On March 13, 1979, the NRC shut down five East Coast nuclear plants, taking 4.025 gigawatts of power offline. Engineers at the Beaver Valley plant had discovered a bug in the NRC approved software used to design the plant's primary coolant pipe supports. The result was the design basis earthquake loads were one-third to one-sixth what they should be. This meant the pipe supports might fail if the plants experienced the largest earthquake in the historical record for the region. That failure might result in a Loss of Coolant Accident, which might result in a meltdown.
Did you listen to the Titans of Nuclear podcast featuring Nils Diaz? He was a commissioner for 10 years starting in 1996 and ending as chair in from 2003-2006.
He was probably the most technically qualified commissioner in the history of the NRC/AEC.
IMO, every NRC employee should be required to listen to his interview.
Who knows, the stampede of uneducated journalists that headed to Harrisburg might have caused enough ground movement on the east coast to rupture those pipes...
Nuclear has got to move forward or the planet is toast. Nothing compares to its safety being 340 times safer than Solar! LNT has been debunked by the science community so nuclear plants should be insurable. No future health issues are predicted for Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters.
We are being left behind in a world that is stepping up in build out of nuclear power and those regions will have a competitive edge on the USA for the lack of foresight we currently command.
Jack - what a sad tale.
Did you listen to the Titans of Nuclear podcast featuring Nils Diaz? He was a commissioner for 10 years starting in 1996 and ending as chair in from 2003-2006.
He was probably the most technically qualified commissioner in the history of the NRC/AEC.
IMO, every NRC employee should be required to listen to his interview.
Who knows, the stampede of uneducated journalists that headed to Harrisburg might have caused enough ground movement on the east coast to rupture those pipes...
Nuclear has got to move forward or the planet is toast. Nothing compares to its safety being 340 times safer than Solar! LNT has been debunked by the science community so nuclear plants should be insurable. No future health issues are predicted for Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters.
We are being left behind in a world that is stepping up in build out of nuclear power and those regions will have a competitive edge on the USA for the lack of foresight we currently command.