Nuclear reactor operator gets safety regulations eased to extend reactor's life

A key safety limit at one of Britain's nuclear power stations is being eased to allow the life of the reactor to be extended, the BBC has learned.

The regulator has agreed to increase the amount of weight graphite bricks at the core of the reactor at Dungeness B in Kent will be allowed to lose.

The bricks, which degrade over time due to radiation, are vital for safety.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation said it was a "robust" body but one expert accused it of "moving the goalposts".

The nuclear reactor at Dungeness B would have breached the safety margin within months which could have forced the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to prosecute or even shut it down.

The safety margins cover thousands of graphite bricks at the core of Britain's 14 elderly Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors (AGRs).

But the bricks, each about a metre in height, are both cracking and starting to lose weight due to decades of radiation, and that could affect safety.

The current graphite weight loss limit for Dungeness is set at 6.2% but the regulator says when it reached 5.7% its operator, French power giant EDF, applied to raise it to 8%.

Mark Foy, deputy chief inspector at the Office for Nuclear Regulation, said "We will be in a position to agree that 8% limit within the next few weeks. Ageing is a nuclear safety issue".

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-27691207

Thanks for that Ben - real news at last! I was beginning to despair.

This is appalling, but typical of the way things are slipping not just in this country but in the States and elsewhere, all in the name of economy.  Very dangerous and bound to have serious consequences in the long run - but hey so long as it's covered up no-one will know, or care - until reactive pollutants are released into the air, the soil, the sea, and cancers increase....

Tesstacious wrote:Thanks for that Ben - real news at last! I was beginning to despair.

This is appalling, but typical of the way things are slipping not just in this country but in the States and elsewhere, all in the name of economy.  Very dangerous and bound to have serious consequences in the long run - but hey so long as it's covered up no-one will know, or care - until reactive pollutants are released into the air, the soil, the sea, and cancers increase....

Yeah, I don't know how anybody could not be nervous about this, and I hope the publicity sparks some protests. Scary stuff!

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Tesstacious wrote:Thanks for that Ben - real news at last! I was beginning to despair.

This is appalling, but typical of the way things are slipping not just in this country but in the States and elsewhere, all in the name of economy.  Very dangerous and bound to have serious consequences in the long run - but hey so long as it's covered up no-one will know, or care - until reactive pollutants are released into the air, the soil, the sea, and cancers increase....

Yeah, I don't know how anybody could not be nervous about this, and I hope the publicity sparks some protests. Scary stuff!

The problem is that this country's generating capacity has declined alarmingly because of the dithering of successive governments.

It is at least five years since we received quite stark warnings, from authoritative sources, that the UK faced the very real risk of "rolling" power cuts ("outages" to our American friends) on the scale of those experienced because of industrial unrest during the Heath government's period of office in the 1970s.

The year during which that frightening prospect was deemed most likely to begin was...2015.

We get rolling blackouts sometimes here in Texas and other states, I'm familiar with them. Be better to see the UK generate more wind and solar than keep a creaky old nuclear site online for the sake of saving a little money.

Two things to say about this.

An extra few years will still be within design parameters.

Secondly because of lefty opposition we have delayed replacing Nuclear plant.


Had we replaced this plant earlier this would not be required.

As an aside Nuclear though expensive causes far less pollution than fossil fuels and alternative renewables are simply unreliable at the moment. Yes the pollution I does cause has long term storage problems but Uranium has no other good uses unlike Oil which can be used to make chemicals.

Which would you prefer the lights to go out or extend the life until new plant is ready?

Mark this day on your calendar; I agree, ASF, that too many on the left get upset about nuclear plants and that it can have bad outcomes such as this; the best short-term bet as far as I can see would have been to start constructing a replacement plant to take over for this one before now, with a longer-term goal of using more wind and solar.

As far as renewables go, they are relied upon pretty heavily, though not exclusively, by a lot of people around the world. It seems to me that the most realistic way forward for electricity is to have a wind/hydro/solar/nuclear system where the nuclear reactor can power up to cover any downturns in renewable output.

I shall indeed mark this day Ben.

For the record I was very interested in Nuclear in my younger days and visited Windscale ( the first site of the clear programme in the UK now Sellafield) on a number of occasions.

I remain to this day a firm believer in Nuclear not because it is cheapest (which it isn't)but because in geologically stable regions it is the most stable source of supply. Civilisation requires as a minimum power and water without it we would descend into chaos. I despise the plantpots ( My term for do gooders in the green movement who who would bring this chaos down upon us) and who haven't a clue about the realities of the current state of technology. Moreover the few that have believe we should live like we did two hundred years ago. Well forgive me if I choose the alternative.

I am often critical of France on this forum but in one major respect I doff my cap to them, they went Nuclear big style and wasn't that a great idea. They actually exported energy to the UK across a cable under the Channel

Strangely enough the left in France did not get as vocal. I know in the UK the Soviets supported CND which in turn leaked over into resistance of all things Nuclear. Maybe in France because they were much more friendly to Russia they didn't get the KGB agitating in their country.

It's like terrorism -- people freak out about the deadly incidents, yet you're far more likely to die by being struck by lightning or of overheating than you are in a nuclear meltdown or terrorist attack.

But I really don't think your average mainstream lefty wants to upend civilization. We have what it takes to produce much cleaner energy right now; it only will require the proper incentives to scale it up.

On that note:

Neil deGrasse Tyson says the wealthy will soon be forced to pay attention to climate change: Not because of any political movement, but because of basic economics.

During an interview on All In With Chris Hayes on Monday, the renowned astrophysicist said the evidence is mounting that climate change will have extreme economic ramifications. And that, in turn, will get the rich to pay attention.

"If they start to lose their wealth, they change their minds real fast," Tyson said. "Particularly in a capitalist culture."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/04/degrasse-tyson-climate-change-wealthy_n_5446333.html

One good volcano eruption and a few hundred thousand tons of dust in the atmosphere will put us into a long term winter Ben. I realise the majority of scientist buy into the current view but there are a number of equally well qualified scientist who do not.

That said with Nuclear there ain't a problem with C02 emissions.

Alright said Fred wrote:One good volcano eruption and a few hundred thousand tons of dust in the atmosphere will put us into a long term winter Ben. I realise the majority of scientist buy into the current view but there are a number of equally well qualified scientist who do not.

That said with Nuclear there ain't a problem with C02 emissions.

Wrong. Every year, on average, volcanoes emit 65 to 319 million tonnes of CO2; human activity emits 30 billion tonnes and that figure is always going up.

97 percent of qualified climatologists agree that global warming is happening and that it is down to human activity (you can look this up anywhere).

You're right about nuclear, though -- it's a much cleaner fuel source and also much more renewable than fossil fuels, which are indeed running out:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/16/5723880/france-uk-run-out-of-fossil-fuels-next-five-years

Well I have to say that ice cores show that we have had periods of severe heating and cooling long before man was about.

Let me give you an example of where consensus opinion of a medical matter was massively in favour of the wrong diagnosis. That of the incidence of stomach ulcers and the actions of Helica Bacter pylori. The cocnsensus wisdom was that the best treatment was the use of ten of millons of pounds worth of antacid drugs per annum. One scientis alone was convinced the bacteria was causing a huge propotion of ulcers, He was right and everyone else had to accept they were wrong. It took years for them to be convinced and now a wide spectrum anti biotic is prescribed with bismuth to kill of the bacteria.

The cocnsensus isn't always right and I think the jury is out on this one. Yes we are affecting the temperature a little but I'm convinced its about raising more taxes.

Yeah, but if you look at that severe heating and cooling, it still happened a lot slower than it is now, and even though it was slower it had dramatic effects on life on Earth, including mass extinctions.

During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, temperatures rose 6 °C within about 20,000 years. Between 35 and 50 percent of ocean life went extinct.

We're on pace to raise global temperatures at about that rate within well under 1,000 years. There's no way of knowing whether any form of life that takes years to mature could adapt that quickly, and there will be a lot of extinctions. As you probably know, extinctions are already happening at an alarming rate.

If it makes you feel any better, my position is that there is no way raising taxes will make a real dent in warming. Besides, a global conspiracy among scientists to help politicians raise taxes just doesn't compute. They don't need hoaxes to raise taxes, they do it all the time just fine.

Except there are big grants to be had and one can lose grants if you are perceived to be against the consensus. Indeed Scientist on the wrong side are often ostracised.

I'm not saying it isn't true I'm saying there are a lot of other variables. Consensus scientific opinion has been wrong on many subjects in the past therefore this could be yet another case.

Remember the Millenium bug what a damp squib that was.

Ah, I hate the "grants" argument! They do give grants to study all sorts of things. And I hear there's also a bit of money to be made in the oil and gas industry ... even for a climate scientist!

A think tank partly funded by Exxon Mobil sent letters to scientists offering them up to $10,000 to critique findings in a major global warming study released Friday which found that global warming was real and likely caused by burning fossil fuels.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/02/news/companies/exxon_science/index.htm?cnn=yes

Yes, scientific consensus has been proven wrong before, but the study of global warming has been going on a long, long time (like more than a century now) and by many, many scientists and every day that passes and nobody comes up with a global-warming-killing paper, the less likely it is to be proven wrong -- particularly as more and more evidence mounts that points to fossil fuel burning as the cause of what we're seeing.

As far as the millenium thing, I thought that was averted by the institutions that might be effected taking measures to fix their systems before 2000, and a lot of it was always just media hype in the first place.

Global warming...pffft///get used to it...its happening...its real...and its beyond us to prevent it now...

THAT doesnt mean we shouldnt just "carry on " as before...the sooner we are off fossil fuels the better...

solar wind and geohermal are the ultimate way to go...and eventually perhaps fusion ....

what we SHOULD be doing is looking to mitigate the effects, that INCLUDES more and better seed banks DNA banks for endangered species, better sea and river defences, better water management.

PREPARATION for WAR....

Better use of "minor technology" to help poverty struck areas of the world....
and MORE use of the "molten salt" fission reactors...which are virtually a nuclear generator on wheels....for poorer nations ...(which tech is safe and almost impossible to weaponise)

what do the politicians do......raise taxes....pfffft

victorisnotamused wrote:Global warming...pffft///get used to it...its happening...its real...and its beyond us to prevent it now...

THAT doesnt mean we shouldnt just "carry on " as before...the sooner we are off fossil fuels the better...

solar wind and geohermal are the ultimate way to go...and eventually perhaps fusion ....

what we SHOULD be doing is looking to mitigate the effects, that INCLUDES more and better seed banks DNA banks for endangered species, better sea and river defences, better water management.

PREPARATION for WAR....

Better use of "minor technology" to help poverty struck areas of the world....
and MORE use of the "molten salt" fission reactors...which are virtually a nuclear generator on wheels....for poorer nations ...(which tech is safe and almost impossible to weaponise)

what do the politicians  do......raise taxes....pfffft

+1