The Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant is seen in the early morning hours March 28, 2011 in Middletown, Pennsylvania. (Photo: Jeff Fusco/Getty Images)
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The COVID Pandemic has thrown America’s atomic reactor industry into lethal chaos, making a major disaster even more likely. Reports from “terrified” workers at a Pennsylvania reactor indicate vital precautions needed to protect them may not even be possible.
Nationwide, with falling demand and soaring prices for nuke-generated electricity, the pandemic casts a dark shadow over reactor operations and whether frightened neighbors will allow them to be refueled and repaired.
America’s 96 remaining atomic reactors are run by a coveted pool of skilled technicians who manage the control rooms, conduct repairs, load/unload nuclear fuel.
Because few young students have been entering the field, the corps of about 100,000 licensed technicians has been—like the reactors themselves—rapidly aging while declining in numbers. Work has stopped at the last two US reactors under construction (at Vogtle, Georgia) due to the pandemic’s impact, which includes a shrinking supply of healthy workers.
Every reactor control room requires five operators at all times. But the physical space is limited there and in plant hot spots that need frequent, often demanding repairs. Social distancing is virtually impossible. Long shifts in confined spaces undermine operator safety and performance.
Of critical importance: every 18-24 months each reactor must shut for refueling and repairs. Itinerant crews of 1000 to 1500 technicians travel to 58 sites in 29 states, usually staying 30-60 days. They often board with local families, or in RVs, hotels, or Air B&Bs.
Some 54 reactors have been scheduled for refuel/repairs in 2020. But there is no official, organized program to test the workers for the Coronavirus as they move around the country.
As the pandemic thins the workforce, older operators are being called out of retirement. The Trump-run Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently certified 16-hour work days, 86-hour work weeks, and up to 14 consecutive days with 12-hour shifts.
Long-time nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen warns of fatigued operators falling asleep on the job. He recalls at least one exhausted worker falling into the highly radioactive pool surrounding the high-level fuel rods. Operator fatigue also helped cause the 1979 melt-down that destroyed Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island Unit Two.
The industry is now using the coronavirus pandemic to rush through a wide range of deregulation demands. Among them is a move to allow radioactive waste to be dumped into municipal landfills.
The NRC may also certify skipping vital repairs, escalating the likelihood of major breakdowns and melt-downs. Nearly all US reactors were designed and built in the pre-digital age, more than 30 years ago. Most are in advanced decay. Atomic expert David Lochbaum, formerly with the NRC, warns that failure risks from longer work hours and deferred repairs could be extremely significant, and could vary from reactor to reactor depending on their age and condition […]
via Terrified Atomic Workers Warn That the COVID-19 Pandemic May Threaten Nuclear Reactor Disaster
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“As the pandemic thins the workforce, older operators are being called out of retirement. The Trump-run Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently certified 16-hour work days, 86-hour work weeks, and up to 14 consecutive days with 12-hour shifts.”
I say: Lots of reason to be terrified!!
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No reason to be terrified auntyuta. If my life’s experience means anything and I remember how oil and nuclear power workers reacted to environmentalists then most of ’em very likely voted for Trump so all they have to do is wear their MAGA hats and all will be honky dory in the kingdom.
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I looked up MAGA hats:
https://www.google.com/search?q=maga+hat&oq=MAGA&aqs=chrome.5.69i57j0l6j69i60.7201j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Yes, of course, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
This is it. No worries. All will be well! Not only in America, but in the rest of the world too. Well, at 85 I have noe reason to be terrified, right? At least not for myself. But what about the survival of mankind, including all of my descendants?
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They’ll just have to buy MAGA hats… and proudly wear them, won’t they. That’s the gospel according to Donald Trump!
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The ability of Trump supporters to do this is classic compartamentalization.
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Aunty, if we are serious about ordinary people taking back society from the capitalists, then some of us will need to figure out how to safely decomission the nuclear power plants. That’s the only real stumbling block I see.
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A great stumbling block indeed!
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Everything about the nuclear generation issue was and is wrong. 1, does not design and build an electrical generation system that creates a deadly waste product…unless of course that was the plan from day 1!
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That never occurred to me, ecovortx – that they might have done it deliberately.
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The powers that run america, are ignoring the great nuclear power plant, fire and meltdown risks. They have accelerated the risks since fukushima. They have added fuel to the fire of nuclear confrontation, through tactical nukes and first strike paradigms.
The countries with major nuclear meltdowns, have only slipped further into risk of nuclear self-destruction and nuclear-world pollution from the economic hardship and political problems caused, by their meltdowns ie Japan and Ukraine. Ukraine has nuclear powerplants, seriously on the verge of going off.
The same can be said of Russia and America if they have serious nuclear accidents or, as they continue to allow risks to grow exponentially in times of dangerous demagogery and authoritarianism. There is the looming riak of nuclear war in times of destabilized nuclear armed and nuclear powered countries.
There are multiple reactors and reactor cores in space now. There is other non-nuclear garbage in space now, along with nuclear garbage from plutonium batteries. The amount of garbage can spiral into multiple reactor cores plummeting to earth. Far more impending, than asteroid risks.
They will have to put up 40,000 satellites, to make 5g work. Asteroids are not our greatest short term threats from space.
There is enough nuclear pollution in the biosphere, to have devastating effects on our immune systems and genome, yet no one speaks of it in relation to the covid epidemic.
What a tragic-painful and sad way to end human life and most all life on earth
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Your comment is both profound and disturbing, Richard. It’s also like the ruling class has deep seated self-destructive urges they can’t understand or control.
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