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FW: [DOEWatch] Russie's rantings on Davis-Bessie
Here is a written reply to Hoffman's rant that went out on the Know_Nukes
and DOEWatch mailing lists.
> Man, Russell has really gone off the deep end on this one. His
> scenario would make a good Hollywood movie but unfortunately is not
> based in reality.
>
> Allow me to dissect his ranting (Norm, feel free to forward this to
> him. I made the decision about 6 months ago to cease my
> conversations with that man and blocked all email from him. It was
> unsubstantiated crap like this post that made me say, "enough is
> enough."
>
>
>
> --- In Know_Nukes@y..., KnowNukes relay <kn_relay@y...> wrote:
> > From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@a...>
> > Date: Mon Mar 25, 2002 3:46 am
> > Subject: Did you hear about Davis-Besse? This could have
> been "Biblical"!
> >
> > Dear Mr. President:
> >
> > Did you hear about what almost
> > happened at Davis-Besse?
> >
> > It would have been "10 times worse
> > than Chernobyl" as one eminent
> > scientist I've spoken to put it.
>
> I'd surely like to know who this "eminent scientist" is that is
> making such wild, unsupported, and blantently incorrect claims.
> Chernobyl's core is/was bigger than Davis-Besse's, had no
> containment, and spewed virtually all of it's core's contents into
> the air. How can it get much worse than that?
>
> People always like to compare potential nuclear incidents to
> Chernobyl and say it would be "X" times worse. Why? Could it be
> that Chernobyl being about the worse nuclear incident one could
> imagine did not have anywhere near the health impact that anti-nukes
> predicted so they have to further massage the numbers? I mean, it
> doesn't spread too much fear in people to say that the worst nuclear
> accident ever to occur where things couldn't get any worse killed 31
> people and caused only 1,800 highly treatable thyroid cancers?
>
> Now, I am not saying that 1,831 people deserved to be affected
> because that is 1,831 people too many - but from a risk standpoint,
> it isn't bad. Anti-nukes love to play numbers and give death tolls
> in the millions becuase they know the higher the number the more
> scared people get. You find me one anti-nuke that tries to instill
> fear into people by saying that the death toll could exceed 30 people
> and cause about 1,800 highly-treatable cancers over a period of 15-20
> years and I'll die of a heart attack. It just doesn't happen. In
> the USA during 2000, over 22,000 people alone died in vehicle crashes
> yet you don't see long lines of people protesting vehicles saying
> that they are too dangerous, do you?
>
> > Most people have no idea how
> > close we came to catastrophe. A
> > mere half inch.
>
> What about the containment? Oh, wait, Russell thinks that steam
> pressure and temperature rises during an adiabatic throttleing
> process. *SLAP* How stupid of me to think that the laws of
> thermodynaics are reversed in a nuclear power plant...
>
>
> > Here's the basic sequence, in
> > lay-person's terms:
>
> > WE ALMOST LOST OHIO:
>
> We didn't loose the Ukraine, so how could we have "almost lost Ohio?"
>
>
> > Davis-Besse is a 900 Megawatt PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) owned
> by
> > FirstEnergy Corp.. It is located 21 miles ESE of Toledo, OH. It
> first went
> > online in 1977.
> > It's getting OLD.
>
> 25 years old isn't "OLD" in industrial terms.
>
> > Winds tend to go from the Northwest to the Southeast in that part
> of the
> > country, but not
> > always. Some areas downwind include Sandusky, OH, Cleveland, OH,
> Pittsburgh,
> > PA,
> > Washington DC, Toronto, Canada, as well as Virginia, West Virginia,
> New Jersey,
> > NYC,
> > Long Island, New England, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina...
>
> Big deal. What about the jet stream going across Europe and Asia?
> Russell forgot to apply the cardinal rule of anti-nukes: overplay and
> exaggerate the effects as much as possible. He simply forgot to
> include exposures to those in Mexico, Central & South America, the
> Caribbean, Europe, Asia, Australia, Afria, and both people in
> Alaska ;) *joke*
>
> > A crack all the way through the reactor pressure vessel's carbon-
> steel outer
> > layer was discovered on March 11th, 2002 while investigating other
> cracks in
> > flanges
> > (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission calls them "nozzles" but they're
> really
> > flanges)
> > above (and coming out of) the reactor vessel.
>
> A flange is a flat piece of metal with holes in a pre-defined bolt
> hole pattern used to mate-up to another flange to perform some
> function. A nozzle is a protrusion in a pressure vessel to which
> flanges are usually welded to at the end. Semantics. It was a
> nozzle.
>
> > Six inches of carbon-steel protection had already been eaten
> through when the
> > developing crack was discovered. All that held back the 2500-PSI
> pressure
> > inside the
> > reactor was a half-inch of stainless steel -- the "liner" on the
> inside of the
> > 6 1/2
> > inch-thick (total) reactor pressure head.
>
> More than enough steel to contain the pressure - but in an unanalyzed
> condition and a violation of NRC regulations so it was a safety
> signifigance. I'm not saying that it is good for business that only
> 3/8" stood between the RCS and containment but it was still enough to
> contain the pressure - a testament to the design of the plant, but I
> digress. In any point, the thru-wall corrosion was not anticipated
> and so was a major find since it did decrease the margin of safety to
> unacceptable levels.
>
> > If the liner had cracked, the accident would have been of Biblical
> proportions
> > indeed,
> > and the stainless steel inner liner was already BULGING! How much
> time was
> > left?
> > Days? Weeks? We'll never know!
>
> Biblical proportions? I think he is getting a little ahead of
> himself here. Again, the consequences he speaks about may be good
> for Hollywood, but are not absed on reality. Chernobyl was not a
> disaster of biblical proportions, Davis-Besse certainly would not
> have been either.
>
> What we would have had was a small-break LOCA, similar to that
> experienced at TMI. TMI was not an accident of "Biblical
> proportions" so it only stands to reason that neither would Davis-
> Besse.
>
> What exactly is an accident of "Biblical proportions?" I would
> consider that something akin to an extention level event. Russell
> only claims a couple million deaths (a totally unrealistic and
> outrageous claim) but the population of the world is over 6 billion.
> There just isn't enough radiation and an effective transport
> mechanism to give a lethal dose to over 6 billion people in any
> reactor core built by humans.
>
> > Had the situation progressed much further, and a crack open up in
> the liner,
> > the
> > extremely radioactive water explosively rushing out would have, in
> short order:
> >
> > 1) Flashed over to steam.
>
> Correct.
>
> > 2) Expanded the hole in the reactor vessel.
>
> Probably correct also, but it would not have opened it up very much
> more.
>
> > 3) Cracked the reactor's fuel rods and thrown their contents
> towards and
> > out the
> > hole.
>
> I disagree. There would be no pressure excursion transient inside
> the RPV that could possibly have this effect.
>
>
> > 4) Pulverized the fuel pellets as they flew through the hole
> at tremendous
> > speed,
> > expanding the hole further in the reactor vessel.
>
> Again, I do not see how this is physically possible.
>
>
> > 5) Cut a hole in the containment dome like it was made of
> BUTTER. Yes, I
> > know
> > containment domes are up to about ten feet thick, but this
> stuff is at
> > 2500 PSI,
> > thousands of degrees Centigrade, probably actually getting
> hotter as it's
> > pulverized coming out the hole, and concrete itself pulverizes
> at about
>
> The water, when leaving the PRV would have a static pressure of
> ambient. Since the D-B containment is kept at atmosphereic pressure,
> this would be the pressure the steam would be at. The velocity would
> be high as the pressure energy is changed to velocity head. This
> would be similar to a pressure washer. You can have a pressure
> washer at 4000 psi and stand 5 feet from the nozzle and get a good
> dusting of water mist on a hot summer's day.
>
> Certainly, Russell's "eminent scientist" doesn't think that this
> steam stream would cut through the concrete housing surrounding the
> RPV and then travel a hundred or so feet to the containment and still
> have enough energy to even make a scratch?
>
> Moreover, the saturation pressure of water at 2500 psig is 668 oF or
> 353 degrees centigrade. Where is this "thousands of degrees"
> centigrade coming from?
>
> And since when did ANY fluid going from high pressure to low pressure
> HEAT UP? That is a classic throttleing process where the temperature
> of the lower-pressure steam MUST, MUST, MUST, ***ABSOLUTELY MUST***
> drop becuase it is within the inversion curve for steam. Of course,
> Russell's grasp on simple sophomore-level thermodynaics is quite
> limited probably because he never took thermodynamics and therefore
> has no clue what he is talking about. All SCUBA divers have seen
> this phenonema first hand when they opened up their tank and allowed
> the air to escape...the vave starts to freeze up. This is also how
> an air conditioner works. As the refigerant passes through the
> throttling valve, it's temperature drops.
>
> This isn't a very difficult concept to grasp...well, maybe for some
> it is (Russell).
>
> In any event, the water will escape from the RPV, flash to steam and
> fill the containment. The idea that the steam will travel a hundred
> or so feet and still have enough force to damage anything thicker
> than a piece of paper is ridiculous. If the steam break were a few
> inches from the containment then this would be an issue. The steam
> break is not a couple inches from containment so it is not an issue
> by any stretch of the imagination.
>
> What could happen is that the steam would continue to escape and
> increase containment pressure. With the RCS volume and initial
> conditions, one could expect the pressure to rise to about 60-75
> psig, which is above the containment design pressure. To counter
> this, the containment spray system would kick in which will decrease
> the steam temperature and hence decrease the pressure. In addition,
> containment sump cooling will further reduce containment pressure and
> keep the containment atmosphere within design limits.
>
> Of course, there would still be the issue of DCH if the melted fuel
> were to melt through the RPV and accumulate on the containment floor,
> but the ECCS and CS systems would help to mitigate this.
>
> The cold legs of the RPV enter the RPV at the bottom, the hot legs at
> the top. The ECCS systems inject water in the cold legs. At that
> point, the RPV would be at atmospheric pressure and the water would
> circulate through the RPV. Since the hole is at the *top* and
> gravity flows *down* the ECCS could keep the core covered with cold
> borated water because water does not leak *up*.
>
> As a consequence, although there would be a very damaging core melt
> scenario, the containment and any number of other emergency systems
> would prevent a release of radiation of anything but trivial amounts -
> similar to what was released with TMI.
>
> > 400
> > degrees Fahrenheit. And there is LOTS of coolant in the
> system which will
> > virtually ALL get shot out the hole in the pressure vessel
> like it was
> > coming out of
> > a cannon, along with the fuel rod assemblies and everything
> else inside
> > the
> > reactor (that is, pieces of irradiated metal, some of which
> will
> > flash-burn if they
> > come in contact with oxygen). In the end, the containment
> dome would have
> > a
> > hole in it directly out from where the hole in the pressure
> vessel was.
>
> This is not a very realistic scenario and was probably thought up of
> by someone with no inkling of the physics or thermodynaics of an
> accident. Sure, it *sounds* good, but it simply is not true.
>
> > There
> > would be pulverized radioactive particles spewed into the air
> and onto the
> > ground
> > for miles around.
> > 6) Killed millions of Americans.
>
> Simply not credible. Millions of people were not killed as a result
> of Chernobyl so there is absolutely no rational belief of why it
> would be true if D-B blew it's lid - even if the containment failed.
>
>
> > 7) Been blamed on terrorists and we would have bombed another
> country into
> > Depleted Uranium hell, to go with our own misery and suffering.
> >
> > Massive die-offs of humans and other living things would have begun
> almost
> > instantly --
> > people would have died downwind for hundreds of miles, and would go
> on dying,
> > generation after generation, for thousands of years, all around the
> world.
>
> Where in the heck does this come from? Can we say hysteria? Can we
> say paranoia and extreme phobia? Why would they blame it on
> terrorists when everyone knew that they would find cracking at the
> CRDM nozzles? We don't blame things on terrorists unless they were
> caused by terrorists. I guess now, Russell is going to say that we
> flew those planes into the WTC and Pentagon and *blamed* them on
> terrorists. What about all the *other* incidents that happen that
> are not blamed on terrorists simply becuase there is no proof of
> them? What about all the wild fires that we could blame on
> terrorists or the out-of-control 4 million tire fire in Roanoke, VA?
>
> This is simply a very immature and irrational statement that we would
> blame an accident on terrorists and go bomb a country to shift the
> blame to someone else. Futher, the "massive die-offs" and
> catacylsmic results of a D-B accident that Russell claims are simply
> a result of an over-active imagination based in some fantasy land
> that Russell imagined where the laws of nature are subject to the
> whims of a person's imagnation. Maybe Russell needs to seek
> professional help. I am serious.
>
> > The cost would be in the trillions, and we wouldn't even know what
> hit us.
>
> Wow, that's a pretty low estimate. If the entire world were affected
> like this, I would think that the costs would be uncalculable. This
> is therefore another foolish guess.
>
> > It's amazing what goes on behind closed doors at the world's
> nuclear power
> > plants.
>
> Closed doors? If Russell were treally that concerned then he would
> have known that this was a long-standing issue that the NRC has been
> looking into for quite some time. All the documents and information
> on this issue have been publicly available for years...
>
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Russell Hoffman
> > Concerned Citizen
> > Carlsbad, CA
>
> If he were that concerned, then he would take a few minutes out of
> his busy day to actually learn something about nuclear power instead
> of feeding his unrealistic, exaggerated, unsubstantiated, incorrect,
> and phobic hysterical rantings of cataclysmic doom and gloom and come
> back down to reality where the rest of the world will be waiting to
> discuss this issue.
>
>
>
>
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