Here's a joke: Hi, Martin! How's it going for you nowadays?

A Sunday School teacher of preschoolers told her students that she wanted each of them to have learned one fact about Jesus by the next Sunday. The following week she asked each child in turn what he or she had learned.

Susie said, "He was born in a manger."

Bobby said, "He threw the money changers out of the temple."

Little Johnny said, "He has a red pickup truck but he doesn't know how to drive it."

Curious, the teacher asked, "And where did you learn that, Johnny?"

"From my Daddy," said Johnny. "Yesterday we were driving down the highway, and this red pickup truck pulled out in front of us and Daddy yelled at him, 'Jesus Christ! Why don't you learn how to drive?'"

Jesus came across an adulteress crouching in a corner with a crowd around her preparing to stone her to death. Jesus stopped them and said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

Suddenly a woman at the back of the crowd fired off a stone at the adulteress. At which point Jesus looked over and said, "Mother! Sometimes you really tick me off!"

A man and his ever-nagging wife went on vacation to Jerusalem. While they were there, the wife passed away. The undertaker

told the husband, "You can have her shipped home for $5,000, or you can bury her here, in the Holy Land, for $150." The man

thought about it and told him he would just have her shipped home.

The undertaker asked, "Why would you spend $5,000 to ship your wife home, when it would be wonderful to be buried here and

you would spend only $150?"

The man replied, "Long ago a man died here, was buried here, and three days later he rose from the dead. I just can’t take that chance."

Little Johnny came home from school to see the family's pet rooster dead in the front yard. Rigor Mortis had set in and it was flat on its back with its legs in the air. When his Dad came home Johnny said, "Dad our rooster is dead and his legs are sticking in the air. Why are his legs sticking in the air?"

His father thinking quickly said, "Son, that's so God can reach down from the clouds and lift the rooster straight up to heaven."

"Gee Dad that's great," said Little Johnny. A few days later, when Dad came home from work, Johnny rushed out to meet him yelling, "Dad, Dad we almost lost Mom today!"

"What do you mean?" said Dad.

"Well Dad, I got home from school early today and went up to your bedroom and there was Mom flat on her back with her legs in the air screaming,"Jesus I'm coming, I'm coming"If it hadn't of been for Uncle George holding her down we'd have lost her for sure!"

Regarding San Onofre, that much wear in nearly new steam generators suggests manufacturing defects or improper installation.

Friends of the Earth are claiming that SoCal Edison misrepresented the generator replacement as a like-for-like swap to dodge a full & thorough review by the NRC. The new steam generators, made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, were installed in 2009 (Unit 2) and 2010 (Unit 3). At that time, the station still had it's original steam generators, made by Combustion Engineering. They'd been running ever since Unit 2 started up in 1983, and Unit 3 in 1984. Replacing decades-old steam generators with brand new ones made by another company is not a like-for-like swap, and a full & thorough review before approval would have been called for in any case.

From the NRC:

"On January 31, 2012, at 3:05 PM (PST) main control room operators at San Onofre Unit 3 received secondary plant system radiation alarms. The operators responded in accordance with their alarm response procedures and diagnosed a steam generator tube leak from the number 2 steam generator. The operators evaluated the leakage to be about 82 gallons per day. At 4:30 PM, as directed by plant procedures, operators conducted a rapid power reduction to 35 percent power, then manually tripped Unit 3 at 5:31 PM.

All plant systems responded as expected during shutdown, and the steam generator tube leak rate did not worsen during the plant shutdown. Operators successfully isolated the steam generator at 6:00 PM and continued to cool the plant using the number 1 steam generator."

Note that those 82 gallons per day were leaking from primary containment into secondary containment, not spilling out into the environment. While this was going on, some radioactive steam may have been vented into the auxiliary building next to the reactor building. This building wasn't sealed - it had doors for people to go in and out - so it's possible some of that steam could have escaped into the atmosphere.

Oops, forgot the link:

http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1203/ML12032A243.pdf

> Regarding San Onofre, that much wear in nearly
> new steam generators suggests manufacturing
> defects or improper installation.

Oh. Well, why didn't you say so?

I'm totally at ease. Completely reassured.

How exactly are we to feel about "defects or improper installation" in that particular industry's 6th decade?

This is a little more consequential than a soda bottle cap in a car door.

> so it's possible some of that steam could have
> escaped into the atmosphere.

MMMkay. Thanks.

Outside of Chernobyl -- the amount of truly measurable radiation that would have long term bad effects is probably miniscule.

I'll need Radwaste to back up my supposition but I bet I'm right.

There will still be defects and improper installations in this industry's 16th decade.

The SONGS estimate for the radioactivity released to the atmosphere is 0.00004 millirem:

http://www.songscommunity.com/news.asp

To put that in perspective, you'd get a dose of about 0.01 millirem - 250 times as much - from eating one banana (bananas are naturally radioactive because they contain Potassium-40). And this is the estimate for the amount released to the atmosphere right over the auxiliary building, not the amount that would be released to the public once the steam dissipated in the air and was blown past the plant boundary.

When something goes wrong at a nuke plant, that does not automatically mean there is a danger to the public. In this case:

1) New steam generators were ordered to replace the decades-old originals and extend the plant's life to 2022,

2) Something went wrong during the manufacture or installation of the new generators.

3) Very sensitive detectors measured a rise in radioactivity in the secondary containment. An alarm was sounded in the control room.

4) Operators quickly determined that water was leaking from primary into secondary containment from faulty tubes in one of the generators.

5) They followed textbook procedure in shutting the reactor down while maintaining cooling at all times. None of that leaked water escaped into the environment.

6) Whatever steam did escape into the atmosphere had too little radioactivity to be measurable at the plant boundary.

> I'll need Radwaste to back up my supposition
> but I bet I'm right.

Everything's under control!

> To put that in perspective...

Assurances! They bring comfort! Even if I can't take that tour you promised me...

If only the industry were as horny to do well as it is to condescendingly explain these very complicated things to the little people.

Do you suppose that, as the work of this update began some months earlier, assurances were given that there'd be no problems? Were assurances provided that the specs were comprehensible, and adhered to during construction? During the installation? I mean, "a full & thorough review before approval would have been called for in any case"... Right?

No? Wiki says "The shutdown in 2012 was not due to an earthquake or tsunami but instead apparently due to poor design of the replacement steam generators that included many design changes and were not reviewed by the Nuclear Regulator Commission."

I wonder where they keep their backup generators. I wonder if, like the Japanese, they have mismatched connectors. Not that this was a crisis... Despite the release of radioactive material.

So S.O. had essentially infinite time to prepare but still couldn't pull it together. We're asked to be patient because the technology, or the spec, has been lost. You want us to know that... TO REASSURE US.

By the way... That tour of the plant you were talking about... Does it end at a gift shop?

Because I'm thinking I might wanna pick up some knick-knacks for the family, y'know? Little trinkets of remembrance to seal the warmth of the visit in my memory.

Maybe a snowglobe with the double-boobie building astride the freeway.

Or a T-shirt with a radiant little cartoon man exclaiming 'I glow like a fuckin' firefly!' as he strolls down a sandy California beach on a moonless night.

Maybe an ashtray. Y'know, somethin' small, but fun, a keepsake which I can treasure... To put that in perspective.

"Not that this was a crisis..."

Who said this wasn't a crisis? When something's leaking and alarms are going off in the control room, that's a crisis.

If you follow the reference to that quote from the Wiki, you will get a report authored by Arnold Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates and commissioned by Friends of the Earth (says so right on the title page). This report accuses SoCal Edison of misleading the NRC in order to dodge review. Just because Friends of the Earth say so does not make it so, even if the media takes it as gospel. The report also accuses SoCal Edison of being in a blind rush to restart the reactors before a root cause analysis is completed, an accusation which has no basis in fact.

We could go on with this all week, but the reactors are shut down, they're being cooled, and speculation on exactly what went wrong is pointless until the inspectors get to the bottom of this.

> This report accuses SoCal Edison of misleading
> the NRC in order to dodge review.

Do I care? Choose one:

[1.] The NRC was not mislead. Edison screwed this up, and would have done so even if the NRC did (or did NOT) have the responsibility to ensure faultless work.

[2.] The NRC was mislead, demonstrating that {A} the NRC can be mislead and {B} Edison misleads people.

> speculation on exactly what went wrong is
> pointless until the inspectors get to the
> bottom of this.

No! We can keep going! I speculate to help us put things in perspective!

I speculate that This wasn't caused by anything remarkable, and that it won't turn out to be something that ISN'T likely to happen another thousand times as the lives of these plants are extended again and again.

I speculate that The promises of safety from yet another generation of pompous, ill-educated, careerist technocrats will again prove to have been self-serving and baseless.

What could possibly be found "at the bottom" of this to prove me wrong?

New parts + plenty of time = fucked up anyway.

"We can keep going!" Yes, round & round in circles. Meanwhile, San Onofre is in a safe state despite what went wrong, and other plants are still churning out the megawatts.

You didn't choose. How come? Is this a backhanded way of conceding the Fairewinds accusations?

(Sorry to be so niggling about it, but careerists are not to be trusted.)

> San Onofre is in a safe state despite
> what went wrong

Financially safe? The first report I saw said that brownouts were a virtual certainty if '12 was a scorcher.

What will this report say to reassure us? It will be great to find out!

"If only the industry were as horny to do well as it is to condescendingly explain these very complicated things to the little people."

Real information is out there in a dozen trade papers, and in engineering dissertations both collegiate and otherwise. I suppose you're waiting for nuke plant details to appear on Twitter. No.

If you think it's condescending, you've earned that. Just when have you shown any indication of wanting to actually know anything about this? I do not for a minute expect you to peep over your flapping lips to learn about any aspect of a nuclear plant. Explaining the industry to you has been worse than teaching the pig to sing. Pigs are pretty smart.

"Horny to do well"? Another clue about how breathtakingly, awesomely ignorant you are and how pleased with your own noises you can be. It costs a power company a fortune not to run a nuke plant. While you're busy going on about their greed, all of a sudden they don't care about this real expense?

If the power company was really as horrible as you're implying, they'd be running with that leak. They're not.

Really. It's you. That's not much, and that's about all.

Back on topic: (Note artful use of boldface.)

Light comedy from Bob Hope, visiting Dallas:
"Everything's big here in Texas. Yesterday, playing golf, I lost three balls. And I was putting!"

From the political cartoons, we learn that among all the regulations and programs, the only thing a student CANNOT get in trouble for is failing to learn!

I found the Harry Potter series totally unbelievable. Not because of the "magic" - after all, Adam and Eve could speak Parseltongue, Jesus turned water into wine and could Apparate, etc... no, none of that. It's because nobody figured out what the "Engorgio!" spell was good for...

"You didn't choose" I don't have to. All the facts will come out.

"Financially safe?" The huge daily cost to SoCal Edison of keeping San Onofre safely idle will be exceeded by the cost of finding & fixing all the problems with the generators.

Safety is not the same as nothing going wrong.

There used to be two outhouses near the summit of Mount Whitney. The highest outhouses in America!

http://www.jldr.com/mtwhitneyoh.shtml

I would have suggested you run away and go hide in there until the report comes out, but they tore them down five years ago.

> Real information is out there in a dozen
> trade papers, and in engineering dissertations
> both collegiate and otherwise.

Yes, you're part of an elite priesthood! Those people around you in the restaurants and banks and sports arenas? Sheeple, you call 'em! And yet, you're still not elite enough! You ascribe a churning curiosity to the hearts of the populace, as if we needed to admire you EVEN MORE... Rather than worry that irresponsibility will take out part of the California coastline and nearby loved ones.

(Does "otherwise" mean you went to a two-year program? Just curious. Kidding! Don't answer. Swear to God I don't want to hear about your resume, how that one girl hurt your feelings in high school, or how that one great aunt in the family was a secret drinker.)

> I suppose you're waiting for nuke plant
> details to appear on Twitter.

You think we WANT to worry about details. You can't believe we're not captivated by the mundane technocracy that manages these things... Or fails to do so. You're giving you life to it, so you need to goose up market interest.

To wit:

> Just when have you shown any indication of
> wanting to actually know anything about this?

The reflexive nature of your (defensive and condescending) responses to these things make the field seem MORE dangerous, not less. The nuke guys are Masters of the Universe, right up until the generators won't connect, or until machinery needs long-anticipated replacement.

> all of a sudden they don't care about
> this real expense?

I think no one in government or industry is likely to pay a meaningful price for the failure... Or any other. Ever. But financial costs for this outage will indeed be borne by a third party... Guess who.

> Really. It's you. That's not much,
> and that's about all.

Indeed, the opinions you read in comments over my signature are mine... But it's not like I'm professionally interested or anything.

Still waiting to be told how investigation & report on this could offer any comfort or exoneration.

> Safety is not the same as nothing going wrong.

Interesting aphorism! New to me! Was that the motto during construction and initial budgeting? Was that on the lapel pins of the SCE guys when they went looking for permission to build the thing?

Weird time for supporters of these ventures to go all Lynn Anderson on our ass.

"Rather than worry that irresponsibility will take out part of the California coastline and nearby loved ones"

Amongst the faceless sheeple out there past the plant boundary are the families of the people who work in the plant, the people who are putting themselves in the line of fire by working next to reactors.

"Interesting aphorism!"

Everyone at a nuke plant thinks about keeping it safe even when things go wrong. That's what they just did at San Onofre.

It's not a broom factory. When it has to be shut down because something went wrong, the power company can't just turn out the lights and tell everyone to go home. Lots of people have to keep busy (and keep getting paid) keeping it safely idle and ready to be restarted when the problem is fixed. Nuke plants that are humming along safely & smoothly make lots of money every day. Nuke plants that have to be shut down because something went wrong cost even more money each day.

How time flies! Just a few days ago, you were heaping scorn & ridicule on Amy & Flynne over their concerns about the spread of Islam:

"Howling at the moon...Crackers...Insanity...BE AFRAID! BE AFRAID!...Doomed! DOOMED!!!!!"

Now here you are, foaming at the mouth over an event that didn't harm one housefly. And you're outraged that not everyone wants to join you in your hysteria.

I didn't know you had such great taste in country music!

> past the plant boundary are the families of
> the people who work in the plant, the people
> who are putting themselves in the line of fire

And God Bless 'em, the little Pilgrims. But have you ever noticed how political interests, both commercial and technocratic, can push an enterprise far beyond where it ought to be?

> Nuke plants that have to be shut down
> because something went wrong cost
> even more money each day.

Riiight. And, again, by whom will this cost finally be borne? By the taxpayers and utility customers, of course, including the ones surrounding the plant, who've lately been losing sleep every time they catch an unusual whiff in the air....

> you were heaping scorn & ridicule
> on Amy & Flynne

"Heaping" overstates things. 'Aggressively shoveling' is more precise....

> over their concerns about the spread
> of Islam

Right. And this is a completely different topic. New issues, new contexts, and so what?

Specifically— I think radical Islam is a hillbilly mentality. There are forces at work in modernization that should tamp that religious extremity just as they've tamped all the predecessors. I think the sheer mendacity of Islam as practiced in disconnected regions is more distressing to A & F than it deserves to be. People in civilization often forget how great it is over here. It's not an acquired taste, if you can imagine your own next spoonful. We forget to be grateful.

But the technocracies that sustain the growth and investment of nuclear power (while not fortifying existing installations and infrastructure [which are less profitable than new builds]) exhibit some of the most up-to-date soulcancers to be found in the human project. They're absolutely cutting-edge paper-pushers, exploiting all the weaknesses which modern education and economic competition nourish in the raw stock of shabby human nature. Nuclear may be a great way to power this very computer... But I resent the dishonesty of the nuke-industry fraud-mongers both because their savagery has essentially been undefeated (unlike Islam) and because many of them are from my own generation.

It's really, really important to note that whatever the faults in A & F's analyses of Islam, no one can accuse them of taking their positions as a career move. For Amy, at least, quite the opposite... She lives in freaking Venice/Santa Monica. Those people are all about bogus accommodation of other cultures. I'd not be surprised if her posture has cost her friendships, including with people who'd otherwise publish her work.

> great taste in country music!

Nope... Exquisite taste in young, high-cheekboned, oblivious and corruptible blondes.

Wow. You're in Cuckoo Land.

Well, carry on if you want to. I gotta go generate some electricity.

OK. Be sure to risk a 250,000-year exclusion zone on a slice of coastal paradise if you can, m'kay? (Ah, got that covered? Wunnnnnderful.)

But before you go, are there any other tour groups you wanna recommend?

"Yes, you're part of an elite priesthood!"

Only by comparison to yourself: the ignorant man who simply refuses to learn anything.

You have no solution. You have no point. You have finely-honed outrage, but that's all.

"Be sure to risk a 250,000-year exclusion zone on a slice of coastal paradise if you can, m'kay?"

Good example. Atom bombs went off at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rendering them off-limits for human habitation for, hmm, let's see, another 249,933 years. Oh, wait.

Finely-honed outrage: not even close to rational thought.

And not funny at all. Way to show disrespect for the Goddess's wishes.

Start your own blog if this is so important. Greenpeace will sponsor you.

> the ignorant man who simply refuses to
> learn anything.

Ludicrous. That's how the priesthood works... The souls of others are FALLEN until they believe with all their hearts, and can have be corralled.

The LAST thing you want it education.

> You have no solution.

Yeah, this is the Stop me before I kill again! part... As if you had no options in your life but support this wickedly complicated, expensive, risky and waste-producing venture...

And THEN, THEN to pester others for not enthusiastically cleaning up the mess that's been created.