I wonder how much the house in the foreground is worth?

Oh, I'd say about 200,000 rads.

Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, From Wikipedia

Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station (TMI) is a civilian nuclear power plant (NPP) located on Three Mile Island in the Susquehanna River, south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It has two separate units, known as TMI-1 and TMI-2. The plant is widely known for having been the site of the most significant accident in United States commercial nuclear energy, on March 28, 1979, when TMI-2 suffered a partial meltdown. According to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the accident resulted in no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of nearby communities. The reactor core of TMI-2 has since been removed from the site, but the site has not been decommissioned.

"The plant responded as designed and is stable with no impact on public health or safety, added NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci.."

Yeah right...what the scientists call "steam" is probably radioactive Cyanide mixed with nuclear grade Plutonium gas...when folks start noticing some unusual hairs around their ears, nose and ass, that's when scientists tell the truth...

I would run the hell outta there...otherwise ya askin fa it folks!

Glad I'm upstream.

Damn Doc! Unusual hairs around ears, nose, and ass, @!$%#, I thought that was a sign of old age. Now I'm worried.

Thats what I was thinking Ron, boy I'm in trouble and I don't even live there....funny.

Only Unit 1 was shutdown

RichMJones: Wikipedia is DEAD WRONG. The undamaged reactor at TMI is still operating and generating ~1200 MWe power. The undamaged reactor was purchased By Exelon Nuclear, wholly owned sub of Exelon Corporation. If the core wasn't there and operating, there would have been nothing to generate steam or trip. As a former Nuclear Power Plant operator for Exelon, I know of which I speak. Wikipedia is a valuable resource, but must be taken with a grain of salt...

ka9nyn,

I think you misunderstand.

Wikipedia is not wrong. Unit 2 has been shut down at the site. As per the NRC:

TMI-2 has been in a non-operating status since that time. The licensee conducted
a substantial program to defuel the reactor vessel and decontaminate the
facility. All spent fuel has been removed except for some debris in the reactor
coolant system. The plant defueling was completed in April 1990.

This doesn't dispute the quote from Wikipedia that RichMJones posted, as far as I can see. Unit 2, responsible for the 1979 accident, currently does not operate.

the steam is from atmospheric steam dumps on the secondary cooling loop.

In laymens terms, the clean water used to run the turbine (which doesn't touch the reactor water) is vented in the form of steam to help cool the plant down. This is designed into all PWR nuclear plants. The radiation which may be present in this water is minute amounts of tritium which cannot be easily filtered out of the water and may have leaked in from other locations. The amounts are so low that when working at a plant the on site contamination monitors cannot pick them up. To give an idea of how sensitive nuclear plant monitors are, the plant I worked at (Columbia Generating Station) was picking up molecules worth of radioactive material after Fukushima. The plant I'm at now has detectors which will alarm for the small amounts of radon stuck to your clothes from your basement. So the onsite alarms dont even go off for this stuff.

NG, you are correct about PWR's having two different loops, one for radioactive water and one for clean water. The main point is that it taught us a lesson when the first accident happened. They have back up plans in place for many circumstances. I also work at nuke plants. PWR's and BWR's and I don't have any health problems. People are afraid of things they don't understand sometimes.

Thank you Nuclear Guy. I'm glad that there is someone who understands the technology of nuclear power generation.

Holy ... m...

Are people really this ignorant? Didn't people take science class in primary and secondary schools? No wonder we're getting so f*cking stupid, people don't even know the basic understandings of science.

Pump malfunctions and shuts down, automatic safety systems kick in to prevent any sort of cooling issue. Everything works as intended, no problems and just cooling steam being vented. Otherwise it's a sunny day with slight overcast.

Seriously people, move the f*ck on.

Why can't people understand, there is no such thing as a "minor" event when it comes to radioactive material. FYI people, radiation is cumulative in your body over your life span. Even small doses eventually have the ability to kill you as your life span continues.

differnet,

Clearly you don't understand the subjects of which you're trying to speak.

First of all, the steam released in this instance is simply water. It contains no fission products or other solid materials. There is a tiny amount of radioactive Nitrogen, which decays to undetectable levels within 30 seconds.

Second, there is a large difference between radiation and contamination; a differentiation which neither you nor the media is ever aware of. Radiation is electromagnetic waves, contamination is solid material that emits radiation. Neither is "cumulative" in the human body. You can speak of a "cumulative" lifetime exposure, but that's relatively meaningless since your body will repair the damage caused by low levels of radiation (as it has done in all life forms on Earth for thousands of years). Every person on this planet gets 200-300 mRem of radiation exposure from natural sources annually and it doesn't cause us any problems.

Furthermore, let's worry about real dangers. Suppose you were standing next to the steam vent of this reactor today. Let's suppose you were exposed to what would be considered a gigantic amount of Nitrogen-7, resulting in a 50 mRem exposure. Dis you know that the following everyday activities that people think nothing of give you more than that?

Chest X-Ray - 100 mRem
Cross-country flight NY to LAX: 250 mRem
Abdominal CT scan: 3000 mRem

What you need to understand is that indeed there are "minor" things when it comes to radiation. Further, you need to let the experts worry about it instead of panicking.

I entirely understand. Sure it was a small amount, but we have to stop irradiating ourselves unnecessarily. It is cumulative. LOL... And what makes you think I don't know a great deal about radiation. How many NBC classes have you sat through? How many times have you practiced decontamination procedures. Get off your high horse. Your own post shows you don't know that much.

as it has done in all life forms on Earth for thousands of years

You were doing good up until that part. Thousands?

actually dan is pretty much dead on, having come from a job where i worked in a nuclear facility every day for quite a few years. if you're worried about "irradiating ourselves unnecessarily", the biggest thing you can do is not go outside in the sun.

Sorry but the democrats clean energy is to build several more nuclear plants, like the one they are build in Ohio. Also, wind energy has several environmental problems also.

Not all democrats want "several more nuclear plants." Most, if not all, prefer renewable, and they're far more likely than republicans to support major research on renewables (are any republicans interested in this at all?).

What are the major "problems" with wind power? I know they can kill birds, but is this as bad as the nuclear or other options (how many do they kill? are there other issues?).

Short answer is that it is somewhat unreliable.

To somewhat expound upon that it is because since you cannot guarantee wind when it's needed you have to keep all the traditional methods in place as backup, this is a large expense which a lot of people forget about.

Windmills are great local supplemental energy, but it's a very tricky thing to consider when talking about base loads of a region.

Mitchell

Well, Popular Mechanics lists "Wind power is too unreliable" as myth #3. An article from 2010 says, "First things first: Wind power is intermittent; it's just the nature of, well, nature. Due largely to the unpredictability of weather, turbines typically generate only about one-fifth of the energy they'd make if they actually ran 24/7. That said, energy planners have devised tactics to make wind power reliable" to make it more viable as we explore other energy sources.

A NY Times blog says,

"A new study of wind integration, however, argues that the capacity value of windmills could be improved by building even more of them, spreading them out geographically, and connecting them with a strong grid. The reason is that the wind is always blowing somewhere, and if it can be averaged over a bigger area, the minimum amount of energy available will rise."

Interesting and useful information, I think.

I also think I found some answers to my question about republicans and renewable energy:

"The debate over renewing the credit is dividing Republicans, with conservative lawmakers from wind states joining Democrats to push for an extension even as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, has made attacks on government support for clean energy, including wind, a centerpiece of his fight against President Barack Obama...Democrats generally support federal backing for wind power and other clean energy, arguing that it needs help to compete with entrenched fuel sources whose environmental and health impacts often aren't included in their costs...Now the stakes are higher, because the wind industry has established a manufacturing base in the U.S. to build many of the 8,000 parts that go in a typical turbine. Industry data show manufacturing facilities in the U.S. have more than doubled since 2009 to around 470 in 2011. Meanwhile, wind's share of U.S. electricity output has grown to 2.9% last year, from about 1.3% in 2008, according to the Energy Information Administration. "

-Wall Street Journal

You misunderstand. It's unreliable for base load calculations, because of this, more traditional forms of generation needs to be on hand, or a storage mechanism in place. Either of these greatly increases the cost of wind generation when it's used for a significant portion of everyday use.

Yes you can spread out the windmills, but then you start factoring transmission loss and even then there's no guarantee that the 5000 sq miles for your wind farms are on will always receive wind somewhere. There's plenty of times where whole states don't receive any appreciable wind.

It's great supplement power, just hard and expensive to rollout as the major source for base load power generation, not that it isn't doable.

Mitchell

My understanding is that there will probably need to be other forms of energy sources on hand to help supply many areas--probably always--but that there are ways to make things more workable than they are now. That New York Times blog said “stronger transmission connections” were definitely needed but that “the added capacity value would offset the cost of the transmission.” They conclude the study they cite concludes, “The study’s overall conclusion is that there is no technical barrier to supplying 20 percent or 30 percent of the energy on the Eastern Interconnection, the power grid that stretches form Halifax to New Orleans. It would take money, however, and a new way of planning for transmission lines.” I guess my main point here is that I don’t know exactly what you’re saying in relation to these findings or the benefit to the economy/lack of pollution I’m going to talk about in the next paragraph. In the end, maybe you’re just saying it can’t be the main source of energy, and/or it’s difficult to make more viable, of which I conclude the latter seems true (it seems mainly because of politics) and the former seems very likely true.

My understanding, again, from the Wall Street Journal, is that most democrats consider that while fossil fuels are "cheaper," their true cost doesn't get figured in—the costs of pollution, mainly, I’m assuming. I’d love an expert and/or study showing the figures of how much air pollution we’ll stop, and, if possible, what direct effects that could have (not only the carbon footprint, but health aspects like asthma reduction, etc.). Do you have any sources that show anything like this? Let’s not forget a source on how many jobs (and their contribution to the economy) this gives us as well…According to Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican and a member of the House Tea Party Caucus (and supporter of wind energy), 5,000 wind-industry jobs statewide and locally-produced clean energy are proof of the benefits of federal policies that support wind power. According to the WSJ, “The production tax credit has spurred huge growth since it was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1992” as well.

I don't argue for fossil fuels, without question I believe we need to get off of them and the sooner the better.

If you simply base your opinion off of the WSJ or NYT, you are definitely not getting a good overall picture, especially when they dip into politics. Given that this is the only thing you're using and with your last post, it looks as though you are trying to inject politics into this discussion, not rational thought. On the off chance you aren't, I'll respond.

Yes, stringing up new HV lines reduce transmission cost, but, it's indiscriminate and will help with any source of energy. Therefore it's not offsetting any real cost, if it just helped wind power, then yes you could make that argument but it doesn't work that way.

As I said in my last post, it's absolutely doable, the problem is cost, it's high. There's a tremendous amount of infrastructure that needs to built when dealing with wind.

Here's something for you to think about. I'm sure you saw the article earlier this week regards putting up 140,000+ windmills off the Atlantic coast to power the whole east side. That's great and all, but here's the problem. What happens when a nor'easter blows through? This is a storm that blows through most of the northeastern coast with high winds. Windmills only can operate in winds up to about 30mph. A nor'easter will shutdown most of those windmills during a time when people need that power for heat.

Now how about cost? In good conditions (meaning relatively easy access to the area and also easy enough to bring the power to the grid) it's about $1,000,000 per mW. These farms don't meet either criteria. On top of that, I took the time to go through the abstract and part of the study, either they were underestimating how many they need, or, it was assuming that a few thousand miles of new HV lines would be strung. First lets just take the 144,000 turbines, these are of the 5mW variety, all things being nice, that's $700bil. But these would be put up a few miles at sea, probably going to double the cost so we are at $1.4trillion. It's is on the low side but includes all the cabling and substations that will be built to bring the power to the grid.

What does $1.4 trillion get? Well, PV goes for about $1.2/watt, residential is lower, but farms are higher, it's a good average. So 1.4t/($1.2/w) x 12hrs(ave)/day = 14tWhrs/day. Wind farm is 144,000 x 5mW x 24hr/day x 20%efficiency= 3.45tWhrs/day or less than a 1/4th of what PV can do. Even if we didn't double the price, it still comes in at under a half of what PV can do.

A nuclear plant these days come about 2-4bil per 1200mW gen III+ reactor and this is estimated for lifetime operation. Let's go high and say 4bil. 1.4tril gets you 350 units. 350 x 1200mW x 24hr/day = 10.1tWhr/day or nearly 3 times the capacity of that wind farm. Since we are using total lifetime cost in this calculation, you need to factor in maintenance costs for the windmills, which can be sizable. Even PV has maintenance costs.

This is all without adding in the additional cost of HV lines that need to be strung up for the wind farm.

I'm actually a nuclear supporter. A decent amount of the cost is due to government regulations and such. Now before anyone goes off the deep end, I'm not advocating getting rid of them. But, the process needs to be streamline and all the states need to get the stuff standardized. Everyone is on a different page (sometimes different book) and it's incredibly inefficient and expensive to deal with.

If they could fix this, then for something like $2.5-4 trillion, as an entire nation we could get totally off of fossil fuels for general electrical power production with the capacity to switch all heating to electric and accommodate a significant amount of plugin electric cars with room for future growth. Neither wind, solar/PV, hydro, or any other renewable can do this for such a low price. And this is for state of the art Gen IV reactors which are more efficient, vastly more safe, creates far less waste which is also safer to handle than the gen II,III,III+ ones that we have today (which could then be decommissioned).

Now, if you are just trying to be political. Then this is my last post.

Mitchell

I admit I don’t know that much about wind power. As far as politics are concerned, I do want my voting to be as informed as possible, but I can assure you how things work is my primary interest.

This is an interesting point: “Yes, stringing up new HV lines reduce transmission cost, but, it's indiscriminate and will help with any source of energy. Therefore it's not offsetting any real cost, if it just helped wind power, then yes you could make that argument but it doesn't work that way.” It seems to make sense. I’d still love to see a source on this and other points you make.

Regarding high winds in the Atlantic, that’s interesting too. If we had time to talk all day, I’d ask, do you know if there’s there a way to connect to a grid that preferably (maybe some day) is connected to (non-local) renewable sources, or at least reliable sources? I would think many areas wouldn’t work well in days of extreme stillness as well. I'd also like to know: how do they get wind energy standardized?

As for all cost estimates, where are you getting them from (even if it’s some kind of primary sources), plus what does it cost to store radioactive waste and how safe is it? I’d love to believe you on everything you have to say, especially if you’re expert, but even then I’d want credentials (plus sources and/or more details on at least some of your points). While NYTimes and the WSJ aren’t the end-all, a detailed discussion intended to persuade others needs sources.

Well said robiscoole. I wish everyone had your outlook. It would certainly help clean up the vine.

It joined the Chicago Teachers Union, A day late and a rod short? It wants less water in it's coolant area and a shorter day! It also wants less people pulling on it's rods! ;-}

People from Jersey built the reactor.

J. E. T. S. Jets Jets Gaints! No I don't thinks so.

The whole 5 headed chicken thing was due to inbreeding, not radiation.

About time a businessman ran this country...

You mean like George W.?

You have no clue what your talking about. Nuclear is better than coal. It takes 186 coal cars to do what a nuke plant does in one day.

What does running a business have to do with governing a country???

Located about 12 miles south of Harrisburg, Pa., Three Mile Island

The article refers to Harrisburg. The closest one to Pittsburgh is 35 miles north of the city.

Problem is no one will allow a new one to be built to replace it. so we are forced to run our reactors until something does happen that will just vindicate the nay-Sayers even more. A lose-lose situation.

There are 2 New ones being built in Georgia and another 20 in Licensing

Yes Annoyed, that sounds familiar. While not an issue of radioactivity, after 911 everyone working in the immediate vicinity of the attacks were told by our government that the air around ground zero was not a health issue and we know today that they deliberately lied to us all.

Any exposure to radiactive matrerial has some impact on the health of those exposed.

Then throw away your microwave oven and tv. Don't eat any bananas, or get an x-ray. I could go on but we hate long posts and don't tend to read them.

Any exposure to radiactive matrerial has some impact on the health of those exposed.

Yes, but there was no radiation leakage. There wasn't a meltdown either. It's quite easy to detect radiation with the right equipment...and you can bet your butt that everyone who lives near the reactor owns a geiger counter. If there was radiation detected, somebody would be screaming their head off.

At least Liberals are intelligent enough to care enough. Didn't you spell your name wrong, eough??

That's right it did.