Georgia nuclear reactor idled unexpectedly still shut down

news.google.com... a6lATX0upU&rt=STORY&vm=STANDARD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Farticle%2F2011%2F04%2F22%2Fus-georgia-nuclear-shutdown-idUSTRE73L3FV20110422

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(Reuters) - A reactor at a nuclear power plant in Georgia remained out of service on Friday after it shut down unexpectedly earlier this week when a breaker failed. Carrie Phillips, a spokeswoman for Southern Nuclear, which operates the plant in Waynesboro, Ga., declined to say when the nuclear unit would be back in operation. But she said the company had replaced the breaker that tripped on Wednesday, as well as related equipment, and that plant employees were now "going through the process to look at our restart activities to return that unit to 100 percent."

What is going on here? I realize this is not in Japan, but this concurrent with the ongoing Nuclear crisis, right here in the U.S. This looks like a script right out of the movie "China Syndrome". In the movie, two reporters happen to be a the nuclear plant doing a "feel good" story about nuclear power when a major disaster almost happens. In the movie, the reporters, and the public, were fed the same lines as this article, a breaker tripped...it's a maintenance issue...breaker has been replaced as well as related equipment...when all the while it turns out that the plant came within hairs of a meltdown.

Another article says,

The company has replaced the breaker and related electronics and installed monitoring equipment to help determine the root cause of the shutdown, Ledford said.

And you notice from the headlines from MSM, the words "still shut down", after the simple little pieces of equipment have already been replaced. Seems like there is a WHOLE lot more to this story that the MSM is being blocked from, as usual.

Editing: Not trying to start any panic of the situation, just wondering if there is any other info on this situation than is being reported in the MSM. It never hurts to try and probe deeper.

How does it seem there's a whole lot more going on than what we're being told?

Sounds like they want to review their restart procedures as well as determine the cause of the malfunction before flipping the switch.. which sounds pretty smart when dealing with a nuclear reactor.

Breakers do fail you know, sometimes it just happens, but usually it's because they were doing their job and failed as a result of a surge.. it's really important to understand why a breaker tripped before just turning everything on again.

Just to add..

It's understandable that people are on edge because of what's happening with Japan but the circumstances are drastically different here, we don't know what caused the problem so it's just sane to determine that first.

I'm just glad the breaker did it's job and "break" .. that's what it's designed to do in the event of trouble anyway

I wouldn't rule out parties with a covert agenda attempting to infiltrate the staff at any US nuclear plant, and eventually committing acts of sabotage like this to test and gage the systems in preparation for the installation of a virus, or system attack similar to what happened in Iran.

Maybe they are already infiltrated, and have been for some time?

Originally posted by Fractured.Facade
I wouldn't rule out parties with a covert agenda attempting to infiltrate the staff at any US nuclear plant, and eventually committing acts of sabotage like this to test and gage the systems in preparation for the installation of a virus, or system attack similar to what happened in Iran.

Maybe they are already infiltrated, and have been for some time?

I suspect this is nothing of the sort or it probably would have resulted in more than a safe shut down of a reactor as a result of a tripped breaker.

I would also suggest that prior to Japan's events, this may not have even been newsworthy since it poses no risk.. the media and people in general are just at a heightened state of awareness because of what's happened and will be sensitive to any new ( or non-news for that matter ) that deals with nuclear power

reply to post by RoyalBlue


I sure hope your wrong . We don't need a new nuclear disaster. But it definitely sounds fishy.

reply to post by miniatus

Don't mis-understand me, I have no problem with them taking as long as they need to find the "root cause", or whatever the problem is they are working on, but I wanted to point out there is a problem, and something to keep an eye on. Some reports said they should have it up and running by Friday of last week, and it's not. I'm reporting this in case any other member might have more info than is being reported on the MSM. We all know we're lied to and fed "it's a routine issue, nothing to see here, you're safe sheeple" lines all the time.
Hopefully this is something small, no big deal, but it might be worth watching, just in case...

Originally posted by RoyalBlue
reply to post by miniatus

 

Don't mis-understand me, I have no problem with them taking as long as they need to find the "root cause", or whatever the problem is they are working on, but I wanted to point out there is a problem, and something to keep an eye on. Some reports said they should have it up and running by Friday of last week, and it's not. I'm reporting this in case any other member might have more info than is being reported on the MSM. We all know we're lied to and fed "it's a routine issue, nothing to see here, you're safe sheeple" lines all the time.
Hopefully this is something small, no big deal, but it might be worth watching, just in case, for you skeptics...

I imagine re-starting a reactor is very serious business indeed, I don't mind them taking a while to rule out any potential foul play as suggested in a previous response.. and I'm not denying that it's possible, I'm just suggesting that I think it's not worth panicking over with what little information we have and I'm also suggesting that this kind of thing has probably happened before and we just either never hear about it or ignore it .. Japan changed everything in the way people think.

wether it was simply a breaker or not id irrelevant.
The Fukushima plant was meant to be 100% safe NO MATTER WHAT!!!!

It was even said to be earthquake and tsunami proof!!!

We need to be moving away from nuclear energy, stop building new plants and start looking for viable alternatives as the risks addociated with it far outweigh the benefits. In fact this should have been done after Chernobyl.

But we are consuming more and more power and as things stand its the only tech we have that can easily and economically be put in place.

So a question for you all,
If you could vote on wether to wait 10 yrs for a new say windfarm to be built and in that time be without electricity for 4 hrs a day or have a nuclear plant go up next week with no change to your lifestyle what would you choose?

reply to post by miniatus


So many enemies, so many ways they can give us all a really bad day.

Don't underestimate them... ever!

Originally posted by IkNOwSTuff
wether it was simply a breaker or not id irrelevant.
The Fukushima plant was meant to be 100% safe NO MATTER WHAT!!!!


So a question for you all,
If you could vote on wether to wait 10 yrs for a new say windfarm to be built and in that time be without electricity for 4 hrs a day or have a nuclear plant go up next week with no change to your lifestyle what would you choose?

Hands down, flip it off!!! I will do without the electricity! I would rather live like the Amish are already doing today (northeastern United States, places like communities in Indiana), (and surviving quite well), than to live without safe food and water to consume, and not have to worry about what we're adding to our future generations' worries. I remember when Hurricane Ike came through down here, we lost our electricity for quite a while, and how surprisingly nice it was! It was QUIET! It was a peace of mind I cannot describe in words. Neighbors came together, became friendlier and more engaged than any other time period, to solve issues and help each other out. And we have all these creative, brilliant minds of our current generations starving for REAL problems to solve, and we're feeding them handheld and computer games to keep their minds busy and help their idle time pass by more quickly. Or we're sending them off to die in irrational, unnecessary politically agenda warfare. Each new generation starves for, and hopes for, a chance to be part of something bigger than themselves, and we try and program them to be better consumers, that's the best they can hope for ? What is wrong with this picture???

reply to post by IkNOwSTuff


I could easily go without electricity for 4 hours, but why? Just allow all homeowners to install their own windmill like Mason City Iowa does. Connect it to a "grid tie inverter" and immediately begin reducing your bill or get more elaborate and add batteries and maybe some solar.

A lot of small windmills could go up a lot quicker than a large wind farm. The first ones could be installed less than a week after passing the law allowing it.

City Utilities where I live has a nice big windmill at one of their facilities on the main road through town I guess to showcase alternative energy. I assume they were able to put it up as they are a government entity, but the county does not allow anyone to install a windmill.

reply to post by KaiserSoze


Ive never heard of personal windmills.

Im gonna check that one out.

Cheers dude

Nuclear plant hit by US twisters

- www.thesun.co.uk... Virginia Power Station April 18 2011

A NUCLEAR power plant in the US is being monitored by safety regulators after a monster storm cut off its electricity

The situation was described as an "unusual event" by the Nuclear Regulatory commission — but they said that no radiation had been released.

Yeah, yeah, I know these are "non-events', but that's the problem! Here in America people don't pay attention to these events, until they become a catastrophe that can't be un-done, like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukishima. God knows what is actually released in the environment, or what dangerously unreported damage (accidents waiting to happen in the future) occurs when "nobody" is watching these "non-events", in general. You know, the "Don't ask", "don't tell" mentality.

Go ahead and continue to give unbridled, unchecked power to the corporate and power mongering demons. That's what they want. Until something horrible happens, then they want us to know all about so WE can bail them out.....how ironic....

vimeo.com...

The Nuclear Scientist talks about how all our nuclear disasters have been by problems not anticipated by the Nuclear Agency and how we need to freeze licensing of old AND new reactors until we have time to learn more about Fukishima, ampong He talks about current problems with the reactors, such as leaks that are being ignored.

Probably this question has been asked and answered somewhere on these threads but I missed it. What happens to our nuclear plants if we have an EMP attack? Are the back-up generators hardened to withstand the pulse? And if so, do they have enough fuel on hand for at least of year of chaos?

I find this explanation for the shutdown a little hard to swallow.

In a PLC system such as the ones used in Nuclear power plants, long before a breaker trips, there should be audio and visual alarms which would alert the control room operators and they should easily be able to run diagnostics and they should be able to activate back up systems and keep the reactor on-line.

The fact that the reactor has been shut down speaks volumes (to me at least) as this is not as simple as flicking a switch. Taking a Nuclear Power station offline is a BIG decision and is usually a last resort action. Any fault that has warranted a shutdown of the reactor should be treated as a serious affair.

PEACE,
RK

If the reactor scrammed and that is what "popped" the breaker, they can't start it again until they have found out why it scrammed and why the breaker popped. Looks like they're just going with SOP.

I know there has been this big push for nuclear power lately and they have been trying really hard to convey this image of just how "safe" nuclear plants are, but they are not. It's just an image and nothing more. If anything they have blatant disregard for most of the things their training departments train them to do. Most of these places, and especially the "mom and pop" plants as they are commonly referred to, hire greatly on a good ol boy system, and hire people that have no experience and don't even meet requirements for the job description of qualifying to operate these plants. They are supposed to follow procedures that they are required to have in hand and most of the time they don't even bother using them just out of plain laziness. They are federally mandated to pass requalification exams that they can't even pass on their own without someone sending them the exam answers before their tests. They blaze off safety-related surveillances, constantly violate safety procedures and practices, and will even send their discharged radioactive liquid to other plants that have less stringent requirements so they can then discharge it into their rivers without it passing through their radiation monitors. And as a reward for speeding up production and getting the job done, their supervisors will look the other way while their operators will falsely fill in extra overtime hours into their time sheets and rake in several hundred extra dollars every paycheck and none of it is even monitored. It just gets a blind eye turned to it. They rake in tons of money for what they do, and are arrogant enough to think they'll never be caught. Worse than that, if anyone who works for them tries to avoid shady practices such as these, they will be continually harassed, vandalized, and humiliated on a personal and professional level until they conform or leave the department. I have had both of my homes, and both my cars continuously broken into, and my cars sabotaged on a regular basis. Eventually I resigned and later decided to leave the area due to continued vandalism.

reply to post by RoyalBlue


What you are saying is true. Alot of times they keep ignoring a problem until the reactor vessel almost ruptures on them due to gross negligence. Their have been documented cases of such things happening. They've even had cases of their operators accidentally opening valves all the way when they shouldn't have, but due to ignorance, letting most of the hydrogen out of their generators almost causing a huge accident in the process. When following procedures they are required to have a two party team go out and perform operations. And instead of letting the second operator verify procedures properly, they'll have the attitude that they already know everything and not even give the other person a chance to verify the work and screw things up in the process. Most of the things that happen in those places ARE due to extreme stupidy and drug abuse in the workplace. Coke and Meth are preferred when they pull "all nighters."