The Point About FPL Turkey Point Nuclear? It is on top of a sponge ... by gimleteye

An uncontrolled flow of highly radioactive water is seeping into the sea and groundwater surrounding the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Over the weekend, Japanese workers tried to plug a crack around the concrete base of a storage facility at Unit 2 where radioactive water had pooled, with no success. This morning's news: radioactive iodine has been detected at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken near the facility. What would happen if radioactive water were spilled from crippled nuclear reactors at Turkey Point or its external storage pools for spent fuel? We know the answer. (Please click, read more)

In 2007 we reported on the impact of 1992 Hurricane Andrew on the two nuclear reactors, Unit 3 and Unit 4. The NRC wrote in its 1993 summary, "Hurricane Andrew is historic because this is the first time that a hurricane significantly affected a commercial nuclear power plant. The eye of the storm, with sustained winds of up to 233 kilometers per hour (km/h) [145 miles per hour (mph)] and gusts of 282 km/h (175 mph), passed over the Turkey Point site and caused extensive onsite and offsite damage. The onsite damage included loss of all offsite power for more than 5 days, complete loss of communication systems, closing of the access road, and damage to the fire protection and security systems and warehouse facilities. However... the units remained in a stable condition and functioned as designed."

But what if the storm had been sprawling and the storm surge knocked out roadways and infrastructure surrounding the plant, and what if the backup power generation failed and sufficient cool water could not be supplied to the reactors or the spent fuel rod pond? Hurricane or black swan event: we know what would happen if radioactive water was released in significant quantities at Turkey Point.

We have the answer because Turkey Point is releasing highly saline water, the byproduct of steam generation, that has been pushing westward for many years. According to its 1972 license and subsequent amendments with the state, FPL is obligated to contain its superheated outflow water within a system of cooling canals, 168 miles long and compressed into a serpentine formation within its 11,000 acre facility in South Dade. Neither FPL nor the state of Florida, through the South Florida Water Management District, can live up to its legal commitments with respect to this issue.

At the Fukushima nuclear plant, cracks in concrete armor are providing a direct convection route to the sea. There would be no such struggle to contain a leak at Turkey Point with a radioactive spill because the rock bed underneath Turkey Point, called Karst formation limestone, and the entire region is full of holes as a sponge. Radioactive water would follow the same path that the highly saline water is demonstrably following now: westward into the porous aquifer underlying farmland, industrial rock mines, and suburbs. (In fact, it is through the release of trace amounts of a radioactive isotope called tritium. FPL calls the issue "harmless" and is otherwise silent on this subject, too.)

FPL is pushing forward two new reactors through a permitting process that the Miami Dade county commission should have held up until important safety questions including coolant water supply were answered. When the unreformable majority had a chance to hold up the application, it rolled over like a spayed spaniel.

Draw that exclusion radius around Turkey Point. In Japan, the radius for evacuation is 20km or 30km depending on who you trust. Here, a whole number of FPL executives and lobbyists live within that radius and are paid big bucks for gambling that everyone else can live with the risk they have imposed. The final nature of that risk was well described in an Orlando Sentinel editorial last weekend by a retired chemist living in Gainesville, Lee Bidgood. "Even more ominous than the cancer is the threat to future generations — that's what you ought to be really afraid of." The problem, of course, is that future generations don't show up on 20 year depreciation schedules or in compensation plans for advocates and executives charged with nuclear power investments.

Bidgood is right: "It's the genetic damage, the possibility of sowing bad seeds into the gene pool from which future generations are drawn. There will be a buildup of defective genes into the population. It won't be noticed until it's too late. Then we'll never root it out, never get rid of it. It will be totally irreversible."

Recently, UK Guardian writer Thomas Noyes asked the question whether nuclear energy is being priced right. "The total costs of coal may be high, but the total costs of nuclear power are, in any meaningful sense, incalculable... I don't see why I or anyone should apologise for advocating developing energy resources that don't blow up and take their investors with them." Or grandchildren who will be saddled with the expense of decommissioning nuclear reactors built at sea level before the ratepaying base of FPL disappears from South Florida, entirely, under the pressure of climate change.

A disaster, they say, could never happen here unless it does in which case sitting on porous limestone will lead to questions: what were voters drinking when they elected officials who supported nuclear power in South Florida?