The title seems to imply an active disaster is underway. I was relieved to find out out that the reactor is currently switched off and to be decommissioned in 2023. A case is being made to switch it back on as some people (with a stake in the matter) believe that the risk is too low to justify a switch off. WTF are these people even thinking. Smallest risk with such disastrous outcome is scary as shit.
This may well be the case during normal operation. It seems the worry, however, is that seismic activity etc. could lead to a steam explosion and release of radioactive gases if the plant failed to shut down.
(I’m not a nuclear engineer and the article doesn’t make the assessed risks 100% clear, though.)
I don’t have domain knowledge, so to me intuitively it feels like the risk of this crack quickly widening is real. Experts also seem to have called out risks due to factors such as quakes, steam escape etc.
That's not risk. That's likelihood. The article admits that the likelihood is low, but the severity could be high. Risk is a combination of severity and likelihood. The nuclear industry has an entire discipline (PRA) dedicated specifically to risk assessment [1].
They have already exceeded the safety margin specified in the design, that is why it is shut down. They want to change the safety margin of the design to start it up again.
I suspect trade unions are most concerned with the short to medium term interests of their current members. And less so with the interest of the greater public.
In this case they likely want a pay check for their members.
This is just my opinion and I’m completely speculating.
Trade unions were not created to represent the masses, however some of them took this up, with varying levels of success depending on the inherent conflicts of their trade versus the needs of the masses, as a side job. They are supposed to represent the workers in a particular trade for pay and working conditions. Often what the masses would prefer is just less work to do and that is not in a trade unions interest to really help with. I have had discussions about increasing productivity in UK factories by integrating CNC processes so that you can have more machines per operator. I was told flat that it was a non-starter as it was one machine per operator and if I did anything different I would be opposed at every turn.
> The reactors have been closed since October 2018 as a result, but owners EDF Energy are currently making a case for turning them back on, with help from trade union GMB.
So, there is a chance for disaster if the reactors are activated again, not from continued non-operation.
> The reactors have been closed since October 2018 as a result, but owners EDF Energy are currently making a case for turning them back on, with help from trade union GMB.
I find it tragic that workers (the members of the union) have to weigh between safety on the one hand and their livelihoods (lost income) on the other. These things should be independent from each other.
This is a somewhat scaremongering article, as it lacks a plausible scenario in which a meltdown would both occur and breach the containment.
There is, apparently, a valid concern over control rods jamming, but there are two independent backup safety mechanisms: nitrogen injection and the release of boron beads into the core (both absorb neutrons.)[1] The plan, apparently, is to install 'super-articulated' control rods to mitigate the jamming risk.
Do you drive recklessly and avoid getting your brake pads replaced because "it's OK, I've got two independent backup safety mechanisms: seatbelts and airbags"? Backup safety mechanisms are not intended to allow you to operate the primary mechanism in a known unsafe state, they have a calculated reduction in failure likelihood based on the primary mechanism being in a working state, and those calculations go out the window if the primary mechanism is faulty.
But if they are planning to install a different type of control rod that won’t be jammed, isn’t that more like taking your car to the mechanic and getting the brake pads replaced and then feeling safe to drive it again?
You build a reactor and specify its lifetime, then push the reactor past its design lifetime, then you find way too many cracks in your reactor and you want to run it for 4 more years by asking for an increase in the $number_of_allowed_cracks?
You increase the limit and notice it works just as well as before. Then you'll increase the limit again, and again, and again...
This is called "normalization of deviance", and it's what caused the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger. There is a large number of great articles about the phenomenon.
Well design lifetime is only really relevant at the design stage. I would hope they're proceeding on how the the reactor is now, regardless how how long it was designed to last.
I don't per se have a problem with them changing safety limits, if we know more about how things behave, it seems sensible. I suppose the question is still, is it safe? Regardless of number of cracks, the design life time, or the actual age.
The cracks are a current event as is the pressure to restart the reactor by allowing changes to the original design's safety parameters.
As for the potential scenario referred to in the headline, I think that is labelled clearly as a theoretical possibility by the use of the words 'could lead'.
The original headline 'Cracks found in nuclear reactor that could lead to the full evacuation of Edinburgh and Glasgow' is better, but too long for HN, so I edited as best I could. Was not meaning to make it more linkbatey, but is very hard when deleting words from a headline to make it fit.
The authorities quoted in the article are an “independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment,” and a “Reader in Energy Policy”.
While I am sure they are experts in their respective fields, is either actually an expert on nuclear engineering qualified to judge whether these cracks actually are dangerous?
BTW if the reactor is truly dangerous it should be shut down, but we need to keep in mind every reactor being shut down means more fossil fuels being burned and destroying our entire planet’s environment.
One does not follow from the other. Many countries are vastly reducing carbon while not investing in nuclear at all. We're already at the point where the carbon impact of energy production is negligible in many areas, there are much bigger fish to fry if you're truly concerned about carbon.
> Many countries are vastly reducing carbon while not investing in nuclear at all
In this case we are talking about shutting down a plant that could potentially run for 4-5 more years without decommissioning. I suspect the difference will be made up by coal/gas.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2019/02/01/germany-...
“Coal, the most emissions-intensive fossil fuel, now provides more than 42% of Germany’s power according to the International Energy Agency – a proportion that has been growing since the nuclear decision. The result is that Germany’s carbon emissions have been growing, while their neighbors’ has been declining.”
>I suspect the difference will be made up by coal/gas.
Well, it doesn't seem that it is being offset by coal, given that while it has been offline, the UK has also had the longest run of not burning coal for power since industrialisation.
Hunterston is a 1 GW power station and while it has been offline the UK has installed 2 GW in new capacity of offshore wind, if you are looking for what is making up the difference, perhaps start there.
Was the offshore wind only installed because the nuclear plant was taken offline? I’d assume the wind generation capability would have been installed anyway...
“Although a significant share of coal-powered energy has been replaced by renewable sources such as solar and wind power, the largest power source in Britain remains natural gas, a carbon-emitting fossil fuel.”
Yes, you can still reduce carbon footprint if you're not investing in nuclear. You can invest in renewables, energy efficiency, or reduce emissions in other industries.
But closing working nuclear reactors always leads to higher emissions. You can replace nuclear with renewables, but that means these new renewables would otherwise replace more fossil fuels.
According to the article, experts in nuclear engineering (working for the company) have modeled the state of the reactor and determined it is safe to restart.
The anti-nuclear quotes in the article don’t appear to be from people qualified to judge the analysis of the cracks, which is why I mentioned it. Can’t they find an independent expert like a professor who specializes in nuclear reactor design, rather than someone who studies “energy policy”?
>Cracks in the core of a Scottish nuclear reactor could signal that most of Britain’s ageing plants will not be able to supply the country with much needed power for as long as predicted.
>Nuclear reactors generate just over 20 percent of Britain’s electricity and even before EDF Energy said last week it would need to shut down one of two reactors at the Hunterston B plant, almost half of that capacity was scheduled to go offline by 2025.
>“These reactors are over 40 years old. This is a generic defect which cannot be fixed so it would not surprise me if the older plants would all need to close within the next few years,” said John Large, an independent nuclear engineering consultant.
Thanks for sharing. Looks like that article was from about a year ago, before the analysis of the cracks was performed.
Perhaps there’s simply a dearth of expertise in this field outside of the industry itself, which I guess would make it difficult for news articles to find folks who could review EDF’s work. Or reviewing and critiquing the kind of simulation described in the article might not be possible, it isn’t clear if they’re sharing the details of the analysis.
The largest problem is a dearth of expertise within the industry. Not saying the expertise isn't there but it is often mushroomed by management to save money. I have worked on the periphery and it is a lot less professional than you would like. It has a lot of petty little fictions that added together create a very dangerous engineering culture.
Oh look. Industry asking for a half of the safety measure in order to continue to make money. Accurate or not - we’ve seen this pattern of behaviour and it’s results time and time again. 737-Max anyone?
Unreliable source. This is one of those stupid articles which takes a very very unlikely worst case scenario and paints it as news. The earth could get hit by an asteroid tomorrow, Shock! Horror!. You should know better than this
37 comments
[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 95.1 ms ] thread(I’m not a nuclear engineer and the article doesn’t make the assessed risks 100% clear, though.)
[1] https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/risk-informed/pra.h...
In this case they likely want a pay check for their members.
This is just my opinion and I’m completely speculating.
AFAIK, Beznau 1 in Switzerland is the oldest operating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors
So, there is a chance for disaster if the reactors are activated again, not from continued non-operation.
I find it tragic that workers (the members of the union) have to weigh between safety on the one hand and their livelihoods (lost income) on the other. These things should be independent from each other.
There is, apparently, a valid concern over control rods jamming, but there are two independent backup safety mechanisms: nitrogen injection and the release of boron beads into the core (both absorb neutrons.)[1] The plan, apparently, is to install 'super-articulated' control rods to mitigate the jamming risk.
[1] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/barry2/docs/nks... p.21
What could possibly go wrong?
This is called "normalization of deviance", and it's what caused the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger. There is a large number of great articles about the phenomenon.
I don't per se have a problem with them changing safety limits, if we know more about how things behave, it seems sensible. I suppose the question is still, is it safe? Regardless of number of cracks, the design life time, or the actual age.
As for the potential scenario referred to in the headline, I think that is labelled clearly as a theoretical possibility by the use of the words 'could lead'.
The original headline 'Cracks found in nuclear reactor that could lead to the full evacuation of Edinburgh and Glasgow' is better, but too long for HN, so I edited as best I could. Was not meaning to make it more linkbatey, but is very hard when deleting words from a headline to make it fit.
While I am sure they are experts in their respective fields, is either actually an expert on nuclear engineering qualified to judge whether these cracks actually are dangerous?
BTW if the reactor is truly dangerous it should be shut down, but we need to keep in mind every reactor being shut down means more fossil fuels being burned and destroying our entire planet’s environment.
In this case we are talking about shutting down a plant that could potentially run for 4-5 more years without decommissioning. I suspect the difference will be made up by coal/gas.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2019/02/01/germany-... “Coal, the most emissions-intensive fossil fuel, now provides more than 42% of Germany’s power according to the International Energy Agency – a proportion that has been growing since the nuclear decision. The result is that Germany’s carbon emissions have been growing, while their neighbors’ has been declining.”
Well, it doesn't seem that it is being offset by coal, given that while it has been offline, the UK has also had the longest run of not burning coal for power since industrialisation.
Hunterston is a 1 GW power station and while it has been offline the UK has installed 2 GW in new capacity of offshore wind, if you are looking for what is making up the difference, perhaps start there.
According to https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/...
“Although a significant share of coal-powered energy has been replaced by renewable sources such as solar and wind power, the largest power source in Britain remains natural gas, a carbon-emitting fossil fuel.”
But closing working nuclear reactors always leads to higher emissions. You can replace nuclear with renewables, but that means these new renewables would otherwise replace more fossil fuels.
The anti-nuclear quotes in the article don’t appear to be from people qualified to judge the analysis of the cracks, which is why I mentioned it. Can’t they find an independent expert like a professor who specializes in nuclear reactor design, rather than someone who studies “energy policy”?
>Nuclear reactors generate just over 20 percent of Britain’s electricity and even before EDF Energy said last week it would need to shut down one of two reactors at the Hunterston B plant, almost half of that capacity was scheduled to go offline by 2025.
>“These reactors are over 40 years old. This is a generic defect which cannot be fixed so it would not surprise me if the older plants would all need to close within the next few years,” said John Large, an independent nuclear engineering consultant.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-nuclear-edf-analys...
He was the consulting engineer on the raising of the Kursk submarine - https://www.theengineer.co.uk/british-led-team-gains-access-...
Here's his obituary, he died recently.
John Large, nuclear scientist who oversaw the raising of the Russian ‘Kursk’ submarine from the seabed – obituary - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2018/12/06/john-large...
Perhaps there’s simply a dearth of expertise in this field outside of the industry itself, which I guess would make it difficult for news articles to find folks who could review EDF’s work. Or reviewing and critiquing the kind of simulation described in the article might not be possible, it isn’t clear if they’re sharing the details of the analysis.