[lbo-talk] El Diablo

Gar Lipow gar.lipow at gmail.com
Thu Mar 17 13:15:45 PDT 2011


A couple of things that would add to those figures today. At the time, there was a belief in what was call a "threshold" of damage. Radiation below that was thought to be harmless. Biologist who argued against this were severely marginalized and mocked. Today, the view that was considered fringe then is mainstream, supported by the National Academy of Sciences and pretty much all mainstream medical studies. There is not such thing as a "threshold". And amount of radiation, no matter how low carries risk. Radiation is cumulative. So short term damage might be the same, adjusting for population, but the same methodology incorporating just that one change would give larger long term estimates.

On Wed, Jan 4, 2006 at 2:40 AM, Chuck Grimes <c123grimes at att.net> wrote:
>
> Below is an NRC report table with calculated data of worst case
> for nuclear power plants around the US, published in 1982.
>
> http://www.ccnr.org/crac.html
>
> CRAC stands for calculation of reactor accident consequences. Their idea of
> worse case is core meltdown and breech,
>
> For Diablo Canyon it lists Peak Early Fatalities 10,000. Peak Early injuries
> 11,000. Peak Deaths from Cancer 12,000. Property Damage 155-8 billion. There
> are two units at this location, so if they both went up you double those
> figures. For NYC you want to look at the figures for the Indian plants,
> which are 46,000 deaths per unit
>
> San Luis has since undergone a lot of development so the population is
> larger and of course the costs are larger.
>
> I am not sure what to say about this report. 1982 was still within some
> reasonable level of trust in the science behind it. In other words the NRC
> was not as heavily politicized and seemed more like a real regulatory
> agency. I am not sure I would trust anything coming out of the US
> government, especially its environmental and nuclear sciences since the
> Clinton administration. After Bush II and Obama... forget it.
>
> This report is posted with other reports by Canadian Coalition for Nuclear
> Responsibility. Their main directory is here:
>
> http://www.ccnr.org/index.html
>
> Below is from a different report:
>
> ``2.11   HOW LIKELY IS A CORE MELT ACCIDENT?
>
> The Reactor Safety Study carefully examined the various paths leading to
> core melt. Using methods developed in recent years for estimating the
> likelihood of such accidents, a probability of occurrence was determined for
> each core melt accident identified. These probabilities were combined to
> obtain the total probability of melting the core.
>
> The value obtained was about one in 20,000 per reactor per year. With 100
> reactors operating, as is anticipated for the U.S. by about 1980, this means
> that the chance for one such accident is one in 200 per year [or about 1 in
> 10 over a period of 20 years].''
>
> http://www.ccnr.org/rasmussen.html#2.11
>
> The above is an NRC report from 1974, or the Rasmussen Report, titled
> Reactor Safety Study, (WASH-1400). I think it was the planning study with
> estimates back in the development era for Diablo and the next generation of
> reactors.
>
> Diablo 1 was commissioned 1985, Diablo 2 1986. Considering the report above,
> I assume their original operating license expired in twenty years 2005-6 and
> they got license extensions to 2024-5, i.e. another twenty years. According
> PG&E Diablo they are now starting a new license extension with the NRC.
>
> CG
>
>
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>

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