She was right to focus on safe ladder usage. Ladders and stairs have killed and seriously injured far more people in the US than a nuclear power plant. It might even be more than nuclear weapons.
I have worked with all of the major defense contractors. Everytime I went on site, I would feel anxious from seeing how little everyone was doing. When Destin's video came out, it looked even worse. They are some of the few people that could learn efficiency from the DMV.
It's a matter of priorities. In our tanker engine rooms, which were more than ten stories tall, we had the same kinds of stairs, only narrower, steeper and longer. The crew had this technique of putting the railings under their shoulders and sliding down the railings. Quicker and easier to carry tools and stuff.
I am suggesting that the marginal effort/cost spent on making stairs/ladders safer is probably better spent than on tracking contamination on guests' cameras and some design elements of the plant.
Stairs and ladders are much more dangerous to the general public. Something like 2000 die in the US every year from falling down them. Over the last 75 years, the 2000/year (the rate used to be lower because of a younger population and smaller houses) is not far from the number of deaths from nuclear weapons.
But we should be looking at deaths from stairs and ladders among workers, not the general public. First, only about 20% of those deaths are from working-age adults. This is still about 1 death per 500,000 each year. With 30,000 US nuclear plant workers, we would expect a death every 17 years. Over the last 75 years, that comes out to about 4 deaths. Which is close to the 3 deaths from nuclear accidents in power plants over the same time period.
A lot more goes into comparing the risks in the plant rather than just the total risk to the employees throughout their day. But I am comparing the marginal cost of saving lives, and we have already made giant leaps in safety since SL-1. $1B of making stairs safer can go a long way.
I am only comparing the marginal cost of stairway safety to the marginal cost of safety in the rest of the plant. I am not saying that the marginal cost for either justifies greater safety.
Of course, you are right. My comment was not intended to be a counter-argument.
Regulatory radiophobia such as we see in this video has put the marginal cost of saving a life from nuclear radiation in the billions. The GKN has opined on this in the past
But the real tragedy is that by making nuclear many times more expensive than it can and did cost, we are killing lots of people. The greatest health hazard of all is being poor.
So the secret to Germany's $20/MWh running cost 2 unit plants wasn't just that they designed them with an excellent eye to operations, but that having done so they felt obligated to actually have an appropriately sized staff
Yeah. The Germans used a variant of the Sevilla process to set standards. The KTA (Kerntechnisher Ausschuss sets the rules. The KTA is made of of 5 groups: Vandors, Operators, Regulators, Experts, Others. Each groups has 7 members. Setting a standard requires 30 votes, so any one of the groups can block a standard. The details are in the last part of
You are far less likely to get really nutty stuff with such a system.
Note Underwriter Certification is far more developed than when I wrote this old piece.
See the NRA stuff for the current version.
The Nuclear Reorganization Act uses a variant of this system. The Germans also delegated nuclear inspection to the TUV's. The NRA uses that system as well.
This excessive and engrained safety fascism is one of the things that makes me quite skeptical about SMRs. They will have the same circus attached, but only 5 or 10% the revenue to pay for the clowns.
The 'contaminated' water drains contain basically drinking quality water.
A work permit needed to talk a walk. There can't be very many people that are defending this stuff. Is everyone just happy to have a nice cosy job with benefits and no hard work ever and a nice clean plant environment, that they just run with this nonsense?
I did like the post-it data transfer guy. I used the same data transfer system when I worked for nuclear companies between the thermalhydraulic simulations and the reactor physics team. When questioned, I always used in my defence that it is fully cyber-proof. No hacker is going to get access to my post-it notes!
Automation is clearly the way forward. Keep the monkeys out, no circus.
I worked in this environment for 40 years. I was in maintenance, engineering, operations, and training. I watch this video with mixed emotions. The overzealous Security drove me bonkers. At the end, I didn’t want to go into the plant, just to avoid going through the security search train nightmare.
I earned a license to be a senior reactor operator and in 2008, I was on watch in the Control room when Fukushima happened. Seeing three hydrogen explosions occur during the week was pretty frightening. Turns out very little radiation was released, and the evacuations were unnecessary, but at the time. It certainly was a dangerous situation. The 50 operators that ended up staying there to try and safely shut down the reactors are all heroes.
The safety conscious work environment is in my DNA now. I guess I was sufficiently brainwashed to believe it was and is still necessary to some degree. So I have a hard time, just agreeing with the choir and saying eradicate it all.
That just doesn’t seem safe to me.
Nuclear power poses unique industrial hazards and should be dealt with accordingly.
The choir is not saying eradicate regulation. What we are preaching is replacing the NRC system with a system that balances the manifold benefits of cheap, pollution-free electricity with the risks of a release.
The Nuclear Reorganization Act borrows quite a lot from the German system. Germany operated 17 big plants for close to 40 years with a staff size one-third of American practice. They had a perfect no release record, which can't be said about the Americans. In 1972, they uncovered a major design fault in GE's Mark 1 containment. They required a stress test that the AEC did not. When at Wurgassen they opened up all eight RPV safety valves at the same time. This was not really a stress test. This is what is supposed to happen on over-pressure. The suppression torus started oscillating, banging back and forth, badly damaging the reactor. The NRA borrows quite a lot from the German system.
Close packing of the spent fuel pool would disappear under the NRA. This is probably the current most likely path to a very large release. Insurer's are not stupid. They are not going to take this risk. What's stupid is a system that spreads the costs of a big release at one reactor over all reactors, so it does not pay anybody to go to open-racking unless everybody else does.
"Turns out very little radiation was released" Huh??? Fukushima was an extremely large release, roughly one-tenth the size of Chernobyl, which is about as bad as it can get. The reason evacuations were unnecessary, is that release dose rate profiles are far less harmful than LNT and the deceitful system you are defending would have us believe.
Under the NRA, the NRC would be replaced by four much smaller government agencies. So the NRC would be eradicated but not governmental oversight of nuclear power. The NRA proposes a major change in regulation, but nuclear power remains regulated. In fact, it would be regualted in much the same way german nuclear power was.
She was right to focus on safe ladder usage. Ladders and stairs have killed and seriously injured far more people in the US than a nuclear power plant. It might even be more than nuclear weapons.
I have worked with all of the major defense contractors. Everytime I went on site, I would feel anxious from seeing how little everyone was doing. When Destin's video came out, it looked even worse. They are some of the few people that could learn efficiency from the DMV.
Alex,
It's a matter of priorities. In our tanker engine rooms, which were more than ten stories tall, we had the same kinds of stairs, only narrower, steeper and longer. The crew had this technique of putting the railings under their shoulders and sliding down the railings. Quicker and easier to carry tools and stuff.
I am suggesting that the marginal effort/cost spent on making stairs/ladders safer is probably better spent than on tracking contamination on guests' cameras and some design elements of the plant.
Stairs and ladders are much more dangerous to the general public. Something like 2000 die in the US every year from falling down them. Over the last 75 years, the 2000/year (the rate used to be lower because of a younger population and smaller houses) is not far from the number of deaths from nuclear weapons.
But we should be looking at deaths from stairs and ladders among workers, not the general public. First, only about 20% of those deaths are from working-age adults. This is still about 1 death per 500,000 each year. With 30,000 US nuclear plant workers, we would expect a death every 17 years. Over the last 75 years, that comes out to about 4 deaths. Which is close to the 3 deaths from nuclear accidents in power plants over the same time period.
A lot more goes into comparing the risks in the plant rather than just the total risk to the employees throughout their day. But I am comparing the marginal cost of saving lives, and we have already made giant leaps in safety since SL-1. $1B of making stairs safer can go a long way.
I am only comparing the marginal cost of stairway safety to the marginal cost of safety in the rest of the plant. I am not saying that the marginal cost for either justifies greater safety.
Of course, you are right. My comment was not intended to be a counter-argument.
Regulatory radiophobia such as we see in this video has put the marginal cost of saving a life from nuclear radiation in the billions. The GKN has opined on this in the past
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/nuclear-power-is-too-safe
But the real tragedy is that by making nuclear many times more expensive than it can and did cost, we are killing lots of people. The greatest health hazard of all is being poor.
So the secret to Germany's $20/MWh running cost 2 unit plants wasn't just that they designed them with an excellent eye to operations, but that having done so they felt obligated to actually have an appropriately sized staff
Yeah. The Germans used a variant of the Sevilla process to set standards. The KTA (Kerntechnisher Ausschuss sets the rules. The KTA is made of of 5 groups: Vandors, Operators, Regulators, Experts, Others. Each groups has 7 members. Setting a standard requires 30 votes, so any one of the groups can block a standard. The details are in the last part of
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/market-regulation-of-nuclear-power
You are far less likely to get really nutty stuff with such a system.
Note Underwriter Certification is far more developed than when I wrote this old piece.
See the NRA stuff for the current version.
The Nuclear Reorganization Act uses a variant of this system. The Germans also delegated nuclear inspection to the TUV's. The NRA uses that system as well.
How can such competent people be so stupid?
That's a great find.
This excessive and engrained safety fascism is one of the things that makes me quite skeptical about SMRs. They will have the same circus attached, but only 5 or 10% the revenue to pay for the clowns.
The 'contaminated' water drains contain basically drinking quality water.
A work permit needed to talk a walk. There can't be very many people that are defending this stuff. Is everyone just happy to have a nice cosy job with benefits and no hard work ever and a nice clean plant environment, that they just run with this nonsense?
I did like the post-it data transfer guy. I used the same data transfer system when I worked for nuclear companies between the thermalhydraulic simulations and the reactor physics team. When questioned, I always used in my defence that it is fully cyber-proof. No hacker is going to get access to my post-it notes!
Automation is clearly the way forward. Keep the monkeys out, no circus.
Very cool, thank you
I worked in this environment for 40 years. I was in maintenance, engineering, operations, and training. I watch this video with mixed emotions. The overzealous Security drove me bonkers. At the end, I didn’t want to go into the plant, just to avoid going through the security search train nightmare.
I earned a license to be a senior reactor operator and in 2008, I was on watch in the Control room when Fukushima happened. Seeing three hydrogen explosions occur during the week was pretty frightening. Turns out very little radiation was released, and the evacuations were unnecessary, but at the time. It certainly was a dangerous situation. The 50 operators that ended up staying there to try and safely shut down the reactors are all heroes.
The safety conscious work environment is in my DNA now. I guess I was sufficiently brainwashed to believe it was and is still necessary to some degree. So I have a hard time, just agreeing with the choir and saying eradicate it all.
That just doesn’t seem safe to me.
Nuclear power poses unique industrial hazards and should be dealt with accordingly.
Accordingly, is the tough part.
Ken,
The choir is not saying eradicate regulation. What we are preaching is replacing the NRC system with a system that balances the manifold benefits of cheap, pollution-free electricity with the risks of a release.
The Nuclear Reorganization Act borrows quite a lot from the German system. Germany operated 17 big plants for close to 40 years with a staff size one-third of American practice. They had a perfect no release record, which can't be said about the Americans. In 1972, they uncovered a major design fault in GE's Mark 1 containment. They required a stress test that the AEC did not. When at Wurgassen they opened up all eight RPV safety valves at the same time. This was not really a stress test. This is what is supposed to happen on over-pressure. The suppression torus started oscillating, banging back and forth, badly damaging the reactor. The NRA borrows quite a lot from the German system.
Close packing of the spent fuel pool would disappear under the NRA. This is probably the current most likely path to a very large release. Insurer's are not stupid. They are not going to take this risk. What's stupid is a system that spreads the costs of a big release at one reactor over all reactors, so it does not pay anybody to go to open-racking unless everybody else does.
"Turns out very little radiation was released" Huh??? Fukushima was an extremely large release, roughly one-tenth the size of Chernobyl, which is about as bad as it can get. The reason evacuations were unnecessary, is that release dose rate profiles are far less harmful than LNT and the deceitful system you are defending would have us believe.
Jack
I got the term eradication from this article you posted.
I said it’s in my DNA, I can’t help myself from defending it.
Nuclear power truly is a unique industry.
So the choir is not for eradication, but you are, correct?
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-nrc-swarm?r=b354y&utm_medium=ios
Ken,
Pls read https://gordianknotbook.com/download/underwriter-certification-of-nuclear-power/
Under the NRA, the NRC would be replaced by four much smaller government agencies. So the NRC would be eradicated but not governmental oversight of nuclear power. The NRA proposes a major change in regulation, but nuclear power remains regulated. In fact, it would be regualted in much the same way german nuclear power was.
Ok, thanks.