Joe discusses the failures and costs of nuclear containment systems.
By: Joe Makoto
-Opinions Editor-
“A gas-tight shell or other enclosure around a nuclear reactor to confine fission products that otherwise might be released to the atmosphere in the event of an accident.” Nuclear Regulatory Commission Glossary.
Nuclear reactors in the West (the non-ex-Soviet world) all have a “containment structure”. Containments have one extremely critical job; keeping radioactive particles inside of the containment if a core meltdown ever occurs. Rarely have they been put to a real world test.
However, in March 2011 at Fukushima Dai-Ichi, the General Electric Mark I containments were put to a real world test and failed to perform this vital function. Not just once but three times. Of the three operating Mark I reactors, all three developed substantial leaks of radioactive material. The consequences of these failures will linger for a long time.
The cost of failure would be somewhat excusable if these failures were unexpected; but sadly they were not.
According to reporting by Tom Zeller, Jr., of The New York Times, “In 1972, Stephen H. Hanauer, then a safety official with the Atomic Energy Commission, recommended that the Mark 1 system be discontinued because it presented unacceptable safety risks. Among the concerns cited was the smaller containment design, which was more susceptible to explosion and rupture from a buildup in hydrogen.”
Also, according to Fairewinds, a nuclear safety advocacy group, a test at the Brunswick Plant in North Carolina showed that “When [the Mark I containment] was pressurized, it was pressurized to just about 100 pounds and then something really strange and unexpected happened. The top, the head of the containment, began to lift off of the bottom of the containment.”
In other words, the containment system failed to cope with the pressure.
We are now aware that the Mark I containment has been put to both real world tests and a hypothetical test and has failed at both. We should stop pretending that the Mark I containments will perform well in the catastrophic event of a core meltdown. However you feel about nuclear power in general, of which there can be much debate, no one can rightly claim that we should continue to rely on an old technology that has a record of failure. Shutting down operating Mark I reactors promptly should be a top priority.
