Radiation leak investigated at Three Mile Island

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal officials are investigating a radiation leak at Three Mile Island, scene of the worst U.S. nuclear power accident, but said on Sunday there was no threat to public health or safety.

Investigators were trying to determine the cause of radiological contamination inside the nuclear facility's containment building on Saturday afternoon.

About 150 people were working in a TMI containment building when the contamination was detected and some were exposed to low levels of radiation, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman said.

"Based on the information that was provided to us by the company, the level of the dose they received was a small fraction of the NRC's regulatory limit," spokeswoman Diane Screnci said in a telephone interview.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5AM05B20091123

[rgbecker]

1. Nothing to see here, move along, just a little radiation leak....

No reason to question the energy hawks who want more nuclear power plants. These things happen, but, really, no problems....go back to your football game.

[blackbart99]

12. I remeber seeing the movie 3 days after that happened.

Scared the shit out of me. I don't believe a word these guys say.
There is NO amount radiation that I find acceptable.
:scared: :hide: :yoiks:

[sudopod]

16. I know we are trained to fear any talk of radiation at all.

If I had to guess where that fearfulness comes from, I'd suppose that it is a combination left over fear of a nuclear exchange from the Cold War and a sensational media looking for the next disaster to pimp. Medical science indicates that there are levels of ionizing radiation below which there is no measurable increase in risk of sickness. Nerds like me have to deal with them as part of everyday work.

http://www.ncrponline.org/Publications/Statements/Statement_10.pdf

[pimpbot]

17. No radiation huh?

Well, better turn off your tv, cell phone, computer, and never ever step foot outside without your lead suit on.

While what happened at TMI isn't a good thing, I'd rather wait for all the details to come out before going all doom and gloom on this. If you read the whole story, the plant has been shut down for maintence, so its not even operational right now.

[FarCenter]

21. I don't think that the new flat TVs radiate as much

They don't have the high voltage rectifier tubes that were present to drive the beams in the old CRTs. These used to give off a pretty healthy dose of X-Rays.

[Systematic Chaos]

25. Nothing to see here, move along, just another 30 billion tons of CO2....

No reason to question the energy hawks who want more wind and solar power backed up by coal and gas plants. These things happen, but, really, no problems....go back to your daily "renewables will save us" greenwash.


Fixed!!

[Gman]

2. If they see helicopters dropping sand into the towers

we're in trouble.

[Wink]

15. True, there's nothing in towers except cooling water n/t

[Stumbler]

3. And who says we should be investing in wind and solar? Ha!

After all, solar panels are unsightly, and those wind turbines are too noisy! Plus they'd have to be subsidized by our tax-dollars. I'd feel better if everyone had a nuclear reactor in their backyard... provided the operators are armed with machine guns to defend against threats of terrorism, of course... :sarcasm:

[Pavulon]

4. Reality is no fun.. Two choices

nuclear energy or coal. Pick. Solar and birdchoppers cant run the 100 gigawatts or so consumed in the tristate area.

[kristopher]

6. You are not correct.

The ONLY energy analysts who endorse your statement are those affiliated with the fossil fuel and nuclear industries; no independent energy analysts concur.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[Pavulon]

18. 100 gigawatts plus, not covered by 150,000 bird choppers that work

off of that technology does not exist yet. Let me repeat unless you are praying really hard you are talking about vaporware. It will not be miracle into place. Smart grids and massive solar farms are not in the works now and there are no market indicators that a pure "all natural feel good" grid is any better than a pure nuclear one.

You are short, that number does not even cover nyc proper. Plus you end up with a system paying jack shit to the people who maintain it. Windmills and solar shit from china. Ever talk to folks employed at a nuclear facility They are paid well.

Know who makes the best reactors in the world, not china.

You are posting on the cure for cancer and aids, I am posting about a trip across town. Time to standardize on the AP1000 and start building.

[Stumbler]

9. Wrong. Solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, working together can create more energy than we need

As kristopher pointed out, the only people offering single-bullet solutions are those backed by the coal and nuclear industries. The real threat facing these industries is the loss of their consolidated strangle-hold of our electricity-producing options. Simply put, a small number of people can profit greatly when the only option available is the one they happen to be selling. Placing solar panels alone on the roofs of businesses, homes and apartment buildings across the country greatly reduces the demand for energy created from a centralized, highly profitable coal-burning plant. Additionally, in the context of us living in "the age of terrorism," a widely distributed and inter-connected power grid is a much more difficult target to hit than a single, centralized building. A field of birdchoppers will cause far less severe damage to it's surrounding area than a nuclear reactor will, whether it's attacked by our enemies or suffers a failure due to old age, negligence or incompetence.

[Pavulon]

19. Yep, the reactor here brings cheap power, jobs

and does not look shitty like 20,000 turbines that only work when the wind is blowing. Take a look up next time you go outside, the sun and stars are nuclear reactors. The technology is a natural process. Unless you are going to build you own grid they still make money. Bottom line is all the solutions proposed may work great when the technology is there. in the mean time his numbers covered 7% of the demand of the tristate, on a windy day. 150,000 chinese birdchoppers maintained by low paying jobs.

[Stumbler]

24. I call BS on your reply

First, no industrious individual would consider building a nuke plant if they knew they couldn't get federal money to back up the "unexpected costs" involved. No private insurance company in the world is ballsy enough to insure such a project, due to all the risks from leaks, meltdowns, terrorist attacks, etc. Thus, to call it cheap energy is a misnomer. As for wind, you may be surprised to learn that it too is a natural process. Unlike the nuclear reaction in stars, which aside from the sun, occurs light years away from us, wind blows on the surface of the earth and poses no immediate threat to humanity in the form of radiation. Additionally, the wind blows constantly at varying points on the earth, so a wide-ranging network can work continuously. And finally, wind turbines don't require long-term storage plans like nuclear waste does, which still requires technology not yet available. It's foolish to say nuclear energy is safe, clean and cheap, when wind turbine technology has been around for centuries, are much cheaper initially and in the long run and safer by comparison.
(Edited for spellcheck)

[Pavulon]

28. And here is the link to commercial rates paid by the large data centers

in raleigh and the triangle. This is why several large companies here expanded operations in this area vs co cal. So for the people who have jobs here created because of cheap power from Sharon Harris plant (long term profitable for it operator) I call bullshit for them.

NO INDUSTRIAL NATIONS RUN WIND OR SOLAR FOR PRIMARY POWER. You are not in church, beliefs are moot here. Reality is stark, confront it. come to terms with it. Then figure out which modular reactor you want to run a grid with. As for the waste, we already nuked nevada plenty, they are just fucked.

You want lights in NYC, and power to manufacture and compute, here is how it is done. Look up, that the sky is full of reactors.

http://progress-energy.com/aboutenergy/rates/NCScheduleLGS.pdf

III. kWh Energy Charge:

5.482¢ per kWh

That number moves jobs right out of socal and its reactor free high dollar no generation situation.

[bertman]

5. You could have quoted the same comments verbatim back in 1979. Reassuring, eh??

[jtrockville]

7. Crooksandliars.com has some of the quotes from 1979.

http://newstalgia.crooksandliars.com/gordonskene/three-mile-island-day-one-march-28-197

The plant is in a safe condition. The radiation levels at the site boundary are really only a tenth of the general emergency level where we usually get concerned. We do have our crews out. We're monitoring for airborne contamination. The amount we've fond is minimal. Very small traces of radioactivity has been released from the plant

[bertman]

8. Good catch, jtrockville. I remember following closely the events back in '79 and wondering

if we'd ever get the truth. Several books have been written and investigations have been made into the Three Mile Island saga. Very scary. By that, I mean the effects of the radiation releases AND the government coverup.

[amandabeech]

10. All I can say is that a secondary containment structure is a wonderful thing.

I'm neither a lover nor a hater of nukes, but I would never support building one of them of any design with out that big hulking shell.

I lived in the TMI area, BTW. I didn't have a fear of the plant, but the merchant generator owners were bad news. This should be a very heavily regulated industry NOT left to the vagaries of the marketplace.

[twitomy]

13. I live near TMI as well...

Not too concerned. Agree that if we build them heavy regualation is needed.

[shadowknows69]

11. And no Jack Lemmon in sight to save us. We're fucked.

[PurpleChez]

14. TMI is just a few miles away...

...and I had to learn about this on DU....

[PurpleChez]

20. ...it WAS in the morning paper...

when I got around to going out for it....

[proReality]

22. We lived within 5 miles of the place in '79...

...and they told us nothing for 3 days. The morning fog glowed yellow-green (I'm not kidding!) and there were helicopters with instruments flying over the house constantly. It was damned frightening.

[FarCenter]

23. This was a very small leak inside the containment building for the active unit, not the failed unit

One of the active units was shut down for maintenance and there was a small leak inside its containment building.

[brooklynite]

26. UPDATE - Three Mile Island radiation caused by pipe cutting

from AP:

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Officials are trying to determine how workers cutting a pipe stirred up radioactive dust at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.

Plant spokesman Ralph DeSantis said Monday that the public was not endangered Saturday, when a dozen workers were exposed to radiation.

...snip...

DeSantis says the radioactive dust emanated from reactor cooling system pipes the workers were cutting. He says a radiation monitor "temporarily went up" slightly, but a later survey detected no contamination outside.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the radiation isn't significant.

[Algorem]

27. safe as milk.