Hey, this doesn't seem fair...

["Bob Westerdale" <Bob.Westerdale@ametek.com>]

Here is an interesting news article that really illustrates ( for me, anyway...) the  unfair treatment  given to NPP's..... This was published in USA Today on 5-31-02.


" Crisis Looms as Demand Booms  for Natural Gas"

by George Hager

        Lysite, Wyo.   What looks odd in this tiny town in the middle of Wyoming's vast Wind River Basin  is all the windsocks.  There's no  operating airport, here, so why all the fluorescent orange wind direction indicators?

        It turns out that Burlington Resources want you to know where upwind is at any given moment, because that's where you need to go, and fast- if there's a hydrogen sulfide leak from any of the six ultradeep natural gas wells Burlington and others have drilled here into the nearly 5 mile deep bedrock that holds one of the most prolific gas fields in the USA.

        Along with prodigious quantities of natural gas, what boils up out of the wells' specially made high alloy tubing is 126,000 parts per million of Hydrogen Sulphide, which can quickly kill you  in concentrations of as little as 500-1000 parts per million. Each visitor gets a mandatory safety lecture and a portable tank of emergency air. 

        (end quote)

                So where are the downwinders on this one?    Each well produces up to 30 million cubic feet per day, which  results in somewhere around 3.8 million cubic feet of H2S, certainly enough to make a substantial plume of death should a major blowout occur.   OK, fine, it's Wyoming, not downtown Metropolis.   But I doubt the ranchers would consider their lives any less valuable than the  city folks near the NPP.   What logical mind  sees the NPP risk as so much more deadly than a simple, friendly ol' gas well?

        In a related article, just down the page a bit, (Mr. Hager again)  proclaims:


        "Risks of Liquified Natural Gas are Minimal"

            ( snipped...)     The technology isn't complicated. Williams (energy company -)    Operations Director Jim Shannon says the commonly used process that chills natural gas to minus 260 degrees F  and turns it into a liquid is " essentially an industrial air conditioner."   And storing it is likewise low tech.   A possible restraint on increase LNG use is a fear of its destructive force.   Cove Point sits 3.5 miles  from the Calvert Cliffs nuclear Power plant,.  Anxiety about LNG accidents or terrorist attacks could affect any existing or new terminals ( LNG Depots)

        Shannon and Cove Point district manager Michael Gardner downplay the risks.   They note there has been no accident at an LNG facility since a 1944 Cleveland  accident in which LNG tanks ruptured and poured liquified gas into a nearby sewage system, where it collected, vaporized, and ignited.

        Shannon says exhaustive tests have shown that even if a tank at Cove Point ruptured, dikes would contain the gas, and if the gas ignited, the effects would be confined to plant grounds.  " A home a half mile away would feel the heat, but the fire would be contained in the plant, " he says.


        Try to substitute SNF for LNG in the text above,    and tell me why it is that folks are virtually fearless of thin-walled, fragile tank trucks running LNG all over the country,  while a multi-ton SNF cask strapped to a railroad car  presents the assured destruction of everyone on the planet?      Frankly, any fire that I can feel a half mile away is going to scare the dinner out of me in a flash.     OK, the fire would  "be contained in the plant"--  but isn't that essentially the purpose of having a containment building around an NPP?       I realize I'm preaching to the choir, so to speak,

but I am simply amazed at the terrible job of public relations the Nuclear Industry has done in controlling the unwarranted fears that have been whipped up by the media and other  anti-forces.   I do not mean to insult anyone who might be trying to promote the peaceful use of the atom,   but there is an incredible chasm between the perceived and actual risks.

We trust our scientists and engineers to toss hundreds of satellites into orbit over our heads without knowing where they'll fall,  yet we have no trust of those who sucessfully design and operate NPP's  that keep the lights and heat on in our houses????

It is a strange world, indeed!  ( sorry for the extended rant....  too much caffeine again!)

 Bob Westerdale