- Worker dies at Millstone Power Plant
- Just a little fire
- Dominion dumps Brayton Point
- Millstone opens emergency operations center in Norwich
- And distributes potassium iodide pills
- They might also have to build cooling towers
- Fukushima radiation leak worsens
- Good news: new job opportunities
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| Catching some nice two-headed fish |
Most Charlestown residents are probably not aware that we
are all down-winders from a large nuclear power plant. The Millstone Power
Plant, located in Waterford, CT just west of New London, is only 20 miles to
the west.
Recent experience after the Fukushima nuclear disaster after the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami shows that high-levels of radiation exposure can spread by air as far away as 50 miles from the site. Radioactive water from the site will reach the US West Coast in 2014.
So unlike other forms of energy generation, Millstone is for all practical purposes in our own backyard. That makes it worth watching.
Recent experience after the Fukushima nuclear disaster after the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami shows that high-levels of radiation exposure can spread by air as far away as 50 miles from the site. Radioactive water from the site will reach the US West Coast in 2014.
So unlike other forms of energy generation, Millstone is for all practical purposes in our own backyard. That makes it worth watching.
Worker dies at Millstone nuclear power plant
There was a mysterious
death at Millstone on August 22. An electrician working for a Millstone
contractor, Day & Zimmerman, was found dead in a stairwell in the
“Condensate Polish Facility[1]”
near
Unit 3. The unidentified woman was transported to L&M Hospital where
she was pronounced dead.
 |
| Condensate polish system |
The NRC
said that the worker’s death fell under the jurisdiction of the federal
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
However, as of September
3, there was no record of an OSHA inspection at the site which is standard
procedure after a work-related death or serious injury.
Millstone
spokesperson Ken Holt told the New London Patch that “the injury does not
appear to be related to industrial work activities.” Millstone uses 135
contract workers from Day & Zimmerman at the Millstone plant.
Just a little fire
Millstone also had a little
mishap in its training building the morning of September 4. A fire broke
out in the power supply room for the computer simulator for reactor Unit 3. The
building was evacuated, local fire companies turned out, no one was injured and
the company says it was no biggie. The building is outside the power plant’s
security zone.
Millstone’s owner sells Brayton Point Power Station, two others to private
equity firm
One of New England’s dirtiest electrical power generating
stations, the Brayton
Point power plant located between Providence and Fall River is being sold by
Virginia-based Dominion Energy, owner of the Millstone nuclear power plant.
Dominion is also selling its Elwood and Kincaid Power Stations in Illinois. All three plants are coal-fired and pretty dirty.
Dominion is also selling its Elwood and Kincaid Power Stations in Illinois. All three plants are coal-fired and pretty dirty.
Brayton Point was the scene of a July 28 mass demonstration
and civil disobedience that resulted in 44 arrests. Dominion made the deal for
$472 million from Energy Capital Partners,
a private equity firm that invests heavily in energy generated by burning
fossil fuels. Very nice people, I’m sure.
Some Somerset, MA residents are already starting to worry what will happen to the town if Brayton Point - one of the biggest sources of tax revenue for the town - should close. The plant pays more than $10 million in local taxes. Eventually, Brayton Point will close - all power plants, regardless of their energy source, eventually close. But residents' alarm seems premature since the venture capital buyers like coal-fired power plants and probably won't shut down unless they are forced to.
Some Somerset, MA residents are already starting to worry what will happen to the town if Brayton Point - one of the biggest sources of tax revenue for the town - should close. The plant pays more than $10 million in local taxes. Eventually, Brayton Point will close - all power plants, regardless of their energy source, eventually close. But residents' alarm seems premature since the venture capital buyers like coal-fired power plants and probably won't shut down unless they are forced to.
Millstone plans big emergency ops center in Norwich CT
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| What we learned about danger zones from the Fukushima disaster |
Millstone needs a site away from its facility to deal with
worst-case scenarios. Even though they don’t happen often (e.g. Three Mile
Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima), they do
happen, and when they do, they can be catastrophic. The Norwich site is around
20 miles almost due north of the plant in Waterford, CT. Their existing
emergency center is just outside the power plant.
Prevailing winds tend to blow westerly, pretty much in our
direction. Charlestown is also about 20 miles from Millstone, but almost
directly downwind. When the Fukushima power plant suffered its catastrophic
meltdown and radioactive waste fires after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami
in 2011, severe airborne contamination spread over a 50 mile radius.
Norwich Mayor Peter Nystrom is very excited because this
building will bring in new tax revenue. He told
the New London Day, "This really gives them
a foothold in the city and adds another asset to the business park."
Last summer, Millstone had to close down one of its reactors because the water they pull from Long Island Sound was too warm. They have since petitioned the NRC to allow them to use cooler water. But the NRC is also working on general standards for cooling water that might not only spoil Millstone's effort to get an exemption, but may require an expensive solution.
Millstone does not use cooling towers. All three active reactors are cooled with ocean water - 1.3 MILLION GALLONS PER MINUTE - drawn from the Sound and then dumped into an old quarry that is open to the ocean, thus sending the warm water back into the Sound.
New EPA standards are due to come out on November 4 and may end Millstone's practice of directly drawing and dumping coolant water. Instead, Virginia-based Dominion Energy, Millstone's owner, might need to come up with around $1 billion to build three 500-foot tall cooling towers under an anticipated NRC standard that will require "best technology available for minimizing adverse environmental impacts."
Those 500-foot towers will be just fine, as long as nobody sticks wind turbines onto them. Then, who knows what horrors might unfold. Dominion will need to make a profit analysis and decide whether to spend another billion dollars on Millstone, or close it.
Millstone might face billion dollar tab for cooling towers
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| Click to enlarge - you can see Millstone's outflow near the center of the photo at the top of the inlet which was an old quarry. |
Millstone does not use cooling towers. All three active reactors are cooled with ocean water - 1.3 MILLION GALLONS PER MINUTE - drawn from the Sound and then dumped into an old quarry that is open to the ocean, thus sending the warm water back into the Sound.
New EPA standards are due to come out on November 4 and may end Millstone's practice of directly drawing and dumping coolant water. Instead, Virginia-based Dominion Energy, Millstone's owner, might need to come up with around $1 billion to build three 500-foot tall cooling towers under an anticipated NRC standard that will require "best technology available for minimizing adverse environmental impacts."
Those 500-foot towers will be just fine, as long as nobody sticks wind turbines onto them. Then, who knows what horrors might unfold. Dominion will need to make a profit analysis and decide whether to spend another billion dollars on Millstone, or close it.
Just a little precaution
Connecticut’s
Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection will be sending staff from
door to door in the 10-mile emergency zone around the Millstone nuclear power
plant to distribute more than 1 million potassium iodide tablets. These
tablets are to be taken right after a nuclear accident at the plant to prevent
thyroid cancer. As noted, Charlestown is 20 miles downwind from Millstone, so no pills for you.
Each household will get two tablets for each adult and one for
each child. Families are being told to keep the pills with their “to-go kit” packed
with water, food, maps, medications, etc. in case they have to bug out if
things go south at Millstone. No cause for alarm.
Radiation problems worsen at Fukushima
It’s now been more than two years
since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan and caused the
world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. A series of foreseeable
failures led to both meltdowns at three reactors and fires at radioactive waste
holding areas at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Radioactive clouds spread more
than 50 miles from the site. A plume
of radioactive sea water is expected to reach the United States early in 2014. Throughout the disacters, TEPCO, the Japanese nuclear
power company has been unable to find a solution to the spreading problems and
instead has resorted to underplaying the seriousness of the threat, if not
outright lying. Something to remember when you read official statements from
other nuclear plants, such as Millstone.
Finally, the Japanese government
has decided to take over control of the effort, though it’s pretty late in the
game. Latest
reports show record radiation readings from
leaking holding tanks for irradiated water, levels that would kill an
unshielded human being in just a few hours. The latest containment scheme is to
construct a $500 million ice wall around the plant site that would extend both
above and below ground (question: where is the power to freeze this ice wall
going to come from?)
While we usually think of the
Pacific region when we think of earthquakes and tsunamis, the Atlantic
region has also had devastating earthquakes and tsunamis in the past and will certainly have them again in the future.
Always look at the bright side of life
The United States has pretty much
stopped building new nuclear power plants (hooray!) and its array of older
plants are reaching the end of their useful lives. The most recent plant to get
scheduled for final shut-down is the old Yankee Power Plant in Vermont. That
makes five plants scheduled for shut-down in the next 12 months, a new record.
Bloomberg News reports that one
promising area for employment growth is for “Nuclear
Trashmen” [SIC]. A lot of the new jobs will be
with the same companies that built the plants in the first place, such as
Bechtel.
It’s steady work – it takes about ten years to tear apart and secure
an old nuclear power plant. The amount of material – equipment, surfaces, soil
- that gets irradiated during the life of a nuclear power plant is staggering.
All of it has to be handled carefully to reduce exposure to workers, the
community and the environment.
Some of the material can be
classified as low-level radioactive waste which can be stuck in containers and
shipped off to sites in Utah, South Carolina and Texas and other communities
too unfortunate or gullible to have blocked the sites from being built there.
Fuel rods and other high-level waste have no place to go, so they are stored
temporarily in cooling pools of water until they can be placed in sealed casks
for more permanent on-site storage.
Millions of pounds of high-level
radioactive waste are currently stored in nearby Connecticut where they will
stay for a lot longer than the lifetimes of any Progressive Charlestown reader
(or their children or children’s children).
But think of the jobs!
[1] I
looked up “condensate
polish” and discovered it’s an important process in power plants where
condensed steam gets stripped of impurities it picks up (rust and particulates)
before the water gets fed back into the loop. These impurities can cause
corrosion and other serious maintenance problems.