Nigeljay

Unsurprisingly the environmentalist lbby has been up in arms about the licencing of continuing operation of the Cofrentes nuclear plant in the Valencia region following the Japanese disaster and consequent nuclear problems. There seems to me to be a lot of emotion and not much cool analysis in this issue.

It would be good to see some basic questions addressed and answered about the Japanese nuclear problem and then reasoned attitudes could be taken to nuclear issues globally. For example what was the design basis earthquake for the Fukushima reactors? As I understand it this was unlikely to have been an earthquake of greater than 8.5 and therefore the 8.9 magnitude quake would have been an extremely severe test of the reactor design particularly as these were older reactors where there was probably a degree of backfitting to provide confidence of their seismic robustness. What in the worst case scenarion is the consequence of the Japanese nuclear disaster? How many immediate deaths and how many premature deaths from stochastic effects? How do these relate to the numbers of fatalities from the quake and tsunami itself.
These issues can then be translated to nuclear plants in other parts of the world in relation to the known and predicted seismicity of the region. For example I do not believe that Spain has experiences an earthquake of magnitude greater than 7 on the Richter scale and the robustness of Cofrentes in this context along with the worst case consequences from a nuclear accident in the context of likely deaths froma greater than 7 magnitude quake in the region should inform decisions on this matter rather than political knee jerking which we are seeing in places like Germany at present.

Relampago

Fukushima and Garoña are identical, twins. Built and put into operation the same year, same power, etc, I can not say about Cofrentes. However, last year the director and technicians visited Fukushima Garoña

It is certain that Garoña can withstand a earthquake of 7 degrees safely

Spain is not Japan. Fukushima withstood the earthquake well, which broke down the cooling systems of nuclear power was the tsunami. And then, it is not understandable why workers waited some time to cool the reactor

Modern nuclear plants are safe (Chernobyl is another matter) even in high-risk sismic countries such as Japan. But as the article says:

"Fukushima is an inappropriate location, as it is located in a place very close to the subduction zone between the North American plate and Pacific plate"

http://www.diariodeburgos.es/noticia...579AB94370BD8F

Nigeljay

Interestingly this has prompted little discussion so I guess I can conclude that there is not much concern over nuclear plants from members of this forum. That is perhaps good and provides an indicator, if a very small one, that the hot air generated by the media does not necessarily translate to the person in the street.

steviedeluxe

I think most people are making the assumption that any earthquake in Spain wouldn't be half as powerful as the one we saw in Japan, and that in any case a Tsunami wouldn't affect the power plant. Whether or not those assumptions are valid is another matter, but that's probably why there has been little discussion.

EsuriJohn

The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1754 destroyed Lisbon and many other towns in that part of Portugal, in addition the subsequent Tsunami completly cleared Vila Royal Santo Antonio from the map. They did not keep records then but all this happened on the Iberian Penisular some 400 years ago and they go in cycles so are we due another one?

We live in Spain directly across the river from VRSAto but at about 35m above sea level so the Tsunami should not get us and we designed to code so a normal quake might cause us to patch and decorate but who knows about the big one!

Every year there are shocks which can be felt but that just moves us nearer to one that does cause damage but how much who knows.

bil

I'm no fan of nukes, but by god the Japanese plant has performed well. Effectively zero release and it survived a shock far greater than it was designed for.

A friend sent me a very interesting comment on Thorium based plants in lieu of Uranium. Better yet they can't produce fissile weapons material.

JulianWard

Extension of Licence.

This may be of interest.

Incidentally there are around 2,500 quakes a year in Spain, but only those over 3.5 are reported.


QUOTE: After significant pressure from the important nuclear lobby, the Ministry of Industry has conceded a prolongation of the nuclear power station, Cofrentes (Province of Valencia) for a further 10 years. The station has been in operation for 27 years, has suffered several accidents, is similar to those in Fukushima and is situated directly at the waters edge. The extension of use was granted on the 10th March, the day of the earthquake in Japan

steviedeluxe

They're now reporting water radiation levels at the Fukushima plants 10 million times the normal. It's looking like Angela Merkel's reaction to stop all further nuclear power generation is a wise move - the risks are just too great. In the long term it's going to mean a lot more wind-farms, solar plants, wave generated power plants. In the meantime I think we're still going to need to use coal, gas, oil etc to generate electricity.

Nigeljay

I've been a safety consultant for over 30 years and I can assure you that all sorts of industrial, power and transport operations hold high inherent risks. What is important is the balance between benefit and risk. No activity holds zero risk. I will concede that it is at best debatable whether nuclear stations should be located in areas of high seismicity ( such as the Pacific "ring of fire") but this doesn't apply to Germany, France or even most (if not all) of Spain and Italy where earthquakes tend to be of much lower magnitude and less frequent than say Japan. So I still question knee jerking by the likes of Angela Merkel who is playing politics with the important issue of security of long term power supply.

Nigeljay

By the way the contamination to which you refer as being 10 million times normal is Iodine 134 in the contaminated water in the basement building of No2 reactor. It is therefore presently contained and Ioding 134 has a hald life of 53 minutes. Hence the level of contamination from this isotope will rapidly decay and will be of main danger to those working at the plant.