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 Matt Bivens writes: Here are some fun pictures and graphics from the website of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission: This one (a PDF file) is a cross-section drawing of how, while plant operators snoozed, acid dripping over a period of years chewed through the six-inch carbon steel lid of the Davis-Besse nuclear reactor vessel. This one is a photograph of the rusty, acid-charred hole itself. And this one is from the happy ending: A shot of workers and a huge blue truck that's transporting a replacement lid for the reactor. Taken together, they tell a neatly delineated success story: Machine breaks, problem identified, machine fixed -- nay, improved! -- machine roars to life, better than ever, everyone much wiser and more knowledgeable for the experience. So if you want to complain, as I have in recent days, about how the Davis-Besse reactor came, thanks to outrageous negligence, within a fraction of an inch of disaster, fine. But doing so is also probably a waste of time, because the plant's operators simply counter that they're very, very sorry, and that they've spent two years and hundreds of millions of dollars on repairs and improvements, and that everyone from the NRC to the criminal justice system now has the plant and its safety culture under a microscope -- so what's the problem? Davis-Besse, like a late-night highway driver riding the adrenalin of having just narrowly missed a deer, is on full alert; so why not go hassle some other reactor? ... We are approaching the 25th anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident. Twenty-five years! In this context, let's remember that the accident at TMI came in the plant's first year of operations. Accidents at other plants, from Browns Ferry to Chernobyl, also occurred in the very early days of each plant's operations. This conforms with the Bathtub Curve, the classic engineer's illustration of failure over time. The curve is shaped like a bathtub, because things are more likely to break down when they're new, or when they're old. "All of the nuclear accidents [so far] occurred in the first year or two of operation, or on the 'break-in' phase. Plants are now out of that phase. They are in, or heading toward, the 'wear-out' phase where failure rates climb," says David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's only a matter of time before we start populating the right side of the curve with plant names." We can put Davis-Besse there already. Who will be next? (03/11/04)
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Terence R. Wilken writes: If you thought that you were losing money in our global economy, just wait until the government comes out with the consumer price index. There is currently a delay in the government telling us whether or not we have had inflation for the month of January. Because of this delay, they will also hold up what occurred in February as well. Of course the results will probably remain well under the rate that would get us upset. That is a priority. We do not have inflation as we all know. The reason for the delay is that the government may have to adjust the basket of goods again in order to demonstrate that what we are OK on the inflation front. The reason for this is that the CRB (
