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How many reactor-years have we had since the 1930's and how many accidents with release of radionuclides? You are allowed to break down the statistics by type of reactor.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 07:31:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Yes and what were the industry's projected accidents per reactor year in the 1950s?...

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake
by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 07:41:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]
As my computer is nearing meltdown, for the moment I'll have to refer you to the World Nuclear Association's propaganda department.

Hey, maybe one could make t-shirts with that logo on?

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 08:03:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I think we are at about 12.000 civilian reactor years and an equal number of military ones. Safety work in the West was really kickstarted by the TMI accident and safety has increased incredibly (by a few orders of magnitude if I remember correctly, the whole field of man-machine interaction was practically developed by the nuclear power industry after TMI) since then. In the East safety was improved, I don't really know when...

But when the Ignalina RBMK plant was evaluated by Swedish experts in the mid nineties it had a risk of core damage of about 1 in 3000 reactor years. The subsequent improvements raised it to 1 in 10.000. But it will always lack a containment, and what really counts is not the number of accidents but the damage on the environment. Without a containment it becomes Chernobyl-esque.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 07:43:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Now how many incidents have there been where radionuclides were released without core damage being involved?

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 07:47:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]
From reactors? Zero I think, but I'd guess there were quite a number of releases from military labs (not to talk about nuclear weapons testing!) during the 50's and 60's.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 08:10:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Now how many incidents have there been where radionuclides were released without core damage being involved?  

Too many to count, at one single installation of three light-water power reactors in Connecticut USA, alone.  


The Fates are kind.

by Gaianne on Wed Jun 28th, 2006 at 03:13:17 AM EST
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You see, here's the problem... Yousay "too many to count" and Starvid says "zero". Where is the data?

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 28th, 2006 at 03:50:04 AM EST
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A local group (some of whose members live in the pollution shadow) called Citizens Awareness Network has been colating the cases.  

Dozens and dozens.  

Believe me.  Believe them.  Or believe the Industry.  Your choice.  

The Fates are kind.

by Gaianne on Wed Jun 28th, 2006 at 04:23:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Diary, please?

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 28th, 2006 at 06:25:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The right answer is sadly, "too many to count" in the US. In France, it does not happen often, although a few times we hear of accidents where radiation enters the wrong rooms and contaminate a worker or two. No death though. There were some in Japan a few years ago.

Also note that water-cooled reactors continuously release little amount of tritium in the atmosphere as part of their normal operation (the reasoning being that tritium is short lived and flows quickly through living organism, so it is safer to dilute it quickly and never accumulate large amounts that could blow up in one time, and leak anyway - it's still hydrogen and most metals are porous to hydrogen). One of the origins is neutron capture in the water of primary loop, it is extracted because it must be kept non-radioactive for quicker detection of a real leak from a rod.

Pierre
by Pierre on Wed Jun 28th, 2006 at 05:00:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The half-life of tritium is 12 years, though there is a tradeoff between radioactivity levels and half-life (the more radioactive the shorter lived, obviously).

One reason tritium may be "safe" to release is that the Earth's gravity cannot retain tritium in the atmosphere. However, I don't know how long it takes for tritium to escape the atmosphere after it's released.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 28th, 2006 at 06:29:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]
12 years is quite short as half-lives go for radioactive waste. Also, if ingested as water (THO or T2O), tritium is not as bad as it's high activity shows. Other forms can accumulate in the body and are very dangerous (in older days, clock industry workers were applying phosphorescent paint on numbers, that was tritium-enhanced, with a paint brush they used to lick to keep the hair straight, and they had terrible cancers... may be the clock bloggers could dig more detailed stories).
But water in the body actually has a pretty high turnover so it only remains for a few days and concentrates in no particular organs. I was surprised to see in biology labs, that tritium as a tracer is classed rather low in the danger/confinement scale compared to many industrial chemicals used to voluntarily damage DNA in experiments.

Pierre
by Pierre on Wed Jun 28th, 2006 at 07:37:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]
(in older days, clock industry workers were applying phosphorescent paint on numbers, that was tritium-enhanced, with a paint brush they used to lick to keep the hair straight, and they had terrible cancers... may be the clock bloggers could dig more detailed stories)
I would chalk that one to metal or polycyclic hydrocarbon poisoning, actually, but I am just guessing.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 28th, 2006 at 07:44:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]
the tritium had to be bound in a molecule.  

Nothing easier:  Just sustitute tritium for hydrogen in whatever compound you are making the paint out of.  

Suppose THAT persists in the body.  Then the tritium persists right along with it for maximal radiological effect.  

The Fates are kind.

by Gaianne on Thu Jul 6th, 2006 at 01:34:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Well, measured in Becquerels radioactivity is inversely proportional to lifetime. But more relevant to how dangerous something is how energetic the radiation is, and how penetrant. And then we get into its lifetime in the body.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 28th, 2006 at 08:21:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The Indian Point reactor just north of NYC is leaking Tritium contaminated water from the reactor building. This has been going on for some time (no one really knows exactly how long). They have not been able to find the source of the leak, but are trying to treat it by pumping near the source of the leak.

The reactor is on the Hudson River and the idea is to prevent the contaminated water from reaching the river. (Not that this amount of contamination would cause any real problems).

In addition the emergency alarm system continues fail tests and the evacuation plan has not be certified as practical. (Moving about one million people away from the plant over four or five highways is not realistic.)

Finally they have filled up their spent fuel rod storage tanks and are looking to dry storage on site to allow for even more radioactive waste.

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

by rdf (robert.feinman@gmail.com) on Wed Jun 28th, 2006 at 08:46:41 AM EST
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