robinson said:
It's possible there actually are none, as in zero, plans in place for what to do when a meltdown is occurring. If there are plans, and drills done, what are they?
It seems like "run away" is the only actual response anybody is ready to do at a moments notice.
Why would you say that when everything discussed here proves that isn't true?
US nuclear plants have Emergency Operating Procedures to preveny or limit core damage, These procedures are symptom based so it is directed at providing makeup to maintain water level, core cooling to remove decay heayt, rreactivity control to ensure shutdown, containment and presseure vessel pressure control and containment cooling to prevent containment failures. Once core damage is suspected (radioactivity increases, the Severe Accident management Guidelines are activated doing everything possible to protect containment and limit releases to the environment. These procedures are trained and drilled on simulators and are validated via walkthroughs in the actual plants.
Emergency drills are performed several times a year and exercise command control and communications for offsite response providers and regiulators. Evacuation plans are reviewed and approved for use and have been exercised on a limited basis.
After 9/11 a whole new set of requirements were included in US plants to address the effects of SBOs, aircraft attacks or large fires. These capabilitiies were reviewed and inspected at every US plant after March 11 to ensure they were operable and available.
Finally, TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima Daiichi have proven one thing - operators don't "run away." At TMI while they were trying to reduce the hydrogen bubble, they had to order people out of the control room becausae everybody wanted to help. Chernobyl operators died because they refused to abandon their responsibility. At Fukushima workers told us they were ready to die if necessary.
It is a legitimate point to say that the event at Fukushima did result in increased risk to the public and environmental and economic effects that will last for years. But we also know that more was involved in that failure that emergency procedures and planning. There was negligence on design basis, there were significant delays in venting containment, and there was deliberate understatement of risk after the event that contributed to the public risk.
Your flippant conclusion that there were no plans or drills is not helpful. They had plans and procedures at Fukushima. At one point there was a claim that they had to go look for them in another building. So my questions are:
What were the procedures?
Were they available?
Were Operators trained on their use?
Was everything available to execute the procedures (e.g., flashlight batteries, tools, etc.)?
Were they implemented?
Were they delayed?
Were they effective?
If they failed, why did they fail?
Look at a couple of specific points.
Operators at Unit 1 may have unintentionaly or inappropriately disabled the isolation condensers.
Uperator were not certain whether containment venting was successful at Unit 1.
Hardened Wetwell Venting may have been delayed by seeking approval until pressures exceeded even the design pressure for the hardened piping.
Fire trucks and pumps were used to inject water into the RPVs. Was the pressure within the capabilities of those pumps?
In short, it takes more than a one line zinger to add value to this discussion.
