GE Mark 1 Reactors (the Fukushima Models) in the USA

These reactors have design flaws with no hydrogen venting capability, and issues with storing spent fuel.

I hope these are decommissioned as soon as possible, or at least upgraded, and at least lessons learnt from Fukushima.

www.nirs.org...

onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com...

Not very likely

America’s Nuclear NightmareThe U.S. has 31 reactors just like Japan’s — but regulators are ignoring the risks and boosting industry profits

www.rollingstone.com...

Originally posted by ThousandIslandSunny

These reactors have design flaws with no hydrogen venting capability, and issues with storing spent fuel.

I hope these are decommissioned as soon as possible, or at least upgraded, and at least lessons learnt from Fukushima.

www.nirs.org...

onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com...

Many in the US have a system that instead of venting the hydrogen its turned back into steam. these are called Passive Hydrogen Autocatalytic Recombiners.(PHAR)
www.elliron.com...
www.nrc.gov...

The US Canada and France all use them but japan did not,

Venting releases any radioactive material mixed with the hydrogen.
This is against NRC regulations

Any more disinformation

reply to post by ANNED


So these mark 1 reactors, with no venting capability and design flaws have been decommissioned then? My mistake, no disinformation, just a genuine mistake. I would hate for Fukushima to be repeated anywhere. Apologies.

Here is a list of the mark 1 GE reactors I mistakenly thought were still operational and of the same design as Fukushima.

Reactor Location Size Year operation began
Browns Ferry 1* Decatur, AL 1065 MW 1974
Browns Ferry 2* Decatur, AL 1118 MW 1974
Browns Ferry 3* Decatur, AL 1114 MW 1976
Brunswick 1* Southport, NC 938 MW 1976
Brunswick 2* Southport, NC 900 MW 1974
Cooper* Nebraska City, NE 760 MW 1974
Dresden 2* Morris, IL 867 MW 1971
Dresden 3* Morris, IL 867 MW 1971
Duane Arnold* Cedar Rapids, IA 581 MW 1974
Hatch 1* Baxley, GA 876 MW 1974
Hatch 2* Baxley, GA 883 MW 1978
Fermi 2 Monroe, MI 1122 MW 1985
Hope Creek** Hancocks Bridge, NJ 1061 MW 1986
Fitzpatrick* Oswego, NY 852 MW 1974
Monticello* Monticello, MN 572 MW 1971
Nine Mile Point 1* Oswego, NY 621 MW 1974
Oyster Creek* Toms River, NJ 619 MW 1971
Peach Bottom 2* Lancaster, PA 1112 MW 1973
Peach Bottom 3* Lancaster, PA 1112 MW 1974
Pilgrim** Plymouth, MA 685 MW 1972
Quad Cities 1* Cordova, IL 867 MW 1972
Quad Cities 2* Cordova, IL 867 MW 1972
Vermont Yankee* Vernon, VT 620 MW 1973

Originally posted by ANNED
The US Canada and France all use them but japan did not,
Venting releases any radioactive material mixed with the hydrogen.
This is against NRC regulations

Any more disinformation

Please tell me, who is the source of disinformation?

It's correct that venting is against NRC regulations. And the reason the venting is against regulations goes beyond just the release of contamination, it also involves pressurization to force water into the reactor to prevent a meltdown as discussed at around 2 minutes in the following video.

However, that didn't stop them from installing vents anyway as Arnie Gunderson discusses in this video:

The Implications of the Fukushima Accident on the World's Operating Reactors
vimeo.com...

Arnie Gundersen explains how containment vents were added to the GE Mark 1 BWR as a "band aid" 20 years after the plants built in order to prevent an explosion of the notoriously weak Mark 1 containment system.

He claims that the vents aren't part of the original design and they actually violate US NRC regulations, and he shows an enlargement of the applicable regulation in the video.

He claims the vents were a band-aid after the plants were already built and the NRC granted a waiver to their own regulation even though the design is inherently unsafe.

It's scary stuff if he's right, and he's pretty credible, and more credible that most ATSers (that includes me too, I don't claim to know as much as he does about this stuff).

reply to post by Arbitrageur


openchannel.msnbc.msn.com...

"The General Electric-designed nuclear reactors involved in the Japanese emergency are very similar to 23 reactors in use in the United States, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission records.

The NRC database of nuclear power plants shows that 23 of the 104 nuclear plants in the U.S. are GE boiling-water reactors with GE's Mark I systems for containing radioactivity, the same containment system used by the reactors in trouble at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. The U.S. reactors are in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont.

In addition, 12 reactors in the U.S. have the later Mark II or Mark III containment system from GE. These 12 are in Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington state. See the full list below.


GE via NRC

GE's Mark I containment system.
(General Electric is a parent company of msnbc.com through GE's 49 percent stake in NBCUniversal. NBCUniversal and Microsoft are equal partners in msnbc.com.)

Msnbc.com sent questions Saturday to GE, asking whether the Japanese reactors differed from those of the same general design used in the U.S.

A GE spokesman, Michael Tetuan, referred all questions to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade and lobbying group. Tetuan said GE nuclear staff members in Wilmington, N.C., are focused on assisting GE employees in Japan and standing by to help the Japanese authorities if asked to help. The NEI on Sunday confirmed that the figure of 23 is correct.

Updates:

On Monday, GE Hitachi Nuclear sent the following statement, in full: "The BWR Mark 1 reactor is the industry’s workhorse with a proven track record of safety and reliability for more than 40 years. Today, there are 32 BWR Mark 1 reactors operating as designed worldwide. There has never been a breach of a Mark 1 containment system."
On Friday, GE posted rebuttals to the most common criticisms of the Mark I containment system.
The six reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, which had explosions on Saturday and Monday, are all GE-designed boiling-water reactors, known in the industry as BWRs. Five have containment systems of GE's Mark I design, and the sixth is of the Mark II type. They were placed in operation between 1971 and 1979.

A fact sheet from the anti-nuclear advocacy group Nuclear Information and Resource Service contends that the Mark I design has design problems, and that in 1972 an Atomic Energy Commission member, Dr. Stephen Hanuaer, recommended that this type of system be discontinued.

"Some modifications have been made to U.S. Mark I reactors since 1986, although the fundamental design deficiencies remain," NIRS said. The group has a commentary online describing what it says are hazards of boiling-water reactors: human invervention needed to vent radioactive steam in the case of a core meltdown, and problems with aging.


Since the earthquake struck Japan on Friday, the early statements by the industry's Nuclear Industry Institute have emphasized that only six plants in the U.S. have precisely the same generation of reactor design (GE boiling-water reactor model 3) as the first reactor to have trouble in Fukushima Daiichi. Problems then developed at different reactors of GE model 4.

But aside from the generation of reactor design, the following 23 U.S. plants have GE boiling-water reactors (GE models 2, 3 or 4) with the same Mark I containment design used at Fukushima..."

Of course nuclear reactors should not vent as a matter of course, but in a meltdown situation as part of safety measures, they need to be able to vent without human intervention. If the Fukushima plants had been able to do this, this would have helped a lot.

I was being accused of disinformation, and to be frank I think that was very rude.

Originally posted by ThousandIslandSunny
I was being accused of disinformation, and to be frank I think that was very rude.

Yes but just to be clear, it was anned who accused you of that and I was trying to defend you, you realize that, right?

The only thing I'm accusing you of is not following the ATS rules for using the "EX-TEXT" tags:

IMPORTANT: Using Content From Other Websites on ATS
That's from the site owner so you should be using those EX tags as he instructs.

But I think the disinformation was from anned who never came back to defend the claims made.