BTW: When the evil Herald is gone who will report this stuff.
How do we change things. We cannot get rid of FPL, but, we have to find a way to get rid of the careless and care less people who run things. All ideas will be considered except shooting them.
Silence clause aims to keep Turkey Point workers quiet
BY JOHN DORSCHNER
JDORSCHNER@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Licensed nuclear operators at Turkey Point sit at control panels staring at meters that generally don't do much. For this, they can earn up to $150,000 a year, including plentiful overtime, plus another $50,000 or so in bonuses. So why complain about their bosses at Florida Power & Light?
''The work atmosphere there is horrible,'' says Thomas Saporito, a Turkey Point worker who was fired in 1988 but has stayed in touch with many workers since then. ``No one wants to work at the plant because of the retaliatory atmosphere there. People are afraid to make complaints about safety.''
Nuclear operator complaints generally are made public only in public documents, such as lawsuits involving overtime or bonuses. Virtually all operators are reluctant to talk to journalists.
One reason is that many signed bonus agreements in which they promise not to say anything bad: ''The employee shall not, at any time in the future and in any way . . . make any statements that may be derogatory or detrimental to the company's good name,'' was the way it was phrased in the contract of David Hoffman.
Saporito has become an anti-FPL gadfly. He has been suing the utility for 20 years claiming he was fired because of his persistent complaints about safety, but FPL has repeatedly won in court.
FPL spokesman Tom Veenstra says the utility ``vigorously encourages anyone working at any of our nuclear power plants or our other facilities to identify any safety concerns without fearing reprisal of any kind.''
The GAG rules on nuke workers are the reason everyone has gotten so complacent thinking nuclear power safe and that more nuclear reactors is a good idea... isnt there a whisleblower law for private industry?
FYI why doesnt anyone talk about the fact that more nuclear reactors will increase our foreign energy dependence - importing uranium from Russia seems like a crap public policy solution if you ask me.
Gag rules only work while you are employed. Perhaps the NRC should employ some ex FPL workers (tell your friends to apply). They know where the bodies are burried.
Blogs are also a wonderful place to leak information (Oh, perhaps that was an unfortunate use of a voib...heavens to mergitroid!)
Comments this article got on Reddit:
7 hours ago[-]
Ya, but the much, much bigger reason that Chernobyl exploded is that they shut the coolant pumps down at Chernobyl for a test that was never authorized. This article is like someone explaining how the sun works by saying "uh, some shit is burning or something..." Xenon transient just means you have to slightly change when you expect to go critical. We "bounced" reactors constantly in the Navy, ie shutting them down and immediately restarting them. We would literally do it out of boredom on night watches, and do it because of fake casualties during drills. I understand that we had a ton more training then the average civilian operator, but this should still be no problem at all.
greengordon 2 points 1 hour ago[-]
I notice the pro-nuke crowd isn't here en masse defending the safety of nuclear power...
Mad-n-fl 2 points 4 hours ago[-]
You can never unsafely restart a nuclear reactor.
NSMike 1 point 13 hours ago* [-]
So, what exactly is the Xenon effect? It explains that Xenon gobbles up neutrons... Does that mean that if they try to start up too soon, other free neutrons may split a Xenon atom packed with neutrons and cause the reaction to get out of control? I worked in a nuke plant, but my knowledge of actual nuclear theory is limited. It was my understanding too that Cadmium is what the control rods are made of, another material that absorbs neutrons. I can remember that keeping track of the neutron count was important enough during an outage that they had the neutron counter hooked up to a massive loudspeaker, so the whole of containment could hear when it beeped (and if it started getting too fast, GTFO). But I'm just not sure how having a lot of something that absorbs neutrons is a bad thing.
natedouglas 5 points 13 hours ago* [-]
The problem with the Xenon effect is not the Xenon effect itself, but people forgetting it's there and behaving like dorks.
Xenon gobbles up neutrons but is also eliminated when the reactor is at critical -- so there's an equilibrium. Xenon continues to build after the reactor is shut down. So people start up the plant, Xenon gobbles too many neutrons because it's at a high concentration, and the absentminded people operating the plant say "WTF? Why are we still subcritical?" and PULL THE CONTROL RODS OUT all the damned way.
Then the excessive amount of Xenon gets eliminated all of a sudden and the reactor core is supercritical (I think it might even go prompt critical, I don't really remember/can't nuke it out anymore). Which of course might cause boiling in the core and Shit Happening, even before the inevitable scram.
/ex nuke
Edit: I never worked in the civilian world, but I am not sure how seriously to take this article. With proper procedures and awareness of the situation (as the chap no doubt was, since he resigned over it), it would have (I believe) been fine. I just don't know enough about the civilian system to give a good opinion, and it's been years since I worked in the field.
NSMike 1 point 4 hours ago[-]
Ah, so the reaction actually eliminates the Xenon, which then results in a ton of excess free neutrons. Gotcha.
I'm not sure how accurate this story is either. Did they want the reactor critical again after 12 hours? That just doesn't seem feasible at all. I remember when we finished refueling, it took several days before containment was sealed (and it got pretty darned hot in there before they did), and it was a couple more days before the reactor was producing even close to the amount of energy it would at full capacity. I don't really know at what point "critical" is, but I'm betting they didn't get there for a while. The cooling tower wasn't pumping out steam at all until a week after containment had been sealed.
waxwing 4 points 11 hours ago[-]
For those trying to look this up in a reference, the correct term is "Xenon transient". Yes you're basically right, and in Chernobyl, for example, the reactor did indeed go "prompt critical", and the Xenon transient was part of the reason.
The idea of prompt critical is this: some neutrons are produced directly from fission (prompt) and others are produced via decay chains, after a longer time (longer in a subatomic sense, still small times). These later neutrons are a great blessing to reactor neutronics - they allow the reactor's power to vary sufficiently slowly that systems and people can respond. If you have criticality even without them, then the exponential growth of neutrons in the core is too fast for anybody or anything to respond - i.e. an explosion basically. So prompt criticality basically implies disaster.
natedouglas 1 point 11 hours ago[-]
Thanks. I couldn't remember the full explanation, only vague memories of my classes from about -- Jesus -- eight years ago. Thanks for explaining that far better than I did.
CiXeL 1 point 14 hours ago[-]
i am mere miles from turkey point
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Sea level rise will take care of the reactors and south Florida.
The water is not going to rise fast enough for the nukes. Well, maybe that is where the water is coming from for the new plants.
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