Why (baseload) generators are terrified of solar

[kristopher]

28. So you think people should be forced to live around nuclear plants they believe are unsafe?

Beyond our imagination: Fukushima and the problem of assessing risk
Severe accidents at nuclear reactors have occurred much more frequently than what risk-assessment models predicted.
BY M. V. RAMANA | 19 APRIL 2011

The probabilistic risk assessment method does a poor job of anticipating accidents in which a single event, such as a tsunami, causes failures in multiple safety systems.

Catastrophic nuclear accidents are inevitable, because designers and risk modelers cannot envision all possible ways in which complex systems can fail.
The multiple and ongoing accidents at the Fukushima reactors come as a reminder of the hazards associated with nuclear power. As with the earlier severe accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, it will take a long time before the full extent of what happened at Fukushima becomes clear. Even now, though, Fukushima sheds light on the troublesome and important question of whether nuclear reactors can ever be operated safely.

Engineers and other technical experts have two approaches for making nuclear reactors safe: The first is to design the reactor so that it is likely to recover from various initiating failures -- lowering the probability that the damage will spread, even in the absence of any protective actions, automatic or deliberate. The second approach, used in addition to the first, is to incorporate multiple protective systems, all of which would have to fail before a radioactive release could occur. This latter approach is known as "defense-in-depth," and it is often advertised as an assurance of nuclear safety. The World Nuclear Association, for example, claims that "reactors in the western world" use defense-in-depth "to achieve optimum safety."

Within this perspective, accidents are usually blamed, at least in part, on a lack of properly functioning safety systems, or on poor technical design. For example, analysts typically traced the catastrophic impacts of the Chernobyl accident to the reactor's lack of containment and its behavior when being operated at low power. Similarly, in response to the current Fukushima accidents, many analysts have focused on the weaknesses of the reactors' Mark 1 containment system.

Unfortunately, focusing on individual components -- rather than the system as a whole -- gives analysts a false sense of security. Here's how their thinking goes: For each safety system, there is only a small chance of failure at any given time, so it's exceedingly unlikely that more than one safety system will fail at the same moment. A severe accident can't happen unless multiple safety systems fail simultaneously or sequentially. Therefore, a severe accident is exceedingly unlikely....

More at: http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/beyond-our-imagination-fukushima-and-the-problem-of-assessing-risk

How long can nuclear reactors last? US, industry extend spans
'What they're saying is really a fabrication,' retired reactor designer says
ROCKVILLE, Md. — When commercial nuclear power was getting its start in the 1960s and 1970s, industry and regulators stated unequivocally that reactors were designed only to operate for 40 years. Now they tell another story — insisting that the units were built with no inherent life span, and can run for up to a century, an Associated Press investigation shows.
By rewriting history, plant owners are making it easier to extend the lives of dozens of reactors in a relicensing process that resembles nothing more than an elaborate rubber stamp.
As part of a yearlong investigation of aging issues at the nation's nuclear power plants, the AP found that the relicensing process often lacks fully independent safety reviews. Records show that paperwork of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sometimes matches word-for-word the language used in a plant operator's application.
Also, the relicensing process relies heavily on such paperwork, with very little onsite inspection and verification...

Editor's note: Links to the first three parts of this four-part series are at the end of this report.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43556350/ns/us_news-environment/#.T4jqEu3N7dl

Vermont has a plan to replace the plant's output, have you bothered to look for it?
As for plants that haven't reached the end of their design life, they would be subject to the forces demonstrated in the OP.