Nuclear Plant Safety versus Profit09 Feb

In a blog post of December 4, 2011, I wrote, “Thirty percent of New England’s electricity generation is from nuclear plants (ISO Regional System Plan 2011). Three out of five of these five plants are past their design life time. All use mostly imported uranium, and exercise questionable safety by storing greater numbers of densely packed, spent fuel rods at the plants. Nuclear power plants have a finite lifetime. Replacing a decommissioned plant with another will be extremely expensive and time consuming. For example, an AP1000 nuclear power plant (Generation III+) built by Westinghouse will cost between $5B to $7B per reactor and be operational 60 months from receipt of order.

Those comments were reinforced with an article in the Boston Globe (February 9, 2012), “Officials question safety of Seabrook power:”

“Citing safety concerns, a growing chorus of local politicians is urging the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to halt the relicensing  process for Seabrook Station until a long-term solution is implemented to address concrete degradation at the plant.”

“Concrete surrounding an electric control tunnel at the nuclear power plant has lost almost 22 percent of its strength and is showing signs of an alkali-silica (ASR) reaction because of more than a decade of ground-water infiltration, according to an NRC inspection report released in May 2011.”

“The degradation was discovered during a below-grade inspection of the accessible portion of the foundation, including the tunnel, a safety structure with vital electric cables that support the cooling system used when the reactor is shut down.”

How many more Fukushima-Chernobyl wakeup calls are needed to put safety concerns ahead of profit motives?

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About Dr. Everson

Prior to forming this autonomous vehicle consultant practice, Dr. Jeffrey Everson was director of business development for QinetiQ North America’s Technology Solutions Group (previously Foster-Miller, Inc.).

Dr. Everson has been the principal investigator for collision warning systems for automobiles and inner-city transit buses. These programs were awarded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). For his work on developing a collision warning system for inner-city transit buses, Everson was the first U.S. Department of Transportation contractor to win an SBIR Tibbetts Award.

Previously Dr. Everson held senior scientist positions at Battelle Memorial Institute, The Analytic Sciences Corporation (TASC), Honeywell Electro Optics Systems Division, and Itek Optical Systems Division.

He holds a PhD in physics from Boston College and a MS/BS in physics from Northeastern University.

Contact

For more information about how JHEverson Consulting can help your company with autonomous vehicles, please contact Jeff Everson.

JHEverson Consulting is based in the Boston area but consults for clients throughout North America.