There's a 30 foot hairline crack in a containment building at a nuclear plant in Cleveland. No sweat off my brow you say? I don't live anywhere near the great lakes. Let somebody else deal with it it's their problem. And there in lies the rub as Shakespeare would say. Much of our aging infrastructure has gone without inspection for far too long. With the shear amount of items to be checked it wouldn't surprise me if many items go without inspection because we've lost touch with what needs inspecting with changes of personnel and shifting responsibilities. Cities moving the job to counties, counties moving it to the state while the state lost funds from the federal government so nobody does the job anymore. Only when an accident occurs does responsibility surface and it's usually not pretty.
Back to the example one Davis - Besse Nuclear plant on the south shore of Lake Erie. I've worked with concrete for some 20 years as part of haz mat. We often had to remove concrete walls and floors to get to the bad stuff. Even the best quality concrete has a life span. On average it's about 50 years but over that period the material slowly becomes brittle. As it passes about 40 years it becomes far easier to remove because it's strength has diminished. Most of our nuclear plants are closing in on the 40 year mark. But once again greed is raising it's ugly head. With so much money invested in such an operation companies are trying to squeeze every nickel out of the aging structures. So I have to ask at what point do the returns on the dollar diminish? When will the game of chicken end? Like a game of Jinga one more chance is taken until the structure falls apart only the consequences this time won't be putting the pieces on the floor back in the game box.
And one last note, this was the agency that the absentminded Rick Perry couldn't remember that he'd like to rid us of, the Department of Energy which inspects and certifies these nuclear power plants. He's the guy who railed against any stimulus package while at the same time stuffed the state coffers with that very same money.
bank fails later Update: one bank failed in GA this week bringing the total to over 400 banks since the mess started.
7 comments:
I bet THAT concrete aged faster due to being blasted with gamma rays....
I would bet my paycheck that all this "nuke" plant stuff in this country will catch up with us sooner or later ... we have managed to have a leadership take over in this counrty that dont really care much about nothing.
Good points. Perry is the energy industry's walking wet dream of a president. They better be careful who they wish for, because if they get him it might be their ultimate undoing.
We can't change anything so we only have hope of one thing, that we die before things get bad.
I don't think that kind of energy is going away but I often think that it may be easier to deal with if the units were much smaller, it wouldn't take a very large unit to power this town.
On the other hand, we have so many rivers and streams here that we could power this area with them, done properly so the fish can still use them.
Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh ... I like your style BBC, it dont get much more straight than you! : )
But all caca aside as far as the funnies ... we have the tool's to do so much in this nation as far as change, we lack folk's in leadership with any backbone, creativity, vision of any kind, who simply follow the leader. These folk's that run shit with their money ... well ... get shit done that's in their best interest ... you can bank on it though, that this cesspool will "fail" in time ... let's just call it "physic's" and "math" : )
This radiation better result in superpowers and not the grave, though Crane Creek is right over there, and trying to avoid 50-foot birds with giant legs is gonna be a doozy of a time.
That cat looks like he's staring into a cyclone.
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