On Tue, 05 Sep 2006 16:37:40 GMT, "Frank F. Matthews"
wrote:
>
>
>Hatunen wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 04 Sep 2006 16:10:43 GMT, "Frank F. Matthews"
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>>Hatunen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>On Sun, 03 Sep 2006 18:42:13 GMT, "Frank F. Matthews"
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>nobody wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>Hatunen wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>example of tunnel engineering. Chernobyl was stupidly designed by
>>>>>>>a regime that didn't care all that much about it's people, and
>>>>>>>operated by stupid people who didn't follow even the stupid rules
>>>>>>>they had.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>They were actually conducting an experiemnt with the reactor at the time
>>>>>>of the explosion.
>>>>>
>>>>>snip
>>>>>
>>>>>Actually I believe it was a safety test or exercise. I guess we should
>>>>>ban all safety tests.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Your sarcaslm is justified only if it was, in fact, a safety
>>>>test. Was it? it was a test of the reactor, but according to
>>>>http://www.chernobyl.co.uk/ "he test was to check whether, in the
>>>>event of a shutdown enough electrical power to operate the
>>>>emergency equipment and core cooling pumps until the diesel power
>>>>supply came online".
>>>>
>>>>It is clar that some safety procedures were *violated* in
>>>>conducting the test.
>>>
>>>No doubt that it was a badly run safety test but it was a safety test.
>>>
>>>Power availability is a part of safety.
>>
>>
>> By stretching the definition of "safety" for nuclear power
>> plants.
>>
>And you think that the availability of "enough electrical power to
>operate the emergency equipment and core cooling pumps until the diesel
>power supply came online" is not a "safety" item?
As a former construction engineer on American nuclear power
plants, I am amazed that this wasn't in the specs. But for a
nuke, a safety test usually involes testing the performance of
nuclear saftey systems, such as the emergency core cooling
system. Seeing how much power you can crank up to is not normally
thought of as a "safety test".
I'm a little puzzled by the intent of the test, as well. If the
plant is going to have all that power, why do they need the test?
The emergency systems don't come on unless there is a major event
occuring in the reactor core, so the reactor should be going into
safe shutdown mode, not cranking up power. There's something
being untold her, I think.
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hatunen@cox.net) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps * |