Michigan has a rather large nuclear plant event

[ensho]

After being idled for repairs for two weeks, the Fermi 2 reactor of the Energy’s Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station was restarted Thursday night and then shut down again Saturday due to discovery that condenser tubes were leaking. “There are thousands of tubes that cooling water runs through, so we have to shut down to determine exactly where that’s coming from,” said Guy Cerullo, a spokesman for DTE Energy told the newspaper. Unplanned reactor scrams and prolonged repairs are not only a feature of Russian NPPs. After two weeks of repairs at the Fermi 2 plant, on the shore of Lake Erie near Monroe in Frenchtown Charter Township, Michigan, the reactor was launched on Thursday evening only to be shut down again on Saturday due to a leak in the condenser tubes. Cerullo said the second shutdown was not related to the repairs the reactor had been undergoing over the previous two weeks. Further comment sought by Bellona Web from DTE on Saturday
was unavailable as no one picked up the telephone at its press office over the course of several calls. DTE Energy’s website has yet to publicly report the incident at its reactor. And although the story appeared in the small local Monroe Evening News, it has yet to be picked up by any large circulation US newspapers or television news programs. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Current Power Reactor Status Report for February 11, 2011, however, listed the reactor as operating at 2 percent of 100 percent capacity. No one reached at the NRC by Bellona Web on Saturday, however, had any direct knowledge of the event, and responsible parties could not return telephone calls by press time.

The Fermi 2 reactor was built by General Electric and is of the boiling water type, with a generating capacity of 1098 Megawatts. It is located 40 miles from Detroit, and went online in 1988. The only previous incident at the reactor occurred on June 6, 2010 when it was hit by a small Tornado, damaging the reactor’s building and automatically shutting it down. Reactors of the boiling water type have only one boiling loop which is radioactive. Water is boiled directly in the active zone of the reactor. Radioactive steam rises to turn the turbines after which the reactor is cooled by the blanket heat exchange. If the tubes of radioactive circuit are damaged, then there is a danger of radioactive contamination. The DTE site features the words of Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer Jack Davis, who reports that: “Fermi 2 has been providing reliable, cost-effective power to the 2.2 million electric customers of Detroit Edison in Southeast Michigan for more
than 20 years. The plant also has been designated as one of the nation's best-performing nuclear facilities.”

“One of the nation's best-performing nuclear facilities” therefore sprang a leak in its condenser tubes while not even working at full power after two weeks worth of repairs. It’s scary to think what happens at other US nuclear power plants. As often happens, reality contradicts the words of the owners of the Fermi 2 reactor and the propaganda about the reliability of nuclear power. But if in the United States the owners of a plant have to bear the cost of an outage of this nature, then in Russia the expense is passed on to the state budget via Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation. The Fermi 1 reactor of the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station was a prototype for a breeder, or fast neutron reactor. The reactor experienced a serious emergency on October 5, 1966 – a partial core meltdown. After attempts to repair it, the reactor was completely shut down in 1975. In September of 2008, DTE Energy announced intentions to
build another reactor on the site of the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station. The idea provoked protests by various civil initiative groups who underscored that a new reactor would pose health and environmental dangers. Lake Erie, one of five North American lakes that form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total surface and volume.

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the above came from an email alert from rsoe.com

[yourout]

1. I still think Thorium based LFTRs are the way to move forward. IMHO with high pressure primary......

cooling loops it's not a matter of if there will be another substantial primary coolant leak it's just a matter of when and were.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor>

[MadHound]

5. Except for the fact that nuclear power is one of the most expensive forms of energy

Costing more than solar, wind, geothermal, etc.

And please, don't even try to go with the old argument that solar, wind and other renewables can't handle the energy load, that one has already been debunked.

<http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf>

So, why should we go with an energy source that is more expensive, more polluting, and more dangerous than renewables?

[yourout]

8. While I agree Nuclear power in it's current format is not in our best interests I....

hope you will do a little reading on the potential of Thorium powered liquid fluoride thorium reactors(LFTR).

[MadHound]

13. I used to work in the nuclear industry,

Did so for a number of years, and I'm very familiar with most aspects of it, including LFTR's. But again, the bottom line is that it is still more expensive, polluting, and ultimately unsafe for us to pursue.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

6. I agree. Especially with the US thorium reserves.

Nuclear, along with wind and solar.
I think nuclear, due ot the sheer power output, would be great for cities and suburbs where alot of power is consumed. And solar & wind can handle more rural power demands.

Imagine all the money spent on oil staying in america going to americans working in the domestic energy market.

[yourout]

11. The Chinese are jumping ahead on this also.....read here.

<http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2011/01/china-starts-lftr-development-project.html>

[MadHound]

14. We don't need nuclear,

We don't need it for sustained power, since wind, solar and water have reached the point where they can power our entire country.
<http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf>

Furthermore, it simply doesn't make economic sense, since nuclear power is now one of the most expensive forms of power generation going. Not to mention that it still has yet to overcome its two greatest drawbacks, human error and what to do with the waste it generates.

[CanSocDem]

16. There's a problem....

...with thinking that the average consumer will benefit from nuclear power. They will keep paying for high priced energy from the privately owned utility companies who, as we have seen recently, are quite clever at manipulating energy for profit....ENRON....

With solar, wind, geo-thermal etc. consumers can produce their own energy needs, that will undoubtedly be more respectful of the planet, the future, the community and greatly enhance their own well-being.

My own free-market government is sitting on a pile of high grade uranium that it can't wait to turn over, against the will of the people I might add, to the INDUSTRIAL RULING CLASS. They speak highly of its' benefits, like you, but we all know that their number one customer(in waiting) is the neighboring OIL SANDS project, the last gasp of the fossil fuel recovery effort.

Removing the "free market" from the use of natural resources is my ultimate goal. If you call public health a 'natural resource', we have already proven it possible. BTW I live in Saskatchewan.

.

[Tikki]

2. It's like tending thin ice....

and with repugs pushing for MORE & MORE deregulation..Nuke should not be our
future. Unfortunately, it's waste is our past, present and future.:(

Tikki

[ensho]

4. you got it! nuke "waste is our past, present and future"

it ain't going away, ever.

[Motown_Johnny]

3. First Fermi 1, now Fermi 2. Maybe DTE should clue in

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Almost_Lost_Detroit

^snip^

We Almost Lost Detroit, a 1975 Reader's Digest book by John G. Fuller, presents a history of Fermi 1, America's first commercial breeder reactor, with emphasis on the 1966 partial nuclear meltdown.<1><2> It was republished in 1984 by Berkley.

It took four years for the reactor to be repaired, and then performance was poor. In 1972, the reactor core was dismantled and the reactor was decommissioned. America's first effort at operating a full-scale breeder had failed.<3>

[jtrockville]

7. Bellona has the article online

http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/Fermi_shutdown

[roamer65]

9. Sounds like their safety procedures worked.

I have confidence in how DTE runs Fermi 2. However, I do not have confidence in how Toledo Edison run Davis-Besse. Davis-Besse is a stone's throw away from Fermi 2. Google Davis-Besse from 2002 and it will SCARE you.

[safeinOhio]

10. Insurance companies will insure all

kinds of crazy things like a dancers legs or lumped together risky home loans. No insurance company in the world will insure a nuke plant. They did the math.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

12. I think they would, for the right price...

The thing about insurance is generally that no one may be willing to pay the calculated premium.

[safeinOhio]

15. They don't have too, as

the government/us tax payers, do it.