{"id":47852,"date":"2019-08-17T09:11:40","date_gmt":"2019-08-17T14:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=47852"},"modified":"2019-08-17T09:16:37","modified_gmt":"2019-08-17T14:16:37","slug":"limate-change-risks-could-cause-an-american-fukushima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=47852","title":{"rendered":"Climate change risks could cause an American \u201cFukushima\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/2019\/climate-change-risks-could-cause-an-american-fukushima\/\">Climate change risks could cause an American \u201cFukushima\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/energyskeptic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/nuclear-meltdown-climate-change-flooding.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-11112\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Preface<\/strong>. Nuclear power plants need a constant supply of electric power to pump cool water into a reactor\u2019s core.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ninety percent of them, 54 plants, have at least one flood risk exceeding their design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If flooding stops the power supply long enough, as happened in Fukushima, the core can overheat, melting through its container, as well as the nearby spent nuclear fuel pools which unlike the core, are in the open air, releasing deadly levels of radiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*** Some excerpts from:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Flavelle, C., et al. 2019.\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/graphics\/2019-nuclear-power-plants-climate-change\/\"><strong>U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Weren\u2019t Built for Climate Change<\/strong><\/a><strong>. Bloomberg.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The NRC directed the operators of the 60 or so working U.S. nuclear power plants to evaluate their current flood risk, using the latest weather modeling technology and accounting for the effects of climate change. Companies were told to compare those risks with what their plants, many almost 50 years old, were built to withstand, and, where there was a gap, to explain how they would close it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That process has revealed a lot of gaps. But Gregory Jaczko, former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and others say that the commission\u2019s new leadership, appointed by President Donald Trump, hasn\u2019t done enough to require owners of nuclear power plants to take preventative measures\u2014and that the risks are increasing as climate change worsens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ninety percent of plants, 54 of them, have at least one flood risk exceeding their design. Fifty-three weren\u2019t built to withstand their current risk from intense precipitation; 25 didn\u2019t account for current flood projections from streams and rivers; 19 weren\u2019t designed for their expected maximum storm surge; 19 face three or more threats that they weren\u2019t designed to handle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Climate change risks could cause an American \u201cFukushima\u201d Preface. Nuclear power plants need a constant supply of electric power to pump cool water into a reactor\u2019s core. Ninety percent of them, 54 plants, have at least one flood risk exceeding their design. If flooding stops the power supply long enough, as happened in Fukushima, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[11836,141,11859,1001,340,1832],"class_list":["post-47852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-alice-friedemann","tag-climate-change","tag-energy-skeptic","tag-flooding","tag-fukushima","tag-nuclear-power-plants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47852"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47854,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47852\/revisions\/47854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}