Astonishing Tower Collapse (VT) Screams "NO NEW NUKES!!"

[mod mom]

I'm cross posting since this sunk quickly in GD. Many of you are familiar w my friend Harvey from the OH election debacle but he has been a long standing environmental activist as well: (Cross Posted):



Astonishing tower collapse screams "No New Nukes!!"
August 27, 2007

A cooling tower at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant has collapsed.

A broken 54" pipe there has spewed 350,000 gallons per minute of contaminated, overheated water into the Earth. "The river water piping and the series of screens and supports failed," said a company spokesman. They "fell to the ground."

The public and media were barred from viewing the wreckage for three days. But when a Congressional Energy Bill conference committee takes up Senate-approved loan guarantees for building new nukes this fall, what will reactor backers say about this latest pile of radioactive rubble?

This kind of event can make even hardened nuke opponents pinch themselves and read the descriptions twice. Who could make this up?

Vermont Yankee has been in operation---more or less---since the early 1970s. Its owner is Entergy, a multi-reactor "McNuke" operator that last year got approval to up VY's output by 20%.

-snip


http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2007/1595

[singingtothewheat]

1. Nuclear Cooling Tower Collapse

I find it hard to believe that in a Nation where we have OTHER options for energy. We still decide that rather than seriously explore those other options we continue to play tootsie with something so incredibly frightening. Will we have to have a Chernobyl? No joke this stuff scares the stuffings out of me

[sabbat hunter]

4. no chernoblyls

There is not one plant in the US that is of the dangerous Chernobyl plant design, so we are not in any danger of having a similar disaster.

Additionally if we are serious about getting off of fossil fuels, we need to have nuclear as part of the solution, along with geothermal, solar, wind, water.

[pansypoo53219]

11. because of a new website i was linked to , i was

led to an even more disturbing website. http://www.kiddofspeed.com/. a woman motorcycle voyage thru areas hit by chernobyl. i can't imagine whole swaths of america having to be abandoned.
but knowing amerika, no doubt, so it would become the biggest walmart ever.

[GliderGuider]

12. That web site disturbs everyone who first sees it.

As you think about it, though, remember that the Chernobyl reactor design and operation bears no resemblance to anything running in the USA. It was a brain-dead design, being run by people suffering a severe case of recto-cranial inversion.

[phantom power]

13. It turns out that woman's motorcycle story was fiction.

[GliderGuider]

14. What aspects of it?

She must have done some sort of trip, or were the photos BS as well?

[phantom power]

15. She took some kind of guided tour...

I am based in Kyiv and writing a book about Chornobyl for the Joseph Henry Press. Several sources have sent me links to the "Ghost Town" photo essay included in the last e-POSHTA mailing. Though it was full of factual errors, I did find the notion of lone young woman riding her motorcycle through the evacuated Zone of Alienation to be intriguing and asked about it when I visited there two days ago.

I am sorry to report that much of Elena's story is not true. She did not travel around the zone by herself on a motorcycle. Motorcycles are banned in the zone, as is wandering around alone, without an escort from the zone administration. She made one trip there with her husband and a friend. They traveled in a Chornobyl car that picked them up in Kyiv.

She did, however, bring a motorcycle helmet. They organized their trip through a Kyiv travel agency and the administration of the Chornobyl zone (and not her father). They were given the same standard excursion that most Chernobyl tourists receive. When the Web site appeared, Zone Administration personnel were in an uproar over who approved a motorcycle trip in the zone. When it turned out that the motorcycle story was an invention, they were even less pleased about this fantasy Web site.

Because of those problems, Elena and her husband have changed the Web site and the story considerably in the last few days. Earlier versions of the narrative lied more blatantly about Elena taking lone motorcycle trips in the zone. That has been changed to merely suggest that she does so, which is still misleading.

http://www.uer.ca/forum_showthread_archive.asp?threadid=8951

[pansypoo53219]

17. i didn't give a hoot about the motorcycle part and stuff, just the pictures

and that was sad enough. nice to know i don't have to worry TOO MUCH about the nukes in my backyard.

[invader zim]

19. The Dangers of Wind Power

Check out some of these tower collapses...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,500902,00.html


http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,949526,00.jpg

In December of last year, fragments of a broken rotor blade landed on a road shortly before rush hour traffic near the city of Trier.

Two wind turbines caught fire near Osnabrück and in the Havelland region in January. The firefighters could only watch: Their ladders were not tall enough to reach the burning casings.

The same month, a 70-meter (230-foot) tall wind turbine folded in half in Schleswig-Holstein -- right next to a highway.

The rotor blades of a wind turbine in Brandenburg ripped off at a height of 100 meters (328 feet). Fragments of the rotors stuck into a grain field near a road.

[sabbat hunter]

2. slightly different version

"An inside portion of one of 22 cooling towers at Vermont Yankee failed Tuesday, forcing the plant to cut power production by more than 50 percent."

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070822/NEWS02/708220358/1003/NEWS02


Nothing I can see on any other article mentions the water is contaminated. Also considering that the water is returned to the CT river when it functions normally, I do not believe that hte water is contaminated. It does not come in contact with the reactor core so it is not radioactive.

Additionally, the structure that failed, was an old wooden cooling system, one that is not used in modern plant designs.

[TheWraith]

5. That's because it's NOT contaminated.

The author of this article is a ridiculously shrill and deluded anti-nuclear activist who's trying to spin a broken hot water pipe into a nuclear accident, and who obviously has no connection to reality.

[bananas]

16. "An inside portion" ??? They tried to cover this up.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070824/NEWS01/708240311/1009/NEWS05

<snip>

Also of concern were photographs of the collapse that were circulated on the Internet on Wednesday evening.

<snip>

Whoever took the photos must have been close to the structure at the time, Shadis said. If the photographer was someone who had managed to get onto plant property without permission, that would represent a "complete security failure," Shadis said.

"I was flabbergasted when I first saw them," he said of the photos. "I had thought, from the way the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Entergy had described it, that the damage was confined to the interior of the tower. That pipe was a half-inch thick and it just snapped."

<snip>

[phantom power]

3. It screams "better regulatory environment" to me.

But I'm a pro-nuke shill who has a secret crush on Christie Todd Whitman.

[cali]

6. Sorry,

I've been following this story closely, and this version on it borders on being outright lies. Yes it was worse than first reported. Yes it should be shut down, but this business about it being a pile of radioactive rubble is the worst kind of hyperbole. We don't need it. BTW, none of the water going to the river is contaminated.

From yesterday's Burlington Free Press:

Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials said the tower collapse does not pose a safety threat. NRC officials said the water that spilled from the tower pipe is used to cool a condenser and never comes in contact with the plant's nuclear reactor.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070824/NEWS01/708240311/1009/NEWS05

[Nederland]

8. Hyperbole?

From the anti-nuke crowd? Hard to believe... :eyes:

[madrchsod]

7. what the hell is this

"Yankee's cooling system, vintage 1972, centers on 22 (now 21) wood, fiberglass and metal towers that stretch for 300 feet, and are 50 feet high and 40 feet wide. The company calls this giant rig a "rain forest."

wood-fiberglass-metal? who designed that?

[losthills]

9. "Rainforest..."

What a hoot!

[mod mom]

10. Here are more articles-check out the photos

I don't claim to be an expert but am concerned with corporations that place the bottom line over other issues being responsible for these:

AUGUST 24, 2007
Vermont Yankee Cooling Tower Structure Collapses




A story that is not yet being reported on by the local media here in Northampton, and which was reported first by the Rutland Herald on August 22nd, in VT., is this story I picked up on tonight while browsing iBrattelboro.com. On August 22nd, a cooling tower at Vermont Yankee collapsed, causing the plant to immediately power down to below 50% capacity. The collapse and subsequent damage was downplayed by officials when it happened, explaining that none of the water released in the accident came into contact with radioactive waste, and entered straight from the Connecticut River where it travels through these pipes on its way to cooling the plant. Rob Williams, spokesman for plant owner Entergy Nuclear, said the spilling of the water poses no threat to the public. So there you have it. Northamptonist readers can rest easy tonight after being calmly reassured by the spokesman of Entergy Nuclear.

The Montpelier Times Argus has a very informative report on the collapse, with information on what Entergy Nuclear knew about the potential for damage, and when they knew it.

-More reports and photos below: (Photos from Vermont Public Interest Group.)
Nuclear plant damage is worse than reported
NRC inspectors on site of tower collapse
Photos show damage of Vermont Yankee cooling system
Congressional delegation calls investigation into Yankee mishap
NRC: Yankee trouble a mystery

http://northamptonist.blogspot.com/2007/08/vermont-yankee-cooling-tower-structure.html



Dramatic photos taken within minutes of the collapse, either by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or Entergy staff, were obtained and circulated by the anti-nuclear group New England Coalition on Wednesday night. Those photos show a 54-inch broken pipe gushing 350,000 gallons of water a minute onto the ground, amid a pile of debris.

Dreyfuss said the company had heard sounds coming from the cooling tower last week, but he said that sounds are not usual, since there is only 1/8-inch clearance between the giant fans and their housing. He said that section of the plant is usually reviewed twice a day.

But he said the collapse Tuesday took the company by surprise, even though the company knew something was wrong and was getting ready to reduce power and take that cooling tower off-line so it could investigate.


-snip

The towers had been under regulatory scrutiny for the past two years or more, since the New England Coalition had raised questions about their safety in light of the 20 percent power boost. Larger and heavier fans were placed on top of the cooling towers to help dissipate the additional decay heat generated by the reactor.



-snip

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070825/NEWS01/708250359/1002/NEWS01







Nuclear plant damage is worse than reported

Published: Friday, August 24, 2007
By Sam Hemingway
Free Press Staff Writer

A cooling tower structure at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant that partially collapsed Tuesday underwent a full inspection as recently as this spring and was found to be in good condition, a company spokesman said Thursday.

-snip
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070824/NEWS01/708240311

[AdHocSolver]

18. If you aren't worried, just think Three Mile Island and reference Minnesota bridge collapse.

If memory serves, Chernobyl blew up, not merely because of poor design, but because of sloppy maintenance and poorly trained workers who were unable to prevent the explosion even after they became aware that something was wrong. Even Three Mile Island averted a melt down mainly due to a lot of good luck.

The bridge in Minnesota collapsed because of inadequate maintenance, and the damage to New Orleans from hurricane Katrina was also blamed on improper "maintenance". It is sheer stupidity to always be trusting to luck where "accidents" can cause considerable damage.

I gather from the snippets posted here from the various articles that the operator of the plant installed larger cooling fans in the cooling towers so that they could increase power output. Who wants to bet that they failed to do a proper engineering study to ascertain whether the old towers were up to handling the extra stress? The problem at Chernobyl was not spilling water, but an overheating of the reactor core until it exploded. The danger at Three Mile Island was an overheatijg of the reactor core. The real danger at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear plant wasn't from contaminated water, but from the possibility that the reactor core could overheat. If they hadn't been able to reduce power output quickly, then we might be having a different conversation here.