From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Subject: Was it terorism? Or carelessness? Or stupidity that nearly
cost us Ohio?
FYI -- PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THIS TO YOUR LOCAL MEDIA -- DON'T
LET THE DAVIS-BESSE COVER-UP CONTINUE!
WE ALMOST LOST OHIO -- AND YOUR
STATE COULD BE NEXT:
Did you hear about what almost happened at Davis-Besse,
a nuclear reactor in Ohio?
It would have been "10 times
worse than Chernobyl" as one eminent scientist I've spoken to put it.
Most people have no idea how close we came to catastrophe. A mere
half inch.
Here's the basic sequence, in lay-person's terms:
Davis-Besse is a 900 Megawatt PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) owned by
FirstEnergy Corp.. It is located 21 miles ESE of Toledo, OH. It first went
online in 1977. It's getting OLD.
Winds tend to go from the Northwest
to the Southeast in that part of the country, but not always. Areas that
are variously downwind from Davis-Besse include Sandusky, OH, Cleveland, OH, Pittsburgh,
PA, Washington DC, Toronto, Canada, as well as Virginia, West Virginia, New Jersey,
NYC, Long Island, New England, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina...
On March 11th, 2002, while investigating other leaks in flanges (the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission calls them "nozzles" but they're really flanges)
above (and coming out of) the reactor vessel investigators discovered a hole
all the way through the reactor pressure vessel's carbon-manganese six-inch thick
steel outer layer. The hole was four inches by five inches wide on the surface
when it was discovered. All that held back the 2500-PSI pressure
inside the reactor was a half-inch thick stainless steel liner (variously reported
as only 3/8ths of an inch thick) -- on the inside of the reactor pressure vessel
head -- and the liner was BULGING!
If the liner had cracked, the accident
would have been of Biblical proportions indeed. (Imagine a hole in
a piece of cardboard, covered with a piece of plastic food wrap, and you push
your finger through the hole. That's what was happening to the reactor
pressure vessel. How much time was left? Days? Weeks?
We'll never know -- luck (or God) saved us because the reactor head was checked
just in time. You've heard of Just In Time Manufacturing? This was
Just In Time Catastrophe Avoidance!
Had the situation progressed much
further, and a crack develop in the liner, the extremely radioactive water explosively
rushing out would have, in short order (seconds, or fractions of a second):
*1) Flashed over to steam.
*2) Expanded the hole
in the reactor vessel.
*3) Cracked the reactor's fuel rods and thrown
their contents towards and out the hole.
*4) Pulverized the fuel pellets
as they flew through the hole at tremendous speed, further expanding the hole
in the reactor vessel.
*5) Cut a hole in the containment dome like
it was made of BUTTER. Yes, I know containment domes are up to about ten
feet thick, but this stuff is at 2500 PSI [2200 PSI -- rdh
20020505], at well over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit [corrected
figure is more like 666 degrees F -- rdh, 20020505], possibly actually
getting MUCH hotter as it's pulverized coming out the hole [the
theory being that the water would be heated from the breakup of the reactor fuel
pellets and the friction of being shot out the hole -- immediately after leaving
the RPV, the liquid would, of course, cool, but how much will it cool before it
hits the containment dome, for all accident scenarios? -- rdh 20020505],
and concrete itself pulverizes at about 400 degrees Fahrenheit. And there
is LOTS of coolant in the system which will virtually ALL get shot out the hole
in the pressure vessel like it was coming out of a cannon, along with the fuel
rod assemblies and everything else inside the reactor (that is, pieces of irradiated
metal, some of which will flash-burn if they come in contact with oxygen).
In the end, the containment dome would [could --rdh, 20020505]
have a hole in it directly out from where the hole in the pressure vessel was.
There would be pulverized radioactive particles spewing into the air and falling
onto the ground for hundreds of miles around.
*6) Killed millions
of Americans.
*7) Been blamed on terrorists, and we would have bombed
another country into Depleted Uranium hell, in the vain belief that it would somehow
alleviate our own misery and suffering. But the true culprit was our own
technology!
The cost would be in the trillions, the suffering unspeakable,
and we wouldn't even know what hit us. A "China Syndrome" would
be better than this! Chernobyl would have been better than this! We
dodged a bullet. Was it sabotage? Boron doesn't normally corrode carbon-manganese
steel. Was something added to the borated water just so that something like
this would happen? If so, what? And when? And by whom?
Did a worker leave something in the works, which corroded and changed the chemical
structure of the water (negligence), or was something placed in the water on purpose?
The above statement was written by Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA
Below is the CURRENT (March 25th, 2002) Department of
Energy (DOE) description of the Davis-Besse reactor. Note the following
sentence: "Safety-related problems in its early years tarnished its reputation,
but its sale to new owners has brought about a recovery." How inappropriate
can you get?!? I bet they'll change this wording very soon, if they haven't
already.
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Subject: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/davisbesse.html
The Davis-Besse plant is a single unit reactor located
east of Toledo in Oak Harbor, Ohio on the shore of Lake Erie. The site covers
954 acres of which 733 acres is leased to the U.S. government for a National Wildlife
Refuge. Safety-related problems in its early years tarnished its reputation, but
its sale to new owners has brought about a recovery. The site is licensed for
dry storage of spent nuclear fuel and had 3 casks as of March 2000.
Operator:
FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co.
Owners: Cleveland Electric Illuminating
Company (51.4%), Toledo Edison Company (48.6%)
Reactor Supplier: Babcock
& Wilcox
Capacity: 873 net MWe
Reactor Type: Pressurized
water reactor
Date of Operation: April 1977
License Expiration
date: 04/22/2017
Electricity Produced in 2000: 6.70 billion kWh
2000 Average Capacity Factor: 87.32%
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For a list of all nuclear reactors in the United
States:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/nukelist.htm
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