“Foreign materials” on the brain and Nuclear
industry risk perspective.
Do we really know the risk in a
nuclear plant?
So what does “safety related” mean.
I don’t think there has been net increase in safety coming from the responses
of Fukushima; gear, procedures, pumps and diesel generators. They are just
moving safety from one category to another. As example, they are justifying
more unsafety like in violating regulatory or licensing bases rules in the
Palisades PCP (flung off impeller blades) continuing event based on fixing or
mitigating the shortcomings of the USA’s Fukushima SBO issues. Those pumps are
unfit for use in a nuclear power plant primary system (poorly designed) and
Palisades have had a host of serious problems with these pumps beginning in
1971 according to the NRC.
There has been and continues to be a
secret massive and increasing acceptance of plant centric risk in a tradeoff of
reducing risk in a Fukushima style USA SBO event. We are trading electrical
reliability safety in a highly improbable accident in a beyond a design accident
for less safety in plant components and system degradations on a daily or very
frequent bases. This is vastly kicking up capacity factor or obscuring a
decline in plant reliability and safety. It is mostly the stuff we can’t see or
measure while up at power. Most plants are probably making a lot of money over
this or obscuring the detection of decline in competence with operating a
nuclear power plant.
Something bad going to is happen if
we globally “normalize the deviance” on safety degradation through an accepted
bureaucratic process (risk perspectives) like in the Palisades PCP impeller
problem. A known, unknown and not measure risk unsafety could coagulate into an
imaginable accident like the red finding like in ANO and Browns Ferry.
What if, say in 10,000 components or
safety systems, we collectively reduce USA fleet wide safety, tolerate more
degradations or accept a reduction in component reliability wholly based or
keyed off a distance and improbable increase of safety in a beyond a design
event. Instead of talking about isolated plant inncidents, we are talking about global or US flleet wide safety...changing the regulatory safety philosophy USA fleet wide. The tiny increase in “improbably used” safety and the massive increase
in regularly “used unsafety” are so disproportional. An infrequent and
improbable single aspect of a plant can influence so many other frequent and
simultaneous probable aspects of a plant. Your get it, through the Fukushima
responses and the beyond the plant design accident new components; you could
justify the degradation of safety in say 100 components simultaneously. It can mitigate
the threat of a shutdown caused by degraded components and it can mitigate size
of a NRC violation at the same time. It could be a one to a thousand
relationship or more with an increased in improbable safety by adding safety components in beyond
plant design accident to actual unsafety by tolerating degraded component in a
safety system, tolerating a violation plant licensing and NRC violations But
you will probably never consume the increased in the public safety through the
beyond the plant design accident safety or mitigation components by the ongoing
degradation in on going components and rules violations.
And remember, we have little idea
what the total level of component degradation, failure to obey NRC regulations or
to stay within plant designs and licensing rules. The licensee doesn’t disclose
and the NRC captures only a very small percentage of these. If we unjustly
increase on a US fleet wide bases the risk profile in the nuclear plant centric
systems we are heading for big trouble!
Risk
perspectives is like complexity on steroids and heroin in our aging fleet of
nuclear plants. It is collectively and increasingly blinding us. It is not
shining light and understanding on problems in the industry....it is enabling
and prolonging problems in our USA fleet. It is nothing to do with a fix it
first and early philosophy!
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