MSU Red Cedar Message Board

Just passing thru southern MI and northern IN, didn't see anything out of the ordinary on i69. Used the same detective skills as I did a couple weeks ago traveling thru Roscommon.

So I'm supposed to go to a wedding just north of Michigan City tomorrow, driving from STL.... I gone?

Freak me. I live in South Bend. FML.

I am going to see 38 special tomorrow night at Blue Chip in Mi City. Oh well.

This is just great.... I drove back to Chicago yesterday afternoon after a meeting in GRR. It was so nice I decided to stop off in South Haven and drive down to the south beach (my grandparents lived in South Haven so we spent lots of time at the beach there as kids). Noticed a big plume of steam from Palisaides but didn't think anything of it, although I did take a panoramic picture of the beach to email to my sister. You can see the plume down the coast to the south...

Of course I got in my truck and proceeded down 196 right past the plant...

I'm doomed.

with the disaster in fukushima still unfolding and nowhere near resolution(and more or less ignored by big media), minus well vacate the entire northern hemispere.

That's what they want you to think.

Working at Palisades was fun. I worked outage in fall of '10. Made the down payment for my first house in 10 weeks. Heard a lot of stories about workers finding radioactive material in places it shouldn't be. Had a big clump of asbestos fall on my head. Experienced how a gasket is changed in the "hot" areas of the plant:

Man 1: Run up to fitting and loosen right bolt. Run back.

Man 2: Run up and loosen left bolt. Run back.

Etc....

How much stuff is released into the air/water from an old plant like Palisades?

Radioactive material can spread with the wind. Not radiation. Radiation, in the laymen's terms used here, is basically very powerful light.

Below is an animated diagram of how a pressurized water reactor works. Water that is in contact with the actual reactor, is called the primary side. Water traverses next to fuel rods in the reactor, picks up heat, and is pumped over to the steam generators. In the steam generators there are thousands and thousands of tubes. On one side of the tubes is the reactor coolant, on the other side is the secondary side (clean) water. Heat from the reactor coolant transfers through the tubes and is picked up by the secondary side. These two sides are completely isolated.

The secondary side water is super heated and turns to steam which goes through the turbine, turning the shaft inside the generator to create power. Once through the turbine, the secondary side water is dumped down into the condenser. The condenser is a huge component of tens of thousands of tubes passing through it. On one side of these tubes is the secondary (clean) water/steam, on the other is circulating water (river, lake, cooling tower water) that is much much cooler. This cooler water cools the tubes and causes the hot steam (secondary side) to condense back into water. Secondary side water then gets pumped through a number of feedwater heaters back on its way to the steam generator and the process continues.

The circulating water going through the condenser tubes is completely isolated from the secondary side water. At palisades, after the circ water picks up heat from the condenser it travels out to the cooling towers where it is naturally cooled by the atmosphere. The "plume" is just steam from the circ water as it cools. What it looses to the atmosphere is made up by Lake MI. So circ water is 2 levels removed from contact with anything radioactive. Difference between Palisades and DC Cook plant down the road...DC Cook is a once-thru plant where the circ water doesn't go to the cooling towers...the discharge just dumps straight into the lake in its entirety. Supply then is completely suction from the cooler lake. Days where you see more/less steam is simply a matter of the atmospheric conditions..how saturated is air to absorb/dissipate the steam. You can see this change daily, yet that power plant runs for all but 20-30 days during each 18month period.

Now...as far as radiation for EITHER Palisades or DC Cook. Every site has a number various criteria that causes them to enter into different levels of event classification. From Least to Most significant: Unusual Event (UE), Alert, Site Area Emergency, and General Emergency. If an event occurs where a certain monitored system parameter exceeds a predetermined level meeting one of these classifications, it has to be declared within 15minutes. These monitored parameters include things such as containment temperature & pressure, containment radiation levels, physical security threats (terrorists), equipment availability, contaminated system leakage, fires, earthquakes, floods, and many many more. Once the conditions are observed to meet or exceed one of those event classifications, the station has 15 minutes to make the declaration and notify the NRC, and state and local governments. If you fail to do so..you face serious serious ramifications...like forced shutdown..NRC takes your keys away to run basically.

Bottom line...both Palisades and DC Cook are fine. Whatever the cause of that radiation spike THAT far away, was not b/c of one of the power plants. That is far from the closest radiation monitor in the area, yet others show nothing. One thing the public always fails to recognize...it assumes that power plants are some evil entity that would try and cover up an event that is occurring. People at the plants also have live in the conditions of anything occurring..if something happens you cant expect hundreds of people to keep their mouth shut. And most importantly, by working where they do, they live there...anything that happens directly affects their friends and families. No one jeopardizes the health and well being of their own friends, families, and home.

here's a good one