Fire Reported! What The Hell Is Going On At The Palo Verde Nuke Plant In Arizona?
Remember the incident at the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant near Phoenix about 8 weeks ago? They busted a guy with a pipe bomb in the back of his truck entering through the gates.
And prior to that, this April, it was reported that a man had been busted for smuggling sensitive information pertaining to that same nuclear plant into Iran?
Now this…
So I’m asking over here…wtf is going on with the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant?
I’m sure if we ignore it, whatever is going on there will just go away by itself zzzzzzzzz drifting zzzzzzzzzz back zzzzzzzz into zzzzzzzz pre zzzzzzzz 9/11 zzzzzzzz cocoon zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz BOOM.
December 26th, 2007 at 5:51 pmProbably nothing at all that doesn’t happen dozens of times a day at lots of places across the country - except this is a nuke plant where the NRC and the security staff don’t have enough to do and the resulting ridiculously conservative procedures elevate mundane and minor occurrences to “red alert” status, just to be sure nothing bad happens don’t you know. Never mind that over-done regulations create their own vulnerabilities.
December 26th, 2007 at 7:33 pmHaving worked at a not-to-be-named nuclear site I can understand the pedantic nature of security at them. Yes, everything does get blown out of proportion compared to say a coal-fired plant, but the consequences are that much more grave if they aren’t.
December 26th, 2007 at 8:42 pmNo need to worry. First of all, a cooling tower is an ancillary pice of equipment.
If the water got contaminated, sensors would be going off all over the place but you would not see any smoke.
They have a transmission for the fan that can catch on fire if the transmissioin fails and nothin is ndone to cut the power to the motor. Pretty common in refinerys, chemical plants and power plants, nuke or not.
December 27th, 2007 at 9:55 amWhether truly ancillary or not, the NRC is likely to try to get them declared them critical equipment so they can point to “regulatory accomplishments” as well as inevitably cause follow-on problems and violations that can also be used to justify expanding oversight. Classic bureaucratic creep - their real aim is to expand their power, budget and head count, like the Ag Dept promoting food stamps for illegal aliens: http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2006/10/food_stamps_in.html
If the safety aspects of their job actually get accomplished that’s fine, but of course the safest nuke plant is one that doesn’t operate.
December 27th, 2007 at 2:27 pmNuclear Plants Security isn’t like other places, it’s like going back in time to where the cold war is alive and well. Trust me you don’t see half of the security that is in place. The Pinkertons run “some” of the security at a plant just down the road where I live. They know your there long before you get to the gate. If someone so much as stops a car for a second to change a flat within a certain radius someone eyeballs them, without them knowing most of the time.
We had an incident here where they raised alert status pulled out the big guns and shut down anyone going in or out all because a guy wore his vest he had gone hunting in and a sensor and detected the “residue” of gunpowder from the shells that had been in his pocket from before.
They really don’t mess around. I have zero fear of terrorist or anyone making a successful attack on a nuclear plant, they’d need to bring an army, and be able to have hours an hours of uninterupted time.
December 28th, 2007 at 5:38 am