Nuclear fail-safe

[unixronin]

Xcel Energy Inc.'s nuclear plant at Monticello [Minnesota] has been shut down indefinitely while experts investigate why a large component broke loose and triggered the plant's automatic safety systems.

Hey, it failed safe, exactly as it's supposed to.  But have you heard anything about this on the news?  The only reason I knew about it was because yndy er, suzilem posted this Hungarian information-service site showing alert events in the US.  You can find it on Google News, if you search on Monticello, but it doesn't make the headline page.  CNN doesn't appear to have it at all.

Apparently a synergistic side-effect of the shutdown was a fish kill in the Mississippi river:

A side-effect of the shutdown was that it killed over 3,000 fish in the Mississippi River near the plant.

Nonradioactive water used to cool the plant is normally discharged into the river, Datu said, creating warm spots.  When the discharge stopped, she said, the river water quickly cooled, and the fish died of thermal shock.  A planned shutdown typically kills around 100 fish, she said.

Does this mean the fish have evolved dependence on the nuclear power plant...?

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yup, I was really kidding about the dependence.

Recewnt developments seem to indicate that borosilicate vitrification of nuclear waste is far less secure than once thought. Rather than being good for 10,000 years, a recent article in New Scientist was observing that due to accelerated deterioration from knockouts by high-energy neutrons, high-level waste stored in borosilicate could be leaking in as little as 250 years.