Belgian nuclear reactor shuts down after fire

Space_Chief said:
Radiation can be evil. If you get too many CAT scans and Xrays in too short period of time you could end up with a cancer. If you're exposed to the fallout of the sort encountered in Chernobyl you may end up dead after a seriously painful illness or likewise with a neoplasm, or you children may be born malformed or dead.
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A power plant that runs on coal produces more harmful radiation, annualy, than a nuclear power station. Just FYI.
 
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Arthur said:
No problem. Fukushima is safe. The radiation panic and evacuation was a media creation unwarranted by the facts.

Chernobyl is another exaggeration.
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You're either insane or having a laugh.

Chernobyl affected 162,160 km2 of countryside. A 30km radius from the site won't be habitable for +-20,000 years!
 
Arthur said:
No problem. Fukushima is safe. The radiation panic and evacuation was a media creation unwarranted by the facts.

Chernobyl is another exaggeration.
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Fukushima was/is an exaggeration. Chernobyl is not.
 
AntiGanda said:
You're either insane or having a laugh.

Chernobyl affected 162,160 km2 of countryside. A 30km radius from the site won't be habitable for +-20,000 years!
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TooFastTim said:
Fukushima was/is an exaggeration. Chernobyl is not.
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Oh no, you also drank the koolaid. Most people never left. The other reactor next door continued operations. It's a total myth. Use your fave search engine to get the facts. And watch the doccie Pandora's Promise. It has video footage from the plant still operating, and the villagers who never left. I'm on a phone now so can't easily find and post.
 
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TooFastTim said:
Worked in the nuke business long then Arthur?
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So only those who work there know?

In the past 20 years, less than 70 people have died as a consequence of Chernobyl. That's quite a few less than 7000-8000 who die annually as a result of coal power stations. Under 4000 thyroid cancer cases might be attributable to it, but in some cases also to the screening process itself.

The site itself is now an official tourist attraction.

Do yourself a favour and see Pandora's Promise available on Netflix, made by Robert Stone (I detest his politics and his silly global warming agenda, but he's right about nuclear). It also interviews many Impeccable Environmentalists who tell the conversion story, and why. Plus onsite HD film of the site, people, villages, radiation readings, etc.


imranpanji said:
No, Arthur is an oil man
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I am?

All I say is it aint evil.
 
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Now this story is getting interesting. This is the second Nuclear incident in Belgium in 4 months.
The first one has been ruled Sabotage.
And their plants are all ageing, some due to be shut down next year.

UPDATE 2-Belgian Doel 4 nuclear reactor closed till year-end
Thu Aug 14, 2014 5:06pm BST

* Major turbine damage forces closure till year-end

* GDF Suez confirms outage was due to sabotage

* Other reactors down, Belgian nuclear capacity halved

* Further outage set to impact GDF Suez earnings (Adds GDF Suez quote on sabotage, detail on capacity)

By Geert De Clercq

PARIS, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Belgian energy company Electrabel said its Doel 4 nuclear reactor would stay offline at least until the end of this year after major damage to its turbine, with the cause confirmed as sabotage.

On Tuesday, Electrabel had said the plant would remain offline until Sept. 15 as it carried out repairs and investigated an oil leak that forced its closure on Aug. 5. Its French parent company GDF Suez confirmed the closure was due to sabotage.

The shutdown of Doel 4's nearly 1 gigawatt (GW) of electricity generating capacity as well as closures of two other reactors (Doel 3 and Tihange 2) or months because of cracks in steel reactor casings adds up to just over 3 GW of Belgian nuclear capacity that is offline, more than half of the total.

The latest closure will put further pressure on the earnings of GDF Suez, which warned last month that the closure of the first two Belgian plants would push its 2014 group net recurring income to the lower end of its forecast range of 3.3 billion to 3.7 billion euros.

The French company said those outages would have an impact of about 40 million euros per month on net recurring income.

Electrabel said on Thursday the Doel 4 reactor had shut automatically on Aug. 5 following an oil leak in its steam turbine in the non-nuclear part of the plant. The firm said the leak had caused major damage to the turbine's high-pressure section.

"Based on this partial analysis, Doel 4 will certainly not be available before Dec. 31, 2014," Electrabel said.

Once the low-pressure parts of the turbine have been opened and examined, Electrabel will update its estimate of how long the repair work will take.

Energy experts have raised the spectre of possible blackouts this winter and say Belgium will have to boost interconnection capacity with neighbouring countries to prevent power shortages.

A GDF Suez spokesman confirmed Belgian press reports about suspicion of sabotage.

"There was an intentional manipulation," he said, adding that somebody had tampered with the system used for emptying oil from the Alstom-made turbine.

He said no outsiders had penetrated into the plant but declined to say whether an employee could have purposely caused the leak, as has been reported in some Belgian media.

He said Electrabel had filed a complaint and that the Belgian police had started an investigation.

GDF Suez shares close 0.6 percent higher on Thursday, slightly outperforming the broader market.

AGEING REACTORS

Doel 4 is the youngest of four reactors at the Doel nuclear plant, 20 km north of Antwerp, Belgium's second-biggest city. The country has three more reactors in Tihange, 25 km southwest of the city of Liege.

Doel 1 and 2, which came on line in 1975, are set to close in 2015. Tihange 1, which also started operation in 1975 and was designed to last 30 years, got a 10-year extension till 2015.

The two closed reactors Doel 3 and Tihange 2 were connected to the grid in 1982 and 1983. Doel 4 and Tihange 3, which came on line in 1985, were operating normally until the closure of Doel 4 last week.

In Britain, EDF Energy, owned by France's EDF, took three of its nuclear reactors offline for inspection on Monday after finding a defect in a reactor of a similar design.

The problems of the two French utilities with their reactors abroad may serve as a warning of possible generic flaws that could appear in EDF's ageing nuclear park at home.

With 58 reactors in 19 nuclear plants, France is the world's most nuclear-dependent country, relying on it for nearly three quarters of its power.

All of its plants are of the same basic Pressurised Water Reactor design, which means that a flaw discovered in one of EDF's reactors could force the closure of others.

French nuclear regulator ASN has repeatedly warned policy-makers that they should make room for additional supply in case a fault at one reactor prompted the precautionary closure of more than a dozen reactors. (Additional reporting by Michel Rose; Editing by Andrew Callus and Jane Baird)
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In SA load shedding and power cuts are annoying. In Europe, in winter, it's a killer simple as that.
 
rwenzori said:
I believe you can pick up some real property bargains in Pripyat. Nice quiet place for Arthur to bring up his kiddies.
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Actually saw a documentary on it the other day. With them building a dome over the reactor and work being done to the soil it could be inhabitable in about 100 years or so. Not 1000's as people have been thinking previously. I love watching documentaries about Chernobyl.
 
Pitbull said:
Actually saw a documentary on it the other day. With them building a dome over the reactor and work being done to the soil it could be inhabitable in about 100 years or so. Not 1000's as people have been thinking previously. I love watching documentaries about Chernobyl.
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I'm actually curious about that. With the whole debacle between Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the world - how is that project doing?
 
Arthur said:
Oh no, you also drank the koolaid. Most people never left. The other reactor next door continued operations. It's a total myth. Use your fave search engine to get the facts. And watch the doccie Pandora's Promise. It has video footage from the plant still operating, and the villagers who never left. I'm on a phone now so can't easily find and post.
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It's a bit early in the morning to be drinking isn't it?

Perhaps you should read up on the liquidators that where involved in the Chernobyl clean-up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidator_(Chernobyl)

According to Vyacheslav Grishin of the Chernobyl Union, the main organization of liquidators, "25,000 of the Russian liquidators are dead and 70,000 disabled, about the same in Ukraine, and 10,000 dead in Belarus and 25,000 disabled", which makes a total of 60,000 dead (10% of the 600 000, liquidators) and 165,000 disabled.[7]
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Clearly the dangers of radiation exposure near a nuclear meltdown are a myth...:wtf:
 
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When the Chernobyl disaster occurred and it was the West which informed the East about it, scumbag People's and Worker's parties officials went on TV interviews claiming the fears were exaggerated.
 
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