Hurricane Sandy may hit nuclear plants in New York, NJ, PA, Conn

Hurricane Sandy may hit nuclear plants in New York, NJ, PA, Conn

by repost
Monday Oct 29th, 2012 8:27 AM

Hurricane Sandy, expected to make landfall in New York tonight, 10/29/12, is predicted to hit as many as 26 nuclear power plants, none of which is equipped to handle the damage.

Hurricane Sandy May Score a Direct Hit On Spent Fuel Pools at Nuclear Plant
New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut Nuclear Plants In Path of Storm

By Washington's Blog
Global Research, October 29, 2012

Preface: We hope and expect that the severity of the hurricane is being overblown, and that the nuclear plants in the Northeast will ride out the storm without any incident.

We noted Friday that more than a dozen nuclear plants are near Hurricane Sandy’s path.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says that there are actually 26 nuclear plants in the path of the hurricane, and that the spent fuel pools in the plants don’t have backup pumps (summary via EneNews):
■You’ll hear in the next 2 days, “We’ve safely shutdown the plant”
■What Fukushima taught us is that doesn’t stop the decay heat
■You need the diesels to keep the reactors cool
■26 plants in the East Coast are in the area where Sandy is likely to hit
■Fuel pools not cooled by diesels, no one wanted to buy them
■If recent refuel, hot fuel will throw off more and more moisture from pool
■Reactor buildings not meant to handle the high humidity
■Fuel pool liner not really designed to approach boiling water, may unzip if water gets too hot
■A lot of problems with allowing fuel pool to over
■Need water in around 2 days if hot fuel in pool
■The only fall-back if power is lost is to let fuel pools heat up

EneNews also reports that the hurricane is forecast to directly hit the Oyster Creek nuclear plant and that – while the plant is currently shut down for refueling – it still might very well have new, very hot fuel in the fuel pools:

Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station is located near New Jersey’s shoreline in an area forecast to take a direct hit from Hurricane Sandy: “The current ‘track center’ for the landfall path is central New Jersey pointing Sandy in a path that would hit Oyster Creek nuclear station.” -SimplyInfo

With Oyster Creek shut down for refueling starting last week, hot fuel may have been placed in the fuel pool quite recently.

The unit at Oyster Creek is the same as Fukushima Daiichi No. 1: “Oyster Creek is one of the oldest US nuclear plants and is the same design as Fukushima unit 1.” -SimplyInfo

Remember, Fukushima reactor number 4 was shut down for maintenance when the Japanese earthquake hit. And yet the fuel pools at reactor 4 are in such precarious condition that they pose a giant threat to humanity.

Hurricane Sandy is not very intense in terms of wind speed. But the storm is so large, that storm surges could be 11 feet high.

Obviously, the path of the hurricane could veer substantially, and may not hit Oyster Creek after all … weather forecasting is not an exact science. But Gundersen argues that nuclear plants in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are in the most danger given current projections.

As we noted Friday, the Salem and Hope Creek plants in New Jersey are also near the path of the hurricane, as are the following plants in Pennsylvania:
■Peach Bottom
■Limerick
■Three Mile Island
■Susquehanna

Another concern is the Millstone plant in Connecticut:
[Photo in original article.]

EneNews summarizes the situation in a post entitled “Officials in Connecticut warn of giant 16-foot storm surge, with 15-foot waves on top of that — State’s nuclear plant directly exposed on ocean“:

The Hour:

In a message sent to residents Sunday afternoon, [Norwalk, Connecticut] Mayor Richard A. Moccia warned of a 16-foot storm surge brought to land by Hurricane Sandy. [...] “I have declared a state of emergency in the City,” he said. “Coastal flooding from this event will peak at midnight on Monday night and will be worse than any flooding Norwalk has experienced in recent history. If you have ever experienced flooding before it is likely you will be flooded in this storm.” Moccia said that the storm will be equal to a Category 4 hurricane and will produce 16 foot storm surges.

Westport Now:
“The mood during the meeting was tense as federal officials estimated a 13-foot storm surge for Westport [Connecticut] -– 3 or 4 feet higher that the inundation from Storm Irene last year,” a news release said. “This is an unprecedented storm,” said [First Selectman Gordon Joseloff], following his team’s briefing with federal and state disaster preparedness officials. “This will be a storm of long duration, high winds and record-setting flooding. Take Storm Irene from last year and double it.” he said. [...] The town is bracing for at least three waves of flooding, beginning with the high tide at midnight Sunday, the announcement said. [... An] estimated 15-foot wind-driven waves [...] are expected on top of the storm surge.

According to the Weather Channel’s latest map, a 6 to 11 foot water level rise is forecast for the Connecticut coastline. This is the highest increase of any area in the US. The state’s only nuclear power plant is located directly on the ocean, see marker ‘A’ below:
[Photos in original article]
In July, AP reported:
Millstone Power Station, Connecticut’s sole nuclear plant, is focusing on how best to guard against flooding and earthquakes to comply with tougher federal standards following the nuclear plant meltdown in Japan last year, the new chief of the power station said in an interview.

Millstone is assessing its ability to withstand flooding and “seismic events,” Stephen E. Scace, who took over as site vice president at Millstone in January, told The Associated Press on Thursday. He expects upgrades and installation of new equipment in the next three to four years. More

 

Nuclear reactor safety in the post-Fukushima world

Since the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in 2011, there have been calls for increasing safety levels in nuclear plants worldwide. The incident in Japan was the fourth significant accident in the 55-year history of nuclear reactor operation.

The first occurred in 1957 at the Windscale reactor in the UK. Two decades later, in 1979, a reactor at Three Mile Island in the USA was severely damaged, though radioactive material releases were slight. The third incident is well-known: the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl, Ukraine, where the destruction of a reactor by steam explosion, fire and core disruption had significant health and environmental consequences, mainly due to fission product release and dispersion, as well as a human death toll at the site itself.

But throughout the nuclear age, countries and international bodies have, of course, been developing a variety of approaches and systems to promote safety and minimize the risk of accidents. In the UK and US, for example, nuclear reactor safety has, since the latter part of the twentieth century, been based on a comprehensive risk assessment approach in which experts, at the design stage, identify what could go wrong—based on a detailed knowledge of the components, materials, energy flows and core neutronics.

The experts then identify the various paths that an accident might follow, taking into account the plant design and its safety features such as emergency shutdown control rods, emergency core cooling and pressure vessel strength. They also calculate probabilities for each scenario (how often in ten thousand years a given accident might happen). For each hypothetical accident, they calculate the likely release of radioactive materials and model what the consequences would be for human life, health and the environment. Once all the above is complete, the so-called ‘envelope of risks’ for the planned reactor can be examined. If any part of this represents a risk above that which is judged to be tolerable, improvements can be made.

A landmark event in the UK was the Public Enquiry into the construction of a pressurised water reactor at the existing nuclear site at Sizewell. This enquiry revealed that neither the operators nor the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate had a numerical basis for comparing the tolerability of risks from nuclear reactors to such things as deaths from earthquakes, aircraft crashes and lightning strikes. The Sizewell enquiry was adjourned until these things were developed and approved. The result was two seminal documents: ‘The Tolerability of Risk from Nuclear Power Stations HSE, London 1988 (revised 1992)’; and ‘Safety Assessment Principles for Nuclear Facilities (revised as 2006 Edition, Revision 1, HSE, Bootle, UK).

The US has also engaged in studying these issues. The latest document is the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses, which analyzed the potential consequences of severe accidents at the Surry Power Station, Virginia, and the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania as real examples of nuclear reactors. The project combined up-to-date information about the plants’ layout and operations with local population data and emergency preparedness plans. This information was then analyzed using computer codes that incorporate decades of research into reactor accidents. More

 

Warm seawater forces Conn. nuclear plant shutdown

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut's nuclear power plant shut down one of two units on Sunday because seawater used to cool down the plant is too warm.

Unit 2 of Millstone Power Station has occasionally shut for maintenance or other issues, but in its 37-year history it has never gone down due to excessively warm water, spokesman Ken Holt said on Monday.

Water from Long Island Sound is used to cool key components of the plant and is discharged back into the sound. The water may not be warmer than 75 degrees and following the hottest July on record has been averaging 1.7 degrees above the limit, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

The federal agency issued an "emergency license amendment" last week, allowing Millstone, a subsidiary of Dominion Resources Inc., to use an average temperature of several readings.

"It wasn't enough to prevent us from shutting down," Holt said.

Richmond, Va.-based Dominion does not have an estimate of when the unit will restart, Holt said.

Millstone provides half of all power used in Connecticut and 12 percent in New England. Its two units produce 2,100 megawatts of electricity, which is reduced by 40 percent with Unit 2 down, Holt said.

Marcia Blomberg, a spokeswoman for regional grid operator ISO-New England, said the loss of electricity will not be a major problem. The Holyoke, Mass.-based agency generally operates with a margin of reserve and plans for the possibility of lost resources, she said. More