Oyster Creek still shut down

Not good? (0.00 / 0)

The oldest nuke plant in the country had a mechanical malfunction well separated from the machinery that keeps radiation out of the environment (which seems to be functioning fine, as South Jersey isn't under an evacuation order).  The failsafes in the system designed to prevent a disaster functioned exactly as intended.  Meanwhile, these events raise a lot of questions about the plant's viability just before its license is to expire and it hasn't yet received a new one.

I don't think this could have been scripted better (aside from Excelon announcing plans to dismantle the plant, to restore the land to its natural state and making up for the wattage produced in wind and solar power- but I'm a dreamer).

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by: Fedaykin @ Mon Dec 01, 2008 at 20:08:00 PM CST

I meant (0.00 / 0)

not good as in that it was still shut down.  If thats what we've got, we need it to be working.  It does appear that the system did function well to prevent a wider disaster.  I should have noted that in the story.  Thanks for pointing it out.

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by: Jason Springer @ Mon Dec 01, 2008 at 20:24:32 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Oyster Creek Should Be Decommissionsed (0.00 / 0)

This is a plant that is nearing the end of its useful/safe life cycle.

Could it be kept patched up and running for another decade or more?   Sure!   But why bother?

At MOST the NRC should give it another two to three years of existence so that a new "crash program" of putting up a MILLION NJ solar residential and commercial installations can be completed.

The power grid will need upgrading to handle the extra input during the day...and it may even require the addition of storage technologies to hold onto excess power from the daytime.    

Those upgrades will be necessary anyway as it is likely we will be transitioning to plug in electrics.

It will cost many billions of dollars to repair and maintain old nuclear plants that are at the end of their life cycle.  Why take the risk of a catastrophic failure when it isn't necessary???

Note that NO insurance company will write policies on these things.   It's all "insured" by the taxpayers.  

It's pathetically and tragically ironic that we can't get a "single payer" system for human beings but we do just that for the nuclear power industry!

Obviously the few dozen (hundred?) people who read this aren't likely to "jump on the bandwagon" of progressive action.

Again, what's needed is a massive popular movement to force the politicians to do what is right, and if they don't, to remove them from office.

Too many people are making too much money from a corrupt and broken status quo for any kind of real change to be allowed.

They would rather milk the status quo until there is some kind of crisis, then the atmosphere is created where the same people who have been screwing us can profit from the crisis and come up with "solutions".

The same people who gave us the horribly wasteful Iraq war and the current "financial crisis" will be giving us the eventual collapse of these old nuclear power plants as cause for emergency/desperate measures that will cost us trillions more in the future.

Let's go renewable NOW...it will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in NJ and we will wind up with a cleaner and safer AND more prosperous state.

The following video seems off topic; but view it in the context of Klein's whole "take" on disaster/crony capitalism.

Note that since this video was shot that Greenspan has been humbled and forced to acknowledge that he was wrong on many of his assumptions re just how bad/corrupt our financial system is.    

It's all connected folks.

 

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by: Nick Lento @ Tue Dec 02, 2008 at 09:42:09 AM CST