Fukushima - they are planning to move fuel rods from the hottest spent storage pool in Nov. (scary)

[progree]

1. The problem of spent fuel storage pools at nuclear power plants

In the other thread that was locked for not being late-breaking news, there was a discussion beginning of nuclear power plant spent storage pools. Here's an article I remember reading about it a long time ago -- a much over-looked problem / mode of failure.

NUCLEAR WARRIORS, Time Magazine, June 24, 2001

(about nuclear industry whistle-blowers trying to do something about the dangerous situation of spent nuclear fuel pools at nuclear power plant sites)

The pools weren't designed for this purpose, and risk is involved: the rods must be submerged at all times. A cooling system must dissipate the intense heat they give off. If the system failed, the pool could boil, turning the plant into a lethal sauna filled with clouds of radioactive steam. And if earthquake, human error or mechanical failure drained the pool, the result could be catastrophic: a meltdown of multiple cores taking place outside the reactor containment, releasing massive amounts of radiation and rendering hundreds of square miles uninhabitable.

... Finally, he took the case to the NRC himself, only to discover that officials there had known about the procedure for a decade without moving to stop it. The NRC says the practice is common, and safe--if a plant's cooling system is designed to handle the heat load. But Millstone's wasn't. And when Galatis learned that plants in Delaware, Nebraska and New Jersey had similar fuel-pool troubles, he realized the NRC was sitting on a nationwide problem.

... In fact, Millstone is merely the latest in a long string of cases in which the NRC bungled its mandate and overlooked serious safety problems until whistle blowers came forward (see box).

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,135575,00.html#ixzz2buxU9EGE