It's safe to leave your bunker: Blame that Chinese nuclear plant alarm on fuel rod faults

You may have seen in the news some panic about a Chinese nuclear reactor going wrong, and a warning of an "imminent radiological threat." Well, don't worry: it's a routine fuel rod problem. CNN claimed an exclusive on Monday after seeing a June 8 memo indicating there was a build up of "noble gases in the primary circuit" of …

[VE3ID]

A new movie perhaps?

After this news.perhaps they will produce a new movie, perhaps called the 'Three Mile Island Syndrome'?

[Winkypop]

Re: A new movie perhaps?

Well played sir

[Paul Hovnanian]

Re: A new movie perhaps?

Quickly! Everyone behind the sofa.

[teknopaul]

Re: A new movie perhaps?

Hide From CNN

[Winkypop]

released in "accordance with regulations,"

Hey somebody open a window!

[bombastic bob]

Re: released in "accordance with regulations,"

"a buildup of noble gasses"

There is only ONE thing that can cause this: Fuel Element Failure. (the article does describe this)

Fuel rod containment failed and allowed fission products into the primary coolant. Not only could this corrupt the physics parameters [because fuel can ALSO circulate] it can greatly increase the radiation hazards when working on the plant while it is shut down ['crud' traps with dangerous levels of gamma radiation, as opposed to something you could work near by for a few hours without it endangering your life]. F.E.F.'s are BAD.

Any leaks between primary and secondary systems (even tiny ones) can cause fission product gasses to end up in the 'air ejector' system of the secondary plant, which then radioactively decay into particulate matter (like Cs and Rb) which end up in the lungs and cause longer term damage. They'd also increase background radiation levels in the steam plant.

The only thing worse than a gross F.E.F. is a MELTDOWN [which is also a type of F.E.F.]

If this gas accumulation is SO bad that they have to release it (via a 'de-gas' operation which should be infrequent) into the atmosphere at levels above French safety standards, it HAS to be at least SERIOUS.

As I mentioned, fission product gasses (typically Xe and Kr) decay into particulates (typically Cs and Rb), which (as particulate) stay in your lungs for a while after you breathe in, and create "longer" term radiation damage. it's not like you can go outside and breathe fresh air to get rid of it. There is a known "biological half life" for removal of the radioactive particulates. I think it is a month or so.

The article points out that TINY F.E.F.s are acceptable (still bad but you can operate). This is why limits exist. If you are above the limit, your problem is SERIOUS and you need to SHUT DOWN and FIX it. And everything I have read in the article suggests that it's SERIOUS enough to SHUT IT DOWN, at the very least. Then they can replace or repair the affected rod and start it up again. That could take weeks, though [you would probably have to wait for decay heat and radiation to be sufficiently low, etc. beforehand]

(you KNOW the N.R.C. in the U.S. would have shut them down!)

it appears, though, that all eggs may be in one basket and there's no other source of electricity that can make up for the temporary loss of this power plant. Lack of proper planning aside, the pressure is ON to KEEP IT RUNNING ANYWAY.

We can expect further information leaking out about this event to be "filtered" accordingly. Unlike the gas releases...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully, anyone who understands the operation of nuclear reactors knew not to panic. This clip explains the perfectly normal condition and how it's handled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGzkUgTgpa4

[Potemkine!]

anyone who understands the operation of nuclear reactors knew not to panic.

But having the people panicking was the point of media!

When people are led by their emotions, they can be manipulated much more easily.

[N2]

Indeed, I believe about 40,000 people self evacuated when steam was released from the TMI2 plant during their partial meltdown, whoops I mean 'incident'.

[bombastic bob]

nice video - very "educational" - heh

[Velv]

This leaking Taishan Nuclear Power Plant, the one EDF designed and built for the Chinese. Would that be the same design they're building at Hinkley Point and featuring in the BBC Documentary?

[Julz]

Yep, pretty much the same. It seems they are doing a good job of shaking down some of the initial teething problems before Hinkley Point C goes on stream.

[Anonymous Coward]

judging by the numbers from China's nuclear monitors

Annnnnd that fills us with confidence?

There is a bit of a track record of Chinas authorities not declaring precisely whats going on. Its a cultural (revolution) thing - bad news isn't acceptable.

Gawd only knows whether this really happened as described. Even the leadership likely doesnt.

[MiguelC]

Re: judging by the numbers from China's nuclear monitors

That's (another) problem with authoritarian regimes, bearers of bad news are often shot, which lead to bad news only being disclosed when there's no way of hiding them any more, usually too late to easily deal with their causes

[rg287]

Re: judging by the numbers from China's nuclear monitors

The nice(?) thing about nuclear incidents is you don't need to trust the host government.

Any given reactor will produce very specific fission products, which means that within a day or two, international neighbours will know whether a reactor is leaking or has suffered an "incident" even if the host nation is busy telling you with a straight face that everything is fine.

The recent HBO series on Chernobyl simplified aspects of it, but generally did a good job of explaining the context of the incident, and in particular showed very effectively how scientists across Europe knew that a reactor was open even as Soviet leadership were insisting everything was under control. You can't argue with nuclear physics.

Also, we have very good quality, high frequency satellite imagery available.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: judging by the numbers from China's nuclear monitors

All true, but the point being made here is a good one: by the time that's happened, it's far too late to get the problem under control and many people who might otherwise have been unharmed have been irradiated, contaminated with dangerous fission products, or killed outright. Ideally we'd probably like minor problems to be dealt with when they're still minor instead of having a thug regime cover them up until half the planet is radiologically contaminated and a thousand square km have to be permanently evacuated.

Transparency matters. The Soviet Union didn't practice it and neither do China. If a "western" government tell me everything is just fine at a nuclear power plant, I'm deeply sceptical because they place far too much emphasis on "avoiding panic" and far too little on just telling the truth and letting the adults who pay their salaries make choices for themselves. The truth usually comes out pretty quickly, but often not soon enough to prevent avoidable harm. If China say the same thing, I assume they're lying and have taken active steps to hide the truth, such as disappearing whistleblowers, shredding documentation, and burying physical evidence. See the difference?

[teknopaul]

Re: judging by the numbers from China's nuclear monitors

This is a French designed reactor and EDF are producing the information, or lying.

It's physically located in China, or theregister is lying.

And its not a terribly serious incident: or the register is lying, Katie is lying, EDF are lying, the US govt is lying and so are CNN.

So the only people telling the truth are you and Bombastic Bob?

[AndersH]

3.6

Hopefully this isn't a "not great, not terrible" moment. Interesting read. As a layman I imagined (without having really thought much about it) that a nuclear power plant was all slick sci-fi style high-tech, but in fact it sounds like old-skool industrial processes with equipment subject to wear. I think I preferred my fantasy-land version...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 3.6

"a nuclear power plant was all slick sci-fi style high-tech"

It's actually a cheapest subcontractors & corners cut affair like everything else. It's just the smaller leaks (the most frequent) usually go unnoticed by the general public and even the neighbors, radioactivity being invisible and the escaped radioactive elements eventually decaying into something else.

[teknopaul]

Re: 3.6

xenon leaks are invisible, but so is methane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 3.6

James Mahaffey's Atomic Accidents is a great read if you want a better understanding. Definitely no sci-fi magic there. One of the points he makes is that the technology we use for commercial nuclear power is probably the wrong one, based on a frozen-in-time choice made long ago (and no, he doesn't rave about fast breeder reactors -- there are some compelling examples of the problems there too). When you factor in how long it takes to get construction and operating licenses, it's obvious that every plant operating today is a very old version of a very old idea. You're basically walking back into the 1960s.

[Robert Sneddon]

Super Sci-fi

Inside the reactor vessel and piping and circulating pumps and steam generator loops filled with hundreds of tonnes of water at 200 bar pressure and a temperature of over 350 deg C there are a few milligrammes (if that) of radioactive material that shouldn't be there. The slick sci-fi style high-tech monitoring systems in place are detecting this miniscule anomaly in real-time and flagging up a warning and even identifying which kind of radioactive isotopes they are. That's actually kind of impressive.

[martinusher]

Obviously, if its China....

We all "know" that it will have been assembled in a slapdash fashion, run haphazardly by a bunch of untrained workers who are afraid for their lives so can't report problems.....you know the sort of thing, its the normal 'fill in the blanks' reporting about China we get these days.

The reaction's actually a French design, it was built by EDF. Its similar to one being built in the UK in Somerset.

[dmesg]

Re: Obviously, if its China....

Yeah ... it's not like they could land a rover on Mars on the first try or anything.