INDIAN POINT REALITY CHECK
In light of the amazing over-coverage lavished on New York's Indian Point power plant by pre-positioned media, eager to exaggerate, I feel a reality check is in order.
I hate to upset anybody, but a nuclear plant is not designed to be perfect.
A nuclear plant is supposed to have breakdowns. Take a minute or two to get over the shock. Heart pumping normally again?...... Good... Let's proceed, then.
The entire design philosophy used on American commercial power reactors is known as "defense in depth".
Imagine a baseball game where each player on the field has 3 or 4 other players right at his position with him, trained to cover the spaces he can't easily defend. So instead of a second baseman, you'll have second baseman "A", second baseman "B", etc.up to maybe four separate guys, all posted around second base. A pop fly to short center field will pull one of these guys out of position to snag it, but the other three will still remain near the bag, to prevent any stolen bases. At home plate, the four catchers would array themselves one to the left, one to the right, and one way behind, so no wild pitches or passed balls could ever get by. The game as we know it would no longer be sporting, in any way. No matter where in the outfield you hit, one of the 12 outfielders would be right there. The crowd of assistant second, third, and first basemen could play in on the grass, preventing all bunts, and most line drive hits. The four shortstops could roam at will, backing up any small opening in the defensive wall. I predict the outcome of the first game to be played under these rules will be 0-0, called on account of darkness, after a 500-inning no hit game.
That endless no-hitter, is the actual safety record of America's 104 nuclear plants.
The machinery in a nuclear plant was built, in the expectation of no perfection. In the sure knowledge that each piece would fail, it was given a twin or a triplet that all performed the same function. Arrays of these redoubled machines were set up in A-B-C backup formation, so that an entire other train of power, of control, and of protection exists at all times.. perpetually awaiting the failure of its counterpart, and having no purpose at all, were failures not expected, because you could run the place safely on one, instead of two, or three or four, were the place expected to be perfect.
The entire "B" train, and the entire "C" train of components exists, simply because the "A" train is expected to fail, maybe many times over, at which point "B" takes over. It's absolutely routine. So "news" about such "failures" is way off the mark. Basically, it's not news at all, but its presented as if it were.
The thrill-seeking media that over-reports on our nuclear plants acts in a way that is intentionally, arrogantly, and criminally blind to this. I say criminally, because people are dying every day from lung diseases caused by not having all-nuclear power generation. When media over-reports nuclear "breakdowns" , implying they may be dangerous, they cause a reserve of fear and hesitation to us ever fully using this great resource, and thus doom more thousands to die from coal soot, mercury, carbon monoxide, and the unburnt uranium that goes up the fossil stacks as coal ash.
So you can hear ten or a hundred articles per day about Indian Point having a broken relay, or a stuck valve, or some other minor glitch, and it means nothing at all. All it will do is familiarize you with the internal maintenance routine of a typical industrial plant. Typical maintenance is so dull, it is invisible to "civilians" on the outside. It's too trivial to write a story about. Fixing broken stuff. Ho-Hum, bigtime. So because media is addicted to extreme emotions, extreme situations, we only notice maintenance if mental tabasco sauce is added.... ( the red hot word: "nuclear").
But this leads us astray. Spit out the tabasco. There's nothing dangerous, beyond some worker hitting his thumb every once in a while, all is entirely normal, expected, and the news articles are only an indication of a media sickness, not a nuclear power sickness.The media sickness is to make readers fear the mundane...., the humdrum minor work orders in a nuke plant.
In large installations, like factories, or fossil power plants, about 150-250 items are broken, failed, worn out or needing attention every day. A townhouse complex I lived in years ago was much the same. The maintenance crew there was about 15 men, augmented by contract gardeners. The complex would not have hired 15 people on a full time basis, if there was nothing for them to do. That simple enclave of a dozen brick buildings had maybe 50 to 100 unfixed problems being worked on at any time.
Now just imagine yourself being in the real estate market for a townhouse, and being handed a sheaf of papers as you approach the place, listing stuck toilets, failed radiators, uncollected garbage, windows that failed to open, cable TV hookups that didn't work, seamy stories of the personal problems of some of the maintenance mechanics, contagious sicknesses in certain children living there, and a hysterical pre-cooked agenda, telling you to never rent there, because of the great danger, and urging you to call your congressman, to have the place torn down.
Would you become afraid of the Townhouses? Would you join up, get agitated, and march around the place holding placards? (admittedly,.... some poor souls would...... its just that most people would not). In point of fact, I thought the maintenance there was lousy, and I moved out. However, the place is still there, and the townhouses are selling for about $450,000 dollars, so the broken toilets didn't seem to affect the realities of the marketplace.
In a non-nuclear power plant where I once worked , we had about 1500 outstanding unfixed problems at any time, and incidents happened constantly. Once a mugger, pursued by the police, ran in the front gate, climbed a transformer tower, and got fried to a crisp by the 345KV electricity. That kept us down for about 8 hours. Once a 48 inch high-pressure steam line ruptured, and two workers and a fire lieutenant were scalded to death before it was brought under control. That caused a 2 month outage. Once a supervisor led his men to the wrong compartment, and set them to work dismantling the wrong 13KV breaker. They were both incinerated, the lucky man dying in 2 days, the unlucky one taking 3 weeks to die. The entire plant staff of 400 people was bussed to both the funerals. It sucked. Once a worker was careless and cut the wrong cable with a power saw. He lost his sight. He was 45 years old , and lives today as a blind man. A worker made a slip up while pouring powdered caustic into a vat, and got covered with harsh caustic solution, removing the skin from 80% of his body. He lives on disability now, and looks quite a bit less attractive than he did before the incident. Once the entire office complex burned completely overnight, causing 2 million dollars' damage, and resulting in the place being run from rented construction trailers for a year.
There was never a week's period, where something did not break, or fail, or explode, or hurt someone. The rythm of steady disaster was constant. It was a high risk, high energy business, and nobody was dismayed by it. Those working on oil rigs will tell you the same. That's how it is, for those of us who work reality jobs. There's nothing wrong because of it. Its regrettable, should be avoided if possible, but its also perfectly normal, expected, even, in its own way.This kind of real-world enterprise cannot be run without it.
But kindly note, dear reader, that none of you ever heard anything about it. Not a single word. You see, people are generally oblivious to the agonies of those who serve them. Who cares if the chef scalds his finger? Just serve my steak, and be quick about it. I only heard about it, because I had to write the work orders to fix the stuff. My predecessor had quit, because he couldn't keep up the pace. I was young, wanted to show the world, so I dug in for all it was worth, and fixed disaster, after disaster, after disaster, after disaster, for 20 years. Therefore, when I see all the alarmist ranting about Indian Point, I have a point of comparison.
The number of incidents at Indian Point is orders of magnitude less than at the fossil power plant where I worked. The number of failures, is likewise way, way lower than at a typical factory or plant of any kind. The safety regimes preventing the life threatening stuff (for the workers) are so much better at Indian Point, that nothing really eventful happens there, most of the time. The inherent overdesign built into the plant is so robust, that no danger ever exists for people outside the fence ...AND... a specific watchdog agency is built in to the woodwork in the nuclear industry (NRC) , to make sure this is true, on a 24 hour, seven day, 52 week basis, forever, by law.
So, if a transformer fails , its not a point of worry to me, because Entergy is so good, none of our toasters or TV sets even stop working because of it. Weeks later, its silently replaced, so smoothly that again, you didn't even notice. It was just Entergy's capable, professional well trained, well equipped employees, as good as any , keeping your lifestyle intact, invisibly, as always.
Oh, and yes, as the newspapers have relished in saying "There was no release of radiation" . They love saying that, overtly acting as if trying to calm you, while at the same time covertly trying to worry you. Journalistic duplicity, I'd call it. Reporters love the wild, the garish, the worrisome, and want to jiggle your emotions if they can. They get promotions when they succeed at this. For those not wishing to be manipulated in this way, its best to shrug it off. It's THEIR thing, not ours.
And for those of us who like to relish their own feelings of fear, all I can say is, it is your preference to choose fear over calmness, exaggeration over normal confidence in our world being generally OK. As I read the scare stories about Indian Point, it is not about Indian Point at all, but it is about the reporter's own imaginary preference to expect (almost wish) bad things to happen.
They should get some counselling for that.
Otherwise, the chlorine in that manhole down the street from you, or the gasoline in your car, or the high voltage inside your TV set, or the diseases lurking right there in your toilet might cause an undue agony for you.
We wouldn't want that now, would we?
