Our friend the atom

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I grew up in the 50-it’s and 60-it’s with Heinz Haber’s and Walt Disney’s ”Our Friend the Atom”. I learnt that nuclear power is just another way of boiling water. Clean compared to coal and oil that soon would be finished. The future was bright and engineers were heroes.

But the local river stank from the textile industry and small birds started to disappear poisoned by mercury treated seed. The new local built factory for making textile fibers was closed before it was even started. So even if the atom was my friend what about industry?

Even so I studied chemical engineering planning to work in industry. My nuclear chemistry book at university in the 70-ies was loaded with grand expectations. Atomic batteries for lighthouses, nuclear powered merchant ships, nuclear jet-planes and even nuclear space flight.

And then a new disaster every decade. Three Mile Island in 70-ies and Tjernobyl in the 80-ies. Crystal River in the 90-ies (an expensive plant disaster). In the first decade of the 2000-Ies the Forsmark plant was minutes from a core melt down. And then Fukushima in 2012.

Nuclear power is not the power of the future. It is the power of forgetfulness. Here is a list of disasters. If you dare to read and remember. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents

Nuclear power is a technology where the fuel is controlled by a few super powers and much of it mined under terrible working conditions. And a technology so expensive that only extensive public support makes it profitable.

It’s a technology that you cannot trust. A reactor is often finished 5- 10 years later then scheduled. Emergency stops threaten the stability of the grid. Sudden discoveries of corrosion shuts down reactor for extended repairs. Lack of cooling water hampers production.

French nuclear reactors were stopped this spring since they found crack in welds in a safety system. The cause was stress corrosion resulting from a "frenchified" design. According to Bernard Doroszczuk (ASN) it will take several years to address the problem completely.

You can plan anything you want. But lets talk about reliability and not about planning. The latest news from reactor in Olkiluoto in Finland (>10 years behind schedule) are large cracks all four of the feed water pumps. So there will be further delays.

The Olkiluoto reached full effect 1600 MW in 30 september 2022. One month later in 28 October they announced the discovery of large cracks in the feed water pumps. If all the feed water pumps fails at max power a core melt down is a likely scenario.