Interview with Greg Minor,
Former Senior Nuclear Engineer
with General Electric, the worlds
largest supplier of nuclear equipment.
Mr. Minor is now a leading
Californian anti-nuclear activist and
was a consultant for the film "China
Syndrome".
In 1976 Minor with two other senior
engineers from General Electric
resigned because they had come to
believe that nuclear energy represented
a "profound threat to man". Together
the three experts had 54 years
experience in the nuclear industry. Greg
Minor is interviewed by Mike Rann.
Rann: What prompted your decision to
resign from General Electric.
Minor: Well, it was a series of events
that happened over several years, but
some of the primary reasons include the
fact that I began to see the link between
the nuclear reactor programme we are
using for commercial power and the
weapons problem which is being
proliferated around the world. There
were also a series of accidents and
problems occurring, such as the
Browns Ferry incident in Alabama. This
was a plant I had worked on and it came
dangerously close to the accident we
are all trying to prevent.
Rann: What actually happened at
Browns Ferry?
Minor: Browns Ferry was a plant
where we had done very careful and
improved design to try to prevent a
single event from wiping out all the
emergency systems that are used to
protect the reactor and protect the
public from an accident. But what had
basically happened was that a single
event, a fire caused by a lighted candle
being used by an electrician checking
airflow in the cable spreading room -
wiped out 1,600 cables which connect
the control room with the reactor. In
doing so, the fire - which burned for
seven hours - wiped out all the safety
functions of the emergency core cooling
systems that are normally called on in an
emergency condition to save the reactor
from a dangerous situation. Fortunately
it didn't quite come to the condition
where it needed those emergency core
cooling systems. If it had, they would not
have been available. (Two of Browns
Ferry reactors, supplying 15% of the
total electricity demand for the huge
Tennessee Valley Authority, had to be
"scrammed" when erratic readings
began to appear on the controls.
Browns Ferry was out of action for
column2:
many months and repairs cost tens of
millions of dollars. Until the Three Mile
Island/Harrisburg incident in April 1979,
the Browns Ferry incident was regarded
by nuclear critics and advocates alike as
potentially the most serious incident in
the history of the nuclear industry.)
Rann: The Browns Ferry incident was
really the culmination of a number of
very silly mistakes, particularly human
error. If the safety and control systems
could be made more foolproof, would
this remove most of your doubts about
nuclear power?
Minor: Well, I think the thing we learnt
from the Browns Ferry plant was that
you cannot make them more foolproof.
The thing that happens is that human
element. Human error in either design
oversight or the problems we didn't
foresee in designing the plant, or in the
manufacturing where a manufacturer
didn't follow the quality procedures or
the installation procedures, or
maintenance problems. It was a
maintenance problems that happened
to catch Browns Ferry. But it could be
any of those that would produce the
accident in some other plant, regardless
of how carefully you think you have
designed it.
Rann: Supporters of nuclear power
say it is cleaner than other forms of
power generation. They say it is less
wasteful, less environmentally
disruptive. When you look at the track
T record of nuclear power generation over
the years, isn't the Browns Ferry
incident really the exception that proves
the rule: the rule being that nuclear
power is efficient and pretty well safe?
Minor: Well, you have to be very careful
in making that statement about
cleanliness. A nuclear reactor is only
clean if it operates exactly as it is
designed and these incidents around
the United States and around the world
where reactors have released radio-
activity into the environment, which they
are not designed to release, and which ·
really overrides the rule of cleanliness
they all like to speak about. The Browns
Ferry incident was, as far as proving the
rule that reactors are safe and clean, I
would say, quite the opposite. It proves
that they are vulnerable and they were
very lucky that this reactor accident
didn't go all the way.
Rann: What about the potential
benefits? Most proponents of nuclear
energy would concede that the risk can
never be zeroed, but don't the benefits
from nuclear power more than
column3:
compensate for what the proponents
describe as a very slight risk?
Minor: In my opinion they do not. The
risks are so large that it is hard to put it
on a scale that we normally think of in
any mechanical or technical disaster.
The risks of a nuclear accident can be so
devastating and so widespread and last
such enormously long periods of time.
We are talking about thousands and
thousands of years of contamination of
an area which may make it
uninhabitable forever. These are
dangers of a scale we do not normally
think of.
Rann: What sort of catastrophe, then,
could have resulted from the Browns
Ferry incident?
Minor: The danger at Browns Ferry
was that during the process of trying to
get this reactor under control, when it
column 4:
experienced this devastating fire which
was burning up the control cables, the
operators had to relieve the pressure
inside the reactor and in doing so they
had to manually open some valves
which normally they would not open.
But in manually opening those valves
they released the pressure but they also
lost a large part of the cooling water that
normally covers the reactor core, and
that's the concern. Because it you lose
the cooling water and it gets below the
surface of the core, then you begin to
have core melting and the danger
would be that this core melting would
release radioactive material which was
contained in there. If it went on further to
melt out of the pressure vessel and out of
the containing building, in a "China
Syndrome" situation, then you would
have that radio-activity released to the
public and the environment. And that
would be a very, very serious accident.
Source:
Adelaide Independent
Adelaide, South Australia
Volume 1 Number 1
pages 6 - 7
NoNukes note:
Mike Rann has sold out to the uranium industry.
We refer to Rann as U_Rann_ium because he is
a real hot guy : radioactive hot red hot.
Here are photocopies of the article:
Former Senior Nuclear Engineer
with General Electric, the worlds
largest supplier of nuclear equipment.
Mr. Minor is now a leading
Californian anti-nuclear activist and
was a consultant for the film "China
Syndrome".
In 1976 Minor with two other senior
engineers from General Electric
resigned because they had come to
believe that nuclear energy represented
a "profound threat to man". Together
the three experts had 54 years
experience in the nuclear industry. Greg
Minor is interviewed by Mike Rann.
Rann: What prompted your decision to
resign from General Electric.
Minor: Well, it was a series of events
that happened over several years, but
some of the primary reasons include the
fact that I began to see the link between
the nuclear reactor programme we are
using for commercial power and the
weapons problem which is being
proliferated around the world. There
were also a series of accidents and
problems occurring, such as the
Browns Ferry incident in Alabama. This
was a plant I had worked on and it came
dangerously close to the accident we
are all trying to prevent.
Rann: What actually happened at
Browns Ferry?
Minor: Browns Ferry was a plant
where we had done very careful and
improved design to try to prevent a
single event from wiping out all the
emergency systems that are used to
protect the reactor and protect the
public from an accident. But what had
basically happened was that a single
event, a fire caused by a lighted candle
being used by an electrician checking
airflow in the cable spreading room -
wiped out 1,600 cables which connect
the control room with the reactor. In
doing so, the fire - which burned for
seven hours - wiped out all the safety
functions of the emergency core cooling
systems that are normally called on in an
emergency condition to save the reactor
from a dangerous situation. Fortunately
it didn't quite come to the condition
where it needed those emergency core
cooling systems. If it had, they would not
have been available. (Two of Browns
Ferry reactors, supplying 15% of the
total electricity demand for the huge
Tennessee Valley Authority, had to be
"scrammed" when erratic readings
began to appear on the controls.
Browns Ferry was out of action for
column2:
many months and repairs cost tens of
millions of dollars. Until the Three Mile
Island/Harrisburg incident in April 1979,
the Browns Ferry incident was regarded
by nuclear critics and advocates alike as
potentially the most serious incident in
the history of the nuclear industry.)
Rann: The Browns Ferry incident was
really the culmination of a number of
very silly mistakes, particularly human
error. If the safety and control systems
could be made more foolproof, would
this remove most of your doubts about
nuclear power?
Minor: Well, I think the thing we learnt
from the Browns Ferry plant was that
you cannot make them more foolproof.
The thing that happens is that human
element. Human error in either design
oversight or the problems we didn't
foresee in designing the plant, or in the
manufacturing where a manufacturer
didn't follow the quality procedures or
the installation procedures, or
maintenance problems. It was a
maintenance problems that happened
to catch Browns Ferry. But it could be
any of those that would produce the
accident in some other plant, regardless
of how carefully you think you have
designed it.
Rann: Supporters of nuclear power
say it is cleaner than other forms of
power generation. They say it is less
wasteful, less environmentally
disruptive. When you look at the track
T record of nuclear power generation over
the years, isn't the Browns Ferry
incident really the exception that proves
the rule: the rule being that nuclear
power is efficient and pretty well safe?
Minor: Well, you have to be very careful
in making that statement about
cleanliness. A nuclear reactor is only
clean if it operates exactly as it is
designed and these incidents around
the United States and around the world
where reactors have released radio-
activity into the environment, which they
are not designed to release, and which ·
really overrides the rule of cleanliness
they all like to speak about. The Browns
Ferry incident was, as far as proving the
rule that reactors are safe and clean, I
would say, quite the opposite. It proves
that they are vulnerable and they were
very lucky that this reactor accident
didn't go all the way.
Rann: What about the potential
benefits? Most proponents of nuclear
energy would concede that the risk can
never be zeroed, but don't the benefits
from nuclear power more than
column3:
compensate for what the proponents
describe as a very slight risk?
Minor: In my opinion they do not. The
risks are so large that it is hard to put it
on a scale that we normally think of in
any mechanical or technical disaster.
The risks of a nuclear accident can be so
devastating and so widespread and last
such enormously long periods of time.
We are talking about thousands and
thousands of years of contamination of
an area which may make it
uninhabitable forever. These are
dangers of a scale we do not normally
think of.
Rann: What sort of catastrophe, then,
could have resulted from the Browns
Ferry incident?
Minor: The danger at Browns Ferry
was that during the process of trying to
get this reactor under control, when it
column 4:
experienced this devastating fire which
was burning up the control cables, the
operators had to relieve the pressure
inside the reactor and in doing so they
had to manually open some valves
which normally they would not open.
But in manually opening those valves
they released the pressure but they also
lost a large part of the cooling water that
normally covers the reactor core, and
that's the concern. Because it you lose
the cooling water and it gets below the
surface of the core, then you begin to
have core melting and the danger
would be that this core melting would
release radioactive material which was
contained in there. If it went on further to
melt out of the pressure vessel and out of
the containing building, in a "China
Syndrome" situation, then you would
have that radio-activity released to the
public and the environment. And that
would be a very, very serious accident.
Source:
Adelaide Independent
Adelaide, South Australia
Volume 1 Number 1
pages 6 - 7
NoNukes note:
Mike Rann has sold out to the uranium industry.
We refer to Rann as U_Rann_ium because he is
a real hot guy : radioactive hot red hot.
Here are photocopies of the article:
2 comments:
You will undoubtedly delete my comment, but I feel you need to see it, before deleting it. Brown's Ferry was at the infancy of nuclear power, as was TMI & Chenobyl. Read up on the use of steam power between 1800 & 1900, and you will find all the same arguments against steam boilers, that are used today against nuclear reactors. Thousands were killed, in the most horrible way, by exploding steam boilers. Entire ships, entire trains were vaporized, along with their occupants. What was the upshot? By 1885, the boiler code was developed, and the use of these highly explosive death machines was finally mastered. You no doubt have one in your basement, even as I write. Not just safe, but entirely benign, the boilers make today's life livable, without the gathering of firewood,, or the shoveling of coal, or the digging up of peat in peat bogs.
Now to Brown's Ferry. The use of a candle as a tell-tale was a holdover from the 1800's, and now is illegal. They use a small vapor producing aerosol can these days. TMI was in the first month of its operation when its novice crew mishandled the controls. Decades of simulator training have now obviated any recurrance. The litany of Russian incompetencies at Chernobyl is long. They were a corrupt nation. However, Dascha's in the "nuclear exclusion zone" are now going for several million rubles each, and the hunting is great. So much for "uninhabitable for 10,000 years".
Most antinuclear advocates have more of a messianic motivation, than a scientific or social one. Their arguments are moot. China is building nukes in groups of 8 at a time. Get ready.
In reply to
www.blogger.com/profile/13607727620905026361 :
Your profile is not publicly available.
Do You work for the Goldstein Einstein gang ?
If so, then You have much to answer for.
Chernobyl and other nuclear disasters will create disruptions in the genetic sequences of all biological Beings on Earth for many millenia to come.
Will You enjoy living as a three-eyed frog with a foot growing out of your mouth ?
No "steam boiler" resulted in such damage and "steam boilers" are not invoking reactions from NATURE such as earthquakes, cyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes and, yes, UFO visits that human Nuclear disaster invites.
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