Duke Energy nuclear plant relied for 28 years on a backup emergency cooling system that didn't work.

[TalkingDog]

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/02/29/3054182/nuke-safety-report-cites-duke.html

Plant workers had discovered a problem with a backup system designed to cool the reactor after an accident. The Union of Concerned Scientists said Duke had installed the system in 1983, a few years after the partial meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant. The two plants share a similar design.

The problem was in electrical breakers that are part of the plant's Standby Shutdown Facility, a backup control room that could be used to stabilize the plant in an emergency. The breakers were designed to open if they sensed overheating but turned out to open at too-low temperatures inside the reactor building.

If an accident occurred, the open breakers could hurt the system's ability to cool the reactor core.

The breakers Duke used had not been tested to verify they would work at elevated temperatures, the NRC said. "As a result, the (standby facility) was inoperable from 1983 until June 1, 2011," the agency said in citing Duke for a violation in December.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/02/29/3054182/nuke-safety-report-cites-duke.html#storylink=cpy

[mother earth]

1. Nuclear energy needs to be stopped. Why would we want anything in place that can be so lethal &

over which there seems to be little, to no control or power to reign in when there's a problem? It seems it's cost effectiveness is at an outlandish and lethal cost. Makes no sense to me, and Fukushima takes the prize in proving this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

What does it take for us to realize it makes more sense to preserve and value life rather than dollars?