원자력 발전소 관련 기사 1

[포대화상(김희상)]

어제 독서 모임에서 "체르노빌의 아이들"이란 책을 읽었습니다

일본에서 원자력발전소가 폭팔한 사고에 있어 아직 정확한 피해나 결과가 나오지 않아 궁금한데

우리나라의 언론은 신뢰할 수 없어, 미국 뉴욕타임즈 기사를 잠깐 살펴봤습니다.

발전소의 파이프가 녹이슬어 구멍이 나고  방사능이 유출되어 발전소를 중단했다고 하네요

 미국에서 원자력 발전소의 화재방화지붕의 두께기준이 있는데, 훨씬 얇아져 있으니 이를 보강하지 않고

그리고 그 재질에 면허를 준 기간이 40년인데, 뭐 20년 정도 그냥 연장해줬다는 내용인것 같습니다.

안전하다고 장담을 하던데, 이 기사를 보니 도대체 믿을 수 가 없네요. 역시 사람이 하는 일은 과실이 있기 마련입니다.

원자력 발전소는 2만년에 1번꼴로 고장이 난다고 합니다.

세계에 2000기의 원자력 발전소가  있다면은 10년에 한번꼴로 고장이 납니다.

그런데 아래의 기사를 보면은 더 자주 일어나겠습니다.  세계 멸망하는 건 시간문제????   무서워~~~~

In the fall of 2007, workers at the Byron nuclear power plant in Illinois were using a wire brush to clean a badly corroded steel pipe — one in a series that circulate cooling water to essential emergency equipment — when something unexpected happened: the brush poked through.

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The resulting leak caused a 12-day shutdown of the two reactors for repairs.

The plant’s owner, the Exelon Corporation, had long known that corrosion was thinning most of these pipes. But rather than fix them, it repeatedly lowered the minimum thickness it deemed safe. By the time the pipe broke, Exelon had declared that pipe walls just three-hundredths of an inch thick — less than one-tenth the original minimum thickness — would be good enough.

Though no radioactive material was released, safety experts say that if enough pipes had ruptured during a reactor accident, the result could easily have been a nuclear catastrophe at a plant just 100 miles west of Chicago.

Exelon’s risky decisions occurred under the noses of on-site inspectors from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. No documented inspection of the pipes was made by anyone from the N.R.C. for at least the eight years preceding the leak, and the agency also failed to notice that Exelon kept lowering the acceptable standard, according to a subsequent investigation by the commission’s inspector general.

Exelon’s penalty? A reprimand for two low-level violations — a tepid response all too common at the N.R.C., said George A. Mulley Jr., a former investigator with the inspector general’s office who led the Byron inquiry. “They always say, ‘Oh, but nothing happened,’ ” Mr. Mulley said. “Well, sooner or later, our luck — you know, we’re going to end up rolling craps.”

Critics have long painted the commission as well-intentioned but weak and compliant, and incapable of keeping close tabs on an industry to which it remains closely tied. The concerns have greater urgency because of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, which many experts say they believe was caused as much by lax government oversight as by a natural disaster.

The Byron pipe leak is just one recent example of the agency’s shortcomings, critics say. It has also taken nearly 30 years for the commission to get effective fireproofing installed in plants after an accident in Alabama. The N.R.C.’s decision to back down in a standoff with the operator of an Ohio plant a decade ago meant that a potentially dangerous hole went undetected for months. And the number of civil penalties paid by licensees has plummeted nearly 80 percent since the late 1990s — a reflection, critics say, of the commission’s inclination to avoid ruffling the feathers of the nuclear industry and its Washington lobbyists.

Although the agency says plants are operating more safely today than they were at the dawn of the nuclear industry, when shutdowns were common, safety experts, Congressional critics and even the agency’s own internal monitors say the N.R.C. is prone to dither when companies complain that its proposed actions would cost time or money. The promise of lucrative industry work after officials leave the commission probably doesn’t help, critics say, pointing to dozens over the years who have taken jobs with nuclear power companies and lobbying firms.

Now, as most of the country’s 104 aging reactors are applying for, and receiving, 20-year extensions from the N.R.C on their original 40-year licenses, reform advocates say a thorough review of the system is urgently needed.

The agency’s shortcomings are especially vexing because Congress created it in the mid-1970s to separate the government’s roles as safety regulator and promoter of nuclear energy — an inherent conflict that dogged its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission.

“It wasn’t much of a change,” said Peter A. Bradford, a former N.R.C. commissioner who now teaches at Vermont Law School. “The N.R.C. inherited the regulatory staff and adopted the rules and regulations of the A.E.C. intact.”

Mr. Bradford said the nuclear industry had implicitly or explicitly supported every nomination to the commission until Gregory B. Jaczko’s in 2005. Mr. Jaczko, who was elevated to chairman by President Obama in 2009, had previously worked for both Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat and longtime critic of the nuclear industry, and Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and current Senate majority leader who sought to block a nuclear waste repository in his state.

[한선인(규석)]

원자력에 관한 해외 언론도 살펴보시다니 대단하십니다.
영어는 잘 모르므로 포대화상님의 글만 읽고 넘깁니다. 히힛

[Astroboy(용준)]

ㅎㅎ 원자력이 좋기는 하지만 일단 일이 생기면 타격이 크니 신중해야죠.
우리가 할 수 있는 일은 없으니...