Nuclear Expert: “They must be terrified” at South Florida, St. Lucie nuke plant100 times worse than average

Nuclear Expert: “They must be terrified” at South Florida nuke plant; “The damn thing is grinding down” — Gundersen: “Magnitude of what’s going on at St. Lucie is off the charts”; 100 times worse than average

Published: February 22nd, 2014 at 10:45 pm ET By ENENews  Email Article 89 comments

Tampa Bay Times, Feb. 22, 2014: Yet another Florida nuclear plant may be in trouble. [...] More than 3,700 tubes that help cool a nuclear reactor at Florida Power & Light’s St. Lucie facility exhibit wear. Most other similar plants have between zero and a few hundred. Worst case: A tube bursts and spews radioactive fluid. That’s what happened at the San Onofre plant in California two years ago. The plant shut down forever because it would have cost too much to fix. [...] FPL is so confident in St. Lucie’s condition that it boosted the plant’s power. The utility acknowledged that will aggravate wear on the tubes, located inside steam generators. [...] FPL insisted St. Lucie should not be linked to San Onofre from either a safety or financial standpoint.[...] During hearings, [officials at San Onofre] repeatedly pointed to St. Lucie as having the same problem […] When it closed, San Onofre 3 had 2,519 wear spots at least 20 percent deep into a tube wall. When last inspected in 2012, the St. Lucie plant had 1,920, the Times analysis found.

Michael Waldron, FPL spokesman: “From an engineering perspective [...] you can neither make a comparison [between the San Onofre and St. Lucie plants], nor can you assume an outcome because the two systems are so different.”
Southern California Edison, owner of now-closed San Onofre nuclear plant between San Diego and Los Angeles: “[St. Lucie is] the next closest plant with a high number of wear indications. [...] Although a different (steam generator) design, the (antivibration bars) serve the same design function [...] So St. Lucie was used to determine similarities and potential actions.”
Arnie Gundersen, nuclear engineer: “I think the comparison [with San Onofre] is dead on [...] All of the failure modes except for (tubes hitting each other) are identical. When the same problem popped at the two San Onofre plants, it suddenly became a cluster. [...] St. Lucie is the outlier of all the active plants [...] the magnitude of what is going on at St. Lucie is off the charts. These guys are a hundred times worse than the industry average.”
Daniel Hirsch, University of California at Santa Cruz nuclear policy lecturer: “The damn thing is grinding down [...] They must be terrified internally. They’ve got steam generators that are now just falling apart. [The tubes] need to be very strong to prevent a meltdown [...] Steam generators are really critical to safety. It’s not a feature you want to play with.”

Published: February 22nd, 2014 at 10:45 pm ET By ENENews

Yeah, I was gonna mention San Onofre was in the same shutdown state but it was mentioned in the article. San Onofre is only a 20 minute drive north and I've passed it often on I-5. I can't pass by without humming the tune "Hello Dolly" while thinking of Dolly Parton. Sorry ladies.

Soooo, back to the article topic. I wonder how many more of these nuke stations are going to start hemorrhaging? I used to see equipment (electronic monitoring) returned for repair from various nuke plants and I can tell y'all first hand that radiation exposure causes wires, metals, plastics, etcetera to fatigue and break down prematurely. They become brittle and rot away.

HELLOOOOOO DOLLY . . . .   

researcher wrote:

 San Onofre is only a 20 minute drive north and I've passed it often on I-5. I can't pass by without humming the tune "Hello Dolly" while thinking of Dolly Parton. Sorry ladies.

 

Okay, guys, this is a family forum.  

I missed that until rose commented. 

Yeah, when I knew about all that was to come all the nuke plants came to mind... be it a EMP or just some Power Grid problem... they are all at risk of going.

Never could understand if it produces electricity on its own... why does it need external power?
And without external power puts it at risk of meltdown?
Even in a shut down state it should be able to power control panels and enough power necessary for pumps.
It should be self supporting.
They are all bombs waiting... and if there 1 nuke attack in this country, they may all go due to grid... and then I wonder if this is what is meant by "BURN" in the Word.

Yeah that could be the Sun if the pole shift / Nibiru problem slows rotation or even a powerful enough astroid hits opposite of earths rotation... maybe something else...? But still there are over 40 on the Mississippi R. and running dry or even flood is a risk cause they never build the way it should be done.. with Dave's common sense approach!

spring2 wrote:

I missed that until rose commented. 

Yeah, when I knew about all that was to come all the nuke plants came to mind... be it a EMP or just some Power Grid problem... they are all at risk of going.

Never could understand if it produces electricity on its own... why does it need external power?
And without external power puts it at risk of meltdown?
Even in a shut down state it should be able to power control panels and enough power necessary for pumps.
It should be self supporting.
They are all bombs waiting... and if there 1 nuke attack in this country, they may all go due to grid... and then I wonder if this is what is meant by "BURN" in the Word.

Yeah that could be the Sun if the pole shift / Nibiru problem slows rotation or even a powerful enough astroid hits opposite of earths rotation... maybe something else...? But still there are over 40 on the Mississippi R. and running dry or even flood is a risk cause they never build the way it should be done.. with Dave's common sense approach!

1. Re the EMP risk you started a thread a few months ago, I posted a rough map in response. (Impressionist artwork, you'll know what I mean if you look)

2. Reactors take several hours to properly shut down. At one point during the shutdown process the reactor requires more power to keep the reactor core and fuel cool than the turbines are creating from the energy its receiving from the steam/pressure that the core is producing.When nearing 'shutdown' the steam turbines that convert steam to electric are moving slowly, creating less electric than is needed to pump the massive amount of cool water through the core to avoid 'meltdown'. Once this 'line' is crossed, power needs to be supplemented by diesel generators or some form of external power to keep the pumps pumping cold water because the turbines are about to stop but the core is still HOT HOT HOT.  Once the turbines have completely stopped the plant is making 0 power, but cold water needs to keep pumping to cool the reactor into cold shutdown, and it takes awhile. Keep in mind these first gen  bw reactors were engineered to power naval vessels, not S. FL or Socal..

Wow, this is the first I've heard of this. I only live about 40 miles north of PSL. I'll let y'all know when I start to glow.
Actually, I'm not surprised to hear that anything run by FP&L is having problems. They are a joke as a power company. I experience more power failures in a month than I did in my entire lifetime living in NJ.
There's probably more reliable power companies in Honduras than FP&L.

With eyes to see and ears to hear:

  The hook has been set to draw the kings of the world in.  Ha Satan has turned all things upside down and reversed what is truth (evil is good, north is south, etc... http://flourish.org/upsidedownmap/mcarthur-large.jpg Moon Mt is a very UNIQUE mt)

The msg 3/22 corresponds to water treaty and future water war (ww 3 - hook--water).  So where is the fresh h2o discovered???

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/120720/namibia-water-africa-aquifier-sahara-angola-drought

http://www.dailytech.com/Massive+Basin+Aquifer+Found+in+Kenya+Can+Provide+Fresh+Water+for+Up+to+70+Years/article33366.htm







90yr old's prophecy:  Poisoned h2o in eu and usa  (eq's & n plants built on water ways)

It starts small (and grows....ww 3)...... china is not going to let them back in to take over these resources again.  Right now forces are silently being built up.  Egypt (new leader is not talked about) will not be passive about h2o cut-off.  It all begins (how bad will wea ther wars get?)......

The destroyer must come to clean and purify again (lightning interaction cleans atmosphere like fire in the sky with trumpet sounds and it's close but precise passing strips away dark ash to give light access and (falling star) new lands come up while toxic lands sink).  Babylon sinks, (world economic, political and religion systems gone) and earth returned to original state of faster spin under rule of Christ (Zec 9 thru 14).  All shall be changed (as Paul states), but some higher (if I shall be "lifted up".... shall draw all men...) to rule and reign with Christ (msg from Gabriel)