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Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

Misinformation by ABC Action News Blames a Transformer Fire at a Coal Plant on Nuclear Energy

January 17, 2011 By Rod Adams

Crystal River is located on the west coast of Florida, very close to where the Panhandle bends out. One of the largest local employers is a five-unit power station called the Crystal River Energy Complex owned by Progress Energy (soon to be a part of Duke Energy). Four of the units burn coal that comes via the Gulf of Mexico after being shipped down the Mississippi River. About 90% of the site area is dedicated to hosting those four units, their fuel piles and the cooling towers for units 4 and 5.

In the middle of the site, there is a relatively small dome shape and a rectangular building that a trained eye can recognize as a single-unit nuclear plant. Near that plant there is a canal that provides the cooling water supply to the nuclear unit’s condensers.

I once lived close enough to that plant to pay it a visit now and then. I also sent letters to the editor to correct the local paper whenever they published an article about the Crystal River nuclear plant. Invariably, the article would be illustrated with a photo of the formidable hyperbolic cooling towers that cooled the coal fired units 4 and 5 at the plant. No matter how many times I sent those letters, some of which were published, the editors could not seem to understand that the cooling towers had nothing to do with the nuclear unit.

This morning, I had a flashback to those fruitless efforts at helping the advertiser supported media to improve its accuracy in reporting. The headline that caught my attention was Transformer fire sparks at Crystal River nuclear plant.

My initial reaction was to quietly exclaim to myself – how in the world could that be true? The Crystal River Nuclear Plant has been shut down for more than a year. The plant owner has been fixing a troubling crack that was made in the containment building as a result of improperly releasing the rebar tension during a cut to enable a steam generator replacement. I know a little about power plant transformers; though they occasionally catch fire, the probability of one of them catching fire when under very light or no load is very close to zero.

I looked at the source of the headline – ABC Action News. That is a mainstream, reasonably well funded source of information that should be able to afford fact checkers and cannot be overtly activist about any particular topic. Then I read the article to find out that the writer was apparently as ignorant as the folks at the St. Pete Times that I used to correct with depressing regularity. Here is what the text of the article said:

CRYSTAL RIVER, Fla. – A transformer fire at the Crystal River nuclear power plant will not impact Progress Energy customers, a company spokesman told ABC Action News.

Leah Bickley said the fire broke out around noon inside one of the coal burning units. Fire crews quickly responded and put the fire out. No one was hurt.

The plant’s nuclear operations were not affected. The unit is currently offline, but the electric supply to customers will not be impacted, Bickley said.

The transformer that burned was INSIDE one of the four coal fired units that just happen to be neighbors of a nuclear power plant. They do not share any facilities – other than perhaps a training building. They are not even inside the same security boundaries.

Here is a little exercise for you if you happen to write stories about energy and want to learn the difference between the Crystal River Nuclear Plant and the Crystal River Energy Complex. Start up Google Earth and “fly” over to the facility, which is at 28° 57′ N, 82° 42′ W. Take a look around to see just how massive a facility it is and how little a portion of the facility is related to the production of nuclear energy.

Stop writing articles that blame routine electrical equipment failures at the coal fired facilities on nuclear energy!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About Rod Adams

Rod Adams is Managing Partner of Nucleation Capital, a venture fund that invests in advanced nuclear, which provides affordable access to this clean energy sector to pronuclear and impact investors. Rod, a former submarine Engineer Officer and founder of Adams Atomic Engines, Inc., which was one of the earliest advanced nuclear ventures, is an atomic energy expert with small nuclear plant operating and design experience. He has engaged in technical, strategic, political, historic and financial analysis of the nuclear industry, its technology, regulation, and policies for several decades through Atomic Insights, both as its primary blogger and as host of The Atomic Show Podcast. Please click here to subscribe to the Atomic Show RSS feed. To join Rod's pronuclear network and receive his occasional newsletter, click here.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. theanphibian says

    January 17, 2011 at 10:40 AM

    That is one of the worst articles in the history of articles. They must have published it without ever actually reading it. Or maybe they just write articles with bots theses days, and figure out that the words “nuclear” and “fire” trends well so a computer puts together a Franken-article of half-truths.

    It directly contradicts itself. Words can not express just how bad that article is. For heaven’s sake, could they not have looked at the Wikipedia article, that has the distinction written all over it between the nuclear and coal units. Obviously not because of the continued and intentional use of the title “Crystal River nuclear plant”.

    My hope for mankind has been degraded from reading that article. My desire to live is less after reading the article. Every time I read it I feel like a piece of my soul has gone missing. How can people can so neglect in writing just 4 paragraphs? How?

  2. Suzy Hobbs says

    January 17, 2011 at 11:32 AM

    We can’t count on journalist to fact check even the most basic concepts about energy production. More evidence towards the need for large scale public outreach and education about nuclear energy.

  3. Joffan says

    January 17, 2011 at 2:28 PM

    Sadly, a typically poor article. I detect hints that the headline has been juiced up from “power plant” to “nuclear plant”, at the cost of rendering the article incomprehensible in terms of getting real informaiton out – for example, is it the coal unit or the nuclear unit that they are referring to in the final sentence, “It’s unclear when the unit will be back online”?

    I really find it hard to believe that the unnecessary outage at the Crystal River NPP is ongoing a year later. The delamination in the wall that is described would have negligible impact in terms of either structural integrity or containment. The concrete wall isn’t the pressure containment, and delamination does not alter radiation shielding if needed. Please correct me if I have this wrong, because I have no idea why the nuclear plant is still down.

  4. DV82XL says

    January 18, 2011 at 7:28 PM

    We expected anything else?

  5. Rich says

    January 20, 2011 at 11:30 AM

    Perhaps some of you should read “Life-Cycle Assessment of Electricity Generation Systems and Applications for Climate Change Pol;icy Analysis”, by Pail J. Meier. http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/pdf/fdm1181.pdf

    The document assumes NO recycling of spent nuclear fuel, thus, a 10 to 20 fold reduction of CO2 could be realized for nuclear generated electricity.

  6. Lee Conrad (villagegolfer76@embarqmail.com) says

    January 21, 2011 at 6:02 PM

    Question for Rod:
    Any Rebuttals to Keven Kamps interview by Karl Grossman on Enviro Close-up TV. From what authority does Kamps speak and what are his credentials as a radioactive waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear. I don’t buy what he is selling. A local environmentalists group here in FL is featuring that interview at their meeting next Wed 26th. It seems like someone should initiate a defense of nuclear power against that video.

    • Rod Adams says

      January 21, 2011 at 6:36 PM

      @Lee – here are some links providing information about Kevin Kamps’s credentials:

      http://www.ct.gov/csc/lib/csc/kevinkampstestimony.pdf

      http://nuclearaustralia.blogspot.com/2007/03/us-waste-specialist-warns-against.html

      http://nuclearaustralia.blogspot.com/2007/03/kevin-kamps-honing-of-man-and-message.html

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