Once and for all...are humans or robots better for Mars?

Fred J. McCall wrote:

The building is just there to keep the weather off, so it being
'fragile' is hardly a surprise. The pools themselves are not nearly
as fragile as is being claimed.

And no ceiling.

We need to come up with a (largely political) process to move the
waste to some kind of dry storage, preferably glassified.


You can't do that until it has cooled for a year or two. That's the
original purpose of the cooling pools, after all.

But it's not being done. I *THINK* I've read that Fukushima's
reactors have decades worth of fuel in these pools.


I wasn't disagreeing with Bobbert. I may even have him killfiled. I
run so far behind on some newsgroups that I'm not sure what I've
already read. I was disagreeing on the disproof, which is not the
same thing as agreeing to the proof.


Perhaps you should know what is being disproved before you disagree
with it?

If a disproof is invalid, then the assertion can still be false. How
does a bad assertion force the disproof to be good?
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27

bob haller wrote:

coal cant instanetously ... poision the ocean

You're not supposed to eat canned tuna more than once a week. Know
why? Because coal power has ALREADY poisoned the ocean with mercury.
It didn't do it instantly, but why is that a factor. Doing it over
decades with nobody pushing for a switch to something cleaner -- like
competent nuke -- is worse!
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27

tuna fish live off the japanese coast and then migrate yearly to us
waters. i was amazed when i found this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aNVtaf1qgw

On Jul 4, 8:15*pm, Greg Goss wrote:
bob haller wrote:
coal cant instanetously ... poision the ocean

You're not supposed to eat canned tuna more than once a week. *Know
why? *Because coal power has ALREADY poisoned the ocean with mercury.
It didn't do it instantly, but why is that a factor. *Doing it over
decades with nobody pushing for a switch to something cleaner -- like
competent nuke -- is worse!
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27

well if we had competent nuke that would be fine. but we dont.

just build nuke plants robust enough to

A not meltdown

and B if a reactor does meltdown containment is still assured......

On Jul 4, 7:20*pm, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:
On Jul 4, 6:13*am, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:
On Jul 3, 4:13 am, (William December Starr) wrote:
In article ,
William Mook said:

[Fred J. McCall said:]
So in MookieWorld Obama is a tool of the British Empire (which
hasn't been around for quite a while now)? Who knew?

Lyndon LaRouche

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgcdRCWEt4Q

And if you can't trust Lyndon LaRouche for accurate representations
of reality, who can you?

Some people can't get over being transfixed by Madison Avenue.

And others are apparently permanently stuck on stupid, ready to
believe any and every insane conspiracy theory that comes down the
pike.

haha - its funny when Fred talks about his own mental shortcomings and
thinks he's talking of others. *lol.

haha ... lol ... guffaw ... snicker

Yeah, you're starting to sound like you're coming unglued, Mookie. Get
some sleep and take a pill....

--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
*only stupid."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * -- Heinrich Heine

In your dreams - lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBSPcIGGcIc

On Jul 4, 6:50*pm, William Mook wrote:
On Jul 4, 7:20*pm, Fred J. McCall wrote:









William Mook wrote:
On Jul 4, 6:13*am, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:
On Jul 3, 4:13 am, (William December Starr) wrote:
In article ,
William Mook said:

[Fred J. McCall said:]
So in MookieWorld Obama is a tool of the British Empire (which
hasn't been around for quite a while now)? Who knew?

Lyndon LaRouche

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgcdRCWEt4Q

And if you can't trust Lyndon LaRouche for accurate representations
of reality, who can you?

Some people can't get over being transfixed by Madison Avenue.

And others are apparently permanently stuck on stupid, ready to
believe any and every insane conspiracy theory that comes down the
pike.

haha - its funny when Fred talks about his own mental shortcomings and
thinks he's talking of others. *lol.

haha ... lol ... guffaw ... snicker

Yeah, you're starting to sound like you're coming unglued, Mookie. Get
some sleep and take a pill....

--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
*only stupid."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * -- Heinrich Heine

In your dreams - lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBSPcIGGcIc

If Hitler were in charge, Fred's brown nose would be one of his
favorite butt-wipes.

http://groups.google.com/group/googl...t/topics?hl=en
http://groups.google.com/group/guth-usenet/topics?hl=en
http://www.wanttoknow.info/
http://translate.google.com/#
Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / “Guth Usenet”

So, I was jamming to some tunes Parasailing over Taylor's Mistake
yesterday... in the land of the long cloud - New Zealand!

God's gonna cut you down...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxh-FfElY0M

Bargain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOSjMbfrhO8

Parasailing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z1Z42bc3hI

Remarkable Mountains
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NDUyr0LpO8

Jorge R. Frank sent the following on 7/3/2011 11:51 PM:
On 07/03/2011 07:42 PM, Jim G. wrote:
Greg Goss sent the following on Sun, 03 Jul 2011 01:06:29 -0600:
bob wrote:

The terrorist now know what a great target a nuke plant with elevated
waste core storage pools are. A business sized jet loaded with
explosives could take out a pools cooling system.

But you were talking about Indian Point. Indian Point has their
storage pools set into bedrock, not "elevated".

So why the bait and switch?

I've given up on the guy. He's either extremely dim or extremely good at
trolling. I can't quite tell which, but either is a waste of time.

Don't assume he can't be both.

Heh. Normally, I will consider that as an option. But in this case, if
he *is* as dim as he seems, then he's far too dim to make a good troll.

--
Jim G.
Waukesha, WI

Radiological Terrorism: Sabotage of Spent Fuel Pool
Hui Zhang
The September 11 large-scale terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon show the threat of nuclear and radiological
terrorism is real. A successful attack or sabotage on a nuclear
facility could cause the most potentially devastating radiological
release into the atmosphere. While many people focus their concerns on
the vulnerability of reactor containment buildings, an increasing
number of nuclear experts are concerned about the spent fuel pools
(SFP) which would be more vulnerable than the reactor containment
building, because most SFPs are housed in far less robust structures
than the reactor containment vessels. Moreover, a SFP would contain
much more radiation than a reactor core. [1] In particular, one major
concern is the vulnerability of the pools' cooling systems. In absence
of cooling water, the spent fuel would overheat, and the fuel-cladding
could melt or catch fire in some cases. Thus it could release
radioactive substances to the environment.

In fact, a number of countries are taking spent nuclear fuel
vulnerabilities very seriously. For example, France has installed anti-
aircraft missiles around its spent fuel ponds at its reprocessing
facility. However, some scholars and experts argue that these nuclear
facilities could not be vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Risk of Spent Nuclear Fuel at Reactor Pools
In this paper, I will explain the potential consequences of the
sabotage of spent fuel pools and the vulnerabilities of these pools to
terrorist attacks. Finally, I will suggest some security measures to
protect these spent fuel facilities.

Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel

Each year, a typical 1 GWe light water reactor (LWR) discharges about
20 to 30 metric tonnes of heavy metal (tHM) in spent nuclear fuel
(SNF). The SNF is very radioactive. Typically, each tonne SNF would
emit above 200 million curies of activity at the time of reactor
shutdown [2]. Thus, the SNF is very hot. For example, one day after
shutdown, 30 t LWR spent fuel has a thermal output of about 6 MW. [3]
To prevent the spent fuel from melting, once discharged from the
reactor, it is placed on storage racks in rectangular pools, typically
10-20 m long, 7-15 m wide, and 12-13 m deep. [4] The pool is usually
made of reinforced concrete walls four to five feet thick with
stainless steel liners. Pools at pressurized water reactors (PWR, the
most common reactors) are usually outside the reactor containment
building and partially or fully embedded in the ground. Most of the
spent fuel pools at boiling water reactors (BWR) are housed in reactor
buildings and above ground. A pool can have a 15 to 30 year storage
(i.e. about 400-800 t for a PWR) of SNFs discharged from a reactor.
Spent fuel pools could hold about 10 times more long-lived
radioactivity than a reactor core. After a period of cooling time, the
spent fuel can be removed from the wet pool for a dry storage or
reprocessing.

Today, about 10,000 tHM spent fuel is generated annually. Over 150,000
tHM spent fuels were in storage by 2000. More than 90% of the spent
fuel in the world today is stored in pools at reactor sites or in away-
from-reactor facilities. [5] The abandoning or delaying of
reprocessing and the absence of established geologic repositories
through the world have resulted in an increase of spent fuel stored at
the power plants or in central repositories. Moreover, most reactors
were built with an originally planned reprocessing program that made
these reactors have much less pool storage capacity. Thus, in many
cases, these pools are approaching or have exceeded their original
design capacity. To compensate, in practice, many reactor operators in
the world are "re-racking" the spent fuel in the pool so that the
spent fuel is stored more densely. For example, at most operating
reactors in the United States, the 're-rack' of spent fuel has been
done. As discussed below, these densepacked pools would be more
vulnerable to a pool fire and cause a large amount of radioactive
release.

The Consequence of Cesium-137 Release

A 400 t PWR pool holds about 10 times more long-lived radioactivity
than a reactor core. A radioactive release from such a pool would
cause catastrophic consequences. One major concern is the fission
product cesium-137 (Cs-137), which made a major contribution (about
three quarters) to the long-term radiological impact of the 1986
Chernobyl accident. A spent fuel pool would contain tens of million
curies of Cs-137. Cs-137 has a 30 year half-life; it is relatively
volatile and a potent land contaminant. In comparison, the April 1986
Chernobyl accident released about 2 Mega Curies (MCi) Cs-137 into the
atmosphere from the core of the 1,000 MWe unit 4. It is estimated that
over 100,000 residents were permanently evacuated because of
contamination by Cs-137.The total area of the radiation-control zone
is about 10,000 km², in which the contamination level is greater than
15 Ci/km² of Cs-137. [6]

A typical 1 GWe PWR core contains about 80 t fuels. Each year about
one third of the core fuel is discharged into the pool. A pool with 15
year storage capacity will hold about 400 t spent fuel. To estimate
the Cs-137 inventory in the pool, for example, we assume the Cs137
inventory at shutdown is about 0.1 MCi/tU with a burn-up of 50,000 MWt-
day/tU, thus the pool with 400 t of ten year old SNF would hold about
33 MCi Cs-137. [7] Assuming a 50-100% Cs137 release during a spent
fuel fire, [8] the consequence of the Cs-137 exceed those of the
Chernobyl accident 8-17 times (2MCi release from Chernobyl). Based on
the wedge model, the contaminated land areas can be estimated. [9] For
example, for a scenario of a 50% Cs-137 release from a 400 t SNF pool,
about 95,000 km² (as far as 1,350 km) would be contaminated above 15
Ci/km² (as compared to 10,000 km² contaminated area above 15 Ci/km² at
Chernobyl). Thus, it is necessary to take security measures to prevent
such an event from happening.

Vulnerability of Spent Fuel Pools

Until today, no accident or sabotage happened to cause the release of
radioactivity from a spent fuel pool. However, many scientists and
nuclear security experts are very concerned about a significant
release of radioactivity by a possible spent fuel fire, especially in
the case of dense packing of pools – a method that has been used by
many reactor operators worldwide including for most pools in the US.

The most serious risk is the loss of pool water, which could expose
spent fuel to the air, thus leading to an exothermal reactions of the
zirconium cladding, which would catch fire at about 9000 °C. Thus, the
Cs-137 in the rods could be dispersed into the surrounding atmosphere.
Based on a Technical Study of Spent Fuel Pool Accident Risk at
Decommissioning Nuclear Power Plant in 2000, the US Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) conceded that "the possibility of a zirconium fire
cannot be dismissed even many years after a final reactor
shutdown." [10] Recently, a number of nuclear scientists outside the
government agency arrived at the same conclusion. For example, the new
technical study Reducing the hazards from stored spent power-reactor
fuel in the United States by R. Alvarez et al. [11] points out that
"In the absence of any cooling, a freshly discharged core generating
decay heat at a rate of 100 kWt/tU would heat up adiabatically within
an hour to about 600 °C, where the zircaloy cladding would be expected
to rupture under the internal pressure from helium and fission product
gases, and then to about 900 °C where the cladding would begin to burn
in air." In addition, although the cooler fuel could not ignite on its
own, many scientists are concerned that fire from freshly spent fuel
could spread to adjacent cooler fuel by some mechanisms, including
zircaloy oxidation propagation. [12] Finally, even for the case of non-
dense-packed pools, there could still be some sabotage scenarios that
cause a significant amount of radioactive release as discussed in the
following section.

Thus, a loss of pool cooling could cause a pool fire. Then the
question is how such a loss of pool water is brought about. A
terrorist group could cause a loss of cooling water in a number of
ways, such as,

causing the loss of cooling, thus boiling the water off through the
failure of pumps or valves, through the destruction of heat
exchangers, or through a loss of power for the cooling system. It is
estimated that, in the case of a loss of cooling, the time it would
take for a spent fuel pool to boil down to near the top of the spent
fuel would be as short as several hours, depending on the cooling time
of the discharge fuel. [13] Moreover, in the case of terrorist attack,
the operators of nuclear facilities might not have enough time to
provide emergency cooling.
causing the drainage of coolant inventory by piping failures or
siphoning, and by gate and seal failures. Furthermore, a heavy load
including a fuel transport cask could be dropped in the pools thus
causing a collapse of the pool floor and a water leak. As reported,
"The analysis exclusively considered drops severe enough to
catastrophically damage the SFP so that pool inventory would be lost
rapidly and it would be impossible to refill the pool using onsite or
offsite resources. There is no possibility of mitigating the damage,
only preventing it." "The staff assumes a catastrophic heavy load drop
(creating a large leakage path in the pool) would lead directly to a
zirconium fire." [14]
puncturing the pool and causing a drainage by suicide airplanes,
missiles, or other explosives. For the case that spent fuel pools are
located above ground level, a suicide airplane could breach the pool
bottom or sidewalls and cause a complete or partial drainage. A US NRC
study estimated that a large aircraft (one weighing more than 5.4
tonnes) would have a 45% probability of penetrating the five-foot
thick concrete wall of a spent fuel pool. The NRC staff has decided
that it is prudent to assume that a turbine shaft of a large aircraft
engine could penetrate and drain a spent fuel storage pool. [15]
However, there are some opposing arguments regarding the impact of an
aircraft on a spent fuel pool. For example, a study conducted by the
Electric Power Research Institute at the request of the Nuclear Energy
Institute, which considers the impact of a Boeing 767 on spent fuel
storage pools concluded that "the stainless steel pool liner ensures
that, although the evaluations of the representative used fuel pools
determined that there was localized crushing and cracking of the
concrete wall, there was no loss of pool cooling water. Because the
used fuel pools were not breached, the used fuel is protected and
there would be no release of radionuclides to the environment." [16]
However, many experts are concerned about the spent fuel pool damage
from an aircraft crash.

A terrorist could also use anti-tank missiles to puncture a pool.
Modern anti-tank weapons can be fired by shoulder or from a vehicle or
boat, and launched as far as 2 km away. It is reported that some
modern anti-tank missiles would be able to penetrate up to 3 m of
reinforced concrete. Thus these weapons could be used to conduct an
off-site attack on the pools. Moreover, a terrorist attack could
include some kinds of on-site explosions to damage the pools, such as
if a large truck bomb were detonated near the pool; or if a terrorist
carried a certain type of explosive to the pool and blew a sizeable
hole in the pool. In particular, the truck bomb would pose a big
threat.

Risk of Spent Fuel Pools at Reprocessing Plants
Another risk is from the spent fuel pools at reprocessing plants. A
reprocessing plant has even greater pool storage capacity than that of
a reactor pool. Before reprocessing, the received spent fuels are
stored in wet pools at the reprocessing plants. The buildings that
house the pools could be even weaker than those pools at reactor
sites. In particular, the roof of the building could be more
vulnerable. Most of the sabotage scenarios conceivable for reactor
pools could be applied to these pools at reprocessing plants. However,
unlike those freshly discharged spent fuels at reactor pools with
dense packing, the cooler spent fuel at reprocessing pools, which is
at least two years old, could be difficult to ignite automatically in
the absence of cooling.

Nevertheless, there might still be some ways to cause a significant
radioactive release by a successful terrorist attack. For example, a
two- or multiple-stage attack by truck bombs, aircraft impacts or
other kinds of on-site explosion could at least breach the zircaloy
cladding or even partly melt the fuel cladding. Even though this would
not ignite a spent fuel fire, a significant fraction of Cs-137 in the
rods could be released into the atmosphere. For example, a pool with
2,000 t ten-year-old SNF would hold about 170 MCi Cs-137. If 3% of
this Cs-137 inventory were released, [17] about 5 MCi Cs-137 would be
released, which is two times more than the 1986 Chernobyl accident.
Furthermore, terrorists could pour fuel in the pool and start a fire
that would cause ignition of the zircaloy cladding and lead to a
greater release of the Cs-137 inventory. Recent results from France
indicate that heating at 1,500 °C of high-burnup spent fuel for one
hour caused the release of 26% of the Cs inventory. [18] Thus it would
release about 44 MCi of Cs-137 into the environment, which would be
twenty times more than the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

The major operating reprocessing plants are at French La Hague,
British Sellafield, and Russian Mayak, and Japan is currently building
a major reprocessing facility (with a capacity of 800 tHM/y) at
Rokkasho, which is about 90% complete. UK's British Nuclear Fuels Plc.
(BNFL) operates two reprocessing plants at Sellafield, the Magnox B205
and the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP). The B205 plant has a
capacity of 1,500 tHM/y and reprocesses SNF from 16 British Magnox
reactors. THORP has a capacity of 1,200 tHM/y and reprocesses SNF from
14 British Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactors (AGR) as well as imported SNF.
Like the Magnox reprocessing plant, THORP uses the standard Purex
method. As reported, the French La Hague nuclear reprocessing
facilities (with a normal capacity of 800 tHM/year in each of the two
facilities) holds a stock of radioactive substances that greatly
exceeds those of all the French nuclear reactors put together.
According to a Cogema presentation on the situation of its storage
pools on 30 June 2001, 7,484.2 t varied nuclear fuel (of which 7,077.7
t from France), is spread in five pools (which provide a total storage
capacity of 13,990 t.) In addition, over 55 t separated plutonium,
over 1,400 m³ highly radioactive glass, and 10,000 m³ of radioactive
sludges are located there. [19]

Some experts are already concerned about the possible consequence of a
terrorist attack on the La Hague nuclear reprocessing facilities. As a
COGEMA-La Hague spokesman declared after September 11, as far as the
design basis is concerned, the facilities are no more protected
against an airliner crash than any other nuclear power station. [20]
The World Information Service on Energy, Wise-Paris, estimated the
potential impact of a major accident in La Hague's pools. [21] The
calculation was made for the case of an explosion and/or fire in the
spent fuel storage pool D (the smallest one), assuming that it is
filled up to half of its normal capacity of 3,490 t, supposing a
release of up to 100% of Cs-137. Based solely on the stock of Cs-137
in pool D, it is shown that a major accident in this pool could have
an impact up to 67 times that of the Chernobyl accident. Moreover, the
total Cs-137 inventory in the pools of La Hague reprocessing
facilities is about 7,500 kg, 280 times as much as the Cs-137 amount
released from the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

In fact, since 11 September 2001, attention has been drawn to the
physical protection of nuclear power plants and reprocessing
facilities. For example, France has installed anti-aircraft missiles
around its spent fuel pond at the La Hague reprocessing facilities.
Also in the UK, the House of Commons defense committee stressed that
attention should be focused on the vulnerability of nuclear
installations, including reprocessing plants. The Royal Air Force
Tornado F3 fighters based at Coningsby, Lincolnshire, are responsible
for intercepting hijacked commercial aircraft deemed a threat to UK
nuclear sites. In July 2002, the British government published a White
Paper entitled Managing the Nuclear Legacy: A Strategy for Action
which proposed to transform the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Autority
(UKAEA) Constabulary into a stand-alone force, the Civil Nuclear
Constabulary (CNC). [22]

On 7/12/11 10:20 AM, bob haller wrote:
[nothing, just someone else's article]

Sound of Trumpet does this better than you.


--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com