Vattenfall's Kruemmel BWR likely to be offline until late August

[bananas]

http://www.platts.com/Nuclear/News/8153306.xml

Vattenfall's Kruemmel BWR likely to be offline until late August

London (Platts)--12Jul2007

Vattenfall's Kruemmel BWR will likely be offline at least through late August,
nuclear safety sources told Platts July 11. Kruemmel has been offline since it
scrammed June 28 following a short circuit and a transformer fire. Following a
meeting with owner Vattenfall Europe AG held July 9, Sigmar Gabriel, Germany's
head federal regulator, and state regulatory officials have vowed to keep the
unit offline until the safety significance of the June 28 event is probed and
any regulatory actions are taken.

Regulatory sources said July 11 that the reactor will likely remain offline at
least until a planned routine maintenance and refueling outage, scheduled for
early August, is carried out. A week ago, regulators had proposed that the
outage be carried out then while investigation of the transient was under way.
Now, however, regulators believe that the investigation into the background of
the June 28 event may take more time.

[NNadir]

1. OH MY GOD!!!! A TRANSFORMER FIRE AT A POWER PLANT!

QUICK!!!!!!!

LET'S BUILD LOTS OF COAL PLANTS TO PREVENT TRANSFORMER FIRES!!!!!!!!

SHUT ALL THE NUCLEAR PLANTS!!!!!

Oh wait...

That is what Germany is doing, isn't it?

A million people a year could die from the normal operations of fossil fuel plants, and you would not say a word, but you're all over a transformer fire at a nuclear plant that injured no one and merely shut the plant a few weeks before a normal fueling outage.

How do I know?

Because millions of people die each year from normal coal operations and you couldn't care less.

Germany is planning to phase out nuclear power and replace it with coal capacity, thus preventing forever transformer fires.

The release of 150,000,000 million tons of new carbon dioxide from these plants will remain unremarked by the purveyors of anti-nuclear ignorance.

Predictably, the transformer fire, unlike German dumping of dangerous fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere, involved no injuries and no damage to the reactor:

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/headline_news/article.jsp?content=D8Q1U6GO0

[Dogmudgeon]

2. Also this week in Platts

European Nuclear Revival: Coming Out of the Closet?

After two decades during which the "old" Europe has slid down the slope towards a nuclear power phase-out and the newly independent countries of central and eastern Europe struggled to maintain the nuclear plants they inherited from the Soviet era, decision-makers in a growing number of countries are starting to talk openly about a new nuclear era for the continent.

Nuclear power now provides about one-third of the European Union's electricity supply, making it the world's region most dependent on nuclear.

But the political and social fallout from the 1986 accident at Chernobyl in the then-USSR, abundant and low-cost natural gas, and a surplus of baseload electricity supply through the end of the last century combined to make new nuclear power a near taboo in all but a handful of countries.

--p!

[bananas]

3. No, that's dated Mar 7, several months ago, not "this week"

But from that article you quoted:

"Europeans remain skittish about reliance on nuclear: in the latest Eurobarometer survey on EU citizens' attitudes toward energy policy, more than 60% of those polled wanted to see nuclear's role reduced due to concerns over safety and waste management, with only 30% saying more nuclear plants should be deployed to combat climate change."

[Dogmudgeon]

4. That will change with the first blackouts

Actually, the numbers have been changing for almost a decade.

It was about 75% opposed until the summer of 2003.

--p!