Is it possible to be so isolated, so eccentric, and have such a unique view of reality, that the sum effect is tantamount to living as a caveman? Can the scanning of dense indecipherable documents by a caveman bring any useful results? Just because a caveman stays at a Holiday Inn one night (in the dumpster, of course), does that make him suddenly NOT the only Neanderthal in town? Is a "Quest For Fire" a smart thing, when everybody else has electric heating?
Had the engineering world remained stuck in a 1979 time warp, much of what Porgie Tirebiter writes about EPRI research into aging management might seem to an outsider to be true. However, what is NOT contained in any report, is the difference in methodology, a rennaissance of ways and means, that has taken place since the current array of nuclear power plants was designed and built.
Prior to the general, routine use of computer calculation to model engineering problems, the community of responsible engineers faced a large problem of calculability. Its a tough word CALCULABILITY. Sliderules, and small hand calculators were the only tools available before the 1983 introduction of the PC, and Lotus123. Large problems, such as designing buildings, were thought to be not calculable, to any precision.
Actually, they could have been precisely modeled, but the time required would have meant either years of repeat calcs, each time changing the input a little, or else whole gymnasiums full of willing engineers, each one doing a slightly different math run. To do business, to get results in a timely fashion, so that a profit could be made, and safe buildings could be built in months, instead of in decades, required a different tactic.
The tactic used, was the limiting case.(By another, less attractive name, it has also been called the "worst case scenario".) The limiting case was used in tandem with the "safety factor" in a specific way, to intentionally overbuild everything, just to be sure. Not knowing exactly where a concrete dome would fail, engineers calculated the strength they thought would be required at its worst case, and then multiplied their result by five (the safety factor), and the dome was built accordingly.
The fleet of 104 American nuclear plants is therefore built much stronger than it needs to be, in fact. It is also much stronger than it needs to be in every detail, because every detail, such as thickness of a pipe, the amount of rebar in a concrete wall, the number of anchors holding a support to the rock, etc., was calculated by the same obsolete intentional overkill.
Intentional overkill was the best tool they had, back then.
But not now.
What Porgie sees as a vast evil conspiracy to allow failure (and cover it up) is not that at all.Porgie assumes everything done by any corporation is evil, and he assumes that everything either done, or not done, by NRC is a failure to live up to something. However, he forgets that the 104 plant owners, and the NRC do not exist to educate Porgie in Engineering realities, but to serve the public.
EPRI research is done to discover, with modern precision, just how strong the plants really are. Yes, it is calculated at each plant, because each plant IS different. Yes, there is no overall program of making results known to the public, because it is ongoing, it is vastly complicated, it is funded by individual plant owners, and thus too huge an information store for Porgie (or any other civilian) to understand. What Porgie sees as an NRC "conspiracy" to "hide" the facts of plant aging from activists, is simply the collection of 104 sets of separate results, and the conscientious use of those results to individually manage the individual plants. No plant owner wants any failures. Each plant owner wants a viable long-lived asset, to provide his paid service to the communities of customers thirsting for power.
Porgie not only omits any consideration of the 80% of the public who are not offended by the plants (like he is), but he omits any consideration of the 100% of the public who are using their services right now.
Are you willing to pay your electic bill, so you can have modern civilization? Of course you are. This is not some sleazy "conspiracy", it is the civil compact of our very society. Porgie misreads this banal cooperation, as some dark plot to confuse activists, hermits, and those "illuminati" who "realize" that its better to live in a cave, than to allow humankind to utilize the power in the atomic nucleus.
From that eccentric's, hermit's, caveman's point of view, I guess that yes, it may be a plot. Sorry, Porg!
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TAGS: indian point porgie epri nrc martinelli sherwood nuclear
