{"id":649,"date":"2010-06-29T11:10:31","date_gmt":"2010-06-29T16:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/?p=649"},"modified":"2010-08-04T13:21:07","modified_gmt":"2010-08-04T18:21:07","slug":"nuclears-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/2010\/06\/29\/nuclears-lessons\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuclear’s Preparedness Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Like all of you, I’ve been watching with increasing dismay the gulf oil fiasco.\u00a0\u00a0Amid the scenes of\u00a0gushing crude, oil-soaked birds, and iridescent marshes it is easy to forget that good and competent people are working around the clock trying to stop the oil.\u00a0 At some point they will succeed and we can get on with Phase 2: Endless litigation\u00a0and interminable government hearings.\u00a0 Will any good come from all the Sturm und Drang<\/em>?\u00a0 If the last such accident of national\u00a0consequence is any indication, perhaps the answer is yes.<\/p>\n

After Three Mile Island (TMI) the U.S. nuclear power industry went through all the Kubler-Ross stages:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Denial: This appears to be much ado about nothing.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Anger: Dammit… who screwed up, whose\u00a0fault is this?<\/p>\n

\u2022 Bargaining: Whoa, slow down with all the proposed regulations…let’s just reason together.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Depression: This industry is dead; there’s no way we can afford all these new rules and retrofits.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Acceptance: We’re still America’s best energy hope; we’re going to come back stronger than ever.<\/p>\n

\"\"After TMI\u00a0the nuclear industry did some soul-searching and decided: One more event like this and we are doomed as an industry, so let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again.\u00a0 And many of the innovations that followed TMI have contributed to the industry’s excellent performance and budding renaissance.\u00a0 These include:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Creating the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations to set benchmarks, identify and exchange power plant best practices, and generally pursue operational excellence.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Creating the World Association of Nuclear Operators to do more or less the same thing across national borders<\/p>\n

\u2022 Funding ambitious government research projects that investigated exactly how nuclear accidents initiate and progress, including a major initiative on the human factors component<\/p>\n

\u2022 Conducting large-scale experiments to duplicate the TMI events and learn exactly what happened, down to very subtle chemical effects occurring inside the nuclear fuel<\/p>\n

\u2022 Nuclear utility competitors\u00a0pooling their resources to sponsor their own accident prevention research<\/p>\n

\u2022 New accident detection and prevention technologies mandated for new plants and retrofit into existing plants<\/p>\n

Looking at this list, I see a path \u2013 after this oil well is capped and the cleanup is behind us \u2013 towards a much safer and better run offshore oil industry. Oil will be in our future\u00a0for\u00a0all of our lifetimes. Let’s make sure we do it right.<\/p>\n

And oh by the way nuclear industry, it’s been 30+ years since TMI.\u00a0 Are you still looking over your shoulder and remembering your 1979 lesson of eternal vigilance? – Dennis Owen<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like all of you, I’ve been watching with increasing dismay the gulf oil fiasco.\u00a0\u00a0Amid the scenes of\u00a0gushing crude, oil-soaked birds, and iridescent marshes it is easy to forget that good and competent people are working around the clock trying to stop the oil.\u00a0 At some point they will succeed and we can get on with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":812,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions\/812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}