Power Down Wakeup Call

[CharlesHarris]

Some of the fear mongering in US media. World Net Daily is no more credible than Infowars or PrisonPlanet
Fox News should know better too.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/...-blackout/
ww.wnd.com/2013/01/north-korea-emp-attack-could-destroy-u-s-right-now/
http://www.wnd.com/2014/02/u-s-evaluates...mp-threat/

And some blog commentary from a US nuclear engineer:

"Critical Analyses Riddled with Errors"

Too many errors to tackle when there are important things like weeds to be addressed. Control rods are not dangerous as stated. Diesels do not pump the coolant. Control rods not housed in primary and secondary containments, though they are inside an 8 inch thick reactor vessel inside a very heavy duty containment building.

I do have credentials to make those statements because I have a degree in nuclear engineering and I have 40+ years experience working in the nuclear power generating industry. Nobody deliberately builds nuclear power plants on earthquake faults, though newer technology has helped owners discover faults near their plants after the plants were built and operating safely there. The NRC has required re-analysis of those plants' earthquake ability to withstand earthquakes from those faults in order to continue operating the plants.

The diesel powered electric generators are required to have enough fuel to run seven days. This is with them supplying all possible loads; all the loads they can supply are not required to safely shutdown a given unit and keep it safely shutdown, so the fuel supply will likely last longer than seven days. Meanwhile, there are provisions for bringing more fuel to the plants. In a grid down situation, plants are working on other options and have some available now. By the way, it is the NRC, not NERC, that requires the seven day fuel supply. NERC has very little to say about how nuclear plants are operated or maintained.

I could shoot more holes in WND's analyses, but it is not worthy of a serious reply in my book. I do not mean that in an arrogant way. I just mean that its author is trying to feed off people's lack of information about an industry to sensationalize his or her agenda and gain some fame or whatever else one can gain from a piece like this one.